Part 3

"There," he said, as he bent his knee and saluted her hand, "when I am away this will discourse to thee of love."

"But why place it outside the casement, good my lord? I cannot learn to play upon it there."

"Sweet Princess, thou couldst never play upon it, nor could I. The Wind alone can draw music from its heart. When he sweeps the strings the melody is as the very breath of love, so tender and yet so wailing is the strain."

"The Wind!" exclaimed the Princess. "Hast ever seen the Wind?"

"Ay, and romped with him and flown with him over sea and earth."

"Ah! now thou art pleased to be merry, as thou wert yesterday when I saw thee talking to the King, ere we had met. Thy countenance was full of mirth and sunlight then. Tell me, why art thou changed? Wherefore art thou sad?"

"Dear one, I am not sad when I have thy companionship. It is only the thought of losing thee that shadows my face."

So they passed out of the chamber into the garden.

Thus the time wore away. Summer began to wane. The nights grew longer and the days more brief.

The King's impatience to see his daughter married increased hourly. Yet the Prince daily put him off with excuses when asked to fix the date of the wedding. At length His Majesty grew angry at the delay.

"It is time," he said to Myra, "that thou wast settled in life. We are old, and in all probability have little longer to live. Thy good lord seemeth all he should be. In grace of form and beauty of face he stands unsurpassed. But methinks, for all that, he means thee ill."

"Indeed, my father, thou art wrong to say so," replied the Princess, with difficulty suppressing her anger. "He is truth itself, and he loves me."

"But he will not marry thee!" the King muttered.

"There, again, thou art mistaken, my lord. He will marry me to-day--at once, so thou stand pleased withal!"

"Bring him before us, then, and let us hear his vow."

Myra made a deep obeisance, and left the King's closet.

Immediately she had gone His Majesty despatched a page to summon the Queen and Council. They were all assembled before Myra entered with her lover. She had not told him for what reason she had been sent in search of him; therefore, when he saw the grave faces of those present, he was surprised. The King rose and addressed him in dignified words, Myra making her way to her royal mother's side.

"Good my lord, our daughter tells us that thou art willing thy nuptials should be celebrated as soon as we consider meet. We have conferred with these grave counsellors, and they think with us that the ceremony should take place to-day."

"To-day, most powerful sovereign! Is not to-day somewhat soon? Methinks it were not well to hurry the Princess."

"Our child hath given her consent, noble sir. Hast thou not, my daughter?"

"An' it please my dear lord, I have," was the low reply.

There was a long silence in the chamber. Every eye was fixed on Myra's lover. He stood gazing on the beautiful face of her whom he worshipped--a gloomy figure in his purple garments, his eyes full of infinite sorrow.

"It seemeth that the Prince hesitateth," said the King, in a threatening voice.

Myra left the Queen, and with bent head approached her love.

"My good knight," she said, "methinks I do but dream; or, if I am awake, then hast thou changed, or some trouble hath befallen thee. Speak; my father awaits thine answer. Shall our wedding be to-day?"

"Fair lady, nothing could change my love, nor hath any trouble befallen me; and yet, our marriage ceremony cannot be solemnised to-day."

"Then to-morrow, good sir," said the King, "or the week after?"

"Your Majesty, the daughters of earth will never see the celebration of our nuptials."

The King turned grey with wrath, and gasped for breath as if death was upon him. The Council rose; the Queen rushed to her royal consort's side. Myra sank down in a heap at her lover's feet. He knelt beside her for one brief second.

"Forgive me," he murmured, "forgive me, in that I shall suffer eternally, whilst thy pain will end in the grave. Farewell, dear one; would I were mortal for thy sake. Love bids thee farewell."

When the King recovered his senses the Prince had disappeared. The country was scoured for miles round, but not a trace of him nor his followers could be found. No member of the royal household noticed a hundred beautiful red chrysanthemums, which had suddenly rooted themselves in the palace garden.

V.

Myra wandered about the precincts of her home like one distraught with sorrow. The sun of her life had gone out, and left all dark and cold and desolate. The flowers had lost their rare colours, and had clothed themselves in sombre tints of red and purple. The river had lost its merry voice, and went sobbing through the grounds. Many days passed, and life became one long memory. With brooding and sorrowing over her lost Love she grew pale and thin. Her eyes became wan and hollow, and misery closed her lips.

Some weeks after the Prince had disappeared she visited her garden. The flowers had grown tall and straggling, the walks were weedy, the lawn had lost its velvet softness, and all was desolation. As she walked, weeping, beside the once brilliant border, she saw the Rose-Mallow lying half-dead across her path.

"Alas, sweet flower! what aileth thee?" she said, lifting his head and looking into his face.

"My dear mistress, I am hurt to death," he murmured.

"Speak. Tell me thy sorrow."

"I worked by day and by night to climb the wall of the garden, and after much labour I reached the summit, just as the sun was setting. There I saw the lady whose melodious voice had won my heart. Ah, fair Princess! she was more beautiful than dawn or daylight. I gazed at her, and told her that I loved her; but she would not even look at me; she spread forth her pale blossoms with sweet pride. 'I love the Night alone, and only raise my face to his,' she said. Then I drooped and drooped with pain. I am indeed hurt to death," he moaned.

She threw her arms around him, while her tears fell on his poor faded leaves; and when the moon had risen her favourite lay dead in the once happy garden.

The Princess fetched her golden spade, and dug his grave where he had lived. Then she bent down and plucked a little cluster of flowers from the Violet whose love had been wasted, to place upon the earth above his resting-place; and from each blossom a tear-drop flowed from the Violet's heart.

"Ah! if I had not advised him to seek his love away from those with whom his life had been passed," moaned Myra. "He could have cared for one of the flowers in the garden before he saw the Evening Primrose; his life was spoilt through my counsel, and ended in pain. And, oh! that I had been as other women, and had taken a knight of my father's court for husband. If only I had put up with little imperfections, then this trouble had not come upon me. But now life is over, and I can never know happiness again."

That night Fate told the North Wind the story of his child. On his mountain home he learned of the Queen's treachery, of Myra's early life, and of Love's hateful blunder.

Spreading his powerful wings, by Fate's command, he flew earthwards, to bear his daughter to the halls of that dread arbiter of destiny. He was oppressed with sorrow. The snow-flowers hid their heads as he rushed, sobbing, down the mountain; the earth shook at his voice as he shrieked through village and valley; the dead leaves sighed as he scattered them in thousands before him. But when he gained the palace gardens and approached his daughter's window his fierce sorrow abated, and he touched the strings of her harp with gentle fingers. The first strains were more like the voice of the South Wind than that of the wilder North. Then followed long wailing strains of melody, as of a soul in distress.

Myra, sitting brooding on her misery, became strangely roused, as she heard the weird instrument played upon by a master hand. Often the sad music seemed to be the voice of her lover; then the tones softened to a sigh; it was the Rose-Mallow's dying sob.

An overmastering wish seized her to open the casement. She must admit those pleading tones, or her heart would break. Unable to quell the desire, she threw wide the window.

There stood a tall, winged man. His shaggy hair was heavy and black, his face was gaunt and wild. He was sweeping the harp-strings with long, bony fingers. Strange and uncouth and terrible as he looked, there was such strength about the great figure, such power in the face, that the Princess, though terror-stricken, was drawn towards him. And when he saw her leaning from her casement, so gentle an expression crossed his worn visage, that her fear of him departed instantly, and she said:--

"I know thee, great master. Thou art the Wind, and thou hast met my Love. Ah, in mercy take me to him!"

"Wilt thou not be afraid to entrust thyself to my arms?" he whispered.

"Good sir, carry me all over the earth, through frozen worlds of endless ice, so thou layest me at my lord's feet at last, and I shall not know a moment's fear. I love him!" she said simply.

The Wind clasped her in his arms and flew away, lulling her to sleep as he went.

When the Princess awoke she was standing in a gloomy cavern. The walls were of black onyx. A stream of crystal water ran gurgling at her feet.

When her eyes became more accustomed to the haze and dimness of the place, she saw a sight which made her wish to shriek aloud; but her voice seemed to have gone, and she stood powerless and terror-stricken. As she gazed a light seemed to break upon her mind.

Fate, robed in lowering mists, sat gazing into a divining glass, with keen, prophetic eyes; with her right hand she held Love in strong and terrible grasp. In the crouching, penitent figure, Myra recognised, with bursting heart, that her Prince and Love were one. Then she became conscious of the deep voice of Fate ringing through the gloom in threatening tones.

"Thou didst think thou couldst play with her affections as thou dost with those of a mortal maid, couldst win her love and break her heart by thy desertion! But, trickster as thou art, in thine own net art thou caught. See, where each tear she lets fall, a lily springs."

Myra's eyes followed Fate's pointing finger. Love looked up and saw the Princess standing in a cluster of white lilies.

"Know that she is a spirit, immortal as thyself; a child of the Winds, nursed on the salt Sea's breast. Therefore, as thou only canst feel punishment in her agony, she shall be called Grief. Henceforth, in all Love there shall be much of bitterness. Parting from the thing loved shall be the keenest pang of human pain. She shall visit her foster-parents but once again, and mingle her sobs with theirs. She shall pursue thee through the ages, and fear of her coming shall lessen thy rapture. Disappointment, despair, and misery, shall walk in her train. Man shall weep tears of blood in that thou hast created Grief!"

Love shrieked aloud in pain, and flinging aside the cruel hand of Fate, threw his arms about the shrinking girl. They stood in the misty gloom together, his brilliant form regained its strength. Grief lifted her brimming eyes to his and caught their power.

A great wave of tenderness broke over the mournful face of Fate; her calm glance rested prophetically on the two figures as she addressed them for the last time.

"But her love of thee shall endure until the Lilies of Grief are lost in the Roses of Love; for Love shall be king of Grief, and of Time, and of Eternity."

The Flower that reached the Sun-lands

"No star is ever lost we once have seen We always may be what we might have been" Adelaide Procter

I.

Though only a miserable little waif, born in sorrow and nurtured in poverty, George Ermen had resolved to be a great man.

He earned six shillings a week at sorting rags and paper, adding frequently to this a smaller sum gained by cleaning pots at a public-house. It was a miserable pittance. He and his mother could hardly be said to live upon it, they only existed; and they found this still more difficult when George's father, a lazy, ne'er-do-well, came to visit them.

The boy and his mother dwelt in a garret in Paradise Court. It was a bare, miserable room, its only furniture an old iron bedstead, a rickety table, and two chairs. Opening out of the attic was a tiny chamber with a mattress in one corner, on which George slept. He had no bed-clothes, and was in the habit of covering himself with papers during the chill winter nights.

On the wall hung a small plaster crucifix. A sprig of box was thrust through the ring by which the cross was suspended. The window looked out upon a wilderness of chimneys and grimy tenement houses.

It seemed to George that God had been very good to him, although he was poor and ragged and half starved, for besides his old mother, whom he loved above everything, he had three good friends--Father Francis, the Roman Catholic priest; Miss Brand, who was devoting both time and money to the suffering poor in the district; and Maggie Reed, his little sweetheart, who was as poverty-stricken and as tattered as himself.

George sang in the choir at the church. He possessed a beautiful voice, and the priest felt sure that were it possible to procure him an efficient musical training he would have a future. But it seemed rash to even hope for a chance for the boy among the squalor and misery and sin which surrounded the poor. Father Francis, however, did not lose heart, because he was a good man, believing in God, and feeling convinced that He would stretch forth His hand to the waif and help him in His own good time. The lad himself was even more hopeful than the priest, because he was young, and had resolved that death alone should prevent the fulfilment of his vow.

Not that poor George Ermen had much idea of what the term "a great man" meant, excepting that they usually dressed in frock coats, wore gaiters over their boots, and drove about in a carriage, all of which seemed very pleasant and most desirable to the bare-footed waif.

Strangely enough, he was frequently pondering over very material things when he sang his best and when his eyes seemed most dreamy.

"What were you a-thinking of this mornin' in church when you was singin' the _Ave Maria_?" his mother had once inquired.

"Why, didn't I sing it well?" he asked anxiously.

"Yaas, better than ever before, and yer faice looked loike an angel's."

"Well, I was promisin' God that if ever I got rich enough to ride about in a carriage like the lords do that come and lay foundation stones and opens schools and things, I'd invite all the little children what's so miserable to tea and muffins."

Mrs. Ermen smiled sadly. She had no belief in her son ever rising to be anything better than a wretched waif, fated to live and die in Paradise Court. But as long as he was honest, and brave, and true to his friends, she must not complain. She was content, almost happy indeed, when she looked around her and saw boys of George's age swearing and fighting and drinking, while George was sober, well behaved, and industrious.

Maggie Reed knew in her young soul that George would surely live to be a great man, and often when they roamed about the weary streets together, she would cheer him with her childish confidence.

"We'll live on 'Ampstead 'Eath, George, when you're rich and we're married, at one of them big 'ouses by the pond, and we'll 'ave donkey rides and bicycles and things."

"Yes, darling," George would answer.

By the advice of Father Francis they often spent hours in the parks and squares, where the air was sweeter than that of Paradise Court; but frequently George's little sweetheart grew so tired that he had to carry her on his back most of the way home again.

It was a cold day in early spring. Mrs. Ermen sat shivering in a corner of their garret, when her boy bounded into the room carrying a geranium in a pot.

"Mother, mother," he cried in wild excitement, "Miss Brand is gettin' up a geranium show! It's ter come off in July. Four hundred plants have been given out to the children this morning. They are to keep them, water them, attend to them, make them grow and flower, and when the day comes round for the show the plants must be taken to the schoolroom, and the best will get a prize."

"Who is ter judge?" asked Mrs. Ermen, catching George's excitement.

"A lord!"

"A lord?"

"Yes, one of them that wears gaiters over their boots. And I am going to win the first prize!" he added firmly, his sharp face wearing an expression of happy anticipation.

"I 'ope you will, my dear," she answered, kissing him, and breathing a prayer from her poor ignorant soul for the good woman whose unselfish devotion had brought that look into her boy's face.

Time passed, and the bitter, easterly winds proved to be more than Mrs. Ermen could bear. She became too weak to rise, and when George grew alarmed she tried to comfort him by saying that she felt warmer in bed; and when June came she should be about again, and he must not distress himself for her sake.

Supposing she should die! Men and women died frequently in Paradise Court. Their bodies were carried out of the squalid dwellings and rattled over the streets to the crowded burial ground. The thought smote him painfully, and made a burning flush mount to his face. She must not die! What would riches and greatness mean to him unless she were there to share in his good fortune?

II.

The geranium was not at all happy in her new quarters. Although George attended to her wants most carefully she still thought with bitter regret of the greenhouse where she had been reared, and of the old gardener who had ministered to her. Here on the window sill of George's attic thousands of smuts settled daily upon her leaves, and the air was heavy. So great was her discomfort that she would have most certainly ceased to live had not a sunbeam lost his way among the narrow courts of the city, and while darting in and out of the grimy streets in his endeavours to find the sun, espied the unhappy flower. He immediately climbed up his golden ladder, and rested among the broad green leaves, much to her delight.

She confided her pitiful history to this new-found friend, who was so kind and sympathetic that the geranium grew warm and happy. Presently the sun shone out in the murky sky, and immediately the sunbeam glided along his golden thread and rejoined his parent. He did not, however, forsake the plant which had sheltered him, but frequently visited her, so that she forgot her struggle for life, and grew into a fine healthy geranium, much to the delight of her young master.

As time passed George began to realise that his mother would never rise from her bed again. Father Francis had gently told him that there was little hope of her recovery, and that when the great blow fell upon him he must reconcile himself to the will of the Almighty.

The poor waif suffered many hours of agony alone in his garret. Kneeling before the crucifix, he would beg God to spare the one thing he loved in all the world.

"I have so few comforts, dear Lord," he would say, "no clothes, little food; I can stand want if only you will not take her away." But when he was tired out with pain, he would raise his lips to the pierced feet, and kissing them, murmur, "Thy will be done."

His imagination had so often realised the picture that one morning, on finding his mother dead in her bed, he was hardly shocked.

The doctor said that death had resulted from syncope, accelerated by want of nourishment and neglect.

So the waif was left alone. His bright look departed. The wish for greatness was forgotten in his sorrow, and even his little sweetheart failed to comfort him.

On hearing of George's sad plight his father returned to live with him. The boy's saddened face touched Ermen's hard heart, and for a time the son's misery was alleviated by his parent's kindness. His father was decently dressed, and evidently had a little money, for food was more plentiful in the garret than it had ever been during George's remembrance.

Thanks to the sunbeam's care, the geranium continued to thrive marvellously, and as show day drew near she approached her prime.

Miss Brand gave George a clean collar and a decent jacket, and Father Francis bought him his first pair of shoes for the great occasion.

On the morning of the distribution he was up at five o'clock, for at that early hour he had been told to take his geranium to the schoolroom, and enter it for the competition.

Very gently he watered the leaves, taking care that not a drop should fall upon one of the five brilliant blossoms. As he stood admiring the plant he was surprised to hear footsteps in the adjoining room. His father had been away some days. He thought he must have returned earlier than he had expected. He therefore hurried to the door, and opened it, a joyful expression on his face. But it was the landlady, who stood there holding a dirty-looking letter in her hand.

"Look 'ere, sonnie, your father's been took ter gaol. 'E was on 'is way 'ome when the perlice took 'im in charge for that big jewel robbery at Manchester. 'E's wrote me this letter," she said, pausing to unfold the dirty piece of paper, while George stood pale to the lips with terror.

"'E sends you this message: 'Tell my son not ter grieve for me. It's all quite true what they says against me. I am a scamp, and always have been.'"

"'E'll get a lifer, that's a certainty," she observed to the lodgers downstairs when she had left the horror-stricken boy alone.

George couldn't weep at this last blow. He had not shed a tear since his mother's death. The agony in his heart was therefore all the more unbearable. He clenched his hands in pain.

Hours passed, the bitterest he had ever spent. Whatever suffering the future held for him he never experienced such anguish again.

At last he raised his head. His face was white, his eyes were heavy and dull.

"Everything is against me," he moaned. "My mother's dead; my father, who had become so kind, taken and thrown into gaol. Why should I suffer hunger and cold and disgrace and beggary? Other boys, through no merit of theirs, are born rich. Why wasn't I a lord's son instead of a waif of the streets? Why should my mother die of neglect, when others have all they need? Oh! I'll ask God to kill me; death ain't so very terrible. I've seen lots of boys of my age fished out of the river. It's only a few moments' pain, and Jesus wouldn't be 'ard on a little chap what's ben drove to it."

The geranium trembled with fear as she heard the boy's wild words. She spread out her blossoms and endeavoured to attract his attention.

Suddenly the garret was brilliantly illuminated. The sunbeam had glided down his golden ladder, and stood on the window sill.

George was amazed. He must be dreaming! What was this beautiful tiny creature enveloped in a haze of glory?

"The angels are sad when you despair, little boy. Gather your energies. Receive your prize! You are ungrateful to the flower which has grown into so beautiful a plant for your sake. You are ungrateful to your God thus to abandon hope when you possess one of His greatest gifts."

"What gift?"

"Youth, a magic watchword that can open the enchanted gates in the land of genius."

"Genius?" said the boy wonderingly. "I have never heard of it."

"Live your life. Lose not a moment. At your years time flies. Be a great and a good man. Persevere. Out of the mire of this wilderness a golden flower shall rear its head, and grow in beauty day by day. It may even reach the Sun-lands."

III.