Part 13

“Strength is the thing!” said a great voice, suddenly. “We want to be big and strong and _nothing else_. I am going to rule in this.” And the voice of the Strong Self seemed to be everywhere.

“Not without me ... not without me!” said the Wise Self. But it spoke faintly, and could hardly be heard in the clamour of all the others who now all began talking at once, with the little Fun Self dancing among them and crying, “I’m the one--you all want me to rule, _really_, but you don’t know it.”

And suddenly, in the midst of all this, Hazen began to see strange little shadows appearing and lurking about, somewhat slyly, and often running away, but always coming back. They were tiny and faintly outlined--less like reflections in a mirror than like reflections which had not yet found a mirror for their home. And they spoke in thin little voices which Hazen could hear, and said:--

“We’ll help you, Rich! We’ll help you, Strength! We’ll help you, Fun! Only let us be one of you and we’ll help you win, and you shall reign. Here are Envy Self and Lying Self and Hate Self and Cruel Self--we’ll help, if you’ll let us in!”

And when he heard this, Hazen suddenly called out, with all his might:--

“Stop!” he cried, “I’m the ruler here! I’m Hazen!”

And of course he was the ruler--because it was the inside of his own head.

Instantly there was complete silence there, as when a bell is suddenly struck in the midst of whisperings. And all the Selves shrank back.

“Hazen!” they said, “we didn’t know you were listening. You be king. We’ll help--we’ll help.”

“As long as I live,” said little Hazen then, “not one of you shall rule in here without me. I shall want many of you to help me, but only as much as I tell you to, and no more. I’m only a furnace boy, but I tell you that I am king of the inside of my own head, and I’m going to rule here and nobody else!”

Then, nearer than any of the rest--and he could not tell just where it came from, but he knew how near it was--another voice spoke to him. And somewhat it was like the Thought that had spoken to him in the king’s kitchen and bidden him go up to the king’s library--but yet it was nearer than that had been.

“Bravely done, Hazen,” it said. “Be king--be king, even as you have said!”

With the voice came everywhere sweet music, sounding all about Hazen and in him and through him; and everywhere was air of dreams--he could hardly tell whether he was watching these or was really among them. There were sweet voices, dim figures, gestures of dancing, soft colours, lights, wavy, wonderful lines, little stars suddenly appearing, flowers, kindly faces, and then one face--the exquisite, watching face of the Princess Vista at the window, with her hair partly brushed ... and then darkness....

... When he woke, it was early morning. The sun was pricking through the leaves of the forest, the birds were singing so sweetly and swiftly that it was as if their notes overlapped and made one sound on which everything was threaded like curious and beautiful beads on a silver cord. The old man was gone; and before Hazen, the way, empty and green, led on with promise of surprise.

And now as he went forward, eating his bread and gathering berries, Hazen had never felt so able to make his future. It was as if he were not one boy but many boys in one, and they all ready to do his bidding. Surely, he thought, his fortune must lie at the first turn of the path!

But at the first turn of the path he met a little lad no older than himself, who was drawing a handcart filled with something covered, and he was singing merrily.

“Hello,” said the Merry Lad. “Where are _you_ going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” said Hazen. And though he had readily confided to the old man what he was hoping to find, someway Hazen felt that if he told the Merry Lad, he would laugh at him. And that no one likes, though it is never a thing to fear.

“Come on with me,” said the Merry Lad. “I am going in the town to sell my images. There will be great sport.”

And, without stopping to think whether his fortune lay that way, Hazen, whose blood leapt at the idea of the town and its sports, turned and went with him.

The Merry Lad was very merry. He told Hazen more games and riddles than ever he had heard. He sang him songs, did little dances for him in the open glades, raced with him, and when they reached the dusty highway, got him in happy talk with the other wayfarers. And by the time they gained the town, they were a gay little company. There the Merry Lad took his images to the market-place and spread them under a tree--little figures made to represent Mirth, Merriment, Laughter, Fun, Fellowship, and Delight--no end there was to the variety and charm of the little images, and no end to all that the Merry Lad did to attract the people to them. He sang and danced and whistled and even stood on his head, and everyone crowded about him and was charmed.

“Pass my cap about,” he said, while he danced, to Hazen. “They will give us money.”

So Hazen passed the Merry Lad’s cap, and the people gave them money. They filled the cap, indeed, with clinking coins, and went away carrying the images. And by nightfall the Merry Lad and Hazen had more money than they knew how to use.

“Oh,” the Merry Lad cried, “we shall have a glorious time. Come!”

Now Hazen had never been in the town at night, and he had never been in any town at any time without some of the king’s servants for whom he had had to fetch and carry. To him the streets were strange and wonderful, blazing with lights, filled with gayly dressed folk, and sounding now and again to strains of music. But the Merry Lad seemed wholly at home, and he went here and there like a painted moth, belonging to the night and a part of it. They feasted and jested and joyed, and most of all they spent the money that they had earned, and they spent it on themselves. I cannot tell you the things that they bought. They bought a wonderful, tropical, talking bird; they bought a little pony on which they both could ride, with the bird on the pony’s neck; they bought a tiny trick monkey and a suit of Indian clothes with fringed leggings and head-feathers; and a music-box that played like a whole band. And when the evening with its lights and pantomimes was over, they pitched their tent on the edge of the town, picketed the pony outside, brought the other things safely within, and lay down to sleep.

Now, since they had no pillows, Hazen took the picture-book which the princess had given him and made his pillow of that. And as soon as everything was quiet, and the Merry Lad and the talking bird were asleep and the pony was dozing at its picket, the princess’s picture-book began to talk to Hazen. I do not mean that it said words--it is a great mistake to think that everything that is said must be said in words--but it talked to him none the less, and better than with words. It showed him the princess in her blue gown sitting in the window-seat with her little blue slippers crossed. It showed him her face as she taught him about the sun and the world, and taught him her picture-book through. It reminded him that his page-boy’s dress was worn because, in his heart, he was her page. It brought back the picture of her standing at the window, with her hair partly brushed, to wave him a good-bye--“_Now_, good-bye,” he could hear her little voice. He remembered now that he had started out to find his fortune and to become wise, _really_ good, loved, and beautiful. And lo, all this that he had done all day with the Merry Lad--was it helping him to any of these?

As soon as he knew this, he rose softly and, emptying his pockets of his share of the money earned that day, he laid it near the Merry Lad’s pillow, took the picture-book, and slipped away.

The Merry Lad did not wake, but the talking bird stirred on his perch and called after him: “Stay where you are! Stay where you are!” And the words seemed to echo in Hazen’s head and were repeated there as if another voice had said them, and while he hesitated at the door of the tent, he knew what that other voice was: It was within his head indeed, and it was the voice of that breezy little Self, all merry and fluffy and light as lace--the Fun Self itself!

And then he knew that all day long that was the voice that he had been obeying when he went with the Merry Lad, and all day long that Self had been guiding him, and had been his ruler. And he himself had not been king of the Selves at all!

Hazen slipped out into the night and ran as fast as he could. Nearly all that night he travelled without stopping, lest when day came the Merry Lad should overtake him. And when day did come, Hazen found himself far away, and passing the gate of a garden where, in the dawn, a youth was walking, reading a book. Him Hazen asked if he might come in the garden and rest for a little.

This Bookman, who was pleasant and gentle and seemed half dreaming, welcomed him in, and gave him fruit to eat, and Hazen fell asleep in the arbour. When he awoke, the Bookman sat beside him, still reading, and seeing that the boy was awake, he began reading to him.

He read a wonderful story about the elements of which everything in the world is made. He read that they are a great family of more than seventy, and so magically arranged that they make a music, done in octaves like the white keys of a piano. So that a man, if he is skilful, can play with these octaves as he might with octaves of sound, and with a thousand variations can make what he will, and almost play for himself a strain of the heavenly harmony in which things began. You see what wonderful music that would be? Hazen saw, and he could not listen enough.

Until dark he was in the garden, eating fruit and listening; and the Bookman, seeing how he loved to listen, asked him if he would not stay on in the garden, and live there awhile. And without stopping to think whether his fortune lay that way, Hazen said that he would stay.

Everything that the Bookman read to him was like magic, and it taught Hazen to do wonderful things. For example, he learned marvellous ways with sentences and with words. The Bookman showed him how to get inside of words, as if they had doors, so that Hazen could look from out the words that were spoken almost as if they had been little boxes, and he inside. The Bookman showed him how to look behind the words on a page and to see how different they seemed that way. He would say a sentence, and instantly it would become solid, and he would set it up, and Hazen could hang to it, or turn upon it like a turning-bar. It was all great sport. For sentences were not the only things with which he could juggle. He showed Hazen how to think a thing and have _that_ become solid in the air, too. Just as one might think, “Now I will plant my garden,” and presently there the garden is, solid; or, “Now I will get my lesson,” and presently, sure enough, there the lesson _is_, in one’s head, _so_ the Bookman taught Hazen to do with nearly all his thoughts, making many and many of them into actions or else into a solid, so that it could be handled as a garden can.

And at last, one night, Hazen thought of the Princess Vista, hoping that that thought would become solid too, and that the princess would be there before him, for he wished very much to see her. But it did not do so, and he asked the Bookman the reason.

“Why does not my thought about the Princess Vista become solid, and the princess be here beside me?” he asked wistfully.

“Some thoughts take a very long time to become solid,” said the Bookman, gently, “and sometimes we have to travel a long way to make them so. If you think of the princess long and hard enough, I daresay that you will go to her some day--and there she will be, solid.”

But of course as soon as Hazen began thinking of the princess long and hard, he wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be doing something that should hasten the time of seeing her, which could not well be until he had made his fortune. So thereupon he told the Bookman that he must be leaving the garden.

“I knew that the day must come,” said the Bookman, sadly. “_Could_ you not stay?”

And when he said that, Hazen wanted so very much to stay there in the enchantment of the place, that it seemed as if a voice in his own head were echoing the words. And while he hesitated at the gate of the garden, he knew what that other voice was! It was within his head indeed, and it was the voice of that strange, fascinating Self from which he had found that he could hardly look away--the Knowledge Self itself. And then he knew that all this time in this garden, it was this voice that he had been obeying and it had been guiding him. He himself had not been king of the Selves at all. So when he knew that, he hesitated not a moment, for he saw that although the Bookman was far finer than the Merry Lad, still neither must be king, but only he himself must be king.

“Alas!” he cried, as he left the garden, “I am not nearer to making my fortune now than I was at the beginning!”

XV

KING (_continued_)

So Hazen left the garden and the gentle Bookman, who was loath to let him go, and hurried out into the world again.

He travelled now for many days, hearing often of far countries which held what he sought, but never reaching any of them. Always he did what tasks came to his hand, for this seemed a good way toward fortune. But sometimes the Envy Self and the Discontented Self spoke loudly in his head so that he thought that it was he himself who was speaking, and he obeyed them, and stopped his work, and until the chance to finish it was lost, he did not know that it was these Selves who had made him cease his task and lose his chance and be that much farther from fortune. For that was the way of all the Selves--they had a clever fashion of making Hazen think that their voices were his own voice, and sometimes he could hardly tell the difference.

At last, one night, he came to a hill, sloping gently as if something beautiful were overflowing. Its trees looked laid upon the mellow west beyond. The turf was like some Titan woman’s embroidery, sheared and flowered. Hazen looked at it all, and at the great sky and the welcoming distance, and before he knew whether it came as a thought or as a song, he had made a little rhyme:--

Do you wish you had a world of gold With a turquoise roof on high, And a coral east and a ruby west And diamonds in the sky?

Do you wish there were little doors of air That a child might open wide, Where were emerald chairs and a tourmaline rug And a moonstone moon beside?

Do you wish the lakes were silver plates And the sea a sapphire dish? What a wonderful, wonderful world it is-- For haven’t you got your wish?

He liked to sing this, and he loved the hill and the evening. He lay there a long time, making little rhymes and loving everything. Next day he wandered away in the woods, and asked for food at a hut, and offered the bewildered woman a rhyme in payment, and at night he returned to his hill, and there he lived for days, playing that he was living all alone in the world--that there was not another person anywhere on the earth.

But one night when he was lying on the hillside, composing a song to the Littlest Leaf in the Wood, suddenly the voice of his song was not so loud as a voice within him which seemed to say how much he delighted to be singing. And then he knew the voice--that it was the voice of the Beauty Self in his own head, that it was that voice that had made him linger on the hillside and had commanded him to sing about the beauty in the world _and to do nothing else_. And all this time it had been king of the Selves, and not he!

He rose and fled down the hillside, and for days he wandered alone, sick at heart because this fair Beauty Self had tricked him into following her _and no other_, even as the Fun Self and the Knowledge Self had done. But even while he wandered, grieving, again and again the Idle Self, the Strong Self, the Discontented Self, deceived him for a little while and succeeded in making their own voices heard, and now and again the little shadowy Selves--the Malice and Cruel and Envy Selves drew very near him and tried to speak for him. And they all fought to keep him from being king and to deceive him into thinking that they spoke for him.

One brooding noonday, as Hazen was travelling, alone and tired, on the highroad, a carriage overtook him, and the gentleman within, looking sharply at him, ordered the carriage stopped, and asked him courteously if he was not the poet whose songs he had sometimes heard, and of whose knowledge and good-fellowship others had told him. It proved that it was no other than Hazen whom he meant, and he took him with him in his carriage to a great, wonderful house overlooking the valley, and commanding a sovereign mountain on whose very summit stood a deserted castle. It seemed as if merely looking on that wonderful prospect would help one to be wise and _really_ good and beautiful and worthy to be loved.

At once Hazen’s host, the Gentleman of the Carriage, began showing him his treasures and all that made life for him. The house was filled with curious and beautiful things, pictures, ivories, marbles, and tapestries, and with many friends. In the evenings there were always festivities; mirth and laughter were everywhere, and Hazen was laden with gifts of these and other things, and delighted in the entertainment. But by day, in a high-ceiled library and a cool study, the two spent hours pouring over letters and science, finding out the secrets of the world, getting on the other side of words, saying sentences, and thinking thoughts that became solid; or they would wander on the hillsides and carry rare books and dream of the beauty in the world and weave little songs. Now they would be idle, now absorbed in feats of strength, and now they would descend into the town and there delight in its great sport. And in all this Hazen had some part and earned his own way, because of his cleverness and willingness to enter in the life and belong to it.

One day, standing on a balcony of the beautiful house, looking across at the mountain and the deserted castle, Hazen said aloud:--

“This is the true life. This is fortune. For now I hear all the voices of all my Selves, and I give good things to each, and I am king of them all!”

But even as he spoke he heard another voice sounding within his own, and it laughed, and cracked as it laughed, so that it sounded like something being broken that could never be mended.

“I told you so, Hazen! I told you so!” it cried. “Being loved and _really_ good do not mean making our fortune. Just one thing means fortune, and that is being rich. To be rich, _rich_, means good times and learning and beauty and idleness. I’ve fought every one of the others, and now you’ve got all that they had to offer, because you have let me be king--_me and no other_.”

To his horror, Hazen recognized the voice of the dwarf, the Riches Self, and knew that he was deceived again, that he himself was ruler of nothing, and that the dwarf was now king of all his Selves.

When he realized this, it seemed to Hazen that his heart was pierced and that he could not live any longer. Suppose--ah, suppose that he did get back to the Princess Vista now--what had he to take to her? Could he give her himself--a Self of which not he but the dwarf was the owner?

Somehow, in spite of their protestations and persuadings, Hazen said good-bye to them all, to his host and to those who had detained him, and he was off down into the valley alone--not knowing where he was going or what he was going to do, or what hope now remained that he should ever be any nearer the fortune for which he had so hopefully set out.

It was bright moonlight when he came to the edge of a fair, green, valley meadow. The whiteness was flooding the world, as if it would wash away everything that had ever been and would begin it all over again. And in the centre of the meadow, all the brightness seemed to gather and thicken and glitter, as if something mysterious were there. It drew Hazen to itself, as if it were so pure that it must be what he was seeking, and he broke through the hedge and stepped among the flowers of the lush grass, and he stood before it.

It was a fountain of water, greater than any fountain that Hazen had ever seen or conceived. It rose from the green in pure strands of exquisite firmness, in almost the slim lines and spirals of a stair; and its high, curving spray and its plash and murmur made it rather like a gigantic white tree, with music in its boughs--the tree of life itself.

Hazen could no more have helped leaping in the fountain than he could have helped his joy in its beauty. He sprang in the soft waters as if he were springing into arms, and it drew him to itself as if he belonged to it. The waters flowed over him, and he felt purified, and as if a healing light had shone through him, body and mind.

But to his amazement, he did not remain in the fountain’s basin. Gently, as if he were upborne by unseen hands, he mounted with the rise of the fountain, in its slim lines and spirals, until he found himself high above the meadow in a silvery tower that was thrown out from the fountain itself. And there, alone in that lofty silence, it was as if he were face to face with himself and could see his own heart.

Then the Thought spoke to him which had spoken to him long ago that morning in the king’s kitchen, and again on that first night in the wood.

“Hazen!” it said, “you are not wise or _really_ good or loved or beautiful. Why don’t you become so?”

“I!” said Hazen, sadly. “I have lost my chance. I came out to find my fortune and I have thrown it away.”

But still the Thought spoke to him, and said the same thing over and over so many times that at last he answered:--

“What, then, must I do?” he asked.

And then he listened, there in the night and the stillness, to hear what it was that he must do. And this was the first time that ever he had listened like this, or questioned carefully his course. Always before he had done what seemed to him the thing that he wished to do, without questioning whether his fortune lay that way.

“Bravely spoken, Hazen,” said the Thought, then. “Someone near is in great need. Find him and help him.”

Instantly Hazen leaped lightly to the ground, and ran away through the moonlit meadow, and he sought as never in his life had he sought anything before, for the one near, in great need, whom he was to find and help. All through the night he sought, and with the setting of the moon he was struggling up the mountain, because it seemed to him that he must do some hard thing, and this was hard. In the early dawn he stood on the mountain’s very summit, and knocked at the gate of the deserted castle there. And it was the forsaken castle of his father, the king, whom the Princess Vista’s father had conquered; but this Hazen did not know.

No sound answered his summons, so he swung the heavy gate on its broken hinges and stepped within. The court yard was vacant and echoing and grass-grown. Rabbits scuttled away at his approach, and about the sightless eyes of the windows, bats were clinging and moving. The clock in the tower was still and pointed to an hour long-spent. The whole place breathed of things forgotten and of those who, having loved them, were forgotten too.