The Wagner Story Book Part 8

"'No,' the servant answers, 'and unless the princess comes I fear he will never wake; watch for the ship.'

"'I will watch,' the shepherd says, 'and if I see the ship I will play a lively tune on my pipe to tell you of it.'

"The knight begins to wake and stir; he asks where he is, and the servant tells him that he is at his own castle. He has been dreaming of the princess, and the servant says, 'I have sent the ship for her; she will come to-day.' But the knight is so weak that he cannot understand or talk of one thing very long, and he falls half asleep again and dreams of the princess, and because he has heard of a ship he dreams of other ships. He has his old wound now and is lying, just as he lies here, in that ship which bore him the first time toward the princess; now she is with him and his face grows lighter. She is looking at his sword; she raises it again, as she did so long ago, to kill him; but she sees again the helpless look in his eyes and has not the heart to do it, and she lets the sword fall again. He is on a second ship, sailing toward the princess to bring her for the King's bride; now the ship is sailing back and they are together on the deck. She holds out to him that goblet of strange wine; they both drink, they gaze into each other's eyes, the dream is too happy to last, and he awakes and cries, 'Has the ship come? Can you not see her yet?'

"'Not yet,' the servant answers; 'but she must come soon.'

"The knight is in the garden of the castle--the other castle--waiting for the princess to put out the torch, that he may come to her. The torch falls upon the ground, he runs toward the place, and they are together yet again. It is another happy dream that cannot stay. 'Is the ship nowhere in sight?'

"Before the servant can answer he hears the merry tune from the shepherd's pipe and knows that the ship is coming now, indeed. He looks away across the sea and tells his master how swiftly it flies over the water toward them, with its white sails, for the sails are white and the princess is on board. The time seems long to the knight and his servant, yet it is really short, for the wind is fair. The ship comes nearer and nearer, it pa.s.ses the dangerous reef, it is so near that the servant can see the faces of the princess and the helmsman and the sailors. Now it is at the very sh.o.r.e and the princess is at the gate.

Ah, it was not medicines that the knight needed. With the very knowledge that the princess is there, he raises himself from his couch and walks toward the gate. Then his little strength fails again and he would fall, but the princess herself catches him in her arms and holds him. This time it is no dream.

"She leads him back to the couch, he sinks upon it, and she bends over him. But suddenly the shepherd runs to the rampart and cries that another ship is coming, the King's ship. Are the King's men coming then to carry back the princess, perhaps to kill the knight? The servant calls the men of the castle and they try to barricade and guard the gate. But they are too late; the King's men and the King himself break through the barriers and are in the courtyard. The very first of them is the knight's treacherous friend; the old servant instantly cuts him down with his sword, and there is one good stroke at least. Then the King calls to all to hold their hands and to strike no more; he has come only to give the princess to the knight. He has heard of the love drink, and knows at last that they were not to blame for what they did, and that they never meant to be false to him.

"But still the knight lies there on his couch and the princess kneels by his side and bends over him, and neither of them speaks or moves."

"And will the knight get well again?" the little girl asked.

"Let us not try to find out any more now," I said. "The knight and the princess are both here, and I know that they are happier together than they have ever been before. That is enough, is it not?"

All at once there were voices behind us, three voices at least.

"h.e.l.lo, there! who's attending to the fire? You're letting it all go out, and there's plenty of wood left."

"What are you two doing here all alone? Don't you know you'll catch your death o' cold sitting here so long?"

"Are there any marshmallows left?"

"No," said the little girl, answering the last question, "we don't care about marshmallows any way," and I really believe just then she thought she did not care about them, though usually she likes them almost as well as anybody.

THE MINSTREL KNIGHT

The little girl stayed at the seash.o.r.e till the middle of the autumn.

That is the way sensible people do, when they can, and I have worked much in vain if I have not shown by this time that this little girl is a sensible little person. The spring is very lovely, to be sure, and of course we all love it. I should be the last one to say anything against it. But to me the most beautiful time of the whole beautiful year is the early autumn. The heat and the work and the worry of the year are over, and the clear, rich, golden good of it all is left to be enjoyed.

The flowers are not pink and pale blue any more; they are of deep, splendid yellow and red and purple. The golden-rod and the asters are lords of flowers, and the cardinal is their high-priest, while if you will have something that is delicate and modest, there is the fringed gentian, and that shows, too, how healthy and brave and free it is by keeping no company with dark shadows, and opening only when the bright sun shines full upon it.

But of the things that are best in the autumn, the best above all others is the sea. It has been lying quiet and restful all summer, and now it awakes and begins to move and to show the strength and the freedom of its glorious life. As you stand upon the sh.o.r.e and look at it, it draws itself away from you and away from the land as if it were done with it forever; then it pauses, and in a moment begins to come back. Up and up the beach it marches with a majestic will that nothing else in the world is like; as it comes it lifts itself higher and higher; then the wave leaps into the air and its crest is turned to emerald as the sunlight strikes through it for the pause of another instant, there is a roll, a mad plunge, the spray dashes high above your head, the foam floats and flies up the beach to your very feet, the hollow rumble of the water sounds fainter and farther along the sands, and the ocean draws itself back away from you and away from the land. Its colors are different, too. Before it had all sorts of fanciful hues and shades, pale green and blue, silver, violet, almost rose sometimes, the colors of summer dreams. Now the dreaming time is over. The green of the wave-crests is luminous, the white and the blue have the gleam of polished steel, the violet and the rose are turned to deep, rich purple. The sea is not cold, harsh, and cruel yet, but it is free, bold, and majestic.

All this I knew because I remembered it, not because I saw it, for I had been back in the city a long time. The fire was lighted again and I had sat before it often, thinking of the driftwood fire away down there, with the little girl sitting before it, seeing pictures in it for herself, perhaps, and listening to the low sound of the sea, coming up through the still evening air. But one night she came and sat with me again, and once more we both looked into the same fire. "I believe I can almost see pictures myself now," she said.

"Can you? And what do you see in the fire now?"

"Oh, I can see a prince and a princess--and a knight--and a lovely G.o.ddess, like the one that had the apples--and a cave, like the one where the dragon lived--"

"And don't you see the dragon himself? Where is he?"

"No, there isn't any dragon; that would be too much like the other story."

"But you must not mind that. There are only a few good stories altogether, and the most we can do, as I told you once before, is to tell them over and over again in different ways."

"But I don't want any dragon in this one. Now you tell me what they all do, the G.o.ddess and the knight, and the prince and the princess, and what the cave is for."

"Very well, I will try. First I see the knight. He is riding along upon his horse, through the forests, over the hills and across the valleys.

It is a lovely day of summer. When he comes to the top of a hill, he sees the country lying before him and all around him, deep green with woods and pastures and paler green where the grain is ripening. Here and there, too, it is sprinkled with tiny dots of red, where the poppies grow thick in a field, and there are spots that are almost blue with cornflowers. A silver ribbon of a river winds through it, and the sight of it is lost among the blue mountains. As he rides down into a valley the branches wave above him and break the sunshine that falls upon the road and the gra.s.s beside it. The flecks of light and the patches of shade tremble and waver and dart across and across the way, as if they were weaving a robe for the earth, of gold and brown and green. The air is full of the smell of the flowers, a brook makes a soft, cheery little noise, and from the pastures comes the sleepy sound of sheep-bells.

"The knight is riding toward the castle of the prince. He is a minstrel, as well as a knight, and at the castle he will meet other minstrels who are his friends, and they are all to sing for a prize which the prince has offered. There is as much happiness in the heart of the knight as in everything around him, for he loves the prince's daughter, and he knows that she loves him. Besides this she is to give the prize to the one who wins it, and with his mind full of gladness and thoughts of her, he feels sure that he can win.

"As he rides thus the evening falls. The moon comes up, and from the hills the country stretches darkly away all around, with the silver ribbon of the river still winding through it. The shade is so deep in the valleys that he has to ride through them slowly. The robe of the earth now is all of deep gray and silver. The smell of the flowers is stronger and sweeter than before, the brooks sound louder, and the sheep bells are silent. The knight's thoughts just now are wandering away from the princess, and he is thinking of the fame that he hopes to win as a minstrel, how he will gain this prize and many other prizes, how kings will send for him to come to their courts, that they may hear his songs, how he will grow great and rich, and how his name will live on after he is dead.

"As he thinks of these things, suddenly he sees a strange form before him in the valley. It is like a woman, wonderfully beautiful, marvellously, magically beautiful. Something more than the moonlight seems to rest upon her and to show him her face with its deep eyes and soft cheeks, her movements, so graceful and gentle that it seems as if she did not move herself at all, but were just stirred and swayed by the little breezes. A rosy light shines from her face and around her dark hair. All about her are nymphs, or fairies, dancing and gliding and scattering roses for her to walk upon. It seems really quite needless to do that, for she appears rather to float and move in the air and to rest on the flower-perfumed wind than to stand or walk upon the ground. Now a knight who was also a minstrel could not possibly make any mistake about such a person as this, and he knows at once that she is the very G.o.ddess of Love and Beauty."

"Is she the one that had the apples?" the little girl asked.

"No, not quite the same. She is one something like her, yet a good deal different."

"Is she Venus then?"

"Yes, you have guessed just right, and so at last somebody in our story has a name. But she is not altogether like the Venus that you have heard about so many times before. Some people used to believe that after the old G.o.ds whom you know so well had lost their rule on Mount Olympus, they went to live inside the mountains and under the ground, and that they were not kind to men any more, but always did harm, whenever they were able to do anything. Now, for myself, I don't quite see how this could be, because you know we have felt so sure that we saw some of them up in the sky sometimes. Yet now that I see Venus here, it does seem to me as if there were something in the story after all, and I believe it would be better for the knight if he had never seen her at all. If he were thinking of the princess at the time I do not believe he would look twice at Venus. No, I am sure he would not even see her once.

"But since he is not thinking of the princess, but only of what a great man he would be if he could make his songs seem as wonderful to everybody else as they seem to himself, it is not surprising that he is delighted by such a vision, and it is not surprising, either, when the G.o.ddess and her nymphs beckon to him and then glide away as if they wanted him to follow them, that he gets off his horse and does follow them. They move along so fast that he cannot keep up with them, and soon he cannot even see them, but it is still easy for him to follow.

For everywhere they go the strangest flowers spring up under their feet and make a pathway to lead him. They are huge, bright flowers, cup- shaped and star-shaped and sun-shaped. Flowers of such wonderful form and size, and such gorgeous colors the knight never saw before. Some of them seem to be made of hammered gold, and some of silver; some have stamens of precious stones, and some look like clear crystal, blood- red, deep purple, or orange, as if they were cut from solid gems; some of them have petals like flames, that shimmer and glow and are reflected by the others; the leaves are all glistening emerald and they are sprinkled with pearls like drops of evening dew. The stems twine about like serpents, and they seem to the knight to move and turn about to show him all their magic splendor. Some of them, with coiling tendrils, like gold wire, sway toward him as if they would catch him and hold him, others dance and wave about on their stems and twinkle as the other stars do, up above the trees, as if they were laughing and mocking at him, and still others bow and bend away from him and beckon him on. The whole of the fire is scarcely enough to show me this strange garden. A pale, ghostly light rises from all the flowers and hovers over the path. The knight would stop to pick some of them, but those before him seem always more beautiful than those close at hand, and, besides, he is eager to follow the G.o.ddess. So on he hurries till he sees before him a way straight into the side of the mountain and within a great glare of light. If he would only think of the princess now, for one instant! But he goes straight on into the mountain, and the way shuts behind him, and outside the magic flowers are gone, and there is nothing but the soft gra.s.s, the whispering trees, the dark sky, with the stars, and the calm night.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE STRANGEST FLOWERS SPRING UP UNDER THEIR FEET."]

"Do you see how very wrong it is for the knight to go away after the G.o.ddess into the mountain? When people let themselves be led away like that by fairies and G.o.ddesses it is usually a long time before they get back. A knight like this one, who is a minstrel as well, ought to know all about such things, and I dare say he does. He must have heard of men who went to such places and saw beautiful and wonderful sights, and feasted and danced till they thought that they had been away from their homes for a day, or a week, and then, when they went back to them, found that they had really been gone for years, perhaps for hundreds of years, and that all their friends were dead. He ought to think of his friends, the other knights and minstrels, who will be grieved when they meet and he is not with them. For his own sake he ought to know better than to run into strange and dangerous places just because they look pleasant. More than all, he ought to think of the princess. If he does not care for the prize of his song any more for itself he should care for her who is to give it. He should remember how much she loves him, little as he deserves it. She will not forget him as he does her. When she waits and waits for him and he does not come she will believe that he is dead, and she will cry her pretty eyes out. She will never think that he has gone away from her to visit a G.o.ddess of love and beauty who lives in a cave.

"Now I see the cave of the G.o.ddess, deep in the mountain. It seems dim and misty and confused at first, but gradually I can see it clearer.

All around the sides and the top are great pendants of gems, like icicles, of all sorts of colors, as if the precious stones had once been liquid and had run down into the cave and then had frozen into crystal. Here and there are diamonds and rubies and opals and emeralds as big as your head, set in the roof, and they have some magical way of shining all by themselves and light up the whole cave like lamps. The ground is covered with flowers like those that made the path to lead the knight to the place. A stream of water runs from the cave and is fed by fountains in the middle. These fountains are wonderful affairs too. Sometimes they throw jets of liquid silver almost to the roof; then they fall down and spread out wide in sheets, of the color and the brightness of melted gold; again the water rises in little streams that twine and weave themselves together like basket-work, and all of deep, shining crimson; then the fountains take other fantastic forms and other colors, purple or green or orange, but always glowing with light, and so they pa.s.s to silver and to gold again.

"This is the cave of Venus. It is filled with the nymphs who attend her, and they are singing choruses in her praise, and dancing wonderful, mazy, mad, delirious dances. They whirl about and around alone, in couples, in lines, in circles, and in crowds, their arms waving and their hair streaming in the air. Sometimes while they dance every one is plainly to be seen, and again their garments surround them like clouds, and they are all one waving, streaming, fluttering ma.s.s.

These mists of light robes then are like the fountains, for now they are shining white, now red or yellow or green or purple, now all the colors together, mixed and blended like broken and tangled rainbows.

"If you could see all that I see here in the fire I think you would be delighted with it, for a little while. But how do you suppose the minstrel knight likes it? He sits beside the G.o.ddess and looks at it wearily. He has seen them all so much that walls of gems and streams of gold and whirling rainbows do not please him any more. He has been here in the cave for a whole year. He sees now how wrong it was for him to come, and he is so tired of it all that he is beginning to feel that he would rather die than be among these mad pleasures any longer. But he cannot do that because n.o.body ever dies here. When he sees these walls of cold crystal, gleaming with the colored light from the great gems, he thinks of the broad, lovely country that he once saw, that stretched away and ended only at the blue mountains, and of the silver river that never changed to blood, or to green fire, with the clear sunlight brightening them all.

"If he tries to rest his eyes upon the great, glowing, magic flowers that cover the ground, they only make him think of the red poppies that shone out from the fields of ripening grain, and of the blue of the corn-flowers, and then he tries to think of the perfume from the flowers that filled the air after it grew still at evening. There are odors here, too, but they are so heavy and sweet that after a time it is almost a pain to smell them. He hears the rush and the dash of the fountains, and he longs for the low, merry little sound of the brook that ran along beside his road. The air here is full of music, the rich harmonies of many instruments and the voices of the nymphs who sing their choruses to Venus, but his ears are tired of the sounds, and he wishes that he might hear only the sleepy tinkle of the sheep-bells, chiming with the voice of the brook. But more than everything else he thinks of the princess. He remembers now how kind and true she was, and how much truer he ought to have been in return than he really was. He wonders if she still remembers him, if she thinks him dead, and then his heart stops, as he wonders if she herself is dead. Oh, it is a fine time now to think of these things! If he had only remembered the princess once before, instead of thinking what a great minstrel he was, he would never have followed Venus into her cave. Now he can only think of that great wrong he did and long for the fresh fields and woods, for the air, the sunlight--and the princess.

"Venus, sitting by his side, sees that he is troubled and asks him why.

He tells her how much he wishes that he might see again the world he used to know, and live the life he used to live, and he begs her to let him go. She is angry at first. Has she not brought him to live here among such delights as no man before ever knew, and is he tired of them now, and does he want to escape from them? He can only say that he will never forget her or the beautiful things he has seen here, but he can never be happy here again, and if she will only let him he must go. At last she tells him that he may go. 'But you will not be happy,' she says; 'your old friends will scorn you when they know where you have been. They will never forgive you for coming here. You will find no rest, no help, no hope. Then, when you learn that you can have peace nowhere else, come back to me and stay with me forever.'

"All at once the cave, with everything in it, is gone. The knight knows how or where it went no more than I. As for him, he does not know that he has moved from his place, and as for me, the fire is burning just as it did before. Yet now I see him lying on the soft gra.s.s of a beautiful valley. Above him are the sky and the nodding branches of the trees; around are the hills. He sees and he smells the flowers that were lost to him so long. The low tinkle of the sheep-bells comes again drowsily to his ears. A little way up the hill a shepherd is playing softly on his pipe. He picks a flower and smells it, to be sure that it is all real. Then the tears come to his eyes as he thinks of all the beauty and sweetness of the life that he lost and has found again.

"But now a band of pious pilgrims pa.s.ses, on the way to Rome. They are going to ask the Pope to forgive their sins. The sight of them brings a new thought to the knight. It is the thought of his own sin. Now that he sees again the sweet loveliness of the world, he feels at last fully how wicked it was for him to leave it and all his own duties and his friends in it. He is in despair when he thinks that he is no longer worthy of the princess, if indeed he ever were. He dares not see her again; he dares not ask his friends to be his friends longer; he throws himself upon the ground and feels that he has no more a place in this happy world.

"At this very moment comes a company of huntsmen riding past. Their leader is the prince himself and the rest are the friends of the minstrel knight, the very ones with whom he should have sung for the prize a year ago. Very glad they are to find him, after thinking him dead so long, and they insist that he must come with them and be one of them again. He will not go with them. He feels that he is not like them any more. His wrong has been so great that he dares not be with brave, good men. They urge him, but it is useless. But there is one among them, a knight and a minstrel too, who also loves the princess. She does not love him, but his own love is so deep and true that he will do anything to make her happy. When he finds that nothing else can move the stubborn knight he tells him that the princess still loves him, that she has grieved for him all the time that he has been lost, and that he must come back to them for her sake. He is touched at last. He had not dared to ask of her, and now he knows that he may see her again, that she could never forget like him, that she will love him and forgive him. He cannot resist. He will go.