Part 9 (2/2)

”When you see the Princess Elene you will behold her,” said the page.

”I will set forth to war immediately,” announced the King.

Soon thereafter he sailed away, and over the rocking billows went the golden boats until they drove upon the coasts of King Mace's land, where bitter battles were fought and many men laid asleep with the sword. Then came a day when all was quiet, and even King Mace pillowed his royal head on his dead horse, and woke no more.

Then King Theophile entered the little sunny palace where all was so silent, and strode through the echoing corridors to the throne room.

There alone, beneath a canopy of azure satin, on the great throne sat a woman whose face was like a gleam from a lost star. She had proud lips, and hair that was like cloth of gold about her, and eyes that were wells of sorrow. When he beheld her, King Theophile's limbs became as weak as a new-born child's, and he heard the sound of a far-off wind that had traveled from the Kingdom of Lost Hope. He knew that henceforth for him there must be either love or death.

”O Princess,” he cried, ”they are all asleep. But thou and I are awake.”

”Nay,” she replied, ”they are awake. Their spirits crowd this hall to wring my heart with pity; but thou art asleep.”

Her words were like a sword in his breast, and kneeling before her, he cried: ”Come with me to my Kingdom. Thou art my only Love.”

”Thou mayst force me to wed thee,” she replied, ”but the sword which can slay, can never wake love to life. Thou hast come to the end of thy conquests.”

Then King Theophile tasted the bitterness of death as the men who slept from the stroke of his sword could never taste it. And because he was not a man to put his soul into the keeping of his tongue, he made no answer, but in his secret heart he resolved to win her love, though the adventure cost him years of pain.

So while he lingered in her kingdom, building costly monuments to the dead, and showering gold on the wounded, and sending into fine houses the homeless whose hearts ached for vanished humble hearths; while he worked to draw life out of death, he spared no effort to bring a smile to the lips of the Princess Elene.

But she never smiled, and though her heart was breaking, she could not weep. Often she said to her women, ”Pray that I may have the gift of tears,” but always her eyes remained dry, like the vision of those who have gazed too long on fire.

To King Theophile she seemed the very Beauty of the World, as in her black robes she sat in her garden at her tapestry frame, or listened with veiled eyes to the singing of his minstrels. And in his heart was a battle greater than any he had ever waged in desolated lands, for his n.o.bler self told him he had no right to wed her. But his wild love drove like a tempest across these whispers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KING THEOPHILE AND QUEEN ELENE]

So at last he married her in the dim cathedral church of her dead father's kingdom, with pomp of flowers and lights and nuptial music, and she was as pale as those who live long underground.

Then the golden boats drove home across the rocking billows, and one day the Queen Elene, as she was now t.i.tled, lifted her eyes and beheld the gaunt castle of King Theophile cutting the sky. A mist seemed to hang all its turrets with fog and vapor. Elene remembered the s.h.i.+ning happy little castle of her vanished kingdom, and her heart was bitter with tears, but she could not shed them.

King Theophile, gazing upon her face, read her thoughts, for he had the second-sight of lovers; and his heart was as lead in his breast. He was jealous of the very years when he had not known her. Her beauty troubled him like a half remembered name, and when he was in her presence he had the trembling of illness upon him, and when away from her he was as restless as a fallen leaf that the wind blows.

Through many days and weeks he wooed her to bring the smile to her lips, but always she grew whiter and more desolate; so that when she walked the terraces above the boiling surf, she seemed like a white flower torn of its petals and tossed up by the bitter waves.

At the end of a year there came a daughter from the Kingdom of the Little Souls, and lay like a white bud on the Queen's bosom. Then at last Elene smiled and wept, but her strength was gone; and soon afterwards she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

King Theophile's heart was broken, for the baby, and not he, himself, had made Elene smile and weep. When the days of the court mourning were over the little daughter was christened, and to her christening came all the wise women of the kingdom. Each told what this child would be. One said, ”She will have the beauty of s.h.i.+mmering rainbows”; another, ”She will be as wise as she is good.” But the Wisest Woman of all said, ”Every person will read his future in her tears.”

Now this prophecy troubled King Theophile and awoke love in his heart for his little daughter, who was already showing how beautiful she would be some day. So he watched over her, and made one of his echoing rooms into the royal nursery.

Now the nurses knew what the Wisest Woman had said--that the tears of this Princess would be a magic mirror of the future; and one day when the child was two years old, the head nurse, who had a sweetheart and wished to know whether she would marry him, resolved to make the little girl cry.

Now she was puzzled how to do this, for the royal maid was sweet-tempered and obedient; but the nurse knew that Elene loved most dearly a beautiful doll as big as herself, so one afternoon, when the Princess was clasping this treasure to her little breast, the nurse making sure first that no one was looking, s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her and threw it into the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NURSE SEES HER WEDDING IN THE PRINCESS'S TEARS]

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