Chapter Seven.
The Summer Princess.
All was silent too in the little kitchen as the old woman’s voice died away and the click of her knitting-needles ceased.
Alix was the first to speak.
“That was a lovely story,” she said approvingly. “It will give Rafe and me a lot to talk about. It is so interesting to think what we would wish for if we had the chance.”
“I’m afraid you mustn’t stay with me any longer to talk about it to-day,” said the old woman. “It is quite—time—for you—to go home;” and somehow her voice seemed to grow into a sort of singing, and the needles began to click again, though very faintly, as if heard from some way off.
What was the matter?
Alix felt as if she were going to sleep. She rubbed her eyes, but Rafe’s voice speaking to her quite clearly and distinctly woke her up again.
“Alix,” he was saying, “don’t you see where we are?” and glancing up, she found that she and her brother were sitting on a moss-grown stone in the old garden, not very far from the gate by which the wren had invited them to enter.
It was growing towards evening. Already the “going to bed” feeling seemed about in the air. The birds’ voices came softly; a little chill evening breeze made the children shiver slightly, though it only meant to wish them “good-night.”
“It feels like the end of the story,” said Alix. “Let’s go home, Rafe.”
This was how the next story came to be told.
The days had passed happily for Rafe and Alix; the weather had been very fine and mild, and they had played a great deal in the old garden, which grew lovelier every day.
“I hardly feel as if we had anything to wish for just now,” said Alix, one afternoon, when, tired with playing, she and her brother were resting for a little while on the remains of a rustic bench which they had found in a corner under the trees. “We’ve been so happy lately, Rafe; haven’t we? Ever since that day!”
Somehow they had not talked very much to each other of their visit to the old caretaker; but now and then they had amused themselves by planning what they would have wished for had they come across a dwarf with magic power.
Rafe did not answer for a moment. He was looking up, high up among the branches.
“Hush,” he said, in a half whisper. “Do you hear that bird, Alix? I never heard a note like it before.”
“Two notes,” said Alix, in the same low voice. “It’s two birds talking to each other, I feel certain.”
“It does sound like it,” said Rafe. “Oh, I say, Alix, wouldn’t you like to understand what they’re saying?”
“Yes,” said his sister. “I do wish we could. There must be some sense in it. It sounds so real and— Look, Rafe,” she went on, “they’re coming nearer us;” and so they were. Still chirping, the birds flew downwards till they lighted on a branch not very far above the children’s heads.
Suddenly Alix caught hold of Rafe’s arm.
“Be quite, quite still,” she whispered. “I have an idea that if we listen very carefully we can make sense of what they’re saying.”
She almost held her breath, so eager was she; and Rafe, too, sat perfectly motionless. And Alix was not mistaken. After a while the birds’ chirps took shape to the children’s ears. Bit by bit the “tweet, tweet” varied and changed, like a voice heard in the distance, which, as it draws nearer, grows from a murmur into syllables and words.
One bird was answering the other; in fact, there was a lively discussion going on between them.
“No, no,” said the first. “I tell you it is my turn to begin, brother. I have my story quite ready, just as I heard it down there in the sunny lands from one of my companions, and I must tell it at once before I forget it.”
“Mine is ready too,” replied the other bird. “At least almost. I have just to—think over a few little points, and I am just as anxious as you to amuse the dear children. However, it would be setting them a bad example if we began to quarrel about it, so I will give in. I will fly to a higher branch to meditate a little undisturbed, while you can hop lower still and attract their attention.”
Alix and Rafe looked at each other with a smile as the little fellow fluttered downwards and alighted on a branch still nearer them. There he flapped his wings and cleared his throat.
“Cheep, cheep,” he began. At least that is what it would have sounded to any one else, but the children knew it meant “good-afternoon.”
“Thank you,” they said. That was not exactly a reply to “good-afternoon,” certainly; but they meant to thank him for his kind intentions.
“Oh, so you know all about it, I see,” said the bird. “If you do not mind, I should prefer your making no further observations. It interrupts the thread of my narration.”
The children were perfectly silent. One has to be very careful, you see, when a bird is telling a story; you can’t catch hold of him and push him back into the arm-chair, as if he was a big person to be coaxed into entertaining you.
“The title of my story,” began the bird, “is ‘The Summer Princess,’” and again he cleared his throat.
Once upon a time, in a country far to the north of the world, lived a King and a Queen, who had everything they could wish for except an heir to their throne. When I say they had everything they could wish for, that does not mean they had no troubles at all. The Queen thought she had a good many; and the King had one which was more real than any of her fancied ones. He had a wife who was a terrible grumbler. She was a grumbler by nature, and besides this she had been a spoilt child.
As she was very beautiful and could be very sweet and charming when in a contented mood, the King had fallen deeply in love with her when he was on his travels round the world, and had persuaded her to leave her own home in the sunny south to accompany him to his northern kingdom. There she had much to make her happy. Her husband was devoted to her, and while the first bright summer lasted, she almost forgot to grumble, but when the winter came, fierce and boisterous as it always is in those lands, she grew very miserable. She shivered with the cold and instead of bracing herself to bear it, she wrapped herself in her furs and sat from morning till night cowering over a huge fire. In vain the King endeavoured to persuade her to go out with him in his beautiful sledge drawn by the fleetest reindeer, or to make one in the merry skating parties which were the great amusement of his court.
“No, no,” she cried fretfully. “It would kill me to do anything of the kind.” And though she brightened up as each summer came round, with the return of each winter it was again the same sad story.
As the years passed on another and more real trouble came upon the discontented young Queen. She had no children. She longed so grievously to have a little baby that sometimes she almost forgot her other causes for complaint and left off looking out for the signs of the winter’s approach in the melancholy way she was wont to do. So that one day late in the autumn she actually forgot her terror of the cold so far as to remain out walking in the grounds of the palace, though the snow clouds were gathering thick and heavy overhead.
She was alone. For sometimes in her saddest moods she could bear no one, not even the most faithful of her ladies, near her.
“If only I had a little baby, a dear little baby of my own, I would never complain of anything again.”
No doubt she quite meant what she said. And I must say if her only complaints had been of the cold northern winter, I could indeed find it in my heart to pity her—not that I have any experience of them myself (and the bird gave a little shiver), but I can imagine how terrible they must be. Indeed the friend from whom I have this story has often described his sufferings to me, one year when he was belated in the north, owing to an injured wing. That is how he came to know the story.
As the Queen uttered her wish, she raised her eyes upwards, and was startled to see some snowflakes already falling; she turned to hasten indoors, exclaiming as she went:
“To think that winter is upon us already; I shall no longer have even the small pleasure of a stroll in the garden. But if I had a little baby to play with and care for, even the dreary winter would not seem long. Everything would be bright and sunshiny to me.”
“Are you sure of that?” said a voice beside her, and glancing up the Queen saw a lovely figure. It was that of a beautiful woman, with golden hair wreathed with flowers. But her face was somewhat pale and she drew round her a mantle of russet brown as if to protect her from the cold.
“I am the Spirit of the Summer,” she said. “I knew you well in your childhood in the south, and here too I have watched you, though you did not know it. Your wish shall be fulfilled. When I return to my northern home, I will bring you the child you are longing for. But remember, the gift will lead to no lasting happiness unless you overcome your habit of discontent. For I can only do my part. My brother, the powerful Spirit of the Winter, though good and true and faithful, is stern and severe. He has heard your murmurings already, and if, when your great wish is granted, you still continue them, I tremble for the fate of your child.”
The Queen could hardly speak, so overcome was she with delight.
“Thank you, oh, thank you, sweet spirit,” she said. “I will indeed take heed for the future and never murmur again.”
“I trust so,” replied the fairy, “for listen what will happen if you forget your resolution. The slightest touch of snow would, in that case, put the baby into my stern brother’s power, and you would find yourself terribly punished. Beware, therefore! Now I must hasten away. I have lingered too long this year, and though my brother and I work together and trust each other, he brooks no interference.” And as she said this, the gracious figure seemed to disappear in a rosy haze, and almost at the same moment a cold blast, driving the snowflakes before it, came with a rush from behind where the young Queen stood, almost lifting her from her feet.
“That must surely be the Spirit of the Winter himself,” she thought as she hurried indoors.
But her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright. It was whispered in the palace that evening that for the first time the young Queen had the brave and fearless air of a true daughter of the north. And that winter was far the happiest that the King and his wife had yet spent. Scarce a murmur was heard to escape from the Queen’s lips, and in her anxiety to win the good-will of the Winter Spirit, she often went out sleighing and joined in the other amusements which hitherto she had refused to take any part in during the cold season. More than once, even, she was heard to express admiration of the snow-covered mountains, or of the wonderful northern sunsets and clear star-bespangled skies.
Nevertheless, the return of the warm and sunny days was watched for by her most eagerly. And the Summer Spirit was true to her promise. On the loveliest morning of all that year was born a baby Princess, the prettiest baby that ever was seen, with dark-blue eyes and little golden curls all over her head.
“A true child of the summer,” said the happy Queen.
“And strong to brave and enjoy the winter too, I trust,” added the King. “She must be a true Princess of the north, as her mother is fast becoming, I hope,” he went on with a smile.
But his words did not please the Queen, though they were so kindly meant. With the possession of the baby, though she was so overjoyed to have her, the young Queen’s wayward and dissatisfied spirit began to return. She seemed to think the Princess was to be only hers, that the nation and even the King, who naturally felt they had a share in her, must give way, in everything that concerned the child, to its mother’s will. She was even displeased one day when she overheard some of her ladies admiring the beautiful colour of the baby’s hair and saying that it showed her a true daughter of the north.
“No such thing,” said the Queen.
“It shows her a child of the sunshine and the summer. My sweet Rose!” for so, to please the Queen, the baby had been named.
On the whole, however, while the summer lasted the Queen was too happy with her baby to give way to any real murmuring, and once or twice when she might perhaps have done so, there was wafted to her by the breeze the sound of a gentle “Beware!” and she knew that the summer fairy was near.
So for the first winter of the baby’s life she was on her guard, and nothing went wrong, except now and then when the King reproached his wife with overcare of the child when the weather was at all severe.
“Do you wish to kill her?” the Queen would reply, angrily.
“I wish to make her brave and hardy, like all the daughters of our race,” replied the King.
But not wishing to distress his wife, he said no more, reflecting that it would be time enough when the little girl could walk and run to accustom her to the keen and bracing air of the northern winter.
But in some strange, mysterious way, the princess, baby though she was, seemed to understand what her father felt about her. It was noticed that before she could speak at all, she would dance in her nurse’s arms and stretch out her little hands with glee at the sight of the snowflakes falling steadily. And once or twice when a draught of the frosty air blew upon her she laughed with delight, instead of shrinking or shivering.
But so well were the Queen’s feelings understood that no one ventured to tell her of these clear signs that little Rose felt herself at home in the land of the snow.