# When I Was a Little Girl/Chapter 15

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 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:—
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 everyone 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.
Hazen mounted the broad, mossy steps leading to the portals, and he found one door slightly ajar. Wondering greatly, he touched it open, and the groined hall appeared like a grim face from behind a mask. On the stone floor, not far beyond the threshold, lay an old man, motionless. And when, uttering a little cry of ​pity and amazement, Hazen stooped over him, he knew him at once to be that old man who had greeted him at the entrance to the wood on the evening of the day on which he himself had left the king’s palace.
What with bringing him water and bathing his face and chafing his hands, Hazen at last enabled the old man to speak, and found that he had been nearly all his life-time the keeper of the castle and for some years its only occupant. He was not ill, but he had fallen and was hurt, and he had lain for several days without food. So Hazen, who knew well how to do it, kindled a fire of fagots in the great, echoing castle kitchen, and, from the scanty store which he found there, prepared broth and eggs, and then helped the old man to his bed in the little room which had once been a king’s cabinet.
“Lad, lad!” said the old man, when he had remembered Hazen. “And have you found your fortune? And are you by now wise, really good, beautiful, and loved?”
“Alas!” said Hazen, only, and could say no more.
The old man nodded. “I know, I know,” ​he said sadly. “The little Selves have been about, ruling here and ruling there. Is it not so? Sit here a little, and let us talk about it.”
Then Hazen told him all that had befallen since that night when they sat together in the wood. And though his adventures seemed to Hazen very wonderful, the old man merely nodded, as if he were not hearing but only remembering.
“Ay,” he said, at the last, “I have met them all—the Merry Lad, the Bookman, and all the rest, and have dwelt a space with some. And I, too, have come to the fountain in the night, and have asked what it was that I should do.”
“But tell me, sir,” said Hazen, eagerly, “how was it that I was told at the fountain that there was one near in great need. Did the fountain know you? Or did my Thought? And how could that be?”
“Nay, lad,” said the old man, “but always, for everyone, there is someone near in need—yet. One has only to look.”
Then he talked to Hazen more about his fortune, and again the old man's meaning was in his mere presence, so that whether he talked ​about the stars or the earth or the ways of men, he made Hazen know fascinating things about them all. And now Hazen listened far differently from the way that he had listened that other time when they had talked, and it was as if the words had grown, and as if they meant more than once they had meant.
Now, whoever has stood for the first time in a great, empty castle knows that there is one thing that he longs to do above all other things, and this is to explore. And when the afternoon lay brooding upon the air, and slanting sun fell through the dusty lattices, Hazen asked the old man eagerly if he might wander through the rooms.
“As freely,” answered the old man, willingly, “as if you were the castle’s prince.”
Thus it chanced that, after all the years, Hazen, though he was far from dreaming the truth, was once more roaming through the rooms of his birthplace and treading the floors that had once echoed the step of his father, the king.
It was a wonderful place, the like of which Hazen thought he had never seen before, save only in the palace of the father of the princess. ​Above stairs the rooms had hardly been disturbed since that old day of the hurried flight of all his father's court. There was a great room of books, as rich in precious volumes as the king’s library which he already knew, and there, though this he could not guess, his own father had been wont to sit late in the night, consulting learned writers and dreaming of the future of his little son. There was the chapel, where they had brought Hazen himself to be christened, in the presence of all the court; there the long banqueting room to which he had once been carried so that the nobles might pledge him their fealty, the arched roof echoing their shouts. The throne room, the council room, the state drawing rooms—through all these, with their dim, dusty hangings and rich, faded furnishings, Hazen footed; and at last, up another stair, he came to the private apartments of the king and queen themselves.
Breathing the life of another time the rooms lay, as if partly remembering and partly expecting. In the king’s room was the hunting suit that he had thrown ofT just before the attack, the book that he had been reading, the chart that he had consulted. In the queen's ​room were tarnished golden toilet articles and ornaments, and in her wardrobe her very robes hung, dusty and mouldering, the gold thread and gold fringes showing black and sad.
And then Hazen entered a room which seemed to have been a child’s room—and it was his room, of his first babyhood. Something in him stirred and kindled, almost as if his body remembered, though his mind could not do so. Toys lay scattered about—tops, a football, books, and a bank. The pillow of the small white bed was indented as if from the pressure of a little head, and a pair of tiny shoes, one upright, one overturned, were on the floor. Hazen picked up one little shoe and held it for a minute in his hand. He wondered if some of the little garments of the child, whoever he was, might not be in the hanging room. And he opened the closed door.
The door led to a closet and, as he had guessed, little garments were hanging there. But it was not these that caught his eye and held him breathless and spellbound on the threshold. On the high shelf of the closet stood a small glass casket. And in the casket was a little bit of live thing that fluttered piteously, as if beg​ging to be released, and frantic with joy at the coming of light from without.
Hazen's heart beat as he took the casket in his hand. It was the most wonderful little box that ever he had seen. And the little living thing was something like a fairy and something like a spirit and so beautiful that it seemed to Hazen that he must have it for his own. Something stirred and kindled in his mind so that it was almost a memory, and he said to himself:—
“I have seen a casket like this. I have had a casket like this. Nay, but the very earliest thing that ever I can remember is a casket like this from which no one knew how to release this little living spirit.”
For the little spirit was fast in the crystal prison, and if one broke the casket, one would almost certainly harm the spirit—but what other way was there to do?
With the casket in his hand and the little spirit fluttering within, Hazen ran back below stairs to the old man.
“Look!” Hazen cried. “This casket! It is from the closet shelf of some child’s room. I remember a casket such as this, and within it ​a little living spirit. I have had a casket such as this! What does it mean?”
Then the old man, who had been keeper there when the castle was taken, trembled and peered into Hazen's face.
“Who are you?” the old man cried. “Who are you—and what is your name?”
“Alas,” said Hazen, sadly, “I was but the furnace boy to the king of a neighbouring country, and who I am I do not know. But as for my name, that is Hazen, and I know not what else.”
Then the old man cried out, and tried to bow himself, and to kiss Hazen's hand.
“Prince Hazen!” cried he. “You are no other. Ah, God be praised. You are the son of my own beloved king.”
As well as he could for his joy and agitation, the old man told Hazen everything: how the castle had been taken by that king of a neighbour country—who did not know that neighbours are nearly one’s own family how Hazen had been made prisoner, and how he was really heir to this kingdom and to all its ample lands. And how the magic casket, which after all these years the old man now remembered, was to make Hazen, and no other, wise and really good and ​loved and beautiful, if only the little spirit could be freed.
“But how am I to do that?” Hazen cried. “For to break the casket would be to harm the spirit. And what other way is there to do?”
“Alas,” answered the old man, “that I do not know. I think that this you must do alone. As for me, my life is almost spent. And now that I have seen you, my prince, the son of my dear sovereign, there is left to me but to die in peace.”
At this, Hazen, remembering how much he owed the wonderful old man for that enchanted talk in the wood, when he had taught him fascinating things about the stars and the earth and the ways of men, and had shown him the inside of his own head and all those Selves of his and he their king if he would be so—remembering all these things Hazen longed to do something for him in return. But what could he do for him, he the heir of a conquered kingdom and a desolate palace? Yet the old man had been his father's servant; and it was he whom the Thought at the fountain had bidden him to help; but chiefly Hazen's heart overflowed with simple pity and tenderness for the ​helpless one. And in that pity the Thought spoke again:—
“Give him the casket,” it said.
Hazen hesitated—and in an instant his head was a chaos of voices. It was as if all the little Selves, even those which had now long been silent, were listening, were suddenly fighting among themselves in open combat to see what they could make Hazen do.
“That beautiful thing!” cried the Beauty Self. “Keep it—keep it, Hazen!”
“ You will never have another chance at a fortune if you give it up!” cried the Discontented Self.
“If you throw away your chance at a fortune, your life will be a life of hard work—and where will your good time come in?” cried the little Fun Self, anxiously.
“You will have only labour and no leisure for learning—” warned the Knowledge Self.
“What of the Princess Vista? Do you not owe it to her to keep the casket? And is it not right that you should keep the casket and grow wise and really good and loved and beautiful?” they all argued in turn. And above them all sounded the terrible, cracked voice of ​the dwarf, not laughing now, but fighting for his life:—
“Fool! Nothing counts but your chance at fortune. If you part with the casket, you part with me!”
But sweet and clear through the clamour sounded the solemn insisting of the Thought:—
“Give him the casket—give him the casket, Hazen.”
Quickly Hazen knelt beside the old man, and placed the magic casket in his hands.
“Lo,” said Prince Hazen, “I have nothing to give you, save only this. But it may be that we can yet find some way to release the spirit and that then you can have the good fortune that this will give. Take the casket—it is yours.”
In an instant, and noiselessly, the magic casket fell in pieces in Hazen's hands, and vanished. And with a soft sound of escaping wings the little spirit rose joyously and fluttered toward Hazen, and alighted on his breast. There were sudden sweetness and light in all the place, and a happiness that bewildered Hazen—and when he looked again, the little spirit had disappeared—but his own breast was filled with ​something new and marvellous, as if strange doors to himself had opened, and as if the spirit had found lodging there forever.
In the clear silence following upon the babel of the little voices of all the mean and petty Selves, Hazen was aware of a voice echoing within him like music; and he knew the Thought now better than he knew himself, who had so many Selves, and he knew that when it spoke to him softly, softly, he would always hear.
“If you had kept the magic casket for yourself,” it said, “the spirit would have drooped and died. It was only by giving the casket away that the spirit could ever be free. It was only when the spirit became yours that you could hope to be wise and good and beautiful and worthy to be loved. And now where is the Princess Vista’s picture-book?”
All this time Hazen had not lost the picture-book of the princess, and now it was lying on the floor near where he was that night to have slept. He caught it up and turned the pages, and the old familiar pictures which the princess had shown him that morning in the window-seat made him long, as he had not longed since he had left the palace, to see her again.
​He turned to the old man.
“There is a certain princess—” he began.
“Ay,” said the old man, gently, “so there is always, my prince. Go to her.”
The mere exquisite presence of that spirit in the room seemed to have healed and invigorated the old man, and he had risen to his feet, clothed with a new strength. He set about searching in the king’s wardrobe for suitable garments for his young prince, and in a cedar chest he found vestments of somewhat ancient pattern, but of so rich material and so delicately made that the ancient style did but add to their beauty.
When he had made Hazen ready, there was never a fairer prince in the world. Then the old man led him below stairs and showed him in a forgotten room, of which he himself only had the key, a box containing the jewels of the queen, his mother. So, bearing these, save one with which he purchased a horse for his needs, Prince Hazen set out for the palace of the princess.
It chanced that it was early morning when Prince Hazen entered the palace grounds which he had left as a furnace boy. And you must ​know that, since his leaving, years had elapsed; for though he had believed himself to have stayed with the Merry Lad but one day, and with the Bookman but a few days, and but a little time on the hills singing songs, and in byways listening to the voices of Idleness, Strength, and the rest, and lingering in that fair home where the Dwarf had sent him, yet in reality with each one he had spent a year and more, so that now he was like someone else.
But the princess's father's palace garden was just the same, and Hazen entered by the east gate, which still no one could lock; and to be back within the garden was as wonderful as bathing in the ocean or standing on a high mountain or seeing the dawn. His horse bore him along between the flowering shrubs and the hollyhocks; he heard the fountains plashing and the song-sparrows singing and the village bells faintly sounding; he saw the goldfish and the water-lilies gleam in the pool, and the horses cantering about the paddock. And all at once it seemed to him that the day was his and the world was his, to do with them what he would.
So he galloped round the east wing of the ​palace, and looked up eagerly and longingly toward the princess's window. And there stood the Princess Vista, watching. But when she saw him, she drew far back as if she were afraid. And Prince Hazen, as he bowed low in his saddle, could think of no word to say to her that seemed a word to be said. He could only cry up to her:—
“Oh, Princess Vista. Come down! Come down! Come down—and teach me about the whole world.”
He galloped straight to the great entrance way, and leaped from his horse, and no one questioned him, for they all knew by his look that he came with great authority. And he went to the king’s library, to that room which was as wide as a lawn and as high as a tree, and filled with mystery, and waited for her, knowing that she would come.
She entered the room almost timidly, as, once upon a time, the little furnace boy had entered. And when she saw him waiting for her before the window-seat, nothing could have exceeded her terror and her wonder and her delight. And now her eyes were looking down, and she did not ask him what he was doing there.
​“Oh, Princess Vista,” he said softly, “I love you. I want to be loved!”
“Who are you—that want so much?” the princess asked—but her eyes knew, and her smile knew.
“Someone who has brought back your picture-book,” said Prince Hazen. “I pray you, teach it to me again.”
“Nay,” said the princess, softly, “I have taught you a wrong thing. For I have taught you that there are many suns. And instead there is only one sun, and it brings only one day—and that day is this day!”
It was so that she welcomed him back.
They went to the king, her father, and told him everything. And when he knew that his daughter loved Prince Hazen, he restored his kingdom to him, and named him his own successor. And Hazen was crowned king, with much magnificence, and his father's courtiers, who were living, were returned to his court, and that wise, wonderful old man, who had shown him the inside of his own head, was given a place of honour near the king.
But on the day of the coronation, louder than the shouts of the people, and nearer even than ​the voice of his queen, sounded that voice of the wise and good Self, which was but the Thought, deep within the soul of the king:—
“Hail to Hazen—King of All His Selves!”