The Damsel and the Sage | Page 8

a woman of resources to keep it.
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The Damsel did not go away from the cave, as was her custom. She continued to draw geometrical figures in the sand. Presently she called to the Sage once more.
"Come out again, dear Sage! Listen, I have something more to say."
He unfastened the window and stood leaning on the sill.
"Well?" he said, sternly. "Well?"
"A Ring Dove once was owned by a man. It was the sweetest and most gentle of birds, besides being extremely beautiful. It adored the man and lived contentedly in its cage. The perches, which the man had had prepared especially for it, were endeared to it from association with the happy hours when it had been caressed by the man. Altogether to it the cage appeared a palace, and it lived content.
"The man was a brutal creature, more or less, and at last he cruelly ill-treated the Ring Dove, and exalted a Cuckoo in its place. This conduct greatly saddened the sweet Dove, but it over and over again forgave its tormentor, so great was its love, and even saw the Cuckoo advanced to the highest honors without anger, only a bleeding heart. How long things would have continued in this way no one knows; but the man suddenly gave the Cuckoo the Ring Dove's cage, and let the Cuckoo sleep on the perches which the Dove was accustomed to consider its very own. This overcame the gentle Dove. Its broken heart mended, and it flew away. Tell me, Sage, why did this action cure the Dove of its great love for the man, when it had borne all the blows and cruelty without resentment?"
"That is an easy question to answer," replied the Sage. "The Dove was really growing tired and seized this as a good opportunity to be off."
"Oh, how little you know of the female sex, even of Doves!" laughed the Damsel. "I can give you the true reason myself. It was the bad taste of the man in giving the Cuckoo the cage and perches of the Ring Dove, which he had consecrated to her. That cured her, and enabled her to fly away."
And the Damsel curtsied to the Sage and sauntered off, laughing and looking back over her shoulder.
* * * * *
An action committed in bad taste is more curing and disillusionizing to Love than the cruelest blows of rage and hate.
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A man would often be the lover of his wife--if he were married to some one else.
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There come moments in life when we regret the old gods.
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Time and place--temperature and temperament--and after the sunset the night--and then to-morrow.
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All the winter passed and the Damsel remained at the Court and the Sage in his cave. Both found the days long and their occupation insufficient.
At last, when spring came, the Damsel again mounted the hill one morning before dawn and tapped at the Sage's door.
His heart gave a bound, and he flew to open it without more ado.
"So you have come back?" he said; and his voice was eager, though it was a gray light and he could not see her plainly.
"Yes," said she; "I want you to tell me one more story of life before I go on a long voyage."
So the Sage began:
"There was once upon a time a man of half-measures, whose brain was filled with dreams for his own glory, and he possessed a woman of flesh and blood, who loved him, and would have turned the dreams into realities. But because he was happy with her, and because her hair was black and her eyes were green, and her flesh like alabaster, he said to himself, 'This is a fiend and a vampire. Nothing human can be so delectable.' So he ran a stake through her body, and buried her at the cross-roads. Then he found life an emptiness, and went down into nothingness and was forgotten--"
"Oh, hush, Sage!" said the Damsel, trembling; "I wish to hear no more. Come, shave off your beard, and put on a velvet doublet, and return with me to the Court. See, life is short, and I am fair."
And the Sage suddenly felt he had found the philosopher's stone, and knew the secret he had come into the wilds to find.
So he went back to his cave, and shaved his beard, and donned a velvet doublet, long since lain by in lavender. And he took the Damsel by the hand, and they gladly ran down the hill.
And the zephyrs whispered, and the day dawned, and all the world smiled young--and gay.
* * * * *
Remember the tangible now.
"Sic transit gloria mundi!"
* * * * *
BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER. Illustrated by HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY.