The Strange Little Girl

I

Once upon a time there was a beautiful palace where the king’s children lived as happily as they alone can live. They never wanted anything and they never knew that there could be others who were not as happy as they. Sometimes, it is true, they would hear a story which would make them almost think that perhaps there was a world beyond, which they did not know, outside the palace of the king and its gardens, but something would seem to say that after all it was only a fairy story, and they would forget that it meant anything that might really be true.

One of the little princesses seemed to think more of these stories of a world beyond the palace garden than the others, and she would sometimes find herself gazing at the sun, and wondering if the great world lay beyond the purple forests where the golden-edged clouds shone like dark mountains in the distance. And the name of this princess was Eline.

More and more as she thought of these things she felt sure that there must be a world where things were very different from the happy life in the palace garden; and in the stories which the children heard she thought of many things, which, with the others, she used to pass by without notice. Once they used to hear of no sorrow, no pain, but only joy and peace. Now, in thinking, she sometimes noticed that there were things which were not spoken; that there were things passed by in silence; that there were things which travelers passing through the palace kept back, as though they knew of much which the children must not know, and yet which they would have told had they dared.

Questions Eline asked, and the answers seldom satisfied her, for they never seemed to tell her everything. Every time one of the travelers left the palace to return on his journey there seemed to be a look of appeal in his eyes, an appeal which only Eline seemed to see, and which made her wish to follow them for the very love that shone in the kind faces of these strangers—strangers who told the children stories of things they loved—of wonderful fairy worlds where they were not as in the palace; of worlds where Eline seemed to have traveled many times, long, long ago.

One day she asked her father, the king:

“Shall I never go out of the palace, never leave the garden of delight and see the world that lies beyond the cloud-mountains, beyond the sunset and the whispering forests?”

And the king looked intently at Eline.

“These are strange fancies,” he said. “Are you not happy here in the garden?”

“Yes, I am happy,” she said, “happier than I can tell. But you have not answered me. Is there not a world beyond? Shall I ever see it?”

“Some traveler must have been telling you forbidden tales,” said the king. “These things I have said may not be spoken in my garden.”

“No traveler has told me,” said Eline. “I have seen them looking as though they would tell me, but could not, of things beyond the garden, beyond the palace. I have asked them, and they have told me nothing. Yet I have felt that I long to go with them. I have felt that I remember strange places, strange sights, things I know not here, when they speak. Sometimes, even, it seems that I hear a voice like my own repeating a promise—a promise unfulfilled that must be kept. ‘I will return! I will! I will!’ it says. And I hear voices calling in the wind, in the rustling of the leaves, and in the silence of the day, ‘Come back! Come back!’ And the birds say, ‘Come!’ The pines whisper to me strange things, and the laughing water in the brooks says ‘Come!’ What does it mean?”

“I cannot tell you here,” said the king. “But why do you wish to leave the palace? You are yet young and there are many, many years of happiness before you. You may stay in the palace where all things are good, and put these things out of mind. There is another world, but not for you—yet!”

Eline was troubled, or would have been had such a thing been possible in the palace of the king.

“May I ever see that land? May I ever leave the palace?”

“The children of the king are free to come and go,” he said. “I may not keep them if they will not stay; for I know that they will come again.”

II

Again a traveler came to the palace. He brought with him a harp of seven strings, on which he played to the children. He sang to them for a while and then for a space was silent. Eline listened to the strange, beautiful music. And to her it seemed that there was speech in the harp—that it spoke. The other children seemed to listen to the music, but to them it did not seem to speak. To Eline there were echoes of wonderful things the palace knew not; things that the language of the king could not tell. The harp spoke in a way that the Princess Eline knew and understood, although there were no words in its tones.

There were sad and sorrowful notes that told of sorrows the palace never knew. There were strains of music that sounded harsh to the listening ear, though to the careless they told of happiness alone. And as she listened, Eline dreamed. Clearer and more clear she felt that the harp told of a world of men where sorrow and sadness and strife were not unknown; where joy should be, and was not; where the people