Christmas Gold: The Greatest Holiday Novels, Tales & Poems (Illustrated Edition). Гарриет Бичер-Стоу
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standing beside her and looking at her with an expression of the profoundest misery.
'"I have brought it on myself," he said. "I deserve it; but pity me, oh, Auréole! Sweet Auréole, pity and forgive me!" Then a cry of irrepressible grief burst from his lips, and at this moment Auréole awoke, to find her eyes wet with tears, her heart throbbing fast with fear and distress.
'"What can have made me dream of Halbert?" she said to herself. "It must have been seeing the messengers start yesterday," and then all came back to her memory, which at the first moment of waking had been confused, and she remembered her father's death and her own loneliness, and the scarcely-dried tears rushed afresh to her eyes.
'"Has any news come from Prince Halbert?" she inquired of her attendants when they came at her summons. And when they told her "none," she felt a strange sensation of uneasiness. For the messengers had been despatched at once on the death of the old King, which had been sudden at the last, to summon his successor, and there had been time already for their return.
'And as the day went on and nothing was heard of them, every one began to think there must be something wrong, till late at night these fears were confirmed by the return of the messengers with anxious faces.
'"Has the Prince arrived?" was their first question, and when they were told that nothing had been seen of him, they explained the reason of their inquiry.
'Halbert, already informed of the illness of the old King, had quickly prepared to set out with his own attendants and those who had come to summon him. They had ridden through the night, and had nothing untoward occurred, they would have ended their journey by daybreak. But the Prince had lost his temper with his horse, a nervous and restless animal, unfit for so irritable a person to manage.
'"We became uneasy," said the messengers, "on seeing the Prince lashing and spurring furiously the poor animal, who, his sides streaming with blood, no longer understood what was required of him, and at last, driven mad with pain and terror, dashed off at a frantic pace which it was hopeless to overtake. We followed him as best we could, guided for some distance by the branches broken as they passed and the ploughed-up ground, which, thanks to a brilliant moonlight, we were able to distinguish. But at last, where the trees began to grow more thickly——" and here the speaker, who was giving this report to Auréole herself, hesitated—"at last these traces entirely disappeared. We sought on in every direction; when the moon went in we waited for the daylight, and resumed our search. But all to no purpose, and at last we resolved to ride on hither, hoping that the Prince might possibly have found his way before us."
'"But this is terrible!" cried Auréole, forgetting all her indignation against Halbert in the thought of his lying perhaps crushed and helpless in some bypath of the forest which his followers had missed. "We must at once send out fresh horsemen in every direction to scour the country."
'The captain who had had command of the little troop bowed, but said nothing, and seemed without much hope that any fresh efforts would succeed. Auréole was struck with his manner.
'"You are concealing something from me," she said. "Why do you appear so hopeless? Even at the worst, even supposing the Prince is killed, he must be found."
'"We searched too thoroughly," replied the officer. "Wherever it was possible to get, we left not a square yard unvisited."
'"Wherever it was possible," repeated Auréole; "what do you mean? You do not think——" and she too hesitated, and her pale face grew paler.
'The captain glanced at her.
'"I see that you have divined our fears, Princess," he said in a low voice. "Yes, we feel almost without a doubt that the unfortunate Prince has been carried into the enchanted forest, from whence, as you well know, none have ever been known to return. It is well that his parents have not lived to see this day, for, though he brought it on himself, it is impossible not to feel pity for such a fate."
'Auréole seemed scarcely able to reply. But she gave orders, notwithstanding all she had heard, to send out fresh horsemen to search again in every direction.
'"My poor father," she said to herself; "I am glad he was spared this new sorrow about Halbert." And as the remembrance of her strange dream returned to her, "Poor Halbert," she added, "what may he not be suffering?" and she shuddered at the thought.
'For the enchanted forest was the terror of all that country. In reality nothing, or almost nothing, was known of it, and therefore the awe and horror about it were the greater. It lay in a lonely stretch of ground between two ranges of hills, and no one ever passed through it, for there was no pathway or entrance of any kind to be seen. But for longer than any one now living could remember, it had been spoken of as a place to be dreaded and avoided, and travellers in passing by used to tell how they had heard shrieks and screams and groans from among its dark shades. It was said that a magician lived in a castle in the very centre of the forest, and that he used all sorts of tricks to get people into his power, whence they could never again escape. For though several were known to have been tempted to enter the forest, none of them were ever heard of or seen again. And it was the common saying of the neighbourhood, that it would be far worse to lose a child by straying into the forest than by dying. No one had ever seen the magician, no one even was sure that he existed, but when any misfortune came over the neighbourhood, such as a bad harvest or unusual sickness, people were sure to say that the wizard of the forest was at the bottom of it. And Auréole, like every one else, had a great and mysterious terror of the place and its master.
'"Poor Halbert!" she repeated to herself many times that day. "Would I could do anything for him!"
'The bands of horsemen she had sent out returned one after the other with the same tidings,—nothing had been seen or heard of the Prince. But late in the day a woodman brought to the castle a fragment of cloth which was recognised as having been torn from the mantle of the Prince, and which he had found caught on the branch of a tree. When asked where, he hesitated, which of itself was answer enough.
'"Close to the borders of the enchanted forest," he said at last, lowering his voice. But that was all he had to tell. And from this moment all lost hope. There was nothing more to be done.
'"The Prince is as lost to us as is our good old King," were the words of every one on the day of the funeral of Auréole's father. "Far better for him were he too sleeping peacefully among his fathers than to be where he is."
'It seemed as if it would have certainly been better for his people had it been so. It was impossible to receive the successor of Halbert as king till a certain time had elapsed, which would be considered as equal to proof of his death. And the next heir to the crown being but an infant living in a distant country, the delay gave opportunity for several rival claimants to begin to make difficulties, and not many months after the death of the old King the once happy and peaceful country was threatened with war and invasion on various sides. Then the heads of the nation consulted together, and decided on a bold step. They came to Auréole offering her the crown, declaring that they preferred to overthrow the laws of the country, though they had existed for many centuries, and to make her, at the point of the sword if necessary, their queen, rather than accept as sovereign any of those who had no right to it, or an infant who would but be a name and no reality.
'Auréole was startled and bewildered, but firm in her refusal.
'"A king's daughter am I, but no queen. I feel no fitness for the task of ruling," she replied, "and I could never rest satisfied that I was where I had a right to be."
'But when the deputies entreated her to consider the matter, and when she thought of the misery in store for the people unless something were quickly done, she agreed to think it over till the next day.
'The next day came, Auréole was ready, awaiting the deputies. Their hopes rose high as they saw her, for there was an expression on her face that had not been there the day before. She stood before them in her long mourning robe, but she had encircled her waist with a golden belt, and golden ornaments shone on her neck and arms.
'"It is a good sign," the envoys whispered, as they remarked also the bright and hopeful light in her eyes, and they stood breathless, waiting for her