Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/201

Rh THIRD EVENING

"In the narrow street close by—it is so narrow that I can only let my beams glide down for a few minutes, but in those minutes I see enough to know what the people are who move about there—I saw a woman sixteen years ago; she was a child; away in the country she played in the old vicarage garden. The rose hedges were old and past flowering. They were running wild over the paths and sending up long shoots into the apple trees. Here and there grew one poor rose, not lovely as the queen of flowers should be, but the colour was there, and the fragrance. The parson's little daughter seemed to me a far sweeter flower, sitting upon her footstool under the wild hedge, kissing the battered cheeks of her doll. Ten years later I saw her again. I saw her in a brilliant ballroom; she was the lovely bride of a rich merchant, I was delighted with her happiness, and I often sought her in those quiet evenings. Alas! no one thought of my clear eye or my sharp glances. My rose was also sending out wild shoots like the roses in the vicarage garden. There are tragedies in everyday life too. To-night I saw the last act. There, in the narrow street, on a bed, she lay at death's door. The wicked landlord, rough and cruel, her only protector, tore aside the coverlet. 'Get up!' he said. 'Your face is a sight. Dress yourself up, paint your face, and get some money, or I will turn you into the street. Get up at once!' 'Death is in my heart!' she said. 'Oh, let me rest!' But he forced her to get up, and painted her cheeks, and put a wreath of roses in her hair. Then he seated her by the window, with the light close by, and left her. I gazed upon her as she sat motionless, with her hands in her lap. The window flew back, and one of the panes cracked, but she did not move. The curtain fluttered round her like a flame. She was dead.

"The dead woman at the open window preached a moral to me: My rose from the vicarage garden."