On the third evening, at last, the old merchant’s head cleared, and he called his daughters to him, that he might tell them his story, and he told them all of it, sparing himself nothing. He finished by saying, “I do not wish to lie to you now. But there is no question of Beauty taking my place. As soon as I am strong enough again to walk that far, I will return to the Beast’s palace. And then the Beast can deal with me as he sees fit. But I am glad to have had the chance to see you all, my dears, my dearcr-lhan-dears, this final time, to tell you how much 1 love you and to say goodbye.”
Beauty had sat cold and motionless through the last of her father’s story, and at these words the tears ran down her cheeks and dropped into her lap. “Ah! That 1 should have asked you for a rose! I was selfish in my little, little sorrow—and it is I who will take up the fate / have earned. Father, I am going to the Beast’s palace.”
He would not hear of it; but she would hear of nothing else, and they argued. Beauty, always the gentle one, the peace-maker, was roused to fury at last; she crossed her arms tightly over her stomach as if she were holding herself together and roared like Lionheart—or like the Beast. But the old man’s strength came back to him twice over in this, and for a little while he was again the man he had been just after the death of his wife, wild with the strength of grief and loss. And so the old merchant and his youngest daughter shouted at each other till Teacosy fled the house and hid in the now-crowded shed with the goat, the chickens, and the pony, Daffodil.
But Jeweltongue and Lionheart, after a little thought, came in on Beauty’s side, saying, “He says she will take no harm of him, and he declared he would kill you!”
“I am old, and the little left remaining of my life is worthless; you love me, but that is all. The three of you will do well enough without me.”
But that all three of his daughters should range themselves against him was too much for him after all, for he was older now, and the winter had gone very hardly with him, and he had been near the end of what remained of his bodily strength before the blizzard and the meeting with the Beast. His fever came on him again, and he lay half senseless for many days, rousing himself occasionally to forbid Beauty to leave him, although he seemed to have forgotten where she was going. The sisters took a little of what remained of their thatching money—for they had come through the lean winter just past with a little to spare, partly on account of having one less mouth to feed in their father’s absence—and paid the local leech for a tonic, but it had no effect.
“I do not think he will mend till I am gone,” said Beauty at last, a fortnight after their father had come home with his dreadful news. But then her sisters clung to her, and Jeweltongue wept openly, and even Lionheart’s face was wet, although she had twisted her expression into her most ferocious scowl.
“I will—1 will surely be able to visit,” Beauty said, weeping with them. “This palace must be close at hand—as Father has described it. Or he is so great a sorcerer as to make it seem so, and I do not care the truth of it. I am a quick walker—I will find a way to come here sometime and tell you how I get on. It will—perhaps I will be like Lion-heart, who comes home every seven days. I will—I will weed the garden, while Lionheart bakes bread. Remember, he has—he has promised no harm to me. And—can a Beast who loves roses so much be so very terrible?”
Her eyes turned again to the red rose in the vase on the windows!]!. It had opened slowly and was now a huge flat cupful of darkest red petals, and its perfume filled the little house. As its colour was like none of her roses, so was its perfume different from them also; this was a deeper, richer, wilder smell, and it seemed almost to follow her round during the day, so that it was in her mouth when she cleaned out the shed or weeded the farthest row in her vegetable garden. And it came to her every night, in the dream, where the rose-bushes now grew thicker and thicker, till they crossed the corridor and tangled with the bushes on the other side, and she could only force her way through them more and more slowly, wrapping her hands awkwardly in her skirts as she handled the dangerous stems. And yet, in her dream, it never occurred to her not to go on; it did not even occur to her to look behind her and see if the way back was clear.
Beauty had cut two bits off the long stem of the dark red rose and thrust them into her cuttings bed, and she spoke to them every day, saying, “Please shoot for me, for my sisters and my father, so that they may think of me when they see you bloom,” for she in truth did not believe, in her heart of hearts, that the Beast would keep his promise. But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.
And so it was less than three weeks since the old mer—
chant’s return when Beauty packed up the few things she had chosen to take with her and set out. But she had thought often and long about her Father’s story: how the Beast had been roused by the theft of the rose, how he had dwindled and looked sad, how he had taken particular interest in the daughter who believed her roses were her friends. And so she took one more thing with her, secretly, tucked away in her clothing.
She embraced her sisters on the doorstep in the early morning. Their father had had a bad night, and Jeweltongue had sat up with him. There were hollows under her eyes and heavy lines around her mouth, where there had never been lines before. Lionheart looked little better, for her late-and-early hours were telling even on her strength. The three of them spoke quietly, for their father was finally asleep, and they hoped that he would not learn that Beauty was gone till it was too late to stop or to follow her.
Teacosy, aware that something had gone wrong with the old merchant’s homecoming, had been shadowing each sister in turn so closely that whoever was chosen for that hour could not move without tripping over her. In the last few days she had apparently decided that the wrongness threatened Beauty most and never left her side, generally creeping up the loft ladder during the night to sleep on her feet and having to be carried down in the mornings. She was now leaning against Beauty’s shins so heavily she felt like a boulder instead of a small dog, except that boulders don’t tremble.
“I cannot think the Beast’s palace can be found unless he chooses it be found; surely Father will understand that searching is useless. ...” Beauty’s voice trailed away. “Do not forget to water my cuttings bed every day; twice a day, if the summer grows hot....” Again her voice faltered. It was difficult to think of what needed to be said when there was so much and so little to choose from. Finally she stood silent, gripping her sisters’ hands, smelling the warm human smell of them, the scent of each as precise and individual as the shape of her face, and she was terribly aware that she was going to a place where there would be no hands to grasp nor arms to embrace her, and no friendly human smells.