THE
FINDING OF THE PRINCESS.
It was the day I was promoted to a tooth-brush. The
girls, irrespective of age, had been thus distinguished some time before; why,
we boys could never rightly understand, except that it was part and parcel of a
system of studied favouritism on behalf of creatures both physically inferior
and (as was shown by a fondness for tale-bearing) of weaker mental fibre. It
was not that we yearned after these strange instruments in themselves; Edward,
indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of his squirrel’s cage, and for
personal use, when a superior eye was grim on him, borrowed Harold’s or mine,
indifferently; but the nimbus of distinction that clung to them—that we coveted
exceedingly. What more, indeed, was there to ascend to, before the remote, but
still possible, razor and strop?
Perhaps the
exaltation had mounted to my head; or nature and the perfect morning joined to
him at disaffection; anyhow, having breakfasted, and triumphantly repeated the
collect I had broken down in the last Sunday—‘twas one without rhythm or
alliteration: a most objectionable collect—having achieved thus much, the small
natural man in me rebelled, and I vowed, as I straddled and spat about the
stable-yard in feeble imitation of the coachman, that lessons might go to the
Inventor of them. It was only geography that morning, any way: and the
practical thing was worth any quantity of bookish theoretic; as for me, I was
going on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and capitals, might
very well wait while I explored the breathing, coloured world outside.
True, a
fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule, have been counted on with
certainty. But just then Harold was very proud. The week before he had “gone
into tables,” and had been endowed with a new slate, having a miniature sponge
attached, wherewith we washed the faces of Charlotte’s dolls, thereby producing
an unhealthy pallor which struck terror into the child’s heart, always timorous
regarding epidemic visitations. As to “tables,” nobody knew exactly what they were,
least of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of the rest, and
therefore a subject for self-adulation and—generally speaking—airs; so that
Harold, hugging his slate and his chains, was out of the question now. In such
a matter, girls were worse than useless, as wanting the necessary tenacity of
will and contempt for self-constituted authority. So eventually I slipped
through the hedge a solitary protestant, and issued forth on the lane what time
the rest of the civilised world was sitting down to lessons.
The scene was
familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how different it all seemed! The act,
with its daring, tinted everything with new, strange hues; affecting the
individual with a sort of bruised feeling just below the pit of the stomach, that
was intensified whenever his thoughts flew back to the ink-stained, smelly
schoolroom. And could this be really me? or was I only contemplating, from the
schoolroom aforesaid, some other jolly young mutineer, faring forth under the
genial sun? Anyhow, here was the friendly well, in its old place, half way up
the lane. Hither the yoke-shouldering village-folk were wont to come to fill
their clinking buckets; when the drippings made worms of wet in the thick dust
of the road. They had flat wooden crosses inside each pail, which floated on
the top and (we were instructed) served to prevent the water from slopping
over. We used to wonder by what magic this strange principle worked, and who
first invented the crosses, and whether he got a peerage for it. But indeed the
well was a centre of mystery, for a hornet’s nest was somewhere hard by, and
the very thought was fearsome. Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them
in their fastnesses. But these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange, three
stings from which—so ‘t was averred—would kill a horse, these were of a
different kidney, and their warning drone suggested prudence and retreat. At
this time neither villagers nor hornets encroached on the stillness: lessons,
apparently, pervaded all Nature. So, after dabbling awhile in the well—what boy
has ever passed a bit of water without messing in it?—I scrambled through the
hedge, avoiding the hornet-haunted side, and struck into the silence of the
copse.
If the lane had
been deserted, this was loneliness become personal. Here mystery lurked and
peeped; here brambles caught and held with a purpose of their own, and saplings
whipped the face with human spite. The copse, too, proved vaster in extent,
more direfully drawn out, than one would ever have guessed from its frontage on
the lane: and I was really glad when at last the wood opened and sloped down to
a streamlet brawling forth into the sunlight. By this cheery companion I
wandered along, conscious of little but that Nature, in providing store of
water-rats, had thoughtfully furnished provender of right-sized stones. Rapids,
also, there were, telling of canoes and portages—crinkling bays and
inlets—caves for pirates and hidden treasures—the wise Dame had forgotten
nothing—till at last, after what lapse of time I know not, my further course,
though not the stream’s, was barred by some six feet of stout wire netting,
stretched from side to side, just where a thick hedge, arching till it touched,
forbade all further view.
The excitement of
the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flag must surely be fluttering close
by. Here was evidently a malignant contrivance of the Pirates, designed to
baffle our gun-boats when we dashed up-stream to shell them from their lair. A
gun-boat, indeed, might well have hesitated, so stout was the netting, so close
the hedge: but I spied where a rabbit was wont to pass, close down by the
water’s edge; where a rabbit could go a boy could follow, albeit stomach-wise
and with one leg in the stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stood
inside, safe but breathless at the sight.
Gone was the
brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of woodland. Instead, terrace after
terrace of shaven sward, stone-edged, urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to
where the stream, now tamed and educated, passed from one to another marble
basin, in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish in among the
spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding
noonday sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish leapt in
the pools, nor bird declared himself from the environing hedges. Self-confessed
it was here, then, at last the Garden of Sleep!
Two things, in
those old days, I held in especial distrust: gamekeepers and gardeners. Seeing,
however, no baleful apparitions of either nature, I pursued my way between rich
flower-beds, in search of the necessary Princess. Conditions declared her
presence patently as trumpets; without this centre such surroundings could not
exist. A pavilion, gold topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a
special significance over close-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She should be
enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits of princesses, triumphed;
for (indeed) there She was! In no tranced repose, however, but laughingly,
struggling to disengage her hand from the grasp of a grown-up man who occupied
the marble bench with her. (As to age, I suppose now that the two swung in
respective scales that pivoted on twenty. But children heed no minor
distinctions; to them, the inhabited world is composed of the two main
divisions: children and upgrown people; the latter being in no way superior to
the former—only hopelessly different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up
section.) I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion when there
were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun outside; and as I
cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight of me.
“Hallo, sprat!”
he said, with some abruptness, “where do you spring from?”
“I came up the
stream,” I explained politely and comprehensively, “and I was only looking for
the Princess.”
“Then you are a
water-baby,” he replied. “And what do you think of the Princess, now you’ve
found her?”
“I think she is
lovely,” I said (and doubtless I was right, having never learned to flatter).
“But she’s wide-awake, so I suppose somebody has kissed her!”
This very natural
deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter; but the Princess, turning red and
jumping up, declared that it was time for lunch.
“Come along,
then,” said the grown-up man; “and you too, Water-baby; come and have something
solid. You must want it.”
I accompanied
them, without any feeling of false delicacy. The world, as known to me, was
spread with food each several mid-day, and the particular table one sat at
seemed a matter of no importance. The palace was very sumptuous and beautiful,
just what a palace ought to be; and we were met by a stately lady, rather more
grownup than the Princess—apparently her mother.
My friend the Man
was very kind, and introduced me as the Captain, saying I had just run down
from Aldershot. I didn’t know where Aldershot was, but had no manner of doubt
that he was perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly
correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they
are so sadly to seek.
The lunch was
excellent and varied. Another gentleman in beautiful clothes—a lord,
presumably—lifted me into a high carved chair, and stood behind it, brooding
over me like a Providence. I endeavoured to explain who I was and where I had
come from, and to impress the company with my own tooth-brush and Harold’s
tables; but either they were stupid—or is it a characteristic of Fairyland that
every one laughs at the most ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said
good-naturedly, “All right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that’s good
enough for us.” The lord—a reserved sort of man, I thought—took no share in the
conversation.
After lunch I
walked on the terrace with the Princess and my friend the Man, and was very
proud. And I told him what I was going to be, and he told me what he was going
to be; and then I remarked, “I suppose you two are going to get married?” He
only laughed, after the Fairy fashion. “Because if you aren’t,” I added, “you
really ought to”: meaning only that a man who discovered a Princess, living in
the right sort of Palace like this, and didn’t marry her there and then, was
false to all recognised tradition.
They laughed
again, and my friend suggested I should go down to the pond and look at the
gold-fish, while they went for a stroll.
I was sleepy, and
assented; but before they left me, the grown-up man put two half-crowns in my
hand, for the purpose, he explained, of treating the other water-babies. I was
so touched by this crowning mark of friendship that I nearly cried; and thought
much more of his generosity than of the fact that the Princess; ere she moved
away, stooped down and kissed me.
I watched them
disappear down the path—how naturally arms seem to go round waists in
Fairyland!—and then, my cheek on the cool marble, lulled by the trickle of
water, I slipped into dreamland out of real and magic world alike. When I woke,
the sun had gone in, a chill wind set all the leaves a-whispering, and the
peacock on the lawn was harshly calling up the rain. A wild unreasoning panic
possessed me, and I sped out of the garden like a guilty thing, wriggled
through the rabbit-run, and threaded my doubtful way homewards, hounded by
nameless terrors. The half-crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch;
but could I hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted wood?
It was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home, at nightfall, by the
unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and only to be sent tealess to bed
seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for, as was usual
after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming delicately by backstairs,
stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and condolence, till his small skin was
tight as any drum. Then, nature asserting herself, I passed into the comforting
kingdom of sleep, where, a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in
translucent waters with a new half-crown snug under right fin and left; and
thrust up a nose through water-lily leaves to be kissed by a rose-flushed
Princess.
