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.
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