บทที่ บทที่ 5 · THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS

. 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.