by Edith Nesbit
They went down the gallery past the pictures and the stuffed birds and tables with china on them and downstairs on to the white parlour. But they could not see any knot in the mantelpiece panel, because it was all painted white. But mother’s fingers felt softly all over it, and found a round raised spot. It was a knot, sure enough. Then she scraped round it with her scissors, till she loosened the knot, and poked it out with the scissors point.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any keyhole there really,’ she said. But there was. And what is more, the key fitted. The panel swung open, and inside was a little cupboard with two shelves. What was on the shelves? There were old laces and old embroideries, old jewelry and old silver; there was money, and there were dusty old papers that Tavy thought most uninteresting. But mother did not think them uninteresting. She laughed, and cried, or nearly cried, and said:
‘Oh, Tavy, this was why the China Cat was to be taken such care of!’ Then she told him how, a hundred and fifty years before, the Head of the House had gone out to fight for the Pretender, and had told his daughter to take the greatest care of the China Cat. ‘I will send you word of the reason by a sure hand,’ he said, for they parted on the open square, where any spy might have overheard anything. And he had been killed by an ambush not ten miles from home, — and his daughter had never known. But she had kept the Cat.
‘And now it has saved us,’ said mother. ‘We can stay in the dear old house, and there are two other houses that will belong to us too, I think. And, oh, Tavy, would you like some pound-cake and ginger-wine, dear?’
Tavy did like. And had it.
The China Cat was mended, but it was put in the glass-fronted corner cupboard in the drawing-room, because it had saved the House.
Now I dare say you’ll think this is all nonsense, and a made-up story. Not at all. If it were, how would you account for Tavy’s finding, the very next night, fast asleep on his pillow, his own white Cat — the furry friend that the China Cat used to turn into every evening — the dear hostess who had amused him so well in the White Cat’s fairy Palace?
It was she, beyond a doubt, and that was why Tavy didn’t mind a bit about the China Cat being taken from him and kept under glass. You may think that it was just any old stray white cat that had come in by accident. Tavy knows better. It has the very same tender tone in its purr that the magic White Cat had. It will not talk to Tavy, it is true; but Tavy can and does talk to it. But the thing that makes it perfectly certain that it is the White Cat is that the tips of its two ears are missing — just as the China Cat’s ears were. If you say that it might have lost its ear-tips in battle you are the kind of person who always makes difficulties, and you may be quite sure that the kind of splendid magics that happened to Tavy will never happen to you.
BELINDA AND BELLAMANT; OR THE BELLS OF CARRILLON-LAND
There is a certain country where a king is never allowed to reign while a queen can be found. They like queens much better than kings in that country. I can’t think why. If some one has tried to teach you a little history, you will perhaps think that this is the Salic law. But it isn’t. In the biggest city of that odd country there is a great bell-tower (higher than the clock-tower of the Houses of Parliament, where they put M.P.’s who forget their manners). This bell-tower had seven bells in it, very sweet-toned splendid bells, made expressly to ring on the joyful occasions when a princess was born who would be queen some day. And the great tower was built expressly for the bells to ring in. So you see what a lot they thought of queens in that country. Now in all the bells there are bell-people — it is their voices that you hear when the bells ring. All that about its being the clapper of the bell is mere nonsense, and would hardly deceive a child. I don’t know why people say such things. Most Bell-people are very energetic busy folk, who love the sound of their own voices, and hate being idle, and when nearly two hundred years had gone by, and no princesses had been born, they got tired of living in bells that were never rung. So they slipped out of the belfry one fine frosty night, and left the big beautiful bells empty, and went off to find other homes. One of them went to live in a dinner-bell, and one in a school-bell, and the rest all found homes — they did not mind where — just anywhere, in fact, where they could find any Bell-person kind enough to give them board and lodging. And every one was surprised at the increased loudness in the voices of these hospitable bells. For, of course, the Bell-people from the belfry did their best to help in the housework as polite guests should, and always added their voices to those of their hosts on all occasions when bell-talk was called for. And the seven big beautiful bells in the belfry were left hollow and dark and quite empty, except for the clappers who did not care about the comforts of a home.
Now of course a good house does not remain empty long, especially when there is no rent to pay, and in a very short time the seven bells all had tenants, and they were all the kind of folk that no respectable Bell-people would care to be acquainted with.
They had been turned out of other bells — cracked bells and broken bells, the bells of horses that had been lost in snowstorms or of ships that had gone down at sea. They hated work, and they were a glum, silent, disagreeable people, but as far as they could be pleased about anything they were pleased to live in bells that were never rung, in houses where there was nothing to do. They sat hunched up under the black domes of their houses, dressed in darkness and cobwebs, and their only pleasure was idleness, their only feasts the thick dusty silence that lies heavy in all belfries where the bells never ring. They hardly ever spoke even to each other, and in the whispers that good Bell-people talk in among themselves, and that no one can hear but the bat whose ear for music is very fine and who has himself a particularly high voice, and when they did speak they quarrelled.
And when at last the bells were rung for the birth of a Princess the wicked Bell-people were furious. Of course they had to ring — a bell can’t help that when the rope is pulled — but their voices were so ugly that people were quite shocked.
‘What poor taste our ancestors must have had,’ they said, ‘to think these were good bells!’
(You remember the bells had not rung for nearly two hundred years.)
‘Dear me,’ said the King to the Queen, ‘what odd ideas people had in the old days. I always understood that these bells had beautiful voices.’
‘They’re quite hideous,’ said the Queen. And so they were. Now that night the lazy Bell-folk came down out of the belfry full of anger against the Princess whose birth had disturbed their idleness. There is no anger like that of a lazy person who is made to work against his will.
And they crept out of the dark domes of their houses and came down in their dust dresses and cobweb cloaks, and crept up to the palace where every one had gone to bed long before, and stood round the mother-of-pearl cradle where the baby princess lay asleep. And they reached their seven dark right hands out across the white satin coverlet, and the oldest and hoarsest and laziest said:
‘She shall grow uglier every day, except Sundays, and every Sunday she shall be seven times prettier than the Sunday before.’
‘Why not uglier every day, and a double dose on Sunday?’ asked the youngest and spitefullest of the wicked Bell-people.
‘Because there’s no rule without an exception,’ said the eldest and hoarsest and laziest, ‘and she’ll feel it all the more if she’s pretty once a week. And,’ he added, ‘this shall go on till she finds a bell that doesn’t ring, and can’t ring, and never will ring, and wasn’t made to ring.’
‘Why not for ever?’ asked the young and spiteful.
‘Nothing goes on for ever,’ said the eldest Bell-person, ‘not even ill-luck. And we have to leave her a way out. It doesn’t matter. She’ll never know what it is. Let alone finding it.’
Then they went back to the belfry and rearranged as well as they could the comfortable web-and-owls’ nest furniture of their houses which had all been shaken up and disarranged by that absurd ringing of bells at the birth of
a Princess that nobody could really be pleased about.
When the Princess was two weeks old the King said to the Queen:
‘My love — the Princess is not so handsome as I thought she was.’
‘Nonsense, Henry,’ said the Queen, ‘the light’s not good, that’s all.’
Next day — it was Sunday — the King pulled back the lace curtains of the cradle and said:
‘The light’s good enough now — and you see she’s — —’
He stopped.
‘It must have been the light,’ he said, ‘she looks all right to-day.’
‘Of course she does, a precious,’ said the Queen.
But on Monday morning His Majesty was quite sure really that the Princess was rather plain, for a Princess. And when Sunday came, and the Princess had on her best robe and the cap with the little white ribbons in the frill, he rubbed his nose and said there was no doubt dress did make a great deal of difference. For the Princess was now as pretty as a new daisy.
The Princess was several years old before her mother could be got to see that it really was better for the child to wear plain clothes and a veil on week days. On Sundays, of course she could wear her best frock and a clean crown just like anybody else.
Of course nobody ever told the Princess how ugly she was. She wore a veil on week-days, and so did every one else in the palace, and she was never allowed to look in the glass except on Sundays, so that she had no idea that she was not as pretty all the week as she was on the first day of it. She grew up therefore quite contented. But the parents were in despair.
‘Because,’ said King Henry, ‘it’s high time she was married. We ought to choose a king to rule the realm — I have always looked forward to her marrying at twenty-one — and to our retiring on a modest competence to some nice little place in the country where we could have a few pigs.’
‘And a cow,’ said the Queen, wiping her eyes.
‘And a pony and trap,’ said the King.
‘And hens,’ said the Queen, ‘yes. And now it can never, never be. Look at the child! I just ask you! Look at her!’
‘No,’ said the King firmly, ‘I haven’t done that since she was ten, except on Sundays.’
‘Couldn’t we get a prince to agree to a “Sundays only” marriage — not let him see her during the week?’
‘Such an unusual arrangement,’ said the King, ‘would involve very awkward explanations, and I can’t think of any except the true ones, which would be quite impossible to give. You see, we should want a first-class prince, and no really high-toned Highness would take a wife on those terms.’
‘It’s a thoroughly comfortable kingdom,’ said the Queen doubtfully. ‘The young man would be handsomely provided for for life.’
‘I couldn’t marry Belinda to a time-server or a place-worshipper,’ said the King decidedly.
Meanwhile the Princess had taken the matter into her own hands. She had fallen in love.
You know, of course, that a handsome book is sent out every year to all the kings who have daughters to marry. It is rather like the illustrated catalogues of Liberty’s or Peter Robinson’s, only instead of illustrations showing furniture or ladies’ cloaks and dresses, the pictures are all of princes who are of an age to be married, and are looking out for suitable wives. The book is called the ‘Royal Match Catalogue Illustrated,’ — and besides the pictures of the princes it has little printed bits about their incomes, accomplishments, prospects, and tempers, and relations.
Now the Princess saw this book — which is never shown to princesses, but only to their parents — it was carelessly left lying on the round table in the parlour. She looked all through it, and she hated each prince more than the one before till she came to the very end, and on the last page of all, screwed away in a corner, was the picture of a prince who was quite as good-looking as a prince has any call to be.
‘I like you,’ said Belinda softly. Then she read the little bit of print underneath.
Prince Bellamant, aged twenty-four. Wants Princess who doesn’t object to a christening curse. Nature of curse only revealed in the strictest confidence. Good tempered. Comfortably off. Quiet habits. No relations.
‘Poor dear,’ said the Princess. ‘I wonder what the curse is! I’m sure I shouldn’t mind!’
The blue dusk of evening was deepening in the garden outside. The Princess rang for the lamp and went to draw the curtain. There was a rustle and a faint high squeak — and something black flopped on to the floor and fluttered there.
‘Oh — it’s a bat,’ cried the Princess, as the lamp came in. ‘I don’t like bats.’
‘Let me fetch a dust-pan and brush and sweep the nasty thing away,’ said the parlourmaid.
‘No, no,’ said Belinda, ‘it’s hurt, poor dear,’ and though she hated bats she picked it up. It was horribly cold to touch, one wing dragged loosely. ‘You can go, Jane,’ said the Princess to the parlourmaid.
Then she got a big velvet-covered box that had had chocolate in it, and put some cotton wool in it and said to the Bat —
‘You poor dear, is that comfortable?’ and the Bat said:
‘Quite, thanks.’
‘Good gracious,’ said the Princess jumping. ‘I didn’t know bats could talk.’
‘Every one can talk,’ said the Bat, ‘but not every one can hear other people talking. You have a fine ear as well as a fine heart.’
‘Will your wing ever get well?’ asked the Princess.
‘I hope so,’ said the Bat. ‘But let’s talk about you. Do you know why you wear a veil every day except Sundays?’
‘Doesn’t everybody?’ asked Belinda.
‘Only here in the palace,’ said the Bat, ‘that’s on your account.’
‘But why?’ asked the Princess.
‘Look in the glass and you’ll know.’
‘But it’s wicked to look in the glass except on Sundays — and besides they’re all put away,’ said the Princess.
‘If I were you,’ said the Bat, ‘I should go up into the attic where the youngest kitchenmaid sleeps. Feel between the thatch and the wall just above her pillow, and you’ll find a little round looking-glass. But come back here before you look at it.’
The Princess did exactly what the Bat told her to do, and when she had come back into the parlour and shut the door she looked in the little round glass that the youngest kitchen-maid’s sweetheart had given her. And when she saw her ugly, ugly, ugly face — for you must remember she had been growing uglier every day since she was born — she screamed and then she said:
‘That’s not me, it’s a horrid picture.’
‘It is you, though,’ said the Bat firmly but kindly; ‘and now you see why you wear a veil all the week — and only look in the glass on Sunday.’
‘But why,’ asked the Princess in tears, ‘why don’t I look like that in the Sunday looking-glasses?’
‘Because you aren’t like that on Sundays,’ the Bat replied. ‘Come,’ it went on, ‘stop crying. I didn’t tell you the dread secret of your ugliness just to make you cry — but because I know the way for you to be as pretty all the week as you are on Sundays, and since you’ve been so kind to me I’ll tell you. Sit down close beside me, it fatigues me to speak loud.’
The Princess did, and listened through her veil and her tears, while the Bat told her all that I began this story by telling you.
‘My great-great-great-great-grandfather heard the tale years ago,’ he said, ‘up in the dark, dusty, beautiful, comfortable, cobwebby belfry, and I have heard scraps of it myself when the evil Bell-people were quarrelling, or talking in their sleep, lazy things!’
‘It’s very good of you to tell me all this,’ said Belinda, ‘but what am I to do?’
‘You must find the bell that doesn’t ring, and can’t ring, and never will ring, and wasn’t made to ring.’
‘If I were a prince,’ said the Princess, ‘I could go out and seek my fortune.’
‘Princesses have fortunes as well a
s princes,’ said the Bat.
‘But father and mother would never let me go and look for mine.’
‘Think!’ said the Bat, ‘perhaps you’ll find a way.’
So Belinda thought and thought. And at last she got the book that had the portraits of eligible princes in it, and she wrote to the prince who had the christening curse — and this is what she said:
‘Princess Belinda of Carrillon-land is not afraid of christening curses. If Prince Bellamant would like to marry her he had better apply to her Royal Father in the usual way.
‘P.S. — I have seen your portrait.’
When the Prince got this letter he was very pleased, and wrote at once for Princess Belinda’s likeness. Of course they sent him a picture of her Sunday face, which was the most beautiful face in the world. As soon as he saw it he knew that this was not only the most beautiful face in the world, but the dearest, so he wrote to her father by the next post — applying for her hand in the usual way and enclosing the most respectable references. The King told the Princess.
‘Come,’ said he, ‘what do you say to this young man?’
And the Princess, of course, said, ‘Yes, please.’
So the wedding-day was fixed for the first Sunday in June.
But when the Prince arrived with all his glorious following of courtiers and men-at-arms, with two pink peacocks and a crown-case full of diamonds for his bride, he absolutely refused to be married on a Sunday. Nor would he give any reason for his refusal. And then the King lost his temper and broke off the match, and the Prince went away.
But he did not go very far. That night he bribed a page-boy to show him which was the Princess’s room, and he climbed up by the jasmine through the dark rose-scented night, and tapped at the window.
‘Who’s dhere?’ said the Princess inside in the dark.
‘Me,’ said the Prince in the dark outside.
‘Thed id wasnd’t true?’ said the Princess. ‘They toad be you’d ridded away.’
‘What a cold you’ve got, my Princess,’ said the Prince hanging on by the jasmine boughs.