By night Hans saw the true mixture of the pathetic with the true. He saw the beautiful; he became the Sandman; and Rose became the Queen, the gold and silver Queen. And the things in the discarded pieces of luggage became their true selves too. And what unpleasant, critical creatures they became indeed, talking in no uncertain terms about the doings of human beings—mere mice and dolls who got married and gave themselves splendid funerals, such things as they themselves might have done if they had not belonged to the Queen and understood the foolishness of pretending (for, of course, that was all pretending, playing at love and death). The Queen herself did not criticize the doings of human beings, she was too kind to criticize anything; she merely looked the other way until it was all over. But they could not help seeing how, although the clock ticked round always to the same hour, things themselves were never the same again. They themselves only escaped because they were quite old, quite dead. They belonged to the Queen and had no illusions about to-morrow, when things were almost the same but never quite—except the Queen, and she only because she went not from a beginning to an end but from a beginning to a beginning.
When they lay in the basket it had been all very well to talk seriously among themselves like children and call black grey and white grey and feel that that was going far enough into the gloomy side of things. Now they must call black black and white white, and what could be gloomier than that? And yet they were not gloomy, because that was the truth, and one did not stop to think whether the truth was gloomy or not when one belonged to the Queen. They were absolutely right in their opinions, and there was nothing gloomy in being right; just as thinking about death is gloomy, but there is nothing gloomy in being dead. They saw things as they really were, and what could be more satisfactory? When anyone among them—somebody's great-grandfather's portrait, for instance—mumbled, "Now that is instructive," he really meant it, and there was no need to say any more on the subject, such as "Ah, me!" or "Oh, dear!"
Or when the prayer-book of somebody's grandmother, with a rose pressed between its pages, said, "A dead person knows more than all the living ones," they did not sigh like hypocrites, secretly happy to be alive; for they were only alive in the sense that they belonged to the Queen and knew how to express themselves well. They would think to themselves, "But we must not be trapped into feeling ourselves alive, just because we talk in a somewhat scattered way—though in the main we express ourselves well. We must not allow ourselves to prize infirmities." The rose pressed between the pages of the prayer-book, though it may have seemed the loveliest rose in the world, was only a reminder that the real rose was their Queen, and that she was not a flower at all, as her being a hotel-maid by day proved. It was all very well to see a grain of truth in a flower because it was beautiful—or, rather, seemed beautiful. But what about the whole truth, which flowers concealed rather than revealed? From a grain of truth in a flower the most wonderful tales took their beginning. But where did tales lead to?
Back to the tea-pot, back to the Story-pig: in fact, was anyone the wiser for a tale, no matter how much better he might feel for acknowledging to himself that things were not altogether what they seemed?
Things were not only not altogether what they seemed, but utterly different from what they seemed—a thing they themselves would never have realized if the Sandman had not changed Rose into the Queen, and if his twin-brother Death, who worked along with him like a shadow, had not rapped them on their heads and said, "Come now, no nonsense." In the basket they had talked like children, and that was something, as confusion was better than logic, which firmly said yes or no on no more authority than ill-temper. But here they said, in no uncertain terms, so or so, and on the authority of good- temper. Yes, they were good-tempered, although they might seem unpleasant and critical creatures to people who did not understand in what a cheerful state of mind they said all those unpleasant, critical things. Their being good-tempered was due to their belonging to the Queen and not really caring what happened, since all was over with them for ever and for ever and for ever and after. They were dead, but they were also alive— exactly because they were dead, having beheld the true rose that is not a flower at all, and because who beholds this "shall never die".
They had seen the Queen; they were inside the picture; they were behind the picture, on the reverse side, in another kind of to-day. And there were no yesterdays to that to-day. All the other to-days were not merely long, long ago; one could not credit them with having been at all, except in the minds of the people who had lived in them and made finished pictures of them. These pictures were only pictures of the real picture, which was not a picture at all, but the real world itself; and here everything looked like what it really was, not, as in everyday pictures, like what they seemed to people who kept their eyes tight shut (the eyes of the universal soul in which they all shared), lest what they saw should shock their vanity and make them turn pale in broad daylight, before disappointment could set in becomingly, along with bed-time stories and sleepy hopes for to-morrow.
But how they prattled on! But who knew better than they that the moment a thing was said, no matter how true, it became prattle? And that was why the Queen never said anything aloud, though she undoubtedly said to herself all the things that they said—and a great deal more. They could not help saying things aloud, for they only lived in for ever and after by the courtesy of the Queen, who claimed them as hers (rescuing them from the dust-bin where they belonged) only in merriment, as if to make the real world seem jokingly like the human world—jokingly full of unnecessary things. They could not help prattling on, but, on the other hand, they could not help talking sense. And in merriment the Queen put on the pretty red slippers that someone had tossed into the basket one night, having sent Hans for her day-shoes so that she might walk in the moonlight before going to bed.
Such a pretty lady, and how she had flirted with Hans and enjoyed his not being able to flirt back because, as she thought, he was only the doorman, but actually, of course, because he had no eyes for anyone but the Queen. He was the Queen's doorman. Not that she needed doors in her world. But she had doors, so that Hans could open and close them; and this was not in merriment, but for love. What Hans loved best, next to following behind her, was running a little ahead of her sometimes to do something for her. And so in her world she had doors, for love, since there was no vanity, curiosity or ambition in Hans, only love. For in doing this he felt neither proud nor humble, but only pleased to have an excuse for being in the real world, near the Queen. And the Queen, who was not selfish, though she would have been quite happy all by herself and could have got on quite well without anyone's help, was only too glad to provide him with an excuse; and this, too, was love.
And because the Queen did not like one-sided relationships, she became Rose, the hotel-maid, by day, just to make things easy for Hans when he changed from one world to the other; just to make the story truer. And so it was Hans who had to change Rose into the Queen every night; and a very difficult task it was, and an infallible test of his sincerity. For if he let any other thought come between Rose and the Queen (such as a thought of the pretty lady who first owned the pretty red slippers—and who can say but that she left them behind on purpose, for Hans to remember her by), it would all end in the Story-pig. Now, the Story-pig was not so bad in its way. It kept Hans in pocket-money, so that at the end of the day he never fretted over wants not worth fretting over—which prevents one from fretting properly over wants worth fretting over. And once a month (at the full of the moon, as it happened) how almost majestically it shone upon the chimney-corner, having been rubbed hard that morning by Rose with chalk and spirit —a frown on her forehead from saying to herself, "No, brighter than that, and brighter than that."
But there was a limit to the powers of the Story-pig, as there was a limit to the brightness that Rose could get out of it. The Story-pig could not, for all its enthusiasm, get out of the human world into the real world. It skipped resolutely round the ed
ge of the human world, and, when the moon was at its fullest, and its silver coat at its shiniest, it did indeed seem to be on the point of skipping off, or it was on the point of skipping off—and could not. It either could not or would not, which comes to the same thing: that it did not. For it was, after all, only a Story-pig standing still on top of a world that moved round and round over the same path of to-day-to-morrow-to- day, afraid to let go of itself and skip off, though just before bedtime it asked itself the question: "And what if I should skip off?" And the question was enough to make it feel brave, as if it were a brave thing in itself to ask the question. And the world (or the hotel-guests, who were surely all the world that counted, being the nicest people in it) gave the question to the Story-pig. And the Story-pig, its mouth wide open, made the question its own, with a skip and a bound; though no one could guess this from the gruff expression on its snout the next morning—as if to say, "No familiarities, if you please—if I talked nonsense last night, that's my business."
The Queen (in merriment) put on the pretty red slippers and picked up a walking-stick and went out into the moonlight—she did not pay attention to the difference between slippers and shoes. Hans held open the door and then ran ahead to open the gate into the road that led to the elfin hillock. What a silly, frisky place it was, all whispers and wings! But she was walking out for love, and it did not much matter where she went, so long as she gave Hans something to do. The pretty red slippers and the walking-stick would have a talk about it later. "What a silly, frisky place," they would say, "all whispers and wings!" And this would be entirely their own idea, of course, for the Queen would have made no comment, not she. The pretty red slippers would grumble about the mud on their heels; not that there really was any mud on them, for the Queen merely skimmed the ground when she walked, but to emphasize the fact, in no uncertain terms, that the elfin hillock was no more, no less, than a mud-heap in the human world, and only 'the elfin hillock'—something here—by grace of the Queen's merriment. And the walking-stick would be very sharp about the stones in the road. And as for the wicked Prince who had tried to kiss the Queen—if she had asked him to rap the Prince on the head! But she was perfectly right in taking no notice of him, for it was plain that he was only made of moonlight. They had that much at least to be grateful for, that everything in the human world that forced its way into their world was changed into moonlight, nothing but moonlight— except that madman the sun, who was changed into absolute dark. There was no malice in the Queen's doing this; it was just something that could not be avoided. But they couldn't help feeling pleased about it, and how right it served him, for being so dogmatic. What fun when justice was poetic justice!
The elfin hillock had some use, after all, for that was where the things which got into that world by mistake were buried— though they thought themselves alive and never realized the difference. It was not the Queen's policy to kill anyone outright: hers was the world of death, but not in that sense of the word. In the elfin hillock, very happy, lived the happy snail family which thought, in being such a happy family, that happiness was everything. And here, too, lay clever Little Claus on his back, dreaming how clever he was. And the brave tin soldier, thinking what a hero he had been, and what higher virtue could there be than to suffer the worst humiliations for a good cause without complaining—the good cause of being a hero. No, it had never occurred to him to ask himself whether life did not lead elsewhere than home again after an arduous adventure. So there in the elfin hillock he lay, thinking how glad he was to be home again, and what a good name he had made for himself to nail on the front door.
But not to tell all those stories over again, let us follow the Queen home in the moonlight with Hans. And yet, walking home, Hans did not exactly follow; we might almost say that he was walking practically beside her. One rose-elf did actually follow her a good way back, but only to satisfy itself whether it could not be of any use, with its tiny, cruel eye, for picking out evil spirits in the absolute dark. But as the Queen walked straight into the absolute dark and out again, without having even so much as a hair teased out of place, what was the use (it mourned to itself) of all its intuition? Ah, the good old days (it mourned to itself) when things were not so simple. And back it flew to its hillock, where at least it could tell a lie, how it warned the Queen just in time of a wicked witch lying in wait to cast a spell over her. And what was left to them but to fall back on lies in a world that was not kept together by good deeds? In the human world good deeds had been like telling the truth, in this world good deeds were like lies. No, there were neither good nor bad deeds here; there was nothing at all to do, if one wanted to keep the enchantment, but tell lies.
But Hans did not complain of loss of enchantment as he walked along practically beside the Queen. And she put her arm in his; and he took the whole thing as a matter of course, not having any particular thoughts about it. And what need was there to think—was it not all perfectly clear? She was the Queen and he was—surely he must be a king if she was holding his arm? But if he was a king, he was not a king a-courting of a queen. He did not love her; when he loved her he was only Hans. That was enchantment, but this was the truth. She was the Queen and he was a king, and they were the best of friends. Her hand on his arm did not make him first hot, then cold, then all a-quiver and not knowing where he was. He knew exactly where he was; and there was nothing astonishing in his being there, because he understood it all perfectly. It was absolutely necessary that there should be such a queen: everything pointed towards her existence, no matter where. And here she was, and there could be no magic in that, though there was undoubtedly magic in his understanding it all—that is, in overcoming his natural stupidity.
But the magic in his understanding it all was his complete self-control: he allowed himself no liberties. By always keeping before him his stupidity and saying to himself, "No, I am too stupid, too hopelessly stupid, it is impossible," here he was. He accepted the consequences calmly, that he was the impossible one, to be thus walking beside her, not she. Had the magic been that crafty meddling with the rules of the game that never succeeds but it fails, then she would have been only the fierce, false Snow Queen of intellectuality, and Rose would not have been the same as the Queen, impossibly the same, but any fine girl— Gerda, for example. And Gerda would have been half any fine girl, and half the terrible robber girl who did not really care what happened to him, saying, "I should like to know whether you deserve that one should run to the end of the world after you." And no, he would not have deserved it.
No, there must be no craftiness about it, nor any witches except those who conjured a little just for their own amusement, as the Queen did many things just in merriment, to show that there was room for everything if done in the right way at the right time and in the right place. No, he must always observe the rules of the game: he must be either himself, Hans, or himself impossibly a king. All else was mere quibbling, all else was the Story-pig, and standing for one's own pea. Such was the nightingale's singing—taking advantage of effects. No, if there was a change, it had to be an absolute change; not romantic science, but verily to become as if the Queen.
In becoming as if the Queen, Hans became a king. It was not a case of you-and-me as they walked back in the moonlight, arm in arm. It was all one, and how calm; one heart—and the heart was the calm. Something was singing, but not a nightingale. The moon was singing—singing the death of passions and numbers: it was all one here. And the singing was like a loud quiet in the ears; as the moonlight was like a bright blindness in the eyes, and as walking beside the Queen was like a large loss of strength by which all was achieved that strength could not achieve. For long ago, in the troublesome memory of self, Hans had been, or had seemed to be, someone very strong, very brave, very proud—a king who would not be king because he scorned his own strength, so that he went off after each conquest to other conquests, hoping against pride for defeat. By the death of this strength in long self-combat—the death of the trouble
some memory of self—he made himself Hans; and Hans made him a king.
Hans, the doorman, ran ahead and opened the door for the Queen and the king who had been walking beside her. They sank into the easy-chairs by the fire-place like two hotel-guests who had gone for a long, long walk in the moonlight and come back when everyone else had gone to bed. Hans locked the door now, turned the lights down politely and went to bed himself, first asking, "Is there anything I can do for you?" The pretty lady of the pretty red slippers (for that was her name, whether she wore the pretty red slippers or not) smiled no. That was the end of Hans—for the day. "Is there anything I can do for you?" asked the king. The Queen, taking off the pretty red slippers and throwing them in the basket as if her feet were tired after her long, long walk (which they were not, of course), smiled yes, and the king, without inquiring further, knew exactly what she meant. He got up and said "Boo!" to the Story- pig (right into its snout); and away it skipped out of the window and up to the moon and into it—at which the moon promptly set. And the strangest part of it all is that when this had happened the Queen found herself quite alone—the king had disappeared too.
And what a scandal there was the next morning, when Hans came down and found last night's pretty lady curled up in her fur coat fast asleep, her slipperless feet tucked under her.
"Madam, Madam," he said gently, "you are asleep." And she would not wake up. She must have got herself very tired on her long, long walk. Her having looked so hard at Hans as she went out of the door made him afraid to touch her. And even when the other guests began coming down to breakfast and some of them shook her—even then she did not wake up. So it all ended in Hans having to carry her up to her room; and a doctor was sent for, who said that she was only very tired and must be allowed to sleep it out. And then it was discovered that the silver-plated pig was gone. And what with the sleeping lady and Hans' blushes when he was questioned (though no one accused anyone, of course), it was all very mysterious. And was Hans as innocent as his blushes? And what of the picture over the missing pig? For it had been found turned to the wall! And when it was turned back it was unmistakably faded, as if someone had scrubbed it hard with soap and water to wash away the surface and get through to a better picture underneath, and failed, and turned it to the wall in disgust—that so beautiful picture of the view from the hotel in moonlight, looking across the Valley of a Thousand Turns towards the sea, which seemed to say "Slowly, slowly!" as it slowly bore the visible ship to an invisible Somewhere. For whom was that picture not good enough? It had been painted by one of the most famous artists in the world, who had presented it to the hotel as the worthiest possible compliment to its admiration for him—the hotel having presented him with the worthiest possible compliment to his admiration for it, by refusing to let him pay his bill, saying that the honour, etcetera. But beautiful incidents like this were always happening at the hotel. . . .
Progress of Stories Page 19