The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library)

by Hearn, Michael Patrick

  This, probably, was what Prince Dolor expected to see. And what did he see? But I must tell you how he saw it.

  “Ah,” said the magpie, “no levée to-day. The King is ill, though his Majesty does not wish it to be generally known—it would be so very inconvenient. He can’t see you, but perhaps you might like to go and take a look at him in a way I often do? It is so very amusing.”

  Amusing, indeed!

  The Prince was just now too much excited to talk much. Was he not going to see the King his uncle, who had succeeded his father and dethroned himself; had stepped into all the pleasant things that he, Prince Dolor, ought to have had, and shut him up in a desolate tower? What was he like, this great, bad, clever man? Had he got all the things he wanted, which another ought to have had? And did he enjoy them?

  “Nobody knows,” answered the magpie, just as if she had been sitting inside the Prince’s heart, instead of on the top of his shoulder. “He is a king, and that’s enough. For the rest, nobody knows.”

  As she spoke, Mag flew down on to the palace roof, where the cloak had rested, settling down between the great stacks of chimneys as comfortably as if on the ground. She pecked at the tiles with her beak—truly she was a wonderful bird—and immediately a little hole opened, a sort of door, through which could be seen distinctly the chamber below.

  “Now look in, my Prince. Make haste, for I must soon shut it up again.”

  But the boy hesitated. “Isn’t it rude?—won’t they think us intruding?”

  “Oh, dear, no! There’s a hole like this in every palace; dozens of holes, indeed. Everybody knows it, but nobody speaks of it. Intrusion! Why, though the royal family are supposed to live shut up behind stone walls ever so thick, all the world knows that they live in a glass house where everybody can see them and throw a stone at them. Now pop down on your knees, and take a peep at his Majesty!”

  His Majesty!

  The Prince gazed eagerly down into the large room, the largest room he had ever beheld, with furniture and hangings grander than anything he could have ever imagined. A stray sunbeam, coming through a crevice of the darkened windows, struck across the carpet, and it was the loveliest carpet ever woven—just like a bed of flowers to walk over; only nobody walked over it, the room being perfectly empty and silent.

  “Where is the King?” asked the puzzled boy.

  “There,” said Mag, pointing with one wrinkled claw to a magnificent bed, large enough to contain six people. In the centre of it, just visible under the silken counterpane—quite straight and still, with its head on the lace pillow—lay a small figure, something like waxwork, fast asleep—very fast asleep! There were a number of sparkling rings on the tiny yellow hands, that were curled a little, helplessly, like a baby’s, outside the coverlet. The eyes were shut, the nose looked sharp and thin, and the long grey beard hid the mouth and lay over the breast. A sight not ugly nor frightening, only solemn and quiet. And so very silent—two little flies buzzing about the curtains of the bed being the only audible sound.

  “Is that the King?” whispered Prince Dolor.

  “Yes,” replied the bird.

  He had been angry—furiously angry—ever since he knew how his uncle had taken the crown, and sent him, a poor little helpless child, to be shut up for life, just as if he had been dead. Many times the boy had felt as if, king as he was, he should like to strike him, this great, strong, wicked man.

  Why, you might as well have struck a baby! How helpless he lay, with his eyes shut, and his idle hands folded: they had no more work to do, bad or good.

  “What is the matter with him?” asked the Prince.

  “He is dead,” said the magpie, with a croak.

  No, there was not the least use in being angry with him now. On the contrary, the Prince felt almost sorry for him, except that he looked so peaceful with all his cares at rest. And this was being dead? So even kings died?

  “Well, well, he hadn’t an easy life, folk say, for all his grandeur. Perhaps he is glad it is over. Good-bye, your Majesty.”

  With another cheerful tap of her beak, Mistress Mag shut down the little door in the tiles, and Prince Dolor’s first and last sight of his uncle was ended.

  He sat in the centre of his travelling-cloak, silent and thoughtful.

  “What shall we do now?” said the magpie. “There’s nothing much more to be done with his Majesty, except a fine funeral, which I shall certainly go and see. All the world will. He interested the world exceedingly when he was alive, and he ought to do it now he’s dead—just once more. And since he can’t hear me, I may as well say that, on the whole, his Majesty is much better dead than alive—if we can only get somebody in his place. There’ll be such a row in the city presently. Suppose we float up again and see it all—at a safe distance, though. It will be such fun!”

  “What will be fun?”

  “A revolution.”

  Whether anybody except a magpie would have called it “fun” I don’t know, but it certainly was a remarkable scene.

  As soon as the cathedral bell began to toll and the minute guns to fire, announcing to the kingdom that it was without a king, the people gathered in crowds, stopping at street-corners to talk together. The murmur now and then rose into a shout, and the shout into a roar. When Prince Dolor, quietly floating in upper air, caught the sound of their different and opposite cries, it seemed to him as if the whole city had gone mad together.

  “Long live the King!” “The King is dead—down with the King!” “Down with the crown, and the King too!” “Hurrah for the republic!” “Hurrah for no government at all!”

  Such were the shouts which travelled up to the travelling-cloak. And then began—oh, what a scene!

  When you children are grown men and women—or before—you will hear and read in books about what are called revolutions—earnestly I trust that neither I nor you may ever see one. But they have happened, and may happen again, in other countries besides Nomansland, when wicked kings have helped to make their people wicked too, or out of an unrighteous nation have sprung rulers equally bad; or, without either of these causes, when a restless country has fancied any change better than no change at all.

  For me, I don’t like changes, unless I am pretty sure that they are for good. And how good can come out of absolute evil—the horrible evil that went on this night under Prince Dolor’s very eyes—soldiers shooting down people by hundreds in the streets, scaffolds erected, and heads dropping off—houses burnt, and women and children murdered—this is more than I can understand.

  But all these things you will find in history, my children, and must by-and-by judge for yourselves the right and wrong of them, as far as anybody ever can judge.

  Prince Dolor saw it all. Things happened so fast one after another that they quite confused his faculties.

  “Oh, let me go home,” he cried at last, stopping his ears and shutting his eyes; “only let me go home!” For even his lonely tower seemed home, and its dreariness and silence absolute paradise after all this.

  “Good-bye, then,” said the magpie, flapping her wings. She had been chatting incessantly all day and all night, for it was actually thus long that Prince Dolor had been hovering over the city, neither eating nor sleeping, with all these terrible things happening under his very eyes. “You’ve had enough, I suppose, of seeing the world?”

  “Oh, I have—I have!” cried the Prince, with a shudder.

  “That is, till next time. All right, your Royal Highness. You don’t know me, but I know you. We may meet again sometime.”

  She looked at him with her clear, piercing eyes, sharp enough to see through everything, and it seemed as if they changed from bird’s eyes to human eyes—the very eyes of his godmother, whom he had not seen for ever so long. But the minute afterwards she became only a bird, and with a screech and a chatter, spread her wings and flew away.

  Prince Dolor fell into a kind of swoon of utter misery, bewilderment, and exhaustion, and when he awoke he found himself
in his own room—alone and quiet—with the dawn just breaking, and the long rim of yellow light in the horizon glimmering through the window-panes.

  IX

  When Prince Dolor sat up in bed, trying to remember where he was, whither he had been, and what he had seen the day before, he perceived that his room was empty.

  Generally his nurse rather worried him by breaking his slumbers, coming in and “setting things to rights,” as she called it. Now the dust lay thick upon chairs and tables. There was no harsh voice heard to scold him for not getting up immediately—which, I am sorry to say, this boy did not always do. For he so enjoyed lying still, and thinking lazily about everything or nothing, that, if he had not tried hard to avoid it, he would certainly have become like those celebrated

  Two little men

  Who lay in their bed till the clock struck ten.

  It was striking ten now, and still no nurse was to be seen. He was rather relieved at first, for he felt so tired. And besides, when he stretched out his arm, he found to his dismay that he had gone to bed in his clothes.

  Very uncomfortable he felt, of course; and just a little frightened. Especially when he began to call and call again, but nobody answered. Often he used to think how nice it would be to get rid of his nurse and live in this tower all by himself—like a sort of monarch, able to do everything he liked, and leave undone all that he did not want to do. But now that this seemed really to have happened, he did not like it at all.

  “Nurse—dear nurse—please come back!” he called out. “Come back, and I will be the best boy in all the land.”

  And when she did not come back, and nothing but silence answered his lamentable call, he very nearly began to cry.

  “This won’t do,” he said at last, dashing the tears from his eyes. “It’s just like a baby, and I’m a big boy—shall be a man some day. What has happened? I wonder. I’ll go and see.”

  He sprang out of bed—not to his feet, alas! but to his poor little weak knees, and crawled on them from room to room. All the four chambers were deserted—not forlorn or untidy, for everything seemed to have been done for his comfort—the breakfast and dinner things were laid, the food spread in order. He might live “like a prince,” as the proverb is, for several days. But the place was entirely forsaken—there was evidently not a creature but himself in the solitary tower.

  A great fear came over the poor boy. Lonely as his life had been, he had never known what it was to be absolutely alone. A kind of despair seized him—no violent anger or terror, but a sort of patient desolation.

  “What in the world am I to do?” thought he, and sat down in the middle of the floor, half inclined to believe that it would be better to give up entirely, lay himself down, and die.

  This feeling, however, did not last long, for he was young and strong, and, I said before, by nature a very courageous boy. There came into his head, somehow or other, a proverb that his nurse had taught him—the people of Nomansland were very fond of proverbs—

  For every evil under the sun

  There is a remedy, or there’s none;

  If there is one, try to find it—

  If there isn’t, never mind it.

  “I wonder—is there a remedy now, and could I find it?” cried the Prince, jumping up and looking out of the window.

  No help there. He saw only the broad, bleak, sunshiny plain—that is, at first. But by-and-by, in the circle of mud that surrounded the base of the tower, he perceived distinctly the marks of a horse’s feet, and just in the spot where the deaf-mute was accustomed to tie up his great black charger, while he himself ascended, there lay the remains of a bundle of hay and a feed of corn.

  “Yes, that’s it. He has come and gone, taking nurse away with him. Poor nurse! how glad she would be to go!”

  That was Prince Dolor’s first thought. His second—wasn’t it natural?—was a passionate indignation at her cruelty—at the cruelty of all the world towards him, a poor little helpless boy. Then he determined, forsaken as he was, to try and hold on to the last, and not to die as long as he could possibly help it.

  Anyhow, it would be easier to die here than out in the world, among the terrible doings which he had just beheld—from the midst of which, it suddenly struck him, the deaf-mute had come, contriving somehow to make the nurse understand that the King was dead, and she need have no fear in going back to the capital, where there was a grand revolution, and everything turned upside down. So, of course, she had gone.

  “I hope she’ll enjoy it, miserable woman—if they don’t cut off her head, too.”

  And then a kind of remorse smote him for feeling so bitterly towards her, after all the years she had taken care of him—grudgingly, perhaps, and coldly; still she had taken care of him, and that even to the last. For, as I have said, all his four rooms were as tidy as possible, and his meals laid out, that he might have no more trouble than could be helped.

  “Possibly she did not mean to be cruel. I won’t judge her,” said he. And afterwards he was very glad that he had so determined.

  For the second time he tried to dress himself, and then to do everything he could for himself—even to sweeping up the hearth and putting on more coals. “It’s a funny thing for a prince to have to do,” said he, laughing. “But my godmother once said princes need never mind doing anything.”

  And then he thought a little of his godmother. Not of summoning her, or asking her to help him—she had evidently left him to help himself, and he was determined to try his best to do it, being a very proud and independent boy—but he remembered her tenderly and regretfully, as if even she had been a little hard upon him—poor, forlorn boy that he was. But he seemed to have seen and learned so much within the last few days that he scarcely felt like a boy, but a man—until he went to bed at night.

  When I was a child, I used often to think how nice it would be to live in a little house all by my own self—a house built high up in a tree, or far away in a forest, or half-way up a hill-side—so deliciously alone and independent. Not a lesson to learn—but no! I always liked learning my lessons. Anyhow, to choose the lessons I liked best, to have as many books to read and dolls to play with as ever I wanted: above all, to be free and at rest, with nobody to tease or trouble or scold me, would be charming. For I was a lonely little thing, who liked quietness—as many children do; which other children, and sometimes grown-up people even, cannot always understand. And so I can understand Prince Dolor.

  After his first despair, he was not merely comfortable, but actually happy in his solitude, doing everything for himself, and enjoying everything by himself—until bedtime. Then he did not like it at all. No more, I suppose, than other children would have liked my imaginary house in a tree when they had had sufficient of their own company.

  But the Prince had to bear it—and he did bear it, like a prince—for fully five days. All that time he got up in the morning and went to bed at night without having spoken to a creature, or, indeed, having heard a single sound. For even his little lark was silent. And as for his travelling-cloak, either he never thought about it, or else it had been spirited away—for he made no use of it, nor attempted to do so.

  A very strange existence it was, those five lonely days. He never entirely forgot it. It threw him back upon himself, and into himself—in a way that all of us have to learn when we grow up, and are the better for it; but it is somewhat hard learning.

  On the sixth day Prince Dolor had a strange composure in his look, but he was very grave and thin and white. He had nearly come to the end of his provisions—and what was to happen next? Get out of the tower he could not. The ladder the deaf-mute used was always carried away again; and if it had not been, how could the poor boy have used it? And even if he slung or flung himself down, and by miraculous chance came alive to the foot of the tower, how could he run away?

  Fate had been very hard on him, or so it seemed.

  He made up his mind to die. Not that he wished to die. On the contrary, there was a grea
t deal that he wished to live to do; but if he must die, he must. Dying did not seem so very dreadful; not even to lie quiet like his uncle, whom he had entirely forgiven now, and never be miserable or naughty any more, and escape all those horrible things that he had seen going on outside the palace, in that awful place which was called “the world.”

  “It’s a great deal nicer here,” said the poor little Prince, and collected all his pretty things round him: his favourite pictures, which he thought he should like to have near him when he died; his books and toys—no, he had ceased to care for toys now; he only liked them because he had done so as a child. And there he sat very calm and patient, like a king in his castle, waiting for the end.

  “Still, I wish I had done something first—something worth doing, that someody might remember me by,” thought he. “Suppose I had grown a man, and had had work to do, and people to care for, and was so useful and busy that they liked me, and perhaps even forgot I was lame? Then it would have been nice to live, I think.”

  A tear came into the little fellow’s eyes, and he listened intently through the dead silence for some hopeful sound.

  Was there one?—was it his little lark, whom he had almost forgotten? No, nothing half so sweet. But it really was something—something which came nearer and nearer, so that there was no mistaking it. It was the sound of a trumpet, one of the great silver trumpets so admired in Nomansland. Not pleasant music, but very bold, grand, and inspiring.

  As he listened to it the boy seemed to recall many things which had slipped his memory for years, and to nerve himself for whatever might be going to happen.

  What had happened was this.

  The poor condemned woman had not been such a wicked woman after all. Perhaps her courage was not wholly disinterested, but she had done a very heroic thing. As soon as she heard of the death and burial of the King and of the changes that were taking place in the country, a daring idea came into her head—to set upon the throne of Nomansland its rightful heir. Thereupon she persuaded the deaf-mute to take her away with him, and they galloped like the wind from city to city, spreading everywhere the news that Prince Dolor’s death and burial had been an invention concocted by his wicked uncle—that he was alive and well, and the noblest young Prince that ever was born.