THE PRINCESS AND THE CAT

The day when everything began to happen to the Princess began just like

all her ordinary days. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and

the Princess jumped out of bed and ran into the nursery to let the mice

out of the traps in the nursery cupboard. The traps were set every night

with a little bit of cheese in each, and every morning nurse found that

not a single trap had caught a single mouse. This was because the

Princess always let them go. No one knew this except the Princess and,

of course, the mice themselves. And the mice never forgot it.

Then came bath and breakfast, and then the Princess ran to the open

window and threw out the crumbs to the birds that flew down fluttering

and chirping into the marble terrace. Before lessons began she had an

hour for playing in the garden. But she never began to play till she had

been round to see if any rabbits or moles were caught in the traps the

palace gardeners set. The gardeners were lazy, and seldom got to work

before half-past eight, so she always had plenty of time for this.

Then came lessons with dear old Professor Ouatidontnoisuntwuthnoing, and

then more play, and dinner, and needlework, and play again.

And now it was teatime.

'Eat up your bread-and-butter, your Highness,' said nurse, 'and then you

shall have some nice plummy cake.'

'I don't feel plum-cakey at all to-day, somehow,' said the Princess. 'I

feel just exactly as if something was going to happen.'

'Something's always happening,' said nurse.

'Ah! but I mean something horrid,' said the Princess. 'I expect uncle's

going to make some nasty new law about me. Last time it was: "The

Princess is only to wear a white frock on the first Sunday in the

month." He said it was economy, but I know it was only spite.'

'You mustn't say that, dear,' said nurse. 'You know your rosy and bluey

frocks are just as pretty as the white;' but in her heart she agreed

with the Princess Everilda.

The Princess's father and mother had died when she was quite little,

and her uncle was Regent. Now, you will have noticed that there is

something about uncles which makes it impossible for them to be good in

fairy stories. So of course this uncle was bad, as bad as he could be,

and everyone hated him.

In fact, though it was now, as I have said, everybody's teatime, nobody

was making any tea: instead they were making a revolution. And just as

the Princess was looking at the half-moon-shaped hole left by her first

bite into her first piece of bread-and-butter, the good Professor burst

into the nursery with his great gray wig all on one side, crying out in

a very loud and very choky voice:

'The revolution! It's come at last. I _knew_ the people would never

stand that last tax on soap.'

'The Princess!' said nurse, turning very pale.

'Yes, I know,' said the Professor. 'There's a boat on the canal, blue

sails with gold letters "P.P."--Pupil of the Professor. It's waiting.

You go down there at once. I'll take the Princess out down the back

stairs.'

He caught the Princess by her pink bread-and-buttery hand, and dragged

her away.

'Hurry, my dear,' he panted; 'it's as much as your life is worth to

delay a minute.'

But he himself delayed quite three minutes, and that was one minute too

long. He had just run into the palace library for the manuscript of his

life's work, 'Everything Easily Explained,' when the revolutionary crowd

burst in, shouting 'Liberty and Soap!' and caught him. They did not see

the Princess Everilda, because he had just time, when he heard them

coming, to throw a red and green crochet antimacassar over her, and to

hide her behind an armchair.

'When they've taken me away, go down the back stairs, and try to find

the boat,' he whispered, just before they came and took him away.

And then Everilda was left alone. When everything was quiet, she said to

herself: 'Now, you mustn't cry; you must do as you're told.' And she

went down the palace back-stairs, and out through the palace kitchen

into the street.

She had never set foot in the streets before, but she had been driven

through them in a coach with four white horses, and she knew the way to

the canal.

The canal boat with the blue sails was waiting, and she would have got

to it safely enough, but she heard a rattling sound, and when she

looked she saw two boys tying an old rusty kettle to a cat's tail.

'You horrid boys!' she said; 'let poor pussy alone.'

'Not us,' said the boys.

Everilda instantly slapped them both, and they were so surprised that

they let the cat go. It scuttled and scurried off, and so did the

Princess. The boys threw stones after her and also after the cat, but

fortunately they were both very bad shots and nobody was hit.

Even then the Princess would have got safely away, but she saw a boy

sitting on a doorstep crying. So she stopped to ask what was the matter.

'I'm hungry,' said the boy, 'and father and mother are dead, and my

uncle beat me, so I'm running away----'

'Oh,' said the Princess, 'so am I. What fun! And I've got a horrid

uncle, too. You come with me, and we'll find my nurse. _She's_ running

away, too. Make haste, or it'll be too late.'

But when they got to the corner, it _was_ too late.

The revolutionary crowd caught them; they shouted 'Liberty and Soap!'

and they sent the boy to the workhouse, and they put the Princess in

prison; and a good many of them wanted to cut off her pretty little head

then and there, because they thought she would be sure to grow up horrid

like her uncle the Regent.

But all the people who had ever been inside the palace said what a nice

little girl the Princess really was, and wouldn't hear of cutting off

her darling head. So at last it was decided to get rid of her by

enchantment, and the Head Magician to the Provisional Revolutionary

Government was sent for.

'Certainly, citizens,' he said, 'I'll put her in a tower on the Forlorn

Island, in the middle of the Perilous Sea--a nice strong tower, with

only one way out.'

'That's one too many. There's not to be any way out,' said the people.

'Well, there's a way out of everything, you know,' said the Magician

timidly--he was trembling for his own head--'but it's fifty thousand

millions to one against her ever finding it.'

So they had to be content with that, and they fetched Everilda out of

her prison; and the Magician took her hand and called his carriage,

which was an invention of his own--half dragon, and half motor-car, and

half flying-machine--so that it was a carriage and a half, and came when

it was called, tame as any pet dog.

He lifted Everilda in, and said 'Gee up!' to his patent carriage, and

the intelligent creature geed up right into the air and flew away. The

Princess shut her eyes tight, and tried not to scream. She succeeded.

When the Magician's carriage got to the place where it knew it ought to

stop, it did stop, and tumbled Everilda out on to a hard floor, and went

back to its master, who patted it, and gave it a good feed of oil, and

fire, and water, and petroleum spirit.

The Princess opened her eyes as the sound of the rattling dragon wings

died away. She was alone--quite alone. 'I won't stay here,' said

Everilda; 'I'll run away again.'

She ran to the edge of the tower and looked down. The tower was in the

middle of a garden, and the garden was in the middle of a wood, and the

wood was in the middle of a field, and after the field there was nothing

more at all except steep cliffs and the great rolling, raging waves of

the Perilous Sea.

'There's no way to run away by,' she said; and then she remembered that

even if she ran away, there was now nowhere to run to, because the

people had taken her palace away from her, and the palace was the only

home she had ever had--and where her nurse was goodness only knew.

'So I suppose I've got to live here till someone fetches me,' she said,

and stopped crying, like a brave King's daughter as she was.

'I'll explore,' said Everilda all alone; 'that will be fun.' She said it

bravely, and really it was more fun than she expected. The tower had

only one room on each floor. The top floor was Everilda's bedroom; she

knew that by her gold-backed brushes and things with 'E. P.' on them

that lay on the toilet-table. The next floor was a sitting-room, and the

next a dining-room, and the last of all was a kitchen, with rows of

bright pots and pans, and everything that a cook can possibly want.

'Now I can play at cooking,' said the Princess. 'I've always wanted to

do that. If only there was something to cook!'

She looked in the cupboards, and there were lots of canisters and jars,

with rice, and flour, and beans, and peas, and lentils, and macaroni,

and currants, and raisins, and candied peel, and sugar, and sago, and

cinnamon. She ate a whole lump of candied citron, and enjoyed it very

much.

'I shan't starve, anyway,' she said. 'But oh! of course, I shall soon

eat up all these things, and then----'

In her agitation she dropped the jar; it did not break, but all the

candied peel rolled away into corners and under tables. Yet when she

picked the jar up it was as full as ever.

'Oh, hooray!' cried Everilda, who had once heard a sentry use that low

expression; 'of course it's a magic tower, and everything is magic in

it. The jars will always be full.'

The fire was laid, so she lighted it and boiled some rice, but it stuck

to the pot and got burned. You know how nasty burned rice is? and the

macaroni she tried to cook would not get soft. So she went out into the

garden, and had a very much nicer dinner than she could ever have

cooked. Instead of meat she had apples, and instead of vegetables she

had plums, and she had peaches instead of pudding.

There were rows and rows of beautiful books in the sitting-room, and she

read a little, and wrote a long letter to nurse, in case anyone ever

came who knew nurse's address and would post it for her. And then she

had a nectarine-and-mulberry tea.

By this time the sun was sinking all red and splendid beyond the dark

waters of the Perilous Sea, and Everilda sat down on the window seat to

watch it.

I shall not tell you whether she cried at all then. Perhaps you would

have cried just a little if you had been in her place.

'Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!' she said, sniffing slightly. (Perhaps she

had a cold.) 'There's nobody to tuck me up in bed--nobody at all.'

And just as she said it something fat and furry flew between her and the

sunset. It hovered clumsily a moment, and then swooped in at the window.

'Oh!' cried the Princess, very much frightened indeed.

'Don't you know me?' said the stout furry creature, folding its wings.

'I'm the cat you saved from the indignity of a rusty kettle in

connection with my honourable tail.'

'But that cat hadn't got wings,' said Everilda, 'and you're much bigger

than it, and it couldn't talk.'

'How do you know it couldn't talk,' said the Cat; 'did you ask it?'

'No,' said the Princess.

'Well, then!' said the Cat 'And as for wings, I needn't wear them if

you'd rather I didn't.'

The Cat took off her wings, rolled them neatly up, like your father

rolls his umbrella, tied them round with a piece of string, and put them

in the left-hand corner drawer in the bureau.

'That's better,' said Everilda.

'And as for size,' said the Cat, 'if I stayed ordinary cat-size I

shouldn't be any use to you. And I've come to be cook, companion,

housemaid, nurse, professor, and everything else, so----'

'Oh, don't,' said the Princess--'_don't_ get any bigger.'

For while she was speaking the Cat had been growing steadily, and she

was now about the size of a large leopard.

'Certainly not,' said the Cat obligingly; 'I'll stop at once.'

'I suppose,' said the Princess timidly, 'that you're magic?'

'Of course,' said the Cat; 'everything is, here. Don't you be afraid of

me, now! Come along, my pet, time for bed.'

Everilda umped, for the voice was the voice of her nurse; but it was

also the voice of the Cat.

'Oh!' cried the Princess, throwing her arms round the cat's large furry

neck, 'I'm not afraid of _any_ thing when you speak like that.'

So, after all, she had someone to tuck her up in bed. The Cat did it

with large, soft, furry, clever paws, and in two minutes Everilda was

fast asleep.

And now began the long, lonely, but all the same quite happy time which

the Princess and the Cat spent together on the Forlorn Island.

Everilda had lessons with the Cat--and then it was the Professor's voice

that the Cat spoke with; and the two did the neat little housework of

the tower together--and then the Cat's voice was like the voices of the

palace housemaids. And they did the cooking and then the Cat's voice was

the cook's voice. And they played games together--and then the voice of

the Cat was like the voices of all sorts of merry children. It was

impossible to be dull with a companion who changed so often.

'But who are you _really_?' the Princess used to ask.

And the Cat always answered:

'I give it up! Ask another!' as if the Princess had been playing at

riddles.

'How is it our garden is always so tidy and full of nice fruit and

vegetables?' the Princess asked once, when they had been on the island

about a year.

'Oh,' said the Cat, 'didn't you know? The moles you used to let out of

the traps do the digging, and the birds you used to feed bring the seeds

in their little beaks, and the mice you used to save from the palace

mouse-traps do the weeding and raking with their sharp little teeth, and

their fine, neat, needly claws.'

'But how did they get here?' asked the Princess.

'The usual way--swimming and flying,' said the Cat.

'But aren't the mice afraid of _you_?'

'Of me?' The great Cat drew herself up to her full height. 'Anyone would

think, to hear you, that I was a _common_ cat.' And she was really cross

for nearly an hour.

That was the only approach to a quarrel that the two ever had.

Sometimes, at first, the Princess used to say:

'How long am I to stay here, pussy-nurse?'

And the Cat always said in nurse's voice:

'Till you're grown up, my dear.'

And the years went by, and each year found the Princess more good, and

clever, and beautiful. And at last she was quite grown up.

'Now,' said the Cat briskly, 'we must get to work. There's a Prince in a

kingdom a long way off, and he's the only person who can get you off

this island.'

'Does he know?' asked Everilda.

'He knows about _you_, but he doesn't know that he's the person to find

you, and he doesn't know where you are. So now every night I must fly

away and whisper about you in his ear. He'll think it's dreams, but he

believes in dreams; and he'll come in a grand ship with masts of gold

and sails of silk, and carry my Pretty away and make a Queen of her.'

'Shall I like that, pussy-nurse, do you think?' asked the Princess.

And the Cat replied:

'Yes, very much indeed. But you wouldn't like it if it were any other

King than this one, so it's just as well that it's quite impossible for

it to _be_ any other.'

'How will he come?' asked the Princess.

'Don't I tell you? In a ship, of course,' said the Cat.

'Aren't the rocks dangerous?' asked the Princess.

'Oh, very,' the Cat answered.

'Oh,' said the Princess, and grew silent and thoughtful.

That night the Cat got out its rolled-up wings, and unrolled them, and

brushed them, and fitted them on; then she lighted a large lamp and set

it in the window that looked out on the Perilous Sea.

'That's the beacon to guide the King to you,' she said.

'Won't it guide other ships here?' asked the Princess, 'with perhaps

the wrong Kings on board--the ones I shouldn't like being Queen with?'

'Very likely,' said the Cat; 'but it doesn't matter: they'd only be

wrecked. Serve them right, coming after Princesses that don't want

them.'

'Oh,' said Everilda.

The Cat spread her wings, and after one or two trial flights round the

tower, she spread them very wide indeed, and flew away across the black

Perilous Sea, towards a little half moon that was standing on its head

to show sailors that there would be foul weather.

The Princess leaned her elbows on the window-sill and looked out over

the sea. Down below in the garden she could hear the kind moles digging

industriously, and the good little mice weeding and raking with their

sharp teeth and their fine needly claws. And far away against the

low-hanging moon she saw the sails and masts of a ship.

'Oh,' she cried, 'I _can't_! It's sure not to be _his_ ship. It mustn't

be wrecked.'

And she turned the lamp out. And then she cried a little, because

perhaps after all it might be _his_ ship, and he would pass by and never

know.

Next night the Cat went out on another flying excursion, leaving the

lamp lighted. And again the Princess could not bear to go to bed leaving

a lamp burning that might lure honest Kings and brave mariners to

shipwreck, so she put out the lamp and cried a little. And this happened

for many, many, many nights.

When the Cat swept the room of a morning she used to wonder where all

the pearls came from that she found lying all about the floor. But it

was a magic place, and one soon ceased to wonder much about anything.

She never guessed that the pearls were the tears the Princess shed when

she had put out the lamp, and seen ship after ship that perhaps carried

her own King go sailing safely and ignorantly by, no one on board

guessing that on that rock was a pretty, dear Princess waiting to be

rescued--_the_ Princess, the only Princess that that King would be happy

and glad to have for his Queen.

And the years went on and on. Every night the Cat lighted the lamp and

flew away to whisper dreams into the ears of the only King who could

rescue the Princess, and every night the Princess put out the lamp and

cried in the dark. And every morning the Cat swept up a dustpan full of

pearls that were Everilda's tears. And again and again the King would

fit out a vessel and sail the seas, and look in vain for the bright

light that he had dreamed should guide him to his Princess.

The Cat was a good deal vexed; she could not understand how any King

could be so stupid. She always stayed out all night. She used to go and

see her friends after she had done whispering dreams to the King, and

only got home in time to light the fire for breakfast, so she never knew

how the Princess put out the lamp every night, and cried in the dark.

The years went by and went by, and the Princess grew old and gray, for

she had never had the heart to leave the lamp alight, for fear that some

poor mariners who were not her King should be drawn by the lamp to those

cruel rocks and wrecked on them, for of course it wouldn't and couldn't

be the poor mariners' fault that they didn't happen to be the one and

only King who could land safely on the Forlorn Island.

And when the Princess was quite old, and the tear pearls that had been

swept up by the Cat filled seven big chests in the back-kitchen, the

Princess fell ill.

'I think I am going to die,' she said to the Cat, 'and I am not really

at all sorry except for you. I think you'll miss me. Tell me now--it's

almost all over--who are you, really?'

'I give it up,' said the Cat as usual. 'Ask another.'

But the Princess asked nothing more. She lay on her bed in her white

gown and waited for death, for she was very tired of being alive. Only

she said:

'Put out that lamp in the window; it hurts my eyes.'

For even then she thought of the poor men whose ships might be wrecked

just because they didn't happen to be the one and only King with whom

she could be happy.

So the Cat took the lamp away, but she did not put it out; she set it in

the window of the parlour, and its light shone out over the black waters

of the Perilous Sea.

And that very night the one and only King--who in all these years had

never ceased to follow the leading of the dreams the Cat whispered in

his ear--came in the black darkness sailing over the Perilous Sea. And

in the black darkness he saw at last the bright white light that his

dreams had promised, and he knew that where the light was his Princess

was, and his heart leaped up, and he bade the helmsmen steer for the

light.

And for the light they steered. And because he was the only possible

King to mate that Princess, the helmsman found the only possible passage

among the rocks, and the ship anchored safely in a little quiet creek,

and the King landed and went up to the door of the tower and knocked.

'Who's there?' said the Cat.

'Me,' said the King, just as you or I might have done.

'You're late,' said the Cat. 'I'm afraid you've lost your chance.'

'I took the first chance I got,' said the King. 'Let me in, and let me

see her.'

He had been so busy all these years trying to find the bright white

light of his dreams that he had not noticed that his hair had gone gray

long ago.

So the Cat let him in, and led him up the winding stair to the room

where the Princess, very quiet, lay on her white bed waiting for death

to come, for she was very tired.

The old King stumbled across the bar of moonlight on the floor, flung

down a clanking wallet, and knelt by the bed in the deep shadow, saying:

'Oh, my dear own Princess, I have come at last.'

'Is it really you?' she said, and gave him her hands in the shadow. I

hoped it was Death's foot-step I heard coming up the winding stair.'

'Oh, did you hope for death,' he cried, 'while I was coming to you?'

'You were long in coming,' said she, 'and I was very tired.'

'My beautiful dear Princess,' he said, 'you shall rest in my arms till

you are not tired any more.'

'My beautiful King,' she said, 'I am not tired any more now.'

And then the Cat came in with the lamp, and they looked in each other's

eyes.

Instead of the beautiful Princess of his dreams the King saw a white,

withered woman whose piteous eyes met his in a look of longing love. The

Princess saw a bent, white-haired man, but love was in his eyes.

'_I_ don't mind.'

'_I_ don't mind.'

They both spoke together. And both thought they spoke the truth. But the

truth was that both were horribly disappointed.

'Yet, all the same,' said the King to himself, 'old and withered as she

is, she is more to me than the youngest and loveliest of all other

Princesses.'

'I don't care if he _is_ gray,' said the Princess to herself; 'whatever

he is, he's the only possible one.'

'Here's a pretty kettle of fish!' said the Cat. 'Why on earth didn't you

come before?'

'I came as soon as I could,' said the King.

The Cat, walking about the room in an agitated way, kicked against the

wallet the King had dropped.

'What's this,' she said crossly, rubbing her toes, for the wallet was

hard, and she had hurt herself more than a little.

'Oh, that,' said the King--'that's just the steel bolts and hammers and

things that my resolves to find the Princess turned into when I failed

and never did find her. I never could bear to throw them away; I had a

sort of feeling that they might be good for something, since they hurt

me so much when they came to me. I thought perhaps I could batter down

the doors of the Princess's tower with them.'

'They're good for something better than that,' said the Cat joyously.

She went away, and the two heard her hammering away below. Presently she

staggered in with a great basket of white powder, and emptied it on the

floor; then she went away for more.

The King helped her with the next basketful, and the next, and the next,

and the next, and the next, and the next, for there were seven of them,

and the heap of white powder stood up in the room as high as the King's

middle.

'That's powder of pearls,' said the Cat proudly. 'Now, tell me, have you

been a good King?'

'I have tried to be,' said the white-haired King 'I was a workhouse

boy, and then I was apprenticed to a magician, who taught me how to make

people happy. There was a revolution just at the time when I was put

into the workhouse, and they had a Republic. And I worked my way up till

they made me President.'

'What became of the King in that revolution?'

'There wasn't a King, only a Regent. They had him taught a trade, and he

worked for his living. It was the worst punishment they could invent for

him. There was a Princess, too, but she was hidden by a magician. I saw

her once when she was trying to run away. She asked me to run too--to

her nurse----'

Here his eyes met the Princess's.

'Oh,' she said, 'that was you, was it?'

'Oh,' said he, 'then that was you!'

And they looked long and lovingly in each other's faded eyes.

'Hurry up,' said the Cat impatiently; 'you were made President. And

then----'

'Oh, why, then,' said the King, 'they thought it wouldn't be any more

dangerous or expensive to have a King than a President, and prettier at

State shows--ermine, crown, and sceptre, and all that--prettier than

frock-coat and spats. So I agreed.'

'And do your people love you?' the Cat asked.

'I don't know,' said the King simply; 'I love them----'

As he spoke there came a flutter and flicker of many thousand wings at

the closed casement. The Cat threw the window wide, and in swarmed a

countless crowd of white pigeons.

'These are the blessings of your people,' said the Cat.

The wings fluttered and flickered and fanned the heap of pearl dust on

the floor till it burst into flame, and the flame rose up high and white

and clear.

'Quick!' cried the Cat, 'walk through it. Lead her through.'

The old King gave his hand to his poor faded love, and raised her from

her couch, and together they passed through the clear fire made of her

patience and self-sacrifice, his high resolve, and the blessings of his

people. And they came out of that fire on the other side.

'Oh, love, how beautiful you are!' cried the King.

'Oh, my King, your face is the face of all my dreams!' cried the

Princess.

And they put their arms round each other and cried for joy, because now

they were both young and beautiful again.

The Cat cried for sympathy.

'And now we shall live happy ever after,' said the Princess, putting her

other arm round the Cat. 'Dear pussy-nurse, do tell me, now it's all

over, who you really are.'

'I give it up. Ask another,' said the Cat.

But as she spoke she went herself through the fire, and on the other

side came out--not one person, but eleven. She was, in fact, the

Professor, the nurse, the palace butler, footman, housemaid,

parlourmaid, between-maid, boots, scullion, boy in buttons, as well as

the rescued cat--all rolled into one!

'But we only used one part of ourselves at a time,' they all said with

one voice, 'and I hope we were useful.'

'You were a darling,' said the Princess--'darlings, I mean. But who

turned you all into exactly the pussy-nurse I wanted?'

'Oh, that was the Magician,' said all the voices in unison; 'he was your

fairy-godfather, you know.'

'What has become of him?' asked the Princess, clinging to her lover's

arm.

'He's been asleep all this time. It was the condition, the only way he

got leave to work the good magic for all of us,' said the many voices

that were one.

'Let's go and wake him,' said the King.

So they all went. And when they woke the Magician, who was sleeping

quietly in his own private room in the palace where the Princess had

once lived, he sneezed seven times for pure joy, and then called for

Welsh rabbit and baked Spanish onions for supper.

'For after all these years of starvation,' he said, 'I do really think I

may for once take a liberty with my digestion.'

So he had the supper he wanted; but the King and the Princess had roses

and lilies and wedding-cake, because they were married that very

evening.

And when you have passed through exactly the sort of fire those two had

passed through, you can never be old, or ugly, or unhappy again, so

those two are happy, and beautiful, and young to this very hour.