THE FAIRY PRINCE.
They arrived in a few minutes at the house in Temple street, and were let
in by Patrick. Wentworth had been complaining that something was hurting
his foot, and sat down in the hall to take off his boot and see what was
the matter, while Harrington went up-stairs into the library.
The jewel of the rich room was Muriel, and Muriel lay on a velvet couch,
asleep. The young man noiselessly approached her, and stood tenderly
watching her beauty in its repose. She lay in a glimmer of light from
the western window, and the faint radiance lit her dreamful face, whose
beauty was like a hymn of immortal joy. The draped arms lay restfully
along her form, with the white hands lightly clasped together, and the
expression of the figure was repose. Gazing at her with heavenly sadness,
the lover saw her countenance gleam with an evanescent smile, and the
lips murmured a word. It was “Richard.” A quick pang shot to his heart,
and at the same instant Muriel started and awoke.
“John!” she exclaimed, coloring and smiling as she sprang up from her
light sleep and gave him her hands, “you here! When did you come?”
“Just come,” he replied, holding her hands, and smiling into her face.
“Why, Muriel, you looked like the Sleeping Beauty of the fairy tale.”
“Oh, John! And you like the fairy prince that woke the Sleeping Beauty
up!” returned Muriel, gaily.
“That’s a compliment, I suppose,” said Harrington.
“Compliment for compliment,” said she.
“Oh, but mine was the truth,” he replied.
“And so was mine,” she answered. “So it’s arranged that I am the Sleeping
Beauty awakened, and you the fairy prince that awakened me, and now
I shall have to follow you through all the world, as she did him in
Tennyson’s poem.”
Harrington’s color rose, and he dropped her hands. Muriel blushed too,
for she felt that what she had said in thoughtless play had carried some
deeper sense to him than she had intended.
“Pardon me, John,” she murmured, “I did not mean to offend you.”
“You offend me!” exclaimed Harrington, in astonishment. “You, Muriel!
Indeed, no.”
“Then why did you color?” she asked archly, reassured.
“I? Oh—no matter. I was thinking of something.”
“Of what? Come now. Be frank, John. I desire—I command”—
Harrington looked confused for a moment. An impulse came to him.
“It is you who must tell me, Muriel,” he said in a low voice.
“I? What shall I tell you, John. I will tell you anything you ask.”
“Tell me then of the fairy prince who awakened you indeed, and whom
you are to follow through all the world. Tell me of him, that I may
congratulate you and him together.”
Muriel gazed at him in wonder. If he had not spoken with such sweet
seriousness, she would have thought he was jesting.
“You said you would tell me anything I asked,” said Harrington, gravely.
“Tell me this, then.”
“I will, John,” she replied slowly. “I will tell you of him—when I find
him. Not till then.”
She turned away, musing. It was Harrington’s turn now to look at her with
wonder. What did she mean? He had never seen any tokens of duplicity in
her, but what was this?
Just then in came Wentworth, smiling. Harrington saw her face light as
she went toward him, and wondered if she had understood what he had said
to her. That’s it, he thought; she could not have understood me.
“Ha, Muriel. Good afternoon,” burst out Wentworth in his airy way.
“Excuse me for not coming up at once, but I was ransacking my boot. And
see what I found. A damson stone. Take it, Harrington, and be happy.”
“Come, no nonsense, Richard,” said Muriel. “Let’s go up to the studio,
and fence.”
Wentworth darted at her, and she nimbly dodged him, flashed out of the
room and flew up-stairs, laughing, followed by the young artist on the
run. She vanished into the studio before he could come up with her, and
Wentworth turned to wait for his friend, who was leisurely ascending the
stairs.
“Lightfoot cannot outrun Atalanta,” said Harrington.
“Exactly so,” returned Wentworth.
They went up and into the studio, as it was called, together. It was a
large, square, sunlit room, the floor covered with a thick, hard carpet,
and it had two windows looking to the west, with boxes on the sills,
filled with heliotrope and mignionette, which filled the air with their
rich and delicate fragrance. Muriel’s table, with a small easel, cases
of water-colors, and bristol-board, drawing paper, tinted sketches,
and other artistic paraphernalia, stood near one of the windows. Not
far from the other was a moulding stand, on which stood Emily’s bust
of her friend, with a box of clay on the floor near it. The walls were
a warm grey, and ornamented with three or four of Jullien’s crayons,
some plaster medallions and bas-reliefs, and a set of hanging-shelves
filled with books. Parallel-bars on one side of the room, a pair of large
dumb-bells on the floor, several iron weights, with rings for lifting
them, near by, and a set of gilded foils and masks on the wall, gave the
studio something of the air of a gymnasium. A small piano, with books
of music upon it, a low sofa, and a few plain arm-chairs, completed the
furniture of the apartment.
The young men had sat talking a few minutes, waiting for Muriel, when
Mrs. Eastman and Emily came in, and they rose again to make their
salutations. Emily was in her most sumptuous mood, and smiled serenely as
she entered and curtseyed down into a chair. Mrs. Eastman gave her hand
to the young men, whom she loved as much as if they were her own sons,
and standing near Harrington, with her arm in his, affectionately asked
for his health.
“You are looking pale, John,” she said, with motherly solicitude. “Too
much study I’m afraid.”
“Not at all, mother,” said Harrington, gaily—he always called Mrs.
Eastman “mother.” “Celestial pale, the student’s proper hue, you know;
and spite of my paleness, I’m strong and well.”
“Nevertheless, I wish you had some of Richard’s roses,” she said
playfully.
“My roses, indeed!” rattled Wentworth. “Why, Mrs. Eastman, I’m so much
in love with Harrington’s intellectual pallor that I’m thinking of
trying some of Jules Hauel’s lily-white cosmetic to get my face of the
same tint. For what is—hurrah! Here comes the fairy prince!” he cried,
breaking off, as the door of a chamber adjoining the studio opened, and a
beautiful and brilliant figure came forward into the room.
It was Muriel, transformed by the vivid and gorgeous dress of a fairy
prince—such a dress as the artists of fairy books give to Percinet or
Valentine; and in it she was courtly and noble as Shakspeare’s Rosalind,
when Rosalind wore “man’s apparel” in the gay greenwood of Arden. A year
before when she had resolved to take fencing lessons of Harrington,
she had devised this dress, and with a woman’s natural disposition to
ornamentation, and with her own special wish to throw festal grace and
the hues of romance even on her hours of exercise, she had brought to the
fashioning of her attire all the richness of her lavish fancy. To wear
anything that was ugly even at her gymnastics, or to make her exercise
a sober business and not a poetic pleasure, was quite impossible for
Muriel. She must clothe her muscularities with beauty, as Harmodius
wreathed his sword with myrtle. So she gilded her foils and masks,
and fashioned her garb in fairy magnificence. The dress was a cymar
of vivid crimson silk, loosely belted at the waist, and adorned with
broidered arabesques of gold. The bodice, cut loose to the form, with
large sleeves, ruffled with lace at the wrists, had a frilled ruffle of
lace emerging from the bosom, and rising in a sort of fraise around the
neck, in exquisite keeping with the refined beauty of the countenance
which bloomed above it. A little crimson cap, with a thick, swailing,
white plume, rested lightly on the head, and the glorious amber hair
was arranged to lie on the back of the neck like the locks of a page.
The skirt of the dress, also of crimson silk, broidered with golden
arabesques, and deeply bordered with heavy, gold fringe, fell in graceful
folds, ending just above the knee, and white silk hose, with crimson
satin slippers, completed the poetic and splendid costume. Never had
Muriel appeared more fascinating than in this attire, which showed the
full perfection of a form, straight, supple, tall and strong, whose every
rounded outline was elegance, and whose free strength was harmonized in
grace and beauty.
“By Jupiter!” cried Wentworth, “I never see Muriel in that costume,
without thinking that the long skirts are a tremendous shame. There’s a
figure for you!”
“Yes, but please remember,” said Emily, “that there are some of us women
who are not endowed with such fine forms as Muriel.”
“Oh, I’m pretty well,” said Muriel, with a light laugh. “But it’s mainly
due to my life-long muscular exercise, Emily.”
“Indeed, Muriel,” replied Emily, “nature must have contributed largely in
the first instance, to a form like yours.”
“Thanks for compliments,” said Muriel gaily, doffing her plumed cap and
bowing.
“You’re inclined to underrate muscular exercise, Emily,” said Harrington,
laughing.
“Well, perhaps so, John,” she replied, with a slow smile.
“And yet,” he pursued, “I’m not sure, that to make women a race of
gymnasts, wouldn’t be one of the surest ways of securing their social
enfranchisement.”
“Why, John,” returned Emily, laughing, “do you want to make us athletic
enough to get our rights by the strong hand?”
“Oh, no,” he rejoined, amusedly. “But men could not help respecting
women, if women were on a grander scale, and justice might be born of
that respect. And, to make women all they latently are, gymnastics are
a very important instrument. I am inclined to think physical training
the foundation of all noble culture. You get from it health, strength,
beauty of form, grace of carriage, dexterity of movement and action, a
very potent safeguard against all diseases, mental vigor, cheerfulness,
courage, self-reliance, a spirit that nourishes and promotes
self-respect, independence, generosity, moral purity, heroic desires,
large sympathies; in fact, all the virtues. I do not say that gymnastics
bestow the great intellectualities and moralities; but they encourage,
develop, and sustain them. You know what Dr. Johnson said—‘a sick person
is a scoundrel;’ and I think a pretty large sermon might be preached from
that text, in these days. At all events, I am quite sure that you will
see grander and more womanly women, and an increase of social happiness,
when a vigorous muscular training is made part of women’s culture.”
“Bravo!” cried Muriel. “I feel inspired. The foils, Harrington—the foils!”
Harrington-who had been admiring while he spoke, the free, beautiful
figure—started and went to the wall to take the weapons down.
“First, some exercise to get the muscles in order,” said Muriel.
She threw down her cap, and bounding forward, with the light strong
spring of a bayadere, to the parallel bars, put her hands on the poles,
and leaped up between them. Then, with a succession of springs, she
traversed the whole length, leaping along the bars on her hands; then,
back again to the centre, where she swung to and fro for an instant; and,
as she rose again, vaulted over and alighted in the middle of the room,
tossing the air into perfume.
“Bravo!” cried Wentworth. “That’s religion, as Emerson says.”
“Emerson!” chided Mrs. Eastman, amusedly. “Emerson never said any such
thing.”
“More shame for him,” retorted Wentworth, gaily. “Kingsley says so, at
any rate.”
“Kingsley!” she replied, in the same amused, chiding tone.
“Yes, _ma mère_,” asserted Wentworth. “That’s what Kingsley calls
muscular Christianity, and I’m going in for some of it.”
He bounded forward to the bars just as Muriel was running up to them
again. She stopped and stood a little one side, watching him as he swung
and leaped forward.
“You don’t do it half as well as Muriel,” said Mrs. Eastman, very truly.
“Take care now, Richard, that’s dangerous,” cried Muriel in a warning
voice, as Wentworth was swinging, preparatory to vaulting over.
Wentworth laughed recklessly, and flung himself over the bars. Muriel’s
warning was not without reason, for as he came over, his foot struck the
pole, and, with a cry from Emily which proved her interest in him, he
pitched head downward. Muriel sprang on the instant, caught him with all
her strength, and set him on his feet. Wentworth reddened, and looked
dazed.
“Careless boy,” she chided, playfully giving him a light cuff on the ear,
“you came nigh breaking your neck.”
“That he did,” exclaimed Harrington; and “indeed he did,” exclaimed the
others in chorus.
“Saved by a fairy prince,” cried Wentworth in a mock-tragic tone. “By
Jupiter, Muriel, but you’re as strong as you’re quick. I wonder how many
young ladies there are in the world that could catch a fellow when he’s
tumbling over neck and heels to destruction. Well, I guess I won’t try
that again. Thank you, dear fairy prince.”
He put her hand gallantly to his lips as he said the last words.
“I declare,” cried Emily, laughing, “what would society say if it could
behold these operations! I can’t help thinking how our minister at
Cambridge, and all my Episcopal friends would stare at you, Muriel.”
“Yes, flower of the world,” replied Muriel, “we should be awfully
scandalized, no doubt. But there’s virtue in our games, nevertheless, for
health is there, and health is a virtue that beckons the others on. The
fencing, however, is the perfection of exercise.”
“Why is that so superior?” asked Emily.
“Because it develops bodily strength and activity more harmoniously than
any other,” replied Muriel. “So Roland says.”
“Roland?” inquired Emily.
“Yes. Roland is the author of the best modern work on fencing,” answered
Muriel. “Stay, I’ll read you what he says.”
She went to the book-shelves, and returned with the volume—Roland’s
“Theory and Practice of Fencing.”
“Here it is,” she observed, finding the page. “Listen: ‘Perhaps there is
no exercise whatever more calculated for these purposes (developing and
cultivating bodily strength and activity) than fencing. Riding, walking,
sparring, wrestling, running, and pitching the bar are all of them
certainly highly beneficial, but beyond all question there is no single
exercise which combines so many advantages as fencing. By it the muscles
of every part of the body are brought into play; it expands the chest
and occasions an equal distribution of the blood and other circulating
fluids through the whole system. More than one case has fallen under
the author’s own observation, in which affections of the lungs, and a
tendency to consumption have been entirely removed by occasional practice
with the foil; and he can state, upon the highest medical authority, that
since the institution of the School of Arms at Geneva, scrofula, which
was long lamentably prevalent there, had been gradually disappearing.’”
Just then a tap was heard at the door. Muriel dropped the book, and made
one nimble spring through the entrance into her chamber, while Harrington
went to the door. It was Patrick come to say that Mr. Witherlee was
down-stairs.
“Tell him we’re engaged, Patrick, and ask him to excuse us,” rang the
silver voice of Muriel through the half open entrance of her room.
Patrick departed, and as the door closed, Muriel emerged, laughing, from
her hiding-place.
“That was a stroke of policy,” she said. “If Fernando were to see me in
this costume, it would be town talk to-morrow, and in the papers the day
after. Fernando’s mind is a perfect colander—all that gets into it runs
out of it.”
She was more than ever like a fairy prince the next instant as she stood
with the light bright foil in her gloved hand, and her face covered
by the gilt mask, over which waved a thick crimson plume. Harrington,
similarly arrayed, save for the plume, with the golden wires envisoring
his features, advanced toward her.
“You have not forgotten your plastron, have you?” he said.
“No: it’s under the dress,” she replied.
Firm and true as he, she struck guard, and the foils crossed with a clash.
“By George! this is delicious,” exclaimed Wentworth, in perfect rapture.
And so it was, for Muriel was like some unimagined fairy chevalier as she
stood in the beautiful attitude of the exercise, the rich crimson lights
of her dress glowing, and its golden ornaments tremulously flashing in
the sun-ray, and the sumptuous radiance resting on the proud and elegant
flowing curves of her figure. Lithe, superb and strong, an image of
health and grace, a form of lyric beauty, she might have stood in her
armed posture for the spirit of the foil.
Emily had crossed over to the piano, and sitting behind it with her eyes
fixed upon the combatants, began to play a low drumming strain of Bacchic
fury in the pause preluding the game. Fierce, monotonous and dreamful,
a congeries of bass tones swarming grumly from the keys, with low minor
notes faintly chirping at intervals between, it suddenly rang up, pierced
with one sharp tingling treble, like a cry, as with a loud clash of the
foils, the agile and vivid figure of Muriel darted forward in a superb
lunge. Harrington uttered a low ejaculation, for the thrust had nearly
reached him, and he had parried in the compass of a ring. Muriel stood
on guard again, her gold and crimson tremulously glowing and flashing in
the sun, and her bright plume dancing, while the dark and furious music,
swarming and drumming loudly from the bass keys, sunk away into the low,
monotonous and dreamful strain, with the chirping notes still fluttering
and sounding in. It did not rise again, but ran sombrely swarming on,
as Harrington reached in his long arm in a quick and quiet lunge, which
was deftly parried with only a faint clink of the foils, and then, with
another splendid flash of glitter and color, Muriel sprang, lunging
nimbly home, and clash on clash, with a rapturous clamor of steel, came
pass and parry on either side, while the hurrying music rose and rang in
whirling riot, like a wild, tumultuous race of Mænads, with heavy bars of
thunderous sound striking through the loud, triumphant swarming fury of
the melody. Clash and flash, amidst the strumming whirl and anvil blows
of the melodious choral, flew the bright foils, and stamp and tramp,
advancing and retreating, sinking and rising, low to the lunge, and high
to the parry, swayed and darted the lords of the fairy duel—Muriel’s
crimson feather tossing and dancing in time to the gathering and racing
of the music, like a delirious sprite of combat.
Suddenly—snap—jingle—the contest ceased, and the music flittered off
into a light and brilliant strain, like the tinkling laughter of elves.
Harrington stood with a dazed air, looking at the fragment of the foil he
held, the rest of which lay on the floor. Muriel broke into a merry peal
of laughter, in which Wentworth and her mother joined, while Emily, still
playing, smiled indolently over the piano.
“Plague!” exclaimed Harrington. “That’s the second foil I’ve seen broken
to-day. They make these things miserably bad.”
“It’s the last pair we have, so that ends our fun for this day,” cried
Muriel, taking the gilt mask from her bright, flushed face. “Serves me
right for not always having half a dozen sets on hand, a thing I’ll do in
future.”
“By Jupiter!” exclaimed Wentworth, while Muriel crossed to hang up her
mask and foil, “that was tall fencing, while it lasted, anyhow. I’m sorry
the foil’s broken, Muriel, for I wanted to fence with the fairy prince
myself.”
“You ought to learn, Emily,” said Mrs. Eastman. “Then you and Richard
could match John and Muriel.”
Emily stopped playing, and glanced at Wentworth with a slight curl of her
lip, which did not escape the young artist.
“Indeed, Mrs. Eastman,” she said, “it’s not in my line, and I should make
a poor figure at it, I know.”
“But it’s as beautiful as dancing,” said Mrs. Eastman.
“And a great deal more womanly than waltzing,” put in Wentworth,
interrupting, to have his fling at Emily, who was very fond of the waltz.
Emily reddened, and fixed her lustrous eyes on Wentworth, hurt and
angered by his remark.
“Come, come,” interposed Muriel, gaily, “I won’t have Emily badgered into
doing anything it is not her genius to do. Fencing is not in her line, as
she says; but music, dear Emily,” she added, putting her arms around her
friend, “music _is_ in your line, and charmingly you played for us. Your
improvisation inspired our battle, and I should fence twice as well if I
always had you to play for me.”
“Faith, Emily, there’s something in that, I believe,” remarked
Harrington. “But you fence wonderfully, Muriel, for one who has had only
a year’s practice.”
“Are you sure you don’t spare her, Harrington?” said Emily, slily.
“Spare her? Indeed I don’t. I’d scorn to do such a thing!” answered
Harrington, with animation.
“That’s right, John,” said Muriel in a tone of gay gratitude; “it’s
always a shame for a woman to be treated like a weak sister, and
there’s a subtle assumption of our inferiority in the consideration
we women get from men in this polite age, which does not please me at
all. No effeminate culture for me! What I know or do, I will know or do
thoroughly and vigorously, or not at all.”
“Bravo, Muriel!” said Mrs. Eastman, rising, “so your father would say,
if he were with us. There’s no reason, he used to observe, why girls
shouldn’t be as vigorously trained as boys, and even supposing woman’s
sphere to be purely and simply that of a wife and mother, said he, she
ought, on the most ultra conservative principles, to have every power and
faculty fully developed that she may fitly educate her children.”
“Good! Woman’s rights doctrine, that,” said Wentworth, playfully.
“Muriel, do you vote?” he added, with a quizzical air.
“Yes,” answered Muriel, so naively, that Wentworth was taken aback. “Do
you want to know how? Every election day, Patrick comes to ask me how
he shall vote, and I tell him, and he votes. That is my ballot, for my
judgment casts it. But what do you think of the good sense of a community
that allowing me capable of instructing a man how to vote, will not allow
that I am capable of voting myself? What do you think of the good sense
of a country that denies to a cultured woman a right which it accords to
the uncultured man who opens her street door?”
“Well,” returned Wentworth, laughing, “we are not all such fools, Muriel,
as to think the arrangement you criticise right and proper.”
“Come, children,” said Mrs. Eastman, after a pause, “since the play is
over, let us adjourn to the library.”
And she departed, followed by the others. Harrington, seeing Muriel
linger, half-absently, paused near her. Becoming aware that he was
looking at her, she looked up from her musing, with a quiet smile.
“Well, fairy prince,” he said, lightly.
“Ah,” she replied, with pensive playfulness, “you recognize the fairy
prince in me, then, do you? And that is the fairy prince I am to follow
through all the world.”
She had approached him as she spoke, and while he looked at her with an
inquiring face, seeking to fathom the riddle of her speech, she passed
close by him, with a light waft of delicate perfume, and vanished into
her chamber.
He stood for a moment, lost in a sense of some unravelled mystery
lurking in her words and manner, and then suddenly turned and went
down-stairs.