In a few days after the interview of Puck and Paudeen in the hut of
the forester, there was great excitement at the court of Fairyland.
The fashionable milliners and dress-makers never had seen such a
time--orders from the aristocracy poured in upon them by scores, and
their doors were beset by fashionable carriages, and little fairy
footmen caparisoned in long coats with many capes, and broad, red
bands fastened with shining buckles round their hats. The great
_artistes_ who were at the head of these establishments saw themselves
amassing fortunes from the sudden influx of fashionable custom. But
the poor little fairy seamstresses, who sat up all night, sometimes
without time to eat or sleep, from sunset to sunset, so that all these
splendid dresses might be finished in time--they did not fare so well.
They grew pale and sick, and sat swaying and swinging about as they
worked, until one might have thought them the ghosts of fairy workers,
come back for a ghostly midnight frolic in their old haunts. It was
melancholy enough, truly; but then nobody knew any thing about it. The
rich ladies, when their splendid robes came home, did not stop to
think that good, earnest, faithful fairy hearts had embroidered the
roses that adorned the skirts from their own cheeks, and spangled them
with the broken fragments of their youth's faded dreams. If they had--
Well, and if they had?
That is not at all to the purport of my story; and so I will proceed
to let the reader into the secret of all this flutter and fluster. A
great prince had made his appearance at the court of Paterflor, and
had created almost as great an excitement in Fairyland as a new prima
donna with bright eyes and a _sfogato_ voice among mere mortals.
Nobody knew exactly who he was, but he came from a great way off, and
had a name as long as a province, and, beside being incalculably
wealthy, it was universally voted (ladies vote in Fairyland) that he
was the very handsomest love of a fairy knight that ever jingled
spurs, or sighed at the feet of beauty. He had come to court evidently
with the "highest recommendations" to the king, such as would have
procured him immediate access into the first "circles," even in
Philadelphia, where society lives behind barred doors, and goes about
armed cap-a-pie against encroachment or intrusion. He had been at once
received at the royal table, and a splendid suite of apartments had
been assigned him in the palace itself. Such extraordinary attentions
from the imperial family, of course, made the stranger a favorite and
a welcome guest wherever he appeared; and there was not a lady at
court who would not have given her eyes--if it would not have spoiled
her beauty--for a smile from his magnificent mouth.
It was discovered, however, at a very early stage of the proceedings,
that the chief object of the prince's admiration was the lady Dewbell,
who, proud as she was, could not help feeling flattered by the evident
and special devotion of one for whom the whole of her sex were dying.
Sir Timothy Lawn, who, from pique or melancholy, or from some unknown
cause, had left the court the very day after the arrival of the new
prince, was not entirely forgotten, but was laid away carefully on a
back shelf of her heart; and the lady Dewbell never had been so
beautiful, so fascinating, so joyous and irresistible. Courts are as
fickle as coquettes; and before the month had passed, in a series of
brilliant _fêtes_ and entertainments, at all of which the prince and
princess were the reigning toast, it was regarded as a settled thing
that there would, ere the maple leaves grew red in the dying gaze of
the year, be a royal marriage in Fairyland.
But while to all around the beautiful Dewbell was ever the same
careless, saucy and happy creature as ever, in her heart she nursed a
bitter sorrow. After many and severe struggles, she was forced at last
to make to herself the humiliating acknowledgment that she deeply and
truly loved Sir Timothy Lawn, that noble and chivalric spirit, whom
her unworthy trifling had driven--so her frightened heart interpreted
it--in disgust from her. Compelled in common courtesy to receive the
devoted attentions of the stranger prince, and to hear every day and
every hour repeated the earnest solicitations of her father that she
should school herself to regard the stranger as her future husband,
her little fairy heart was quite broken with its ceaseless struggles.
Her pride and self-will were entirely vanquished, and she felt herself
truly the most miserable of fairy maidens. Suicide is of course a
thing strictly prohibited among immortals; but had it been otherwise,
I sadly fear that one of the lady Dewbell's spider-web silk hose would
some morning have been found without a garter, and she herself hanging
like a beauteous exhalation among the elm-leaves in the morning
sunshine. Oh, had Sir Timothy been there then, he would have found,
instead of his imperious and tantalizing coquette, the tenderest and
truest of disconsolate maidens, ready to melt into his arms between
the delicious pause of a sigh and a kiss. "Naughty, cruel Sir Timothy!
Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for real earnest, and to go
away and leave me to be persecuted to death!" exclaimed the lady
Dewbell, with an uncontrollable burst of tears, as she threw herself,
her toilet half finished, and her hair all strewn over her face and
shoulders, upon her little praying cushion. "What will become of poor
Bell!"
"What ails my daughter?" said the sweet, soft voice of the queen
mother, as she knelt tenderly over her child, and pressed her head to
her bosom. "Tell your sorrows to your mother."
"Oh, mother, _I_ am the most wretched fairy that ever existed. I don't
want to marry that odious, red-haired stranger; and my father has made
me promise that the wedding shall take place on Halloween--and I--I
have consented. But I love Sir Timothy; and I wont marry any body but
him," sobbed the poor creature, convulsively, as she cast herself upon
the floor, and looked up to her mother, terrified and half frantic.
"But, dearest, you know you laughed at poor Sir Timothy's vows--and he
is so sensitive."
"Oh, yes, I know I did, but I'll never do so any more. _If_ Sir
Timothy will only come back and forgive me, and marry me, just this
once, I will never, never offend him again as long as I live--never,
never, never! Do, mamma, do make him come back!"
"Poor child! I will certainly do all I can. But you have promised to
be married on Halloween."
"Oh, yes, but that is a good fortnight off, and you can bring Sir
Timothy back before then, you know, and he can kill this horrid
stranger, and then every body will be _so_ happy!" and the face of the
volatile creature began already to re-clothe itself in smiles.
"I fear you are mistaken, love," said her mother, solemnly, and
shaking her head in an impressive manner, she added, "do not deceive
yourself with such fallacies, my daughter; your princely word is
passed, your father's royal honor is pledged, and you must be married
on Halloween."
The lady Dewbell, sobbing hysterically, again looked up. She was
alone; at the same moment the cat-and-baby face of Puck glanced by the
window, and a wild, mischievous laugh melted away into a song, of
which the lady only caught the two last lines:
"He rideth fast, and he rideth well,
But his heart still clings to the pretty Bell."
"Oh, bless thee, dear Puck!" sighed the haply wondering lady, rising
and leaning from the window. "May thy sweet prophecy come true!"