THE FAIRY PRINCESS.
Seated on the wall, like Humpty-Dumpty, Gerald gasped, for two
excellent reasons. Firstly, he was a trifle breathed with the arduous
climb, and, secondly, the sight of the girl whom he believed to be
Miss Bird amazed him out of all common-sense. She stood under the
wall, arrayed in a plain white dress, without frills or trimmings or
ornaments, and looked more like a Vestal of Rome than a young lady of
the twentieth century. And to add to Haskins' astonishment she did not
appear to be the least startled, or even surprised.
"So you have come at last?" she said softly, and the voice had in it
the same melody that Gerald had noted when the phonograph delivered
its fantastical message.
"Charity! Miss Bird!" He could hardly get his tongue to move.
The girl looked puzzled. "My name is Mavis Durham," she said simply.
Haskins knew that he was awake, for he had grazed his knee while
climbing and the pain assured him of material existence. Otherwise, he
would certainly have believed that the whole thing was a delicious
dream. But on looking downward more intently he saw that, although the
image of Charity in physical appearance, this girl who declared
herself to be Mavis Durham had a more spiritual look on her face. Her
eyes were turquoise-blue like the dancer's: she possessed the same
wonderful hair, the color of ripe corn, about which Miss Bird's
admirers raved, and her features were cast in the same classic mold;
but she had a mystical, etherial, evanescent look about her, which
hinted at more spirituality than was apparent in Charity's
pronouncedly material charms. It might have been the dying light of
the evening, or the exalted state of mind consequent on emotion, that
raised Gerald to a high plane, but the girl looked as though she would
vanish like a wreath of mist under the influence of the newly risen
sun.
The resemblance between Mavis and Charity was certainly marvelous, and
Haskins could not account for the similarity; but after a long and
searching look he became certain that the girls were two different
flesh and blood human beings, and not one, as he had momentarily
supposed. On acquiring this assurance in his innermost being the young
man drew a breath of relief, since Charity was more or less engaged to
Tod, and he did not wish to poach on Tod's preserves. The question of
the resemblance he determined swiftly to leave to a later date for
answer, and meanwhile surrendered himself entirely to the incredible
romance of the adventure. Surely no more poetic happening had taken
place since King Cophetua had gone a-wooing his Beggar Maid.
But by the time his reflections had reached this point the Princess of
Fairyland--for that she certainly was--betrayed excitement and
uneasiness, waving her hands to intimate that he should hide behind
the ruddy leaves of a copper beech, which over topped the wall and
leaned against it. "Bellaria will catch you," called up Mavis softly,
"and then I'll never see you again. Get behind the beech. I'll return
soon."
She sped lightly away, while Haskins, still trying to assure himself
that he was not dreaming, shuffled along the wall until he gained the
covert of the spreading branches. Here he was safe from any espial,
and while Mavis was absent he gently parted the leaves to view her
enchanted palace, whither she had called him. A phonograph and
Fairyland! it was an odd mixture of poetry and science. A page with a
silken-bound parchment; a dragon-chariot to waft a mortal prince to a
spellbound queen; these were natural in the circumstances. But to be
summoned by a phonograph! Why, it linked the age of motor cars with
that of King Arthur.
Haskins saw below him a moderately sized quadrangle, smoothly turfed
in the center and bordered with beds of flowers stretching to
moldering walls. To the right, and straight in front--somewhat after
the shape of the letter "L"--were two ranges of a gray stone mansion
clothed--as was the wall--with thickly growing ivy. There were two
stories, and the architecture was Tudor, picturesque, and graceful.
Along the lower story of the front wing were elaborate oriel windows,
filled in with lattice-work and, as Gerald shrewdly suspected, with
stained glass. An archway pierced this wing, and apparently led to
another part of the grounds. The range of buildings on the right was
less elaborate, as the windows above and below were square and modern
in their looks. To the left were ruinous stables, and outhouses more
or less tumbledown, and, of course, the fourth side of the quadrangle
was closed in by the wall upon which the young man was seated. What
with the gray wall, the beautifully shaped oriels, the peaked roofs of
mellow red tiles, and the mantle of greenery which overspread all, the
place looked like a picture from the Christmas Number of _The
Graphic_.
Yet if the house was neglected, the garden and lawn certainly were
not. The turf was as smooth as a billiard-table, and the beds of
flowers were carefully tended, as he could see from the absence of
weeds and the efflorescence of blossoms. These were chiefly those of
humble cottage flowers. Tall hollyhocks, golden snapdragon,
sweet-william, pansies, marigolds, ragged robin, and musk carnations:
all these grew in artistic profusion and confusion, making the
quadrangle a world of beauty and color and perfume. In the center of
the lawn rose an antique sundial, supported by three battered female
figures, and over all this dreamy, old-world haven of rest arched the
shadowy sky, blending night and day in vapory blue and rosy flushings.
Haskins felt that a new planet had "swam into his ken"--all that he
had dreamed of, as too fair for earth, was here transmuted from the
ideal into the real. "I must certainly be in Dreamland," thought the
young man, "or in Paradise, or in Prospero's Enchanted Island, or in
the Vale of Avilion, where it doth neither rain nor snow."
But his poetic musings were cut short by a rustle among the coppery
leaves of the beech. He looked down from his wall and saw a vision of
loveliness rising from the foliage like Undine from the well. "I went
to see what Bellaria was doing," explained Mavis breathlessly, and
perched on a sloping bough, so near to the wall that the young man
could have embraced her without difficulty. He felt very much inclined
to do so, for he was rapidly falling fathoms deep in love. But a
feeling of respect for the unprotected girl restrained him, and he
listened spellbound to the music of her voice. "Bellaria was cooking
the supper, you know," went on the girl prosaically, "so there is no
chance of her coming to call me for half-an-hour."
"And what then?" asked Gerald soberly.
"You must go away. Bellaria would be very angry if she knew that my
fairy prince had come."
"Am I the fairy prince?" asked Haskins softly.
Mavis raised her brows with a trill of heavenly laughter. "Of course
you are, since you came over the wall. I have been watching here for
months to see you arrive. You would not have come had you not got my
message."
"No," acknowledged Haskins sensibly; "that is very certain. No one
would look for a fairy princess in this tangle of woods. But," he
hesitated and smiled, "you are not sleeping."
"Yes, I am! Not with my eyes closed, of course; but I am sleeping
through life. All my days I have lived in this dull old place, and my
guardian will not let me go out and see the world."
"Who is your guardian?" asked Gerald, and received a shock.
"Major Rebb!"
"Good Lord! Major Rebb! Huh!" So this was the elderly relative whom
the man had come to see. Haskins congratulated himself that he had not
questioned the Major. Had he done so there would have been a speedy
end to romance. The word "elderly" had apparently been used by Rebb
to conceal the existence of this lovely girl from too inquiring youth.
No young man would search for anything elderly. Haskins felt like
Saul--as though he had gone to seek his father's asses and had found a
kingdom.
"Do you know my guardian?" asked Mavis, quickly noting his surprise.
"Well, yes! I have met him in London."
"Oh, London! London!" The girl clapped her hands in a childish way.
"How I wish to see London. My guardian says that he will take me there
some day, and then--oh, and then, and then, and then----"
"What then?"
"I shall live. Just fancy," she continued, swinging on the bough. "I
am twenty years of age, and I have lived shut up here with Bellaria
ever since I can remember. My guardian comes and sees me sometimes,
and give me all kinds of presents. He is always very kind, but he will
not let me leave the Pixy's House. I'm not shut up, of course," she
added, contradicting herself, "the grounds are very large. There's a
big garden of fruit and flowers beyond that archway, and a park of
trees with undergrowth just like a fairy wood. I have heaps and heaps
to do, looking after my flowers, and embroidering, and cooking, and
playing games, and listening to Bellaria's stories. I am quite
happy--and now," she leaned forward until her face nearly touched that
of Gerald, "I am happier than ever, because you are here."
"Are you?" inquired Haskins, stupidly and thickly. He did not dare to
move, or to follow his impulse, lest he should alarm her. She was as
trusting as a tame bird, but a chance word or a too eloquent look
might teach her that fear existed.
"Yes, of course I am. How silly you are. In Bellaria's stories the
prince always comes to the princess, in the end. Mine would not come,
so I sent that message. And now----" She stretched a hand to caress
his face: "Oh my prince! my prince!"
"I may not be your prince after all," said Gerald weakly. He certainly
felt unworthy of being so.
"But you are--you are!" cried Mavis, with conviction, "you would not
have found my message otherwise. I flung it from one of the windows
into the pool below. And you picked it up, so I know that you are my
prince. And then," she added, naively, "you are so very handsome."
Haskins was pretty well hardened to admiration, since he knew more
about women than was good for him. All the same the outspoken speech
made him blush. "Who is Bellaria?" he asked abruptly, changing a too
embarrassing subject.
"My nurse, who has looked after me all my life. I call her the Ogress,
and my guardian the Ogre. Not but what they are both very kind. I have
all I want, save liberty."
"And why cannot you get that?"
"It is not the custom of the country."
Haskins looked puzzled. "What do you mean, Mavis?"
She raised her clear truthful eyes. "Why, you know, don't you? Major
Rebb told me that all girls were brought up in seclusion until they
reached the age of twenty-one, and then they were taken out to see the
world. I wish ten months were past," sighed imprisoned beauty, "for
then I shall be one and twenty, and able to leave the Pixy's House.
Bellaria says that I won't like the world; but I shall, I shall, I
shall."
It was both cunning and clever of Major Rebb to suggest such a reason
for her seclusion to the girl herself, as it prevented her feeling
that she was being detained against her will. But she was apparently
unaware that he ascribed a more terrible reason to the world beyond
the gates, and that she was looked upon as a homicidal maniac. Of
course this was wholly and entirely absurd. No one with such steady
eyes, and who spoke so artlessly, could be tainted in that way. She
was limited from sheer ignorance, and innocent beyond belief of evil:
a child of nature, as unsophisticated as Undine herself. Gerald
doubted if she would know the meaning of the word "murder!"
"What is Bellaria's other name?" he asked, after a pause.
"Dondi--Bellaria Dondi, who came from Florence, in Italy," said Miss
Durham easily. "She is ugly, and old, and very cross; but I love her
all the same, for she loves me and means well. And, oh! she tells such
lovely, lovely stories, and can repeat poetry by Dante and Ariosto and
Leopardi, for ever so long. I can repeat poetry also," she added
hastily, with the complacency of a child. "I know lots of Homer, and
of Shakespeare, and of Keats, and----"
"Stop! stop!" interrupted Gerald hastily. "How can you when--according
to your message--you are unable to read?"
"Oh! Schaibar taught me."
"Schaibar?"
Mavis nodded with bright eyes. "You know--the Peri Banou's brother in
'The Arabian Nights.' His real name is Arnold--Mr. Arnold: but I call
him Schaibar because he is a dwarf, with a long beard and a short
temper. He used to recite poetry, and I learned to recite also. But
Schaibar has gone away," she said, with a falling cadence. "Months ago
he went to Australia, and promised to write, but he did not."
"You could not read what he wrote, Mavis?"
"I could hear it! Schaibar should send me a record, in the same way as
I sent you my message. But he has not done so, and yet he was so fond
of me. I cannot understand it!" And Mavis sighed.
"From your mention of Australia, it seems that you know geography
also."
"Oh yes, of course I do! Schaibar drew the maps, and told me where
cities, and mountains, and lakes, and rivers were. I carry it all in
my head."
"And you cannot read or write?" asked Gerald, with a passing
recollection of "The Golden Butterfly" heroine.
"No; the Ogre said that my brain was not strong enough to learn!"
"The Ogre!" said Haskins, forgetting.
"My guardian--Major Rebb. He says that lots and lots of girls never
learn to read or write."
"Liar!" thought Haskins: but he suppressed the opprobrious name, and
merely remarked anxiously: "But you don't feel your brain weak?"
"Oh no! oh no! I could learn anything, I think. I have never had a
day's illness in my life."
"Do you ever feel dizzy?"
"No! Why should I?"
"Do you ever get into a rage and want to strike Bellaria?"
Mavis laughed wonderingly. "I should be foolish to do that! Poor
Bellaria doesn't mean to be cross, and, if she cannot keep her temper,
I must. I wouldn't strike her or anyone, even if I were in a rage. Do
you strike people when you are angry?"
Gerald coughed. He had a vivid recollection of schoolfights, and of
horsewhipping a scandal-monger, much later in life. "It is necessary
sometimes, Mavis," he remarked: "the world is not inhabited entirely
by agreeable people."
"Oh, I know that!" she said quickly, "the old gardener, Matthew, who
came to help me from Leegarth, is very disagreeable, and he seems to
be a little afraid of me. I don't know why, and I am very sorry. I
want everyone to love me."
"Doesn't Major Rebb?"
"Yes! in a way. But he is cold. He never kisses me. If you like a
person don't you kiss her?"
"If she's a very nice person I do," said Haskins, bubbling over with
laughter, "now you----" His eyes completed the sentence.
"You love me?"
"Yes, Mavis!" he answered unhesitatingly. Gerald scorned a lie.
"Then of course----" She bent forward, and, in spite of Gerald's
virtuous resolutions, their lips would have met, but that a deep
contralto voice boomed from the quadrangle calling on Mavis angrily.
"Oh!" the girl flung back her head, "there is Bellaria calling me to
supper. I must go or she may find you. But come again, and I'll kiss
you--you---- Oh! what is your name?"
"Gerald!" he replied softly.
"Prince Gerald!" she said, smiling, and slipped down the tree rapidly,
as Bellaria called again. Haskins, parting the leaves, saw her cross
the lawn, and enter the house in the company of a tall, lean woman.
But it was too dark to see Bellaria's looks at that distance.
The adventurer slipped from the wall, and descended to "Mother Carey's
Peace Pool," as he named the place. Paddling to the opposite side, he
found a sloping bank and dragged his canoe into the undergrowth. Then,
in the rosy twilight, he scrambled through the bushes to find some
path or road leading to Denleigh.