(_Fragments of a Brummagem Fairy Tale._)
It was in a big town in the Midlands that the Ugly Duckling first
chipped shell. "_Cheek! Cheek! Cheek!_" squeaked the youngster as he
crept out. How big and ugly he was, to be sure! Not a bit like the
other ducklings. In fact he was a portent, and a puzzle.
However, the ugly, grey-coated youngster, took to the water, and swam
about like the rest. "He's every inch my own child, after all," said
the old duck. "And really he's very pretty, when one comes to look at
him attentively. Quack! quack!" added she; "now, come along, and I'll
take you into high society. Now move on, and mind you cackle properly,
and bow your head before that old duck yonder, who is the noblest born
of them all. Now bend your neck, and say 'Quack!'"
But the Ugly Duckling was an odd bird, as well as an ill-favoured one,
and gave much trouble and excited much jealousy in the duck-yard. He
quacked indeed, but he would not bend his head or bow to the old duck
properly.
"He remained too long in the egg-shell," mused the maternal bird; "and
therefore his figure, like his manners, is not properly formed on the
true duck model. But as he's a male duck it won't matter so much. I
think he'll prove strong, and be able to fight his way through the
world." Which was true.
<tb>
But at first the Ugly Duckling had a baddish time of it. He was bitten,
pushed about, and made game of, not only by the ducks, but by the hens.
They all declared he was much too big, and fancied himself too much.
He certainly was not graceful, and he had a cocky, self-assertive
air which irritated the Conservative Old Cockalorums. He was always
making unexpected and unducklike sorties, "alarums and excursions,"
and lifting up his raucus-caucus voice against the time-honoured rules
and respectable conventions of the duck-pond. So much so, that they
nicknamed him the "Daring Duckling," and prophesied that he would come
to a bad end.
So he ran away, and flew over the palings.
<tb>
He had many adventures, and various. He dwelt for a time with a lot
of wild ducks in a marsh, and even struck up a sort of friendship
for a swarm of wild geese, who wanted to do away with domestication
and destroy the "tame villatic" tendencies of gregarious goosedom,
and abolish barn-yards and duck-ponds, peacocks, and game-fowls, and
guinea-hens, and poulterer's shops, and _pâté de foie gras_, and other
checks on liberty and incentives to luxury. But somehow he didn't get
on with the wild ducks for long. He was so much wilder than they, and
wanted his own way too much and too often for the old and recognised
leaders of their flocks. And as to the wild geese, why he soon lost
sympathy with their "revolutionary programmes" and "subversive
schemes," which he learned to regard indeed as a sort of wild goose
chase, and deride and denounce as vehemently as he had aforetime
praised them.
"I think I'll take my chance, and go abroad into the wide world," said
the Duckling.
<tb>
One evening, just as the sun was setting, there came a whole flock of
beautiful large birds from a grove. The Ugly Duckling had never seen
any so lovely before. They were dazzlingly white, with long graceful
necks: they were swans. They uttered a peculiar cry, and then spread
their magnificent wings and away they flew from this cold country to
warmer lands across the open sea, as was their usual custom. They rose
so high that the Ugly Duckling felt a strange sensation come over him,
a sort of delicious vertigo. He turned round and round in the water
like a wheel, stretched his neck up into the air toward them, and
uttered so loud and strange a cry that he was frightened at it himself.
Oh! never could he again forget those beautiful, happy birds, so
gracefully fleeting against a primrose sky. He knew not how those birds
were called, nor whither they were bound, but he felt an affection for
them, such as he had never yet experienced for any living creature.
And he more and more lost love for, and patience with, all his old
associates, ducks or geese, wild or domesticated.
<tb>
The Ugly Duckling now felt able to flap his wings. They rustled much
louder than before, and bore him away most sturdily; and before long he
found himself in a noble park, a nobleman's park; indeed, the dainty
demesne of one of those who "toil not neither do they spin." It was
quite Beaconsfieldian in its beauty, with its smooth emerald sward and
umbrageous elm-avenues, its dusky cedar clumps and tail-spreading,
crest-sunning peacocks.
"Dear me!" mused the Ugly Duckling. "It is strange, but _I feel quite
at home here!!!_"
Three magnificent white swans now emerged from the thicket before him;
they flapped their wings and then swam lightly on the surface of the
water. The larger one (whose beak bore the letter S as a "nick") was
dark and haughty of mien, the second (whose beak was branded B) was
slim and exceeding graceful; whilst the third, a solid and even rather
sullen-looking bird, was beak-stamped with a legible D.
"I will fly towards these royal birds," cried the Ugly Duckling. And he
flew into the water, and swam towards those stately swans, who turned
to meet him with sail-like wings the moment they saw him.
"Why, he is one of us!" said the darker and statelier of the three.
"Almost!" he added, _sotto voce_.
The Ugly Duckling was startled at the remark. But looking at his
reflection in the smooth lake he was more startled still. His own image
was to his eyes no longer that of the Daring Duckling, much less of the
Ugly One. It was smart, smooth, sleek, swelling, in fact swan-like!!!
At any rate, he thought so, and so, indeed, the other three swans
seemed to think.
He preened his feathers, and puffed forth his plumes. He flapped his
wings, and arched his neck, as he cried in the fullness of his heart:--
"I never dreamed of such happiness when I was the Brummagem Ugly
Duckling."
<tb>
It matters not being born in a duck-yard if one is hatched from a
swan's egg!
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