There is a certain country where a king is never allowed to reign while
a queen can be found. They like queens much better than kings in that
country. I can't think why. If some one has tried to teach you a little
history, you will perhaps think that this is the Salic law. But it
isn't. In the biggest city of that odd country there is a great
bell-tower (higher than the clock-tower of the Houses of Parliament,
where they put M.P.'s who forget their manners). This bell-tower had
seven bells in it, very sweet-toned splendid bells, made expressly to
ring on the joyful occasions when a princess was born who would be queen
some day. And the great tower was built expressly for the bells to ring
in. So you see what a lot they thought of queens in that country. Now in
all the bells there are bell-people--it is their voices that you hear
when the bells ring. All that about its being the clapper of the bell is
mere nonsense, and would hardly deceive a child. I don't know why people
say such things. Most Bell-people are very energetic busy folk, who love
the sound of their own voices, and hate being idle, and when nearly two
hundred years had gone by, and no princesses had been born, they got
tired of living in bells that were never rung. So they slipped out of
the belfry one fine frosty night, and left the big beautiful bells
empty, and went off to find other homes. One of them went to live in a
dinner-bell, and one in a school-bell, and the rest all found
homes--they did not mind where--just anywhere, in fact, where they could
find any Bell-person kind enough to give them board and lodging. And
every one was surprised at the increased loudness in the voices of these
hospitable bells. For, of course, the Bell-people from the belfry did
their best to help in the housework as polite guests should, and always
added their voices to those of their hosts on all occasions when
bell-talk was called for. And the seven big beautiful bells in the
belfry were left hollow and dark and quite empty, except for the
clappers who did not care about the comforts of a home.
Now of course a good house does not remain empty long, especially when
there is no rent to pay, and in a very short time the seven bells all
had tenants, and they were all the kind of folk that no respectable
Bell-people would care to be acquainted with.
They had been turned out of other bells--cracked bells and broken bells,
the bells of horses that had been lost in snowstorms or of ships that
had gone down at sea. They hated work, and they were a glum, silent,
disagreeable people, but as far as they could be pleased about anything
they were pleased to live in bells that were never rung, in houses where
there was nothing to do. They sat hunched up under the black domes of
their houses, dressed in darkness and cobwebs, and their only pleasure
was idleness, their only feasts the thick dusty silence that lies heavy
in all belfries where the bells never ring. They hardly ever spoke even
to each other, and in the whispers that good Bell-people talk in among
themselves, and that no one can hear but the bat whose ear for music is
very fine and who has himself a particularly high voice, and when they
did speak they quarrelled.
And when at last the bells _were_ rung for the birth of a Princess the
wicked Bell-people were furious. Of course they had to _ring_--a bell
can't help that when the rope is pulled--but their voices were so ugly
that people were quite shocked.
'What poor taste our ancestors must have had,' they said, 'to think
these were good bells!'
(You remember the bells had not rung for nearly two hundred years.)
'Dear me,' said the King to the Queen, 'what odd ideas people had in the
old days. I always understood that these bells had beautiful voices.'
'They're quite hideous,' said the Queen. And so they were. Now that
night the lazy Bell-folk came down out of the belfry full of anger
against the Princess whose birth had disturbed their idleness. There is
no anger like that of a lazy person who is made to work against his
will.
And they crept out of the dark domes of their houses and came down in
their dust dresses and cobweb cloaks, and crept up to the palace where
every one had gone to bed long before, and stood round the
mother-of-pearl cradle where the baby princess lay asleep. And they
reached their seven dark right hands out across the white satin
coverlet, and the oldest and hoarsest and laziest said:
'She shall grow uglier every day, except Sundays, and every Sunday she
shall be seven times prettier than the Sunday before.'
'Why not uglier every day, and a double dose on Sunday?' asked the
youngest and spitefullest of the wicked Bell-people.
'Because there's no rule without an exception,' said the eldest and
hoarsest and laziest, 'and she'll feel it all the more if she's pretty
once a week. And,' he added, 'this shall go on till she finds a bell
that doesn't ring, and can't ring, and never will ring, and wasn't made
to ring.'
'Why not for ever?' asked the young and spiteful.
'Nothing goes on for ever,' said the eldest Bell-person, 'not even
ill-luck. And we have to leave her a way out. It doesn't matter. She'll
never know what it is. Let alone finding it.'
Then they went back to the belfry and rearranged as well as they could
the comfortable web-and-owls' nest furniture of their houses which had
all been shaken up and disarranged by that absurd ringing of bells at
the birth of a Princess that nobody could really be pleased about.
When the Princess was two weeks old the King said to the Queen:
'My love--the Princess is not so handsome as I thought she was.'
'Nonsense, Henry,' said the Queen, 'the light's not good, that's all.'
Next day--it was Sunday--the King pulled back the lace curtains of the
cradle and said:
'The light's good enough now--and you see she's----'
He stopped.
'It _must_ have been the light,' he said, 'she looks all right to-day.'
'Of course she does, a precious,' said the Queen.
But on Monday morning His Majesty was quite sure really that the
Princess was rather plain, for a Princess. And when Sunday came, and the
Princess had on her best robe and the cap with the little white ribbons
in the frill, he rubbed his nose and said there was no doubt dress did
make a great deal of difference. For the Princess was now as pretty as a
new daisy.
The Princess was several years old before her mother could be got to see
that it really was better for the child to wear plain clothes and a veil
on week days. On Sundays, of course she could wear her best frock and a
clean crown just like anybody else.
Of course nobody ever told the Princess how ugly she was. She wore a
veil on week-days, and so did every one else in the palace, and she was
never allowed to look in the glass except on Sundays, so that she had no
idea that she was not as pretty all the week as she was on the first day
of it. She grew up therefore quite contented. But the parents were in
despair.
'Because,' said King Henry, 'it's high time she was married. We ought to
choose a king to rule the realm--I have always looked forward to her
marrying at twenty-one--and to our retiring on a modest competence to
some nice little place in the country where we could have a few pigs.'
'And a cow,' said the Queen, wiping her eyes.
'And a pony and trap,' said the King.
'And hens,' said the Queen, 'yes. And now it can never, never be. Look
at the child! I just ask you! Look at her!'
'_No_,' said the King firmly, 'I haven't done that since she was ten,
except on Sundays.'
'Couldn't we get a prince to agree to a "Sundays only" marriage--not let
him see her during the week?'
'Such an unusual arrangement,' said the King, 'would involve very
awkward explanations, and I can't think of any except the true ones,
which would be quite impossible to give. You see, we should want a
first-class prince, and no really high-toned Highness would take a wife
on those terms.'
'It's a thoroughly comfortable kingdom,' said the Queen doubtfully. 'The
young man would be handsomely provided for for life.'
'I couldn't marry Belinda to a time-server or a place-worshipper,' said
the King decidedly.
Meanwhile the Princess had taken the matter into her own hands. She had
fallen in love.
You know, of course, that a handsome book is sent out every year to all
the kings who have daughters to marry. It is rather like the illustrated
catalogues of Liberty's or Peter Robinson's, only instead of
illustrations showing furniture or ladies' cloaks and dresses, the
pictures are all of princes who are of an age to be married, and are
looking out for suitable wives. The book is called the 'Royal Match
Catalogue Illustrated,'--and besides the pictures of the princes it has
little printed bits about their incomes, accomplishments, prospects, and
tempers, and relations.
Now the Princess saw this book--which is never shown to princesses, but
only to their parents--it was carelessly left lying on the round table
in the parlour. She looked all through it, and she hated each prince
more than the one before till she came to the very end, and on the last
page of all, screwed away in a corner, was the picture of a prince who
was quite as good-looking as a prince has any call to be.
'I like _you_,' said Belinda softly. Then she read the little bit of
print underneath.
_Prince Bellamant, aged twenty-four. Wants Princess who doesn't object
to a christening curse. Nature of curse only revealed in the strictest
confidence. Good tempered. Comfortably off. Quiet habits. No relations._
'Poor dear,' said the Princess. 'I wonder what the curse is! I'm sure
_I_ shouldn't mind!'
The blue dusk of evening was deepening in the garden outside. The
Princess rang for the lamp and went to draw the curtain. There was a
rustle and a faint high squeak--and something black flopped on to the
floor and fluttered there.
'Oh--it's a bat,' cried the Princess, as the lamp came in. 'I don't like
bats.'
'Let me fetch a dust-pan and brush and sweep the nasty thing away,' said
the parlourmaid.
'No, no,' said Belinda, 'it's hurt, poor dear,' and though she hated
bats she picked it up. It was horribly cold to touch, one wing dragged
loosely. 'You can go, Jane,' said the Princess to the parlourmaid.
Then she got a big velvet-covered box that had had chocolate in it, and
put some cotton wool in it and said to the Bat--
'You poor dear, is that comfortable?' and the Bat said:
'Quite, thanks.'
'Good gracious,' said the Princess jumping. 'I didn't know bats could
talk.'
'Every one can talk,' said the Bat, 'but not every one can hear other
people talking. You have a fine ear as well as a fine heart.'
'Will your wing ever get well?' asked the Princess.
'I hope so,' said the Bat. 'But let's talk about you. Do you know why you
wear a veil every day except Sundays?'
'Doesn't everybody?' asked Belinda.
'Only here in the palace,' said the Bat, 'that's on your account.'
'But why?' asked the Princess.
'Look in the glass and you'll know.'
'But it's wicked to look in the glass except on Sundays--and besides
they're all put away,' said the Princess.
'If I were you,' said the Bat, 'I should go up into the attic where the
youngest kitchenmaid sleeps. Feel between the thatch and the wall just
above her pillow, and you'll find a little round looking-glass. But come
back here before you look at it.'
The Princess did exactly what the Bat told her to do, and when she had
come back into the parlour and shut the door she looked in the little
round glass that the youngest kitchen-maid's sweetheart had given her.
And when she saw her ugly, ugly, ugly face--for you must remember she
had been growing uglier every day since she was born--she screamed and
then she said:
'That's not me, it's a horrid picture.'
'It _is_ you, though,' said the Bat firmly but kindly; 'and now you see
why you wear a veil all the week--and only look in the glass on Sunday.'
'But why,' asked the Princess in tears, 'why don't I look like that in
the Sunday looking-glasses?'
'Because you aren't like that on Sundays,' the Bat replied. 'Come,' it
went on, 'stop crying. I didn't tell you the dread secret of your
ugliness just to make you cry--but because I know the way for you to be
as pretty all the week as you are on Sundays, and since you've been so
kind to me I'll tell you. Sit down close beside me, it fatigues me to
speak loud.'
The Princess did, and listened through her veil and her tears, while the
Bat told her all that I began this story by telling you.
'My great-great-great-great-grandfather heard the tale years ago,' he
said, 'up in the dark, dusty, beautiful, comfortable, cobwebby belfry,
and I have heard scraps of it myself when the evil Bell-people were
quarrelling, or talking in their sleep, lazy things!'
'It's very good of you to tell me all this,' said Belinda, 'but what am
I to do?'
'You must find the bell that doesn't ring, and can't ring, and never
will ring, and wasn't made to ring.'
'If I were a prince,' said the Princess, 'I could go out and seek my
fortune.'
'Princesses have fortunes as well as princes,' said the Bat.
'But father and mother would never let me go and look for mine.'
'Think!' said the Bat, 'perhaps you'll find a way.'
So Belinda thought and thought. And at last she got the book that had
the portraits of eligible princes in it, and she wrote to the prince who
had the christening curse--and this is what she said:
'Princess Belinda of Carrillon-land is not afraid of christening
curses. If Prince Bellamant would like to marry her he had better
apply to her Royal Father in the usual way.
'_P.S._--I have seen your portrait.'
When the Prince got this letter he was very pleased, and wrote at once
for Princess Belinda's likeness. Of course they sent him a picture of
her Sunday face, which was the most beautiful face in the world. As soon
as he saw it he knew that this was not only the most beautiful face in
the world, but the dearest, so he wrote to her father by the next
post--applying for her hand in the usual way and enclosing the most
respectable references. The King told the Princess.
'Come,' said he, 'what do you say to this young man?'