We all have our weaknesses. Mine is mulberries. Yours, perhaps, motor
cars. Professor Taykin's was christenings--royal christenings. He always
expected to be asked to the christening parties of all the little royal
babies, and of course he never was, because he was not a lord, or a
duke, or a seller of bacon and tea, or anything really high-class, but
merely a wicked magician, who by economy and strict attention to
customers had worked up a very good business of his own. He had not
always been wicked. He was born quite good, I believe, and his old
nurse, who had long since married a farmer and retired into the calm of
country life, always used to say that he was the duckiest little boy in
a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs. But he had changed since
he was a boy, as a good many other people do--perhaps it was his trade.
I dare say you've noticed that cobblers are usually thin, and brewers
are generally fat, and magicians are almost always wicked.
Well, his weakness (for christenings) grew stronger and stronger because
it was never indulged, and at last he 'took the bull into his own
hands,' as the Irish footman at the palace said, and went to a
christening without being asked. It was a very grand party given by the
King of the Fortunate Islands, and the little prince was christened
Fortunatus. No one took any notice of Professor Taykin. They were too
polite to turn him out, but they made him wish he'd never come. He felt
quite an outsider, as indeed he was, and this made him furious. So that
when all the bright, light, laughing, fairy godmothers were crowding
round the blue satin cradle, and giving gifts of beauty and strength and
goodness to the baby, the Magician suddenly did a very difficult charm
(in his head, like you do mental arithmetic), and said:
'Young Forty may be all that, but _I_ say he shall be the stupidest
prince in the world,' and on that he vanished in a puff of red smoke
with a smell like the Fifth of November in a back garden on Streatham
Hill, and as he left no address the King of the Fortunate Islands
couldn't prosecute him for high treason.
Taykin was very glad to think that he had made such a lot of people
unhappy--the whole Court was in tears when he left, including the
baby--and he looked in the papers for another royal christening, so that
he could go to that and make a lot more people miserable. And there was
one fixed for the very next Wednesday. The Magician went to that, too,
disguised as a wealthy.
This time the baby was a girl. Taykin kept close to the pink velvet
cradle, and when all the nice qualities in the world had been given to
the Princess he suddenly said, 'Little Aura may be all that, but _I_ say
she shall be the ugliest princess in all the world.'
And instantly she was. It was terrible. And she had been such a
beautiful baby too. Every one had been saying that she was the most
beautiful baby they had ever seen. This sort of thing is often said at
christenings.
Having uglified the unfortunate little Princess the Magician did the
spell (in his mind, just as you do your spelling) to make himself
vanish, but to his horror there was no red smoke and no smell of
fireworks, and there he was, still, where he now very much wished not to
be. Because one of the fairies there had seen, just one second too late
to save the Princess, what he was up to, and had made a strong little
charm in a great hurry to prevent his vanishing. This Fairy was a White
Witch, and of course you know that White Magic is much stronger than
Black Magic, as well as more suited for drawing-room performances. So
there the Magician stood, 'looking like a thunder-struck pig,' as some
one unkindly said, and the dear White Witch bent down and kissed the
baby princess.
'There!' she said, 'you can keep that kiss till you want it. When the
time comes you'll know what to do with it. The Magician can't vanish,
Sire. You'd better arrest him.'
'Arrest that person,' said the King, pointing to Taykin. 'I suppose your
charms are of a permanent nature, madam.'
'Quite,' said the Fairy, 'at least they never go till there's no longer
any use for them.'
So the Magician was shut up in an enormously high tower, and allowed to
play with magic; but none of his spells could act outside the tower so
he was never able to pass the extra double guard that watched outside
night and day. The King would have liked to have the Magician executed
but the White Witch warned him that this would never do.
'Don't you see,' she said, 'he's the only person who can make the
Princess beautiful again. And he'll do it some day. But don't you go
_asking_ him to do it. He'll never do anything to oblige you. He's that
sort of man.'
So the years rolled on. The Magician stayed in the tower and did magic
and was very bored,--for it is dull to take white rabbits out of your
hat, and your hat out of nothing when there's no one to see you.
Prince Fortunatus was such a stupid little boy that he got lost quite
early in the story, and went about the country saying his name was
James, which it wasn't. A baker's wife found him and adopted him, and
sold the diamond buttons of his little overcoat, for three hundred
pounds, and as she was a very honest woman she put two hundred away for
James to have when he grew up.
The years rolled on. Aura continued to be hideous, and she was very
unhappy, till on her twentieth birthday her married cousin Belinda came
to see her. Now Belinda had been made ugly in her cradle too, so she
could sympathise as no one else could.
'But _I_ got out of it all right, and so will you,' said Belinda. 'I'm
sure the first thing to do is to find a magician.'
'Father banished them all twenty years ago,' said Aura behind her veil,
'all but the one who uglified me.'
'Then I should go to _him_,' said beautiful Belinda. 'Dress up as a
beggar maid, and give him fifty pounds to do it. Not more, or he may
suspect that you're not a beggar maid. It will be great fun. I'd go with
you only I promised Bellamant faithfully that I'd be home to lunch.' And
off she went in her mother-of-pearl coach, leaving Aura to look through
the bound volumes of _The Perfect Lady_ in the palace library, to find
out the proper costume for a beggar maid.
Now that very morning the Magician's old nurse had packed up a ham, and
some eggs, and some honey, and some apples, and a sweet bunch of
old-fashioned flowers, and borrowed the baker's boy to hold the horse
for her, and started off to see the Magician. It was forty years since
she'd seen him, but she loved him still, and now she thought she could
do him a good turn. She asked in the town for his address, and learned
that he lived in the Black Tower.
'But you'd best be careful,' the townsfolk said, 'he's a spiteful chap.'
'Bless you,' said the old nurse, 'he won't hurt me as nursed him when he
was a babe, in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs ever you
see.'
So she got to the tower, and the guards let her through. Taykin was
almost pleased to see her--remember he had had no visitors for twenty
years--and he was quite pleased to see the ham and the honey.
'But where did I put them _h_eggs?' said the nurse, 'and the apples--I
must have left them at home after all.'
She had. But the Magician just waved his hand in the air, and there was
a basket of apples that hadn't been there before. The eggs he took out
of her bonnet, the folds of her shawl, and even from his own mouth, just
like a conjurer does. Only of course he was a real Magician.
'Lor!' said she, 'it's like magic.'
'It _is_ magic,' said he. 'That's my trade. It's quite a pleasure to
have an audience again. I've lived here alone for twenty years. It's
very lonely, especially of an evening.'
'Can't you get out?' said the nurse.
'No. King's orders must be respected, but it's a dog's life.' He
sniffed, made himself a magic handkerchief out of empty air, and wiped
his eyes.
'Take an apprentice, my dear,' said the nurse.
'And teach him my magic? Not me.'
'Suppose you got one so stupid he _couldn't_ learn?'
'That would be all right--but it's no use advertising for a stupid
person--you'd get no answers.'
'You needn't advertise,' said the nurse; and she went out and brought in
James, who was really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and also the
baker's boy she had brought with her to hold the horse's head.
'Now, James,' she said, 'you'd like to be apprenticed, wouldn't you?'
'Yes,' said the poor stupid boy.
'Then give the gentleman your money, James.'
James did.
'My last doubts vanish,' said the Magician, 'he _is_ stupid. Nurse, let
us celebrate the occasion with a little drop of something. Not before
the boy because of setting an example. James, wash up. Not here, silly;
in the back kitchen.'
So James washed up, and as he was very clumsy he happened to break a
little bottle of essence of dreams that was on the shelf, and instantly
there floated up from the washing-up water the vision of a princess more
beautiful than the day--so beautiful that even James could not help
seeing how beautiful she was, and holding out his arms to her as she
came floating through the air above the kitchen sink. But when he held
out his arms she vanished. He sighed and washed up harder than ever.
'I wish I wasn't so stupid,' he said, and then there was a knock at the
door. James wiped his hands and opened. Some one stood there in very
picturesque rags and tatters. 'Please,' said some one, who was of course
the Princess, 'is Professor Taykin at home?'
'Walk in, please,' said James.
'My snakes alive!' said Taykin, 'what a day we're having. Three
visitors in one morning. How kind of you to call. Won't you take a
chair?'
'I hoped,' said the veiled Princess, 'that you'd give me something else
to take.'
'A glass of wine,' said Taykin. 'You'll take a glass of wine?'
'No, thank you,' said the beggar maid who was the Princess.
'Then take ... take your veil off,' said the nurse, 'or you won't feel
the benefit of it when you go out.'
'I can't,' said Aura, 'it wouldn't be safe.'
'Too beautiful, eh?' said the Magician. 'Still--you're quite safe here.'
'Can you do magic?' she abruptly asked.
'A little,' said he ironically.
'Well,' said she, 'it's like this. I'm so ugly no one can bear to look
at me. And I want to go as kitchenmaid to the palace. They want a cook
and a scullion and a kitchenmaid. I thought perhaps you'd give me
something to make me pretty. I'm only a poor beggar maid.... It would be
a great thing to me if....'
'Go along with you,' said Taykin, very cross indeed. 'I never give to
beggars.'
'Here's twopence,' whispered poor James, pressing it into her hand,
'it's all I've got left.'
'Thank you,' she whispered back. 'You _are_ good.'
And to the Magician she said:
'I happen to have fifty pounds. I'll give it you for a new face.'
'Done,' cried Taykin. 'Here's another stupid one!' He grabbed the money,
waved his wand, and then and there before the astonished eyes of the
nurse and the apprentice the ugly beggar maid became the loveliest
princess in the world.
'Lor!' said the nurse.
'My dream!' cried the apprentice.
'Please,' said the Princess, 'can I have a looking-glass?' The
apprentice ran to unhook the one that hung over the kitchen sink, and
handed it to her. 'Oh,' she said, 'how _very_ pretty I am. How can I
thank you?'
'Quite easily,' said the Magician, 'beggar maid as you are, I hereby
offer you my hand and heart.'
He put his hand into his waistcoat and pulled out his heart. It was fat
and pink, and the Princess did not like the look of it.
'Thank you very much,' said she, 'but I'd rather not.'
'But I insist,' said Taykin.
'But really, your offer....'
'Most handsome, I'm sure,' said the nurse.
'My affections are engaged,' said the Princess, looking down. 'I can't
marry you.'
'Am I to take this as a refusal?' asked Taykin; and the Princess said
she feared that he was.
'Very well, then,' he said, 'I shall see you home, and ask your father
about it. He'll not let you refuse an offer like this. Nurse, come and
tie my necktie.'
So he went out, and the nurse with him.
Then the Princess told the apprentice in a very great hurry who she was.
'It would never do,' she said, 'for him to see me home. He'd find out
that I was the Princess, and he'd uglify me again in no time.'
'He sha'n't see you home,' said James. 'I may be stupid but I'm strong
too.'
'How brave you are,' said Aura admiringly, 'but I'd rather slip away
quietly, without any fuss. Can't you undo the patent lock of that door?'
The apprentice tried but he was too stupid, and the Princess was not
strong enough.
'I'm sorry,' said the apprentice who was a Prince. 'I can't undo the
door, but when _he_ does I'll hold him and you can get away. I dreamed
of you this morning,' he added.
'I dreamed of you too,' said she, 'but you were different.'
'Perhaps,' said poor James sadly, 'the person you dreamed about wasn't
stupid, and I am.'
'Are you _really_?' cried the Princess. 'I _am_ so glad!'
'That's rather unkind, isn't it?' said he.
'No; because if _that's_ all that makes you different from the man I
dreamed about I can soon make _that_ all right.'
And with that she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. And at
her kiss his stupidness passed away like a cloud, and he became as
clever as any one need be; and besides knowing all the ordinary lessons
he would have learned if he had stayed at home in his palace, he knew
who he was, and where he was, and why, and he knew all the geography of
his father's kingdom, and the exports and imports and the condition of
politics. And he knew also that the Princess loved him.
So he caught her in his arms and kissed her, and they were very happy,
and told each other over and over again what a beautiful world it was,
and how wonderful it was that they should have found each other, seeing
that the world is not only beautiful but rather large.
'That first one was a magic kiss, you know,' said she. 'My fairy
godmother gave it to me, and I've been keeping it all these years for
you. You must get away from here, and come to the palace. Oh, you'll
manage it--you're clever now.'
'Yes,' he said, 'I _am_ clever now. I can undo the lock for you. Go, my
dear, go before he comes back.'
So the Princess went. And only just in time; for as she went out of one
door Taykin came in at the other.
He was furious to find her gone; and I should not like to write down the
things he said to his apprentice when he found that James had been so
stupid as to open the door for her. They were not polite things at all.
He tried to follow her. But the Princess had warned the guards, and he
could not get out.
'Oh,' he cried, 'if only my old magic would work outside this tower. I'd
soon be even with her.'
And then in a strange, confused, yet quite sure way, he felt that the
spell that held him, the White Witch's spell, was dissolved.
'To the palace!' he cried; and rushing to the cauldron that hung over
the fire he leaped into it, leaped out in the form of a red lion, and
disappeared.
Without a moment's hesitation the Prince, who was his apprentice,
followed him, calling out the same words and leaping into the same
cauldron, while the poor nurse screamed and wrung her hands. As he
touched the liquor in the cauldron he felt that he was not quite
himself. He was, in fact, a green dragon. He felt himself vanish--a most
uncomfortable sensation--and reappeared, with a suddenness that took his
breath away, in his own form and at the back door of the palace.
The time had been short, but already the Magician had succeeded in
obtaining an engagement as palace cook. How he did it without references
I don't know. Perhaps he made the references by magic as he had made the
eggs, and the apples, and the handkerchief.
Taykin's astonishment and annoyance at being followed by his faithful
apprentice were soon soothed, for he saw that a stupid scullion would be
of great use. Of course he had no idea that James had been made clever
by a kiss.
'But how are you going to cook?' asked the apprentice. 'You don't know
how!'
'I shall cook,' said Taykin, 'as I do everything else--by magic.' And he
did. I wish I had time to tell you how he turned out a hot dinner of
seventeen courses from totally empty saucepans, how James looked in a
cupboard for spices and found it empty, and how next moment the nurse
walked out of it. The Magician had been so long alone that he seemed to
revel in the luxury of showing off to some one, and he leaped about from
one cupboard to another, produced cats and cockatoos out of empty jars,
and made mice and rabbits disappear and reappear till James's head was
in a whirl, for all his cleverness; and the nurse, as she washed up,
wept tears of pure joy at her boy's wonderful skill.
'All this excitement's bad for my heart, though,' Taykin said at last,
and pulling his heart out of his chest, he put it on a shelf, and as he
did so his magic note-book fell from his breast and the apprentice
picked it up. Taykin did not see him do it; he was busy making the
kitchen lamp fly about the room like a pigeon.
It was just then that the Princess came in, looking more lovely than
ever in a simple little morning frock of white chiffon and diamonds.
'The beggar maid,' said Taykin, 'looking like a princess! I'll marry her
just the same.'
'I've come to give the orders for dinner,' she said; and then she saw
who it was, and gave one little cry and stood still, trembling.
'To order the dinner,' said the nurse. 'Then you're----'
'Yes,' said Aura, 'I'm the Princess.'
'You're the Princess,' said the Magician. 'Then I'll marry you all the
more. And if you say no I'll uglify you as the word leaves your lips.
Oh, yes--you think I've just been amusing myself over my cooking--but
I've really been brewing the strongest spell in the world. Marry me--or
drink----'
The Princess shuddered at these dreadful words.
'Drink, or marry me,' said the Magician. 'If you marry me you shall be
beautiful for ever.'
'Ah,' said the nurse, 'he's a match even for a Princess.'
'I'll tell papa,' said the Princess, sobbing.
'No, you won't,' said Taykin. 'Your father will never know. If you won't
marry me you shall drink this and become my scullery maid--my hideous
scullery maid--and wash up for ever in the lonely tower.'
He caught her by the wrist.
'Stop,' cried the apprentice, who was a Prince.
'Stop? _Me?_ Nonsense! Pooh!' said the Magician.
'Stop, I say!' said James, who was Fortunatus. '_I've got your heart!_'
He had--and he held it up in one hand, and in the other a cooking knife.
'One step nearer that lady,' said he, 'and in goes the knife.'
The Magician positively skipped in his agony and terror.
'I say, look out!' he cried. 'Be careful what you're doing. Accidents
happen so easily! Suppose your foot slipped! Then no apologies would
meet the case. That's my heart you've got there. My life's bound up in
it.'
'I know. That's often the case with people's hearts,' said Fortunatus.
'We've got you, my dear sir, on toast. My Princess, might I trouble you
to call the guards.'
The Magician did not dare to resist, so the guards arrested him. The
nurse, though in floods of tears, managed to serve up a very good plain
dinner, and after dinner the Magician was brought before the King.
Now the King, as soon as he had seen that his daughter had been made so
beautiful, had caused a large number of princes to be fetched by
telephone. He was anxious to get her married at once in case she turned
ugly again. So before he could do justice to the Magician he had to
settle which of the princes was to marry the Princess. He had chosen the
Prince of the Diamond Mountains, a very nice steady young man with a
good income. But when he suggested the match to the Princess she
declined it, and the Magician, who was standing at the foot of the
throne steps loaded with chains, clattered forward and said:
'Your Majesty, will you spare my life if I tell you something you don't
know?'