over to occult thought.
But Hugh had begun to speak, and faces of wonder were lifted to him, for
he was strong of lung, and the breath from the magic bags went farther
than ever before.
"Our friend the Necromancer is indisposed, and I must take his place,"
he began. "Like him, I have chosen a theme from the depths of human
thought; and now, hear! hear! hear!"
Then eloquence poured forth from the man's lips so fast, so full a
stream, that the very welkin was rose-tinted, and a great rainbow seemed
to overspread the sky. Gray clouds above the tallest spires broke into
tints of opal, and all the air shaded into the violet and purple of
exclamation points, and of the pet hiatus, which was hard to work, but
came well off. Golden glory haunted carven door and window, and words of
flame crept around the tracery of arch and gable. Women sobbed for very
joy; others wrote madly on their tablets; maidens gasped with red lips
slightly opened; never, during the whole lecture season, had come so big
a wind from out the bags, and honest Hugh blushed with mingled shame and
triumph when he saw the face of his betrothed, for it wore the look of
one who had seen the white vision of naked truth.
Following the fashion of the Necromancer, he had taken a maxim, and had
dressed it up so that men knew it not, and so that it came forth as
revelation. All that he had said from the first to the last was the
truth that he knew best: "Honesty is the best policy;" but this was the
way in which he had said it, with constantly shifting color:
"Glory awaits the equable! All-hails are the portion of him, who,
unswerving, with eyes upon the path ahead, with lofty head erect,
perambulates his chosen path through this world's tangled wilderness,
turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, though golden cohorts
beckon. The goal is for the upright feet. The crown waits.... What
matter if the victor be sobbing and breathless, so that he be
conqueror?" (Observe the hiatus.) "So saith golden-tongued Plato; so
saith heavy-browed Aristotle of persuasive speech; so saith Aulus
Gellius, withdrawn in his inner truth, and his brother, Currant Gellius,
whose essence clings; so say the holy fathers, subtle Basil,
myriad-minded Chrysostom; so saith the copy-book."
When the speech was over, and the bags hidden away, Hugh bore as best he
might the tears and congratulations of the women, their murmured
plaudits, and inspired looks.
"'Tis the first time I have ever failed to give honest measure," he said
shamefacedly to himself as they flocked about him.
That night, as he sat with the maiden and her father, he spoke of
departing on the morrow with a ship that would sail for Morocco to be
gone many months, and his sweetheart came to him, creeping into his
arms.
"Do not leave me, Hugh," she pleaded. "It is so far away."
"I must go, little one," he answered, smoothing her fair hair. "Men sit
not ever by the fire to hear tabby purr."
"Say them again," she pleaded, "say again the words thou didst speak
this morning, that I may have them with me when thou art far away."
"Far in illimitable recesses of time and of space," he began
shamefacedly, "before phenomena existed, thy bodiless soul and mine met
and mingled as one"--
"Where hast learned that jargon, Hugh?" asked the old merchant, with a
loud guffaw.
"Hush!" said Hugh, with loving hands upon the maiden's ears so that she
might not hear. "All is fair in love, father!"
But Hugh was still an honest merchant, and never in his long and happy
life did he use the stolen vocabulary in bargaining, or to gain
dishonest advantage in trade. Only, when the face of Blanche, his wife,
grew sad, he would take out the colored bags, which he kept secretly
locked in an iron chest, and then the old smiles would come back to her
beautiful face, and with them the look of awe wherewith she regarded her
husband, as the mist of purple, and the flecks of rose color, and the
bubbles of gold, fell on hair and eye and ear.
THE PRINCESS
AND THE MICROBE
THE
PRINCESS AND THE MICROBE
[Illustration]
The Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine sat on a stone seat by the
mermaid fountain in the royal gardens, crying bitterly because she was
not a prince. The sun was warm, the water splashed merrily over the
mermaids' tails, and not far away two infant counts, an archduckling,
and a baby baroness were playing on the green grass, but the Princess
would have none of their game of tag. She only howled with her mouth
open, and paused for breath, and howled again. Then Lady Marie Françoise
Godolphin and the Duchess Louise of Werthenheim, who were pacing the
garden paths by box hedge and rose bed (Lady Marie was superb in pink
chiffon over white silk, and the Duchess wore blue embroidered tulle
looped with clusters of artificial lilies), frowned and whispered to
each other that the naughty child ought to be punished, which was
manifestly unfair, as it was all their fault. Never would the Princess
Olivera Rinalda Victorine have thought of being wickedly ungrateful for
the privilege of being a girl, if the following conversation had not
reached her through the box hedge:--
_Lady Marie_: His Majesty will be _so_ relieved that it is a son. Think,
the boy will be Auguste Philippe the Twenty-fourth!
_The Duchess_: I distinctly remember the grief of both the King and
Queen when the Princess turned out to be a girl.
It was then that the Princess Victorine, who had been dandling her doll
and gaining great comfort from this distinctly feminine occupation,
threw this same doll from her with violence, unconscious of the symbolic
character of the act, and digging her little fists into her eyes, burst
into weeping so loud that Lady Marie Françoise and Duchess Louise
dragged their buckram-stiffened trains away over the grass to escape
from their victim's cries.
Presently sobbing became hard work, and the Princess sat still in the
sunshine, thinking. Her blue eyes had red rims about them, her yellow
hair was dried in wisps on her forehead, her fat legs hung dejectedly
down. She was reaching back farther and farther into her dim little
consciousness, trying to remember how she ever came to make that
dreadful initial mistake. She had disappointed the Queen, her
mother--here the sobs began again, for the Princess loved that royal
lady; she had chosen, though she could not remember when, and had chosen
wrongly. Then she began to wonder what it was to be this thing that the
King and Queen and Lady Marie and the Duchess were so grateful for, a
boy. She candidly thought that she was nicer than the two little counts
and the archduckling, and she found her riddle hard to read, for no one
had ever before suggested to her, much less explained, the disgrace of
sex.
Crying was difficult, and thinking was harder still--for the Princess.
Presently she jumped down from her bench and trotted away almost
joyfully, for a happy thought had struck her. The Princess was the
sweetest, most obliging little soul in the world, and helpful withal. A
way of escape had suggested itself to her: she would find out what boys
were like and be one. The Queen, her mother, should be no longer
disappointed in her, nor should any ladies of the court make invidious
remarks through box hedges. Whatever happened, she would never again
turn out to be a girl. So, in an unfortunate comparison, made by two
people who could obviously ill afford to be critics, began the evolution
of that unnatural monster, more "fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea,"
a mannish woman.
At first the Princess Victorine prayed about it. Every night, in her
little golden crib, which had the arms of her house--a spotless leopard,
_couchant_--embroidered on the blue satin hangings, she shut her eyes
and begged to be made into a prince with yellow love-locks and scarlet
doublet and pink hose. Would he be Olivero Rinaldo Victor the
Twenty-fourth, she wondered? But every morning she wakened with
indignation to the fact that she was still a girl. As her faith in
miracle weakened, her determination to succeed by her own efforts grew
stronger, and she never doubted that she could do it if she tried hard
enough. Her face took on an expression of firmness, "most unfeminine,"
said Lady Marie, who was her governess.
"Do not run, my dear--it is so masculine," said Lady Marie, often; or
"Do not climb trees, your Highness--such rough playing is fit only for
boys."
Then the Princess would look at her with non-committal, wide-opened eyes
and say nothing. She had a secret, inner knowledge, dating from that
moment of revelation in the garden, of the superiority of being a boy,
and henceforward nothing could take it from her, not precept, nor
example, nor soft insinuation of the beauty and propriety of
womanliness. She knew that people were trying to deceive her; she had
heard of conspiracies before--but she never let them see that she knew.
On occasions like this she had a way of looking stupid which was nearer
cleverness than anything else that she ever did.
Now, there are people for whom one idea, with variations, will last a
lifetime, and the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine was one of them. As
to questions about the whys and wherefores of things, she never asked
one in her life, nor answered one. Very systematically she set about her
life-work. As his Highness, her baby brother, grew up, she imitated him.
Once she was found standing with her sturdy legs apart and her arms
akimbo, whistling. Lady Marie and the Queen both wept, and deprived the
Princess that day of her bread and jam, but to no effect. She seemed
inspired by the energy of the small boy or the demon. Her legs could not
keep still; she ran, she jumped, she leaped, she climbed, she played all
boyish games, and once, but my ink blushes red in recording this, she
was caught by the Duchess turning somersaults in the garden. Terrible
were the reproaches heaped upon her, and her misdeeds seemed greater
because they went unexplained. On this occasion Lady Marie and the
Duchess were both sent to discipline her. (Lady Marie was attired in
rose satin covered with black lace, and the Duchess was charming in
Nile-green brocade, with pearls.) When Lady Marie said, with her scented
handkerchief at her eyes: "My dear, your actions are bringing me into
disrepute; what will their Majesties think of me?" the Princess, who
detested scents, only turned red and said nothing. Not once did she
retort that she never would have tried to be a boy if these two had not
taught her the desirability of it; she only trudged on in her own way
toward the longed-for goal, sure that the scoldings, the reproaches,
and, saddest of all, her mother's tears, came because she had not tried
hard enough and had not succeeded.
There were times when the Princess Victorine surpassed Auguste Philippe.
One sunshiny morning, when the two were playing knight and ogre in the
courtyard, the Prince announced that he meant to climb the castle wall.
He did it only out of bravado, for, being a boy, with a boy's common
sense, he knew that it was impossible.
"I'm going to climb it, too," said Olivera Rinalda Victorine stubbornly.
"Pshaw, you can't! You're only a girl," said Auguste Philippe, strutting
up and down in his slashed velvet doublet and his feathered cap.
"And you are only a boy," said the Princess, meditatively eying him. She
did not say it to be saucy--she was only thinking. Then she deliberately
took the hem of her embroidered blue satin skirt in her teeth and began
to climb the wall, while Auguste Philippe watched from below with wrath
and terror in his eyes. By means of a niche here, a clinging ivy vine
there, a window ledge, and, now and then, a friendly, grinning gargoyle,
the Princess succeeded, and stood at last triumphant upon the
battlements, waving her blue skirt for a flag. But all that she got for
it was a scolding, and, to the day of his death, Auguste Philippe never
admitted that it was true. In fact, he never entirely believed it,
though he had watched every step from the courtyard below.
Better even than boyish sports, the Princess loved stories of knightly
deeds, and the very pith and marrow of chivalry entered into her bones.
She could not read, but that did not matter, for the story-tellers could
not write, but oh! they could tell tales. Stories of dragons slain and
ogres vanquished, stories of maidens rescued, enchanters caught and
prisoned, stories of caitiff knights thrust through at the moment of
their greatest villainy by the swords of heroes, all these the Princess
Victorine drank up with greedy ears and mind, and her heroic little
heart throbbed within her. Often--it was most unmaidenly--she furtively
felt of her muscle in leg or arm, wondering when she would be strong
enough to go forth in quest, for not one tale roused in her the desire
to become a teller of stories herself--she only wanted to act one. Once
she took Auguste Philippe aside, saying:--
"I'll tell you a secret, if you won't tell."
"Go ahead!" said Auguste Philippe graciously. He had doubly the air of a
sovereign, being at once a brother and heir presumptive.
"I'm going out to find and fight a dragon," said Princess Victorine.
"Huh!" sneered the Prince. "There aren't any dragons any more. You are
behind the times."
"Aren't any dragons!" cried the Princess. "What do you mean?"
"There haven't been any for a long time," remarked Auguste Philippe
nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets. But the Princess would not have
the foundations of her faith shaken too easily.
"What do they mean by telling us about them all the time?" she demanded.
"Every minstrel that comes here does, and so does old Lord Jean, and the
Countess Madeline, and everybody nice."
"I don't care," asserted the Prince. "There aren't any--there's only the
Microbe."
"What's the Microbe?" gasped the Princess.
"It's worse than dragons, that's what it is," said Auguste Philippe
viciously.
"What does it do?" asked the Princess.
"It bites," answered the Prince. "It stays somewhere in the woods and
swamps, and every year it eats a great number of youths and maidens, and
old men and children. It's always hungry."
"Why doesn't somebody go and kill it?" said the Princess.
"Dunno!" answered Auguste Philippe.
"What does it look like?"
"It has one great eye," answered the Prince unhesitatingly, knowing that
life demanded that he should instruct the feminine mind whether he had
information or not; "it has ten great rows of teeth, and what it does
not bite with one set it bites with another. It never roars--that makes
it worse than a dragon, for you can't tell when it is coming. And it has
a hundred thousand claws reaching everywhere."
The Princess went and sat by a rosebush, wearing her most enigmatical
expression. If she was overawed, she was too plucky to show it. Prince
Auguste Philippe looked at her, not without remorse. He was aware that
he knew nothing of the Microbe save its name, but he decided not to
confess--it would only shake a sister's confidence, so he went away to
fly his kite.
Now, years flew past, and every day the Princess's bosom swelled with
knightly ardor, and every waking thought was of the slaying of the
Microbe. The words of Auguste Philippe that day by the rosebush became
the second inspiration of her life, and the second only completed and
strengthened the first. At eighteen, as at six, the Princess Olivera
Rinalda Victorine was round of face and pink of cheek. Her big blue
eyes, set in the baby fairness of her face under the yellow hair, had
the confiding look of a little child. All this was very pretty, but
manly sports had developed her physique far beyond the bounds of
feminine propriety. There were muscles on her lovely shoulders, and they
made her tiring-women weep. As for her biceps, she had always to wear
loose, flowing sleeves, for the strong arms broke through the embroidery
of tight ones. She was taller than she should have been, and her waist
refused to taper. If her sex had been different, the royal parents would
have gloried in her strength and her agility, but as it was, they cast
down their eyes in her presence and begged her, if she had any filial
reverence, to talk mincingly and small, at least in their presence.
One day the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine sought out Lady Marie.
"I am going on a quest, to find and fight the Microbe," she remarked
briefly. Lady Marie gave her one look, and fainted, and the Princess
revived her by means of her vinaigrette.
"My dear!" whimpered Lady Marie, "think how many gray hairs you are
bringing down in sorrow. I do not mean mine," she added hastily; and,
in truth, hers were no longer gray.
"It's got to be killed," said the Princess sturdily. "It's a pest."
[Illustration: "IT'S GOT TO BE KILLED," SAID THE PRINCESS STURDILY]
"But what is it?" whispered Lady Marie, blushing through her rouge. "Is
it a thing that a young girl ought to know about?"
There was hubbub in the court for ten days. Counts, marchionesses,
dukes, and earls gathered in corners and talked under their breath. Some
thought that the Princess should be imprisoned in a dungeon; others
spoke of her with pity, believing her mad. One party, headed by old Lord
Jean and the Countess Madeline, said that it was all nonsense. Everybody
knew that there was no such thing as the Microbe; it was only a new
heresy, wickedly devised to shake the established faith in dragons. The
Princess might just as well be allowed to go the way of her folly and
find out the truth. Another faction, made up of believers, spoke darkly
of the mystery that enshrouded the foe, for he lived in a fog, and went
out to kill veiled in cloud, and they hinted that if the Princess went
to find him, she would not return alive. His Majesty and her Majesty,
bewildered, agreed with both parties, wept, protested, but did not
forbid the Princess to go, for fear that she would not mind. Auguste
Philippe said a bad word.
At first the Princess tried to reason with them--an unwonted occupation
for her.
"It really is a combat that a lady could very well engage in," she said
earnestly. "It isn't as if it were a dragon, you know." But they only
pooh-poohed and ha-haed until she shut her lips very tightly together,
and went on her way as usual, unexplained.
Just here attention was diverted from her, for his Majesty, who had been
hurt in hunting, sickened and died, and amid sobs and whisperings and
discussions, Auguste Philippe the Twenty-fourth came to the throne.
There were many rumors and whispers of how the late King had come to his
death: some said that it was a fall from his steed; others hinted the
Microbe, shivering with horror at the name. No one was sure of anything,
and the court physicians very cleverly gave out that they could not
explain at length his Majesty's ailment because nobody knew enough to
understand.
But the Princess Victorine, who was not a person of doubts, was
convinced from the first. With her head held very erect, she went to the
court armorer, and gave orders that he dared not disobey; then she went
to the royal stables and made her choice, while all stood still to watch
her, spellbound, no one venturing to lift a hand. Her Majesty was too
much overcome with grief to care what happened; Lady Marie and the
Duchess were absorbed and happy getting the court into mourning, and so
there was no one but Auguste Philippe to say good-by to the Princess
when she went away. He had risen very early, and stood upon the
battlements to see her go.
It was one brave June day when the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine,
armed _cap-à-pie_, went forth to war. She was mounted on a charger of
dapple gray; a palfrey she would not have. On her head was a shining
steel helmet, through the back of which her tawny hair floated down her
back--there was not room to do it high. Through her visor her blue eyes
sparkled with a steady light. On her arm she carried a blue shield, for
even in her battle mood she could not forget what color was becoming. It
bore the device that she had chosen for herself, a virgin _rampant_,
gules. The armor that covered her from head to foot was of wrought rings
of finest steel, made with a flowing skirt that fell in protecting folds
about her feet. Her right hand held a spear; with her left she guided
her steed.
"Good-by, dear!" called the Princess, waving her hand to Auguste
Philippe.
"You are a silly thing," he remarked, affectionately, from the
battlements. "You won't do anything but tear your clothes."
He did not try to stop her. In the strain of becoming Auguste Philippe
the Twenty-fourth he found that there were many things he was not so
sure of as he had been before. The flame in his sister's eyes he did not
understand, and he wondered why she was not content to stay at home and
play at quoits and dance to music, as he was; but he resolved that
Victorine should make a fool of herself in her own way, and that it
should not cost her too dear. So he stood long watching her as she went
shining across the great green plain with the light flashing from a
thousand glittering points on her armor.
Now, the Princess rode by night and day, and not once did her courage
fail or her arm grow weary. She left behind the green plain and the
pleasant trees, and traveled in a grievous waste beyond the songs of
birds, and anon she came to a woodland that was dark and old. She was
sorely puzzled as to the habitat of the Microbe, for in his raids he
came from east and west and north and south, and no one could tell if he
had a permanent abiding-place. Often in the dusky shadows of the wood,
she stopped to call a challenge: "What, ho! Come out and try thy skill!"
But that was not his way of fighting, and he stayed hidden. Sometimes
she inquired at a cottage door or at a shepherd's hut on the edge of the
wood, but all thought that the lovely lady in armor was surely mad,
wearing such strange clothing and asking such strange questions. Once
she came upon a witch-wife who was gathering simples by a swamp in the
wood.
"Is the pretty lady looking for the pretty knight that passed this way
yestere'en?" asked the witch-wife, with a horrible leer of her sunken
eyes.
The Princess elevated her eyebrows with a look of scorn.
"No," she answered coldly; "I am looking for the Microbe."
"How?" asked the witch-woman, with her hand behind her ear.
"The Microbe!" shouted the Princess.
"Is it a man, or a lady, or a place?"
"It's a monster!" shrieked the Princess. "It kills, and eats, and
destroys." And then followed a faithful repetition of Auguste Philippe's
description of the beast. The witch-wife laughed and rocked to and fro,
her yellow teeth showing in her shrunken gums.
"Oh, deary, deary, deary!" she said, "there ain't any such critter,
truly there ain't. I've lived here in the swamp seventy-nine year; I
never saw one, and I sees pretty nigh everything."
"Who eats the youths and the maidens, and the old men and the children?"
demanded the Princess sternly.
"How do I know? How do I know?" cackled the old woman. "_I_ don't."
The Princess Victorine rode away, and behind her the witch-wife laughed.
"That's the way the pretty knight went," she called. "You'll find him
further on."