When Prince Dolor sat up in bed, trying to remember where he was,
whither he had been, and what he had seen the day before, he perceived
that his room was empty.
Generally his nurse rather worried him by breaking his slumbers, coming
in and “setting things to rights,” as she called it. Now the dust lay
thick upon chairs and tables; there was no harsh voice heard to scold
him for not getting up immediately, which, I am sorry to say, this boy
did not always do. For he so enjoyed lying still, and thinking lazily
about everything or nothing, that, if he had not tried hard against it,
he would certainly have become like those celebrated
“Two little men
Who lay in their bed till the clock struck ten.”
It was striking ten now, and still no nurse was to be seen. He was
rather relieved at first, for he felt so tired; and besides, when he
stretched out his arm, he found to his dismay that he had gone to bed in
his clothes.
Very uncomfortable he felt, of course; and just a little frightened.
Especially when he began to call and call again, but nobody answered.
Often he used to think how nice it would be to get rid of his nurse and
live in this tower all by himself--like a sort of monarch able to do
everything he liked, and leave undone all that he did not want to do;
but now that this seemed really to have happened, he did not like it at
all.
“Nurse,--dear nurse,--please come back!” he called out. “Come back, and
I will be the best boy in all the land.”
And when she did not come back, and nothing but silence answered his
lamentable call, he very nearly began to cry.
“This won't do,” he said at last, dashing the tears from his eyes. “It's
just like a baby, and I'm a big boy--shall be a man some day. What has
happened, I wonder? I'll go and see.”
He sprang out of bed,--not to his feet, alas! but to his poor little
weak knees, and crawled on them from room to room. All the four chambers
were deserted--not forlorn or untidy, for everything seemed to have been
done for his comfort--the breakfast and dinner things were laid, the
food spread in order. He might live “like a prince,” as the proverb
is, for several days. But the place was entirely forsaken--there was
evidently not a creature but himself in the solitary tower.
A great fear came upon the poor boy. Lonely as his life had been, he had
never known what it was to be absolutely alone. A kind of despair seized
him--no violent anger or terror, but a sort of patient desolation.
“What in the world am I to do?” thought he, and sat down in the middle
of the floor, half inclined to believe that it would be better to give
up entirely, lay himself down, and die.
This feeling, however, did not last long, for he was young and strong,
and, I said before, by nature a very courageous boy. There came into
his head, somehow or other, a proverb that his nurse had taught him--the
people of Nomansland were very fond of proverbs:
“For every evil under the sun
There is a remedy, or there's none;
If there is one, try to find it--
If there isn't, never mind it.”
“I wonder is there a remedy now, and could I find it?” cried the Prince,
jumping up and looking out of the window.
No help there. He only saw the broad, bleak, sunshiny plain--that is, at
first. But by and by, in the circle of mud that surrounded the base of
the tower, he perceived distinctly the marks of a horse's feet, and just
in the spot where the deaf-mute was accustomed to tie up his great black
charger, while he himself ascended, there lay the remains of a bundle of
hay and a feed of corn.
“Yes, that's it. He has come and gone, taking nurse away with him. Poor
nurse! how glad she would be to go!”
That was Prince Dolor's first thought. His second--wasn't it
natural?--was a passionate indignation at her cruelty--at the cruelty
of all the world toward him, a poor little helpless boy. Then he
determined, forsaken as he was, to try and hold on to the last, and not
to die as long as he could possibly help it.
Anyhow, it would be easier to die here than out in the world, among the
terrible doings which he had just beheld--from the midst of which, it
suddenly struck him, the deaf-mute had come, contriving somehow to make
the nurse understand that the king was dead, and she need have no fear
in going back to the capital, where there was a grand revolution, and
everything turned upside down. So, of course, she had gone. “I hope
she'll enjoy it, miserable woman--if they don't cut off her head too.”
And then a kind of remorse smote him for feeling so bitterly toward her,
after all the years she had taken care of him--grudgingly, perhaps, and
coldly; still she had taken care of him, and that even to the last: for,
as I have said, all his four rooms were as tidy as possible, and his
meals laid out, that he might have no more trouble than could be helped.
“Possibly she did not mean to be cruel. I won't judge her,” said he. And
afterward he was very glad that he had so determined.
For the second time he tried to dress himself, and then to do everything
he could for himself--even to sweeping up the hearth and putting on
more coals. “It's a funny thing for a prince to have to do,” said he,
laughing. “But my godmother once said princes need never mind doing
anything.”
And then he thought a little of his godmother. Not of summoning her, or
asking her to help him,--she had evidently left him to help himself,
and he was determined to try his best to do it, being a very proud and
independent boy,--but he remembered her tenderly and regret-fully, as if
even she had been a little hard upon him--poor, forlorn boy that he was.
But he seemed to have seen and learned so much within the last few days
that he scarcely felt like a boy, but a man--until he went to bed at
night.
When I was a child, I used often to think how nice it would be to live
in a little house all by my own self--a house built high up in a tree,
or far away in a forest, or halfway up a hillside so deliciously alone
and independent. Not a lesson to learn--but no! I always liked learning
my lessons. Anyhow, to choose the lessons I liked best, to have as many
books to read and dolls to play with as ever I wanted: above all, to be
free and at rest, with nobody to tease or trouble or scold me, would be
charming. For I was a lonely little thing, who liked quietness--as many
children do; which other children, and sometimes grown-up people even,
cannot understand. And so I can understand Prince Dolor.
After his first despair, he was not merely comfortable, but actually
happy in his solitude, doing everything for himself, and enjoying
everything by himself--until bedtime. Then he did not like it at all.
No more, I suppose, than other children would have liked my imaginary
house in a tree when they had had sufficient of their own company.
But the Prince had to bear it--and he did bear it, like a prince--for
fully five days. All that time he got up in the morning and went to bed
at night without having spoken to a creature, or, indeed, heard a
single sound. For even his little lark was silent; and as for his
traveling-cloak, either he never thought about it, or else it had been
spirited away--for he made no use of it, nor attempted to do so.
A very strange existence it was, those five lonely days. He never
entirely forgot it. It threw him back upon himself, and into himself--in
a way that all of us have to learn when we grow up, and are the better
for it; but it is somewhat hard learning.
On the sixth day Prince Dolor had a strange composure in his look, but
he was very grave and thin and white. He had nearly come to the end of
his provisions--and what was to happen next? Get out of the tower he
could not: the ladder the deaf-mute used was always carried away again;
and if it had not been, how could the poor boy have used it? And even if
he slung or flung himself down, and by miraculous chance came alive to
the foot of the tower, how could he run away?
Fate had been very hard to him, or so it seemed.
He made up his mind to die. Not that he wished to die; on the contrary,
there was a great deal that he wished to live to do; but if he must die,
he must. Dying did not seem so very dreadful; not even to lie quiet like
his uncle, whom he had entirely forgiven now, and neither be miserable
nor naughty any more, and escape all those horrible things that he had
seen going on outside the palace, in that awful place which was called
“the world.”
“It's a great deal nicer here,” said the poor little Prince, and
collected all his pretty things round him: his favorite pictures, which
he thought he should like to have near him when he died; his books and
toys--no, he had ceased to care for toys now; he only liked them because
he had done so as a child. And there he sat very calm and patient, like
a king in his castle, waiting for the end.
“Still, I wish I had done something first--something worth doing, that
somebody might remember me by,” thought he. “Suppose I had grown a man,
and had had work to do, and people to care for, and was so useful and
busy that they liked me, and perhaps even forgot I was lame? Then it
would have been nice to live, I think.”
A tear came into the little fellow's eyes, and he listened intently
through the dead silence for some hopeful sound.
Was there one?--was it his little lark, whom he had almost forgotten?
No, nothing half so sweet. But it really was something--something which
came nearer and nearer, so that there was no mistaking it. It was the
sound of a trumpet, one of the great silver trumpets so admired in
Nomansland. Not pleasant music, but very bold, grand, and inspiring.
As he listened to it the boy seemed to recall many things which had
slipped his memory for years, and to nerve himself for whatever might be
going to happen.
What had happened was this.
The poor condemned woman had not been such a wicked woman after all.
Perhaps her courage was not wholly disinterested, but she had done a
very heroic thing. As soon as she heard of the death and burial of the
King and of the changes that were taking place in the country, a daring
idea came into her head--to set upon the throne of Nomansland its
rightful heir. Thereupon she persuaded the deaf-mute to take her away
with him, and they galloped like the wind from city to city, spreading
everywhere the news that Prince Dolor's death and burial had been an
invention concocted by his wicked uncle that he was alive and well, and
the noblest young prince that ever was born.
It was a bold stroke, but it succeeded. The country, weary perhaps of
the late King's harsh rule, and yet glad to save itself from the horrors
of the last few days, and the still further horrors of no rule at all,
and having no particular interest in the other young princes, jumped at
the idea of this Prince, who was the son of their late good King and the
beloved Queen Dolorez.
“Hurrah for Prince Dolor! Let Prince Dolor be our sovereign!” rang from
end to end of the kingdom. Everybody tried to remember what a dear baby
he once was--how like his mother, who had been so sweet and kind, and
his father, the finest-looking king that ever reigned. Nobody remembered
his lameness--or, if they did, they passed it over as a matter of no
consequence. They were determined to have him reign over them, boy as
he was--perhaps just because he was a boy, since in that case the great
nobles thought they should be able to do as they liked with the country.
Accordingly, with a fickleness not confined to the people of Nomansland,
no sooner was the late King laid in his grave than they pronounced him
to have been a usurper; turned all his family out of the palace, and
left it empty for the reception of the new sovereign, whom they went
to fetch with great rejoicing, a select body of lords, gentlemen,
and soldiers traveling night and day in solemn procession through the
country until they reached Hopeless Tower.
There they found the Prince, sitting calmly on the floor--deadly
pale, indeed, for he expected a quite different end from this, and was
resolved, if he had to die, to die courageously, like a Prince and a
King.
But when they hailed him as Prince and King, and explained to him how
matters stood, and went down on their knees before him, offering the
crown (on a velvet cushion, with four golden tassels, each nearly as
big as his head),--small though he was and lame, which lameness the
courtiers pretended not to notice,--there came such a glow into his
face, such a dignity into his demeanor, that he became beautiful,
king-like.
“Yes,” he said, “if you desire it, I will be your king. And I will do my
best to make my people happy.”
Then there arose, from inside and outside the tower, such a shout as
never yet was heard across the lonely plain.
Prince Dolor shrank a little from the deafening sound. “How shall I be
able to rule all this great people? You forget, my lords, that I am only
a little boy still.”
“Not so very little,” was the respectful answer. “We have searched
in the records, and found that your Royal Highness--your Majesty, I
mean--is fifteen years old.”
“Am I?” said Prince Dolor; and his first thought was a thoroughly
childish pleasure that he should now have a birthday, with a whole
nation to keep it. Then he remembered that his childish days were done.
He was a monarch now. Even his nurse, to whom, the moment he saw her,
he had held out his hand, kissed it reverently, and called him
ceremoniously “his Majesty the King.”
“A king must be always a king, I suppose,” said he half-sadly, when, the
ceremonies over, he had been left to himself for just ten minutes, to
put off his boy's clothes and be reattired in magnificent robes, before
he was conveyed away from his tower to the royal palace.
He could take nothing with him; indeed, he soon saw that, however
politely they spoke, they would not allow him to take anything. If he
was to be their king, he must give up his old life forever. So he looked
with tender farewell on his old books, old toys, the furniture he knew
so well, and the familiar plain in all its levelness--ugly yet pleasant,
simply because it was familiar.
“It will be a new life in a new world,” said he to himself; “but I'll
remember the old things still. And, oh! if before I go I could but once
see my dear old godmother.”
While he spoke he had laid himself down on the bed for a minute or
two, rather tired with his grandeur, and confused by the noise of the
trumpets which kept playing incessantly down below. He gazed, half
sadly, up to the skylight, whence there came pouring a stream of
sunrays, with innumerable motes floating there, like a bridge thrown
between heaven and earth. Sliding down it, as if she had been made of
air, came the little old woman in gray.
So beautiful looked she--old as she was--that Prince Dolor was at first
quite startled by the apparition. Then he held out his arms in eager
delight.
“Oh, godmother, you have not forsaken me!”
“Not at all, my son. You may not have seen me, but I have seen you many
a time.”
“How?”
“Oh, never mind. I can turn into anything I please, you know. And I have
been a bearskin rug, and a crystal goblet--and sometimes I have changed
from inanimate to animate nature, put on feathers, and made myself very
comfortable as a bird.”
“Ha!” laughed the prince, a new light breaking in upon him as he caught
the infection of her tone, lively and mischievous. “Ha! ha! a lark,
for instance?”
“Or a magpie,” answered she, with a capital imitation of Mistress Mag's
croaky voice. “Do you suppose I am always sentimental, and never funny?
If anything makes you happy, gay, or grave, don't you think it is more
than likely to come through your old godmother?”
“I believe that,” said the boy tenderly, holding out his arms. They
clasped one another in a close embrace.
Suddenly Prince Dolor looked very anxious. “You will not leave me now
that I am a king? Otherwise I had rather not be a king at all. Promise
never to forsake me!”
The little old woman laughed gayly. “Forsake you? that is impossible.
But it is just possible you may forsake me. Not probable though. Your
mother never did, and she was a queen. The sweetest queen in all the
world was the Lady Dolorez.”
“Tell me about her,” said the boy eagerly. “As I get older I think I can
understand more. Do tell me.”
“Not now. You couldn't hear me for the trumpets and the shouting. But
when you are come to the palace, ask for a long-closed upper room, which
looks out upon the Beautiful Mountains; open it and take it for your
own. Whenever you go there you will always find me, and we will talk
together about all sorts of things.”
“And about my mother?”
The little old woman nodded--and kept nodding and smiling to herself
many times, as the boy repeated over and over again the sweet words he
had never known or understood--“my mother--my mother.”
“Now I must go,” said she, as the trumpets blared louder and louder, and
the shouts of the people showed that they would not endure any delay.
“Good-by, good-by! Open the window and out I fly.”
Prince Dolor repeated gayly the musical rhyme--but all the while tried
to hold his godmother fast.
Vain, vain! for the moment that a knocking was heard at his door the sun
went behind a cloud, the bright stream of dancing motes vanished, and
the little old woman with them--he knew not where.
So Prince Dolor quitted his tower--which he had entered so mournfully
and ignominiously as a little helpless baby carried in the deaf-mute's
arms--quitted it as the great King of Nomansland.
The only thing he took away with him was something so insignificant that
none of the lords, gentlemen, and soldiers who escorted him with such
triumphant splendor could possibly notice it--a tiny bundle, which
he had found lying on the floor just where the bridge of sunbeams had
rested. At once he had pounced upon it, and thrust it secretly into his
bosom, where it dwindled into such small proportions that it might
have been taken for a mere chest-comforter, a bit of flannel, or an old
pocket-handkerchief. It was his traveling-cloak!