WHAT THE PRINCE ASKED FOR
The royal progress was the event of the morning and afternoon for
several days before it occurred to Pollyooly to tell the Honourable
John Ruffin about it. Then one evening, on their way to bathe, she
told him.
The Honourable John Ruffin stood still on the edge of the sea, looked
at her thoughtfully, and said:
"This is interesting indeed. I had no idea that German aggression had
extended to this retired spot."
"And he's such an ugly little boy," said Pollyooly.
"And he is all alone?"
"Oh, no: there's a baron with him to look after him--with a large
moustache. He's very ugly too," said Pollyooly frankly.
"This grows more interesting still. I think I should enjoy looking
into this matter. Prussian barons always need a firm hand. But I'm
too full up with golf to deal with it for the next day or two. I must
bear it in mind."
Plainly he did bear it in mind, for on the afternoon of the third day,
to Pollyooly's delight, he joined them on the sands. She introduced
him to Mrs. Gibson; and he thanked her for having had his two little
cousins to tea, and chatted to her in his cheerful and engaging fashion
till Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz came slouching along on his
devastating course. The Honourable John Ruffin observed him with every
appearance of the liveliest interest; but the Baron von Habelschwert
seemed to afford him even greater pleasure than did his young charge;
and upon him he gazed with a fascinated, loving eye.
"I have rarely seen a more perfect pair," he said to Mrs. Gibson in a
tone of deep content.
"Detestable creatures!" said Mrs. Gibson with some heat.
"Perhaps--but how incomparably Prussian!" said the Honourable John
Ruffin with warm appreciation. "And you let these unpleasant ones
terrorise your children?"
"Well, what can I do?" said Mrs. Gibson. "My husband would have
stopped it, if he had been down here; but he isn't. I have spoken to
one or two men, acquaintances, about it. But they seem afraid to
interfere."
"We are getting too highly civilised," said the Honourable John Ruffin
in a melancholy tone. "The fine old English spirit is dying out; and
they're afraid of getting into the papers. But evidently what is
needed is the giving of lessons; and the proper person to give them is
a fierce small boy--Irish for choice--one who is always and nobly
spoiling for a fight. Unfortunately I have not a fierce small Irish
boy to hand; but, thank goodness! there are still red Deepings left in
England."
"What is a red Deeping?" said Mrs. Gibson.
"The red Deepings are an old East Anglian strain--red-haired and very
fierce and cantankerous when roused. My little cousin Pollyooly here
is a red Deeping."
"Oh, do you think she could cope with that horrid little boy?" said
Mrs. Gibson eagerly.
"I'm sure of it," said the Honourable John Ruffin with decision. "Come
here, Pollyooly."
Pollyooly came; and he felt her biceps carefully. Then he said:
"Didn't Mr. Vance tell me a story of a boy called Henry Wiggins whom
you found disrespectful and taught manners?"
Pollyooly flushed faintly; but she said bravely, in an explanatory tone:
"I had to. He was always bothering."
"I should think that Henry Wiggins was a far more active and difficult
boy in a fight than this fat little prince," said the Honourable John
Ruffin.
"Oh, Henry Wiggins is tough but really he is quite easy. You've only
got to get hold of his hair," said Pollyooly quickly. "But of course
the prince has very short hair, only he isn't tough at all," she added
in the grave tones of one weighing the chances of battle.
"He certainly is cropped. The Prussians have no aesthetic sense," said
the Honourable John Ruffin in a disparaging tone. "But I should think
that you could get over the difficulty of the hair."
"Oh, yes: I'm nearly sure I could," said Pollyooly; and her deep blue
eyes began to shine. "May I smack him if he interferes with us?"
"Not on any account unless I am at hand," said the Honourable John
Ruffin quickly. "I have a deep, patriotic distrust of the chivalry of
Prussian barons. I do not think that this one could be trusted to see
fair play. You might have a baron on your hands as well as a prince;
and it might be too much for a red Deeping of your size. A prince at a
time should be your motto."
"It would be very amusing," said Mrs. Gibson; and her eyes danced.
"You shall see it," said the Honourable John Ruffin amiably. "Unbiased
spectators of a dramatic scene are always desirable; and it won't be
difficult to arrange your presence, for the business will need a little
stage-managing. You watch the prince, Pollyooly, and see how far he
goes down the beach, so that we can arrange the exact place for his
instruction."
The next day Pollyooly followed the prince to the end of his royal
progress twice; and she had little doubt that she would be able to draw
him into the battle for which she yearned, for he never saw her without
scowling darkly upon her.
On the second day the Honourable John Ruffin returned from his golf in
time to lunch with the two children; and he informed Pollyooly that he
proposed to spend the afternoon on the sand with them. They found Mrs.
Gibson with her children; and she accompanied them to the spot at which
the prince usually turned in his course. Twenty yards beyond it the
Honourable John Ruffin bade Pollyooly build a castle; and then he and
Mrs. Gibson left her and the Lump to build it, and retiring to the
sea-wall forty yards away, they sat down and fell into polite
conversation. As they left her, the Honourable John Ruffin's last
words to Pollyooly were:
"I don't forbid you to scratch him. Scratching is harmonious with the
female nature."
The statement afforded Mrs. Gibson grounds for the beginning of their
polite conversation.
Pollyooly and the Lump worked steadily away at the building of the
castle. Pollyooly did the digging; now and again the Lump would pat a
wall placidly. They had been at work for rather more than half an
hour; and the castle was already beginning to wear the rotund air so
dear to the eye of the builder when the progressive prince came in
sight.
Pollyooly's joyful heart began to beat quickly. He was slouching along
to his doom nearly fifty yards in front of the fragrant baron; and
since there were children to annoy all the way, he came but slowly. It
gave Pollyooly time to lead the Lump half-way to Mrs. Gibson, and send
him toddling the rest. She was back at her castle, and at work again
when the prince caught sight of her.
He stopped short, his unhasty mind slowly taking in the situation.
That she should be working in loneliness, thirty yards beyond the line
of nurses and children along the beach, seemed too good to be true.
Presently his unhurrying mind grasped the fact that it was true; his
heart blazed in his bosom; he threw back his head and, had his nose
been larger, he would have sniffed the breeze like a warhorse. He
advanced upon her in a quick, shambling slouch.
Pollyooly saw his eager advance; but she affected not to see it. She
was eager for the fray, but fearful lest a display of that eagerness
should dash the royal courage; moreover she wished the prince to be
flagrantly the aggressor. She worked at the farther wall of the castle
with her back to him. A fray was the last thing the prince looked for.
There had been but one fray in his sheltered life: with a brother
prince carelessly admitted to his society. A fray with a child not of
the blood royal was beyond dreaming. He sprang on to the castle wall
and began to stamp and kick a breach in it with furious, but clumsy,
energy.
Then Pollyooly turned and sprang. The prince was hardly aware of her
spring; he was only aware of a stinging smack, and then the shock of
her impetus toppled him over on to his back on the sand. Pollyooly
came down too, but not on the sand; she came down on the prince, and
far more heavily than her fragile air warranted. Before he could
collect any scattered wits he may have chanced to have, she was
kneeling astride him, with a painful, grinding knee on either of his
arms, and slapping his face.
The Honourable John Ruffin walked briskly down from the sea-wall with a
smile of profound pleasure on his face. The perfumed baron had not yet
perceived his charge's plight.
Pollyooly did not smack very hard at first, for she was resisting the
wriggling of the prince; but once she had dug her toes firmly into the
sand, she gave her mind to delivering each smack with the full swing of
her arm; and the prince began to bellow. Then the baron saw the
terrible, treasonable indignity the hope of the house of
Lippe-Schweidnitz was enduring. He broke into a curious toddling run,
uttering odd, short shrieks of the last horror as he came.
The Honourable John Ruffin placed himself athwart the course of the
toddling deliverer and said quietly:
"Don't hurry, Pollyooly, but smack him hard."
A smile of understanding wreathed Pollyooly's flushed but angel face;
and she did smack him hard. The Honourable John Ruffin's back was
turned to the headlong baron; but his head was bent a little sideways;
and as the already breathless rescuer made his final spurting rush he
moved sharply to the left.
It was unfortunate (but since he had not eyes in the back of his head,
it could not be helped) that the left shoulder of the Honourable John
Ruffin, jerking upward hard, should have impinged upon the onrushing
right shoulder of the deliverer. The baron left the firm earth,
twirled in the air in a fashion which would have won him the plaudits
of the most exacting music-hall audience, came down on his back on the
sand with a violence which shook the little breath left out of his body
and lay gasping in a darkened world.
It was a full minute and a half before the bellowing of his
sufficiently besmacked charge came again, dimly, to his comprehending
ears. Then he grew aware, also dimly, that the Honourable John Ruffin
was standing over him and asking loudly, with every appearance of just
indignation, what he meant by not looking where he was going. The
baron was strongly of the opinion that the interposed shoulder had been
no accident; but he was much too busy with his breathing to say so.
Then when his breath came more easily and he had the power to say so,
he had no longer the inclination, for the knowledge of the terrible
position in which he stood, or rather lay, had flashed on him: he, a
German officer, had been knocked down by a civilian and was forever
disgraced.
Pollyooly continued to smack the bellowing prince; the Honourable John
Ruffin continued to ask the baron what the devil he meant by it; and
the poor wits of the panting nobleman continued to work on his dreadful
problem. Then a flash of inspiration showed him the saving solution:
he could accept his noisy questioner's view that his fall had been an
accident. He sat up and began to apologise faintly and sulkily for
having been knocked down.
The hands of Pollyooly were sore from smacking Prince Adalbert, but not
so sore as his royal cheeks; and still she smacked on. She interjected
between the smacks requests for an assurance that he would cease to
annoy the children on the beach. His fine Prussian determination not
to be robbed of his simple pleasures prevented him from giving it. He
preferred to bellow. But there are limits even to royal endurance; and
as the baron rose shakily to his feet, the prince howled the assurance
she demanded.
"And mind you do, or I'll smack you again," said Pollyooly coldly.
She rose to her feet, flushed and triumphant, and rubbed gently
together her stinging hands. The prince lay where he was, blubbering.
Ten yards away Mrs. Gibson stood holding the hand of the Lump, who
gazed at the scene in placid wonder; and she was laughing gently. Ten
yards away, on her right, stood a dozen children, surveying their
blubbering pest with joyful, vengeful eyes. Behind them distractedly
hovered three shocked nurses, quivering with horror at the upheaval of
the social edifice; and horror-stricken mothers were slowly approaching
the dreadful spot.
The baron slowly took in the humiliating significance of the scene; he
saw that the glory of a royal house had been levelled to the dust, or
rather to the sand. He caught his blubbering charge by the arm, jerked
him to his feet, and led him away by one large ear.
The Honourable John Ruffin looked after them and laughed quietly but
joyfully. Then he said:
"I congratulate you, Pollyooly--an excellent piece of work very neatly
done. The haughty foreigner will trouble you no more."
Mrs. Gibson came forward and added her congratulations to his. The
children gazed at Pollyooly with deep respect. Only the nurses and the
mothers held aloof; an earthquake shock would hardly have astonished
and confused them more than had this smacking of royalty. Had any one
but the little cousin of the Honourable John Ruffin smacked, they would
have been unable to refrain from an outburst of open disapproval.
To judge from the royal progress next morning, Pollyooly had indeed
done her work. The Baron von Habelschwert still perfumed the air as he
walked; but it was no longer obviously the air of a conquered country.
His moustache was less fierce, his stride less proprietary. Indeed he
might easily have been mistaken, by those to whom his name and
dignities were unknown, for the pear-shaped but inoffensive keeper of a
delicatessen shop. Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz was also
changed. He no longer roamed afield; he kept within six feet of his
protective equerry. He slouched less; and he had ceased to scowl
arrogantly on the children who no longer fled at his approach. He
regarded little English girls with a respectful, not to say timid, eye,
and edged closer to the baron as he passed one. To his mind the little
English girl was stored with the potentialities of a powder-magazine.