“Go along with you do—always worrying;” so then Matilda _knew_.
“Yes,” said the King sadly, “I fear there’s no doubt about it. Your
maid has turned into an Automatic Nagging Machine. Never mind, my
dear, she’ll be all right to-morrow.”
“I like her best like this, thank you,” said Matilda quickly. “I
needn’t put in any more pennies, you see.”
“Oh, we mustn’t be unkind and neglectful,” said the King gently, and he
dropped in a penny. _He_ got—
“You tiresome boy, you. Leave me be this minute.”
“I can’t help it,” said the King wearily; “you’ve no idea how suddenly
things change here. It’s because—but I’ll tell you all about it at
tea-time. Go with nurse now, my dear, and see if any of the Princess’s
frocks will fit you.”
Then a nice, kind, cuddly nurse led Matilda away to the Princess’s
apartments, and took off the stiff frock that hurt, and put on a green
silk gown, as soft as birds’ breasts, and Matilda kissed her for sheer
joy at being so comfortable.
“And now, dearie,” said the nurse, “you’d like to see the Princess,
wouldn’t you? Take care you don’t hurt yourself with her. She’s rather
sharp.”
Matilda did not understand this then. Afterwards she did.
[Illustration: THE PRINCESS WAS LIKE A YARD AND A HALF OF WHITE TAPE.]
The nurse took her through many marble corridors and up and down many
marble steps, and at last they came to a garden full of white roses,
and in the middle of it, on a green satin-covered eiderdown, as big as
a feather bed, sat the Princess in a white gown.
She got up when Matilda came towards her, and it was like seeing a yard
and a half of white tape stand up on one end and bow—a yard and a half
of broad white tape, of course; but what is considered broad for tape
is very narrow indeed for princesses.
“How are you?” said Matilda, who had been taught manners.
“Very slim indeed, thank you,” said the Princess. And she was. Her
face was so white and thin that it looked as though it were made of an
oyster-shell. Her hands were thin and white, and her fingers reminded
Matilda of fish-bones. Her hair and eyes were black, and Matilda
thought she might have been pretty if she had been fatter. When she
shook hands with Matilda her bony fingers hurt quite hard.
The Princess seemed pleased to see her visitor, and invited her to sit
with Her Highness on the satin cushion.
“I have to be very careful or I should break,” said she; “that’s
why the cushion is so soft, and I can’t play many games for fear of
accidents. Do you know any sitting-down games?”
The only thing Matilda could think of was Cat’s-cradle, so they played
that with the Princess’s green hair-ribbon. Her fish-bony fingers were
much cleverer than Matilda’s little fat, pink paws.
Matilda looked about her between the games and admired everything very
much, and asked questions, of course. There was a very large bird
chained to a perch in the middle of a very large cage. Indeed the cage
was so big that it took up all one side of the rose-garden. The bird
had a yellow crest like a cockatoo and a very large bill like a toucan.
(If you do not know what a toucan is you do not deserve ever to go to
the Zoological Gardens again.)
“What is that bird?” asked Matilda.
“Oh,” said the Princess, “that’s my pet Cockatoucan; he’s very
valuable. If he were to die or be stolen the Green Land would wither up
and grow like New Cross or Islington.”
“How horrible!” said Matilda.
“I’ve never been to those places, of course,” said the Princess,
shuddering, “but I hope I know my geography.”
“All of it?” asked Matilda.
“Even the exports and imports,” said the Princess. “Goodbye, I’m so
thin I have to rest a good deal or I should wear myself out. Nurse,
take her away.”
So nurse took her away to a wonderful room, where she amused herself
till tea-time with all the kind of toys that you see and want in the
shop when some one is buying you a box of bricks or a puzzle map—the
kind of toys you never get because they are so expensive.
Matilda had tea with the King. He was full of true politeness and
treated Matilda exactly as though she had been grown up—so that she was
extremely happy and behaved beautifully.
The King told her all his troubles.
“You see,” he began, “what a pretty place my Green Land was once. It
has points even now. But things aren’t what they used to be. It’s that
bird, that Cockatoucan. We daren’t kill it or give it away. And every
time it laughs something changes. Look at my Prime Minister. He was a
six-foot man. And look at him now. I could lift him with one hand. And
then your poor maid. It’s all that bad bird.”
“Why _does_ it laugh?” asked Matilda.
“I can’t think,” said the King; “I can’t see anything to laugh at.”
“Can’t you give it lessons, or something nasty to make it miserable?”
“I have, I do, I assure you, my dear child. The lessons that bird has
to swallow would choke a Professor.”
“Does it eat anything else besides lessons?”
“Christmas pudding. But there—what’s the use of talking—that bird would
laugh if it were fed on dog-biscuits.”
His Majesty sighed and passed the buttered toast.
“You can’t possibly,” he went on, “have any idea of the kind of things
that happen. That bird laughed one day at a Cabinet Council, and all my
ministers turned into little boys in yellow socks. And we can’t get any
laws made till they come right again. It’s not their fault, and I must
keep their situations open for them, of course, poor things.”
“Of course,” said Matilda.
“There was a Dragon, now,” said the King. “When he came I offered the
Princess’s hand and half my kingdom to any one who would kill him.
It’s an offer that is always made, you know.”
“Yes,” said Matilda.
“Well, a really respectable young Prince came along, and every one
turned out to see him fight the Dragon. As much as ninepence each was
paid for the front seats, I assure you. The trumpet sounded and the
Dragon came hurrying up. A trumpet is like a dinner-bell to a Dragon,
you know. And the Prince drew his bright sword and we all shouted, and
then that wretched bird laughed and the Dragon turned into a pussy-cat,
and the Prince killed it before he could stop himself. The populace was
furious.”
“What happened then?” asked Matilda.
“Well, I did what I could. I said, ‘You shall marry the Princess just
the same.’ So I brought the Prince home, and when we got there the
Cockatoucan had just been laughing again, and the Princess had turned
into a very old German governess. The Prince went home in a great hurry
and an awful temper. The Princess was all right in a day or two. These
are trying times, my dear.”
“I am so sorry for you,” said Matilda, going on with the preserved
ginger.
“Well you may be,” said the miserable Monarch; “but if I were to try
to tell you all that that bird has brought on my poor kingdom I should
keep you up till long past your proper bedtime.”
“I don’t mind,” said Matilda kindly. “Do tell me some more.”
“Why,” the King went on, growing now more agitated, “why, at one titter
from that revolting bird the long row of ancestors on my Palace wall
grew red-faced and vulgar; they began to drop their H’s and to assert
that their name was Smith from Clapham Junction.”
“How dreadful!”
“And once,” said the King in a whimper, “it laughed so loudly that two
Sundays came together and next Thursday got lost, and went prowling
away and hid itself on the other side of Christmas.”
“And now,” he said suddenly, “it’s bedtime.”
“Must I go?” asked Matilda.
“Yes please,” said the King. “I tell all strangers this tragic story
because I always feel that perhaps some stranger might be clever enough
to help me. You seem a very nice little girl. Do you think you are
clever?”
It is very nice even to be _asked_ if you are clever. Your Aunt
Willoughby knows well enough that you are not. But kings do say nice
things. Matilda was very pleased.
“I don’t think I am clever,” she was saying quite honestly, when
suddenly the sound of a hoarse laugh rang through the banqueting hall.
Matilda put her hands to her head.
“Oh, dear!” she cried, “I feel so different. Oh! wait a minute. Oh!
whatever is it? Oh!”
Then she was silent for a moment. Then she looked at the King and said,
“I was wrong, your Majesty, I _am_ clever, and I know it is not good
for me to sit up late. Good-night. Thank you so much for your nice
party. In the morning I think I shall be clever enough to help you,
unless the bird laughs me back into the other kind of Matilda.”
But in the morning Matilda’s head felt strangely clear; only when she
came down to breakfast full of plans for helping the King, she found
that the Cockatoucan must have laughed in the night, for the beautiful
Palace had turned into a butcher’s shop, and the King, who was too wise
to fight against Fate, had tucked up his royal robes, and was busy in
the shop weighing out six ounces of the best mutton-chops for a child
with a basket.
“I don’t know how ever you can help me now,” he said, despairingly; “as
long as the Palace stays like this, it’s no use trying to go on with
being a king, or anything. I can only try to be a good butcher. You
shall keep the accounts if you like, till that bird laughs me back into
my Palace again.”
So the King settled down to business, respected by his subjects, who
had all, since the coming of the Cockatoucan, had their little ups and
downs. And Matilda kept the books and wrote out the bills, and really
they were both rather happy. Pridmore, disguised as the automatic
machine, stood in the shop and attracted many customers. They used to
bring their children, and make the poor innocents put their pennies in,
and then read Pridmore’s good advice. Some parents are so harsh. And
the Princess sat in the back garden with the Cockatoucan, and Matilda
played with her every afternoon. But one day, as the King was driving
through another kingdom, the King of that kingdom looked out of one of
his Palace windows, and laughed as the King went by, and shouted,
“Butcher!”
[Illustration: THE KING SENT HIS ARMY, AND THE ENEMY WERE CRUSHED.]
The Butcher-King did not mind this, because it was true, however rude.
But when the other King called out, “What price cat’s meat!” the King
was very angry indeed, because the meat he sold was always of the best
quality. When he told Matilda all about it, she said, “Send the Army to
crush him.”
So the King sent his Army, and the enemy were crushed. The Bird laughed
the King back into his throne, and laughed away the butcher’s shop
just in time for his Majesty to proclaim a general holiday, and to
organise a magnificent reception for the Army. Matilda now helped the
King to manage everything. She wonderfully enjoyed the new delightful
feeling of being clever, so that she felt it was indeed too bad when
the Cockatoucan laughed just as the reception was beautifully arranged.
It laughed, and the general holiday was turned into an income tax; the
magnificent reception changed itself to a royal reprimand, and the Army
itself suddenly became a discontented Sunday-school treat, and had to
be fed with buns and brought home in brakes, crying.
“Something must be done,” said the King.
“Well,” said Matilda, “I’ve been thinking if you will make me the
Princess’s governess, I’ll see what I can do. I’m quite clever enough.”
“I must open Parliament to do that,” said the King; “it’s a
Constitutional change.”
So he hurried off down the road to open Parliament. But the bird put
its head on one side and laughed at him as he went by. He hurried on,
but his beautiful crown grew large and brassy, and was set with cheap
glass in the worst possible taste. His robe turned from velvet and
ermine to flannelette and rabbit’s fur. His sceptre grew twenty feet
long and extremely awkward to carry. But he persevered, his royal blood
was up.
“No bird,” said he, “shall keep me from my duty and my Parliament.”
But when he got there, he was so agitated that he could not remember
which was the right key to open Parliament with, and in the end he
hampered the lock and so could not open Parliament at all, and members
of Parliament went about making speeches in the roads to the great
hindrance of the traffic.
The poor King went home and burst into tears.
“Matilda,” he said, “this is too much. You have always been a comfort
to me. You stood by me when I was a butcher; you kept the books; you
booked the orders; you ordered the stock. If you really are clever
enough, now is the time to help me. If you won’t, I’ll give up the
business. I’ll leave off being a King. I’ll go and be a butcher in the
Camberwell New Road, and I will get another little girl to keep my
books, not you.”
This decided Matilda. She said, “Very well, your Majesty, then give
me leave to prowl at night. Perhaps I shall find out what makes the
Cockatoucan laugh; if I can do that, we can take care he never gets it,
whatever it is.”
“Ah!” said the poor King, “if you could only do that.”
When Matilda went to bed that night, she did not go to sleep. She lay
and waited till all the Palace was quiet, and then she crept softly,
pussily, mousily to the garden, where the Cockatoucan’s cage was, and
she hid behind a white rosebush, and looked and listened. Nothing
happened till it was gray dawn, and then it was only the Cockatoucan
who woke up. But when the sun was round and red over the Palace roof,
something came creeping, creeping, pussily, mousily out of the Palace;
and it looked like a yard and a half of white tape creeping along; and
it was the Princess herself.
She came quietly up to the cage, and squeezed herself between the bars;
they were very narrow bars, but a yard and a half of white tape can
go through the bars of any birdcage I ever saw. And the Princess went
up to the Cockatoucan and tickled him under his wings till he laughed
aloud. Then, quick as thought, the Princess squeezed through the bars,
and was back in her room before the bird had finished laughing. Matilda
went back to bed. Next day all the sparrows had turned into cart
horses, and the roads were impassable.
That day when she went, as usual, to play with the Princess, Matilda
said to her suddenly, “Princess, what makes you so thin?”
The Princess caught Matilda’s hand and pressed it with warmth.
“Matilda,” she said simply, “you have a noble heart. No one else has
ever asked me that, though they tried to cure it. And I couldn’t answer
till I was asked, could I? It’s a sad, a tragic tale, Matilda. I was
once as fat as you are.”
[Illustration: THE KING HAD TURNED INTO A VILLA RESIDENCE.]
“I’m not so very fat,” said Matilda, indignantly.
“Well,” said the Princess impatiently, “I was quite fat enough anyhow.
And then I got thin—”
“But how?”
“Because they would not let me have my favourite pudding every day.”
“What a shame!” said Matilda, “and what is your favourite pudding?”
“Bread and milk, of course, sprinkled with rose leaves—and with
pear-drops in it.”
Of course, Matilda went at once to the King, and while she was on her
way the Cockatoucan happened to laugh. When she reached the King, he
was in no condition for ordering dinner, for he had turned into a
villa-residence, replete with every modern improvement. Matilda only
recognised him, as he stood sadly in the Park, by the crown that stuck
crookedly on one of the chimney-pots, and the border of ermine along
the garden path. So she ordered the Princess’s favourite pudding on her
own responsibility, and the whole Court had it every day for dinner,
till there was no single courtier but loathed the very sight of bread
and milk, and there was hardly one who would not have run a mile rather
than meet a pear-drop. Even Matilda herself got rather tired of it,
though being clever, she knew how good bread and milk was for her.
But the Princess got fatter and fatter, and rosier and rosier. Her
thread-paper gowns had to be let out, and let out, till there were no
more turnings in left to be let out, and then she had to wear the old
ones that Matilda had been wearing, and then to have new ones. And as
she got fatter she got kinder, till Matilda grew quite fond of her.
And the Cockatoucan had not laughed for a month.
When the Princess was as fat as any Princess ought to be, Matilda
went to her one day, and threw her arms round her and kissed her. The
Princess kissed her back, and said, “Very well, I _am_ sorry then, but
I didn’t want to say so, but now I will. And the Cockatoucan never
laughs except when he’s tickled. So there! He hates to laugh.”
“And you won’t do it again,” said Matilda, “will you?”
“No, of course not,” said the Princess, very much surprised, “why
should I? I was spiteful when I was thin, but now I’m fat again I want
every one to be happy.”
“But how can any one be happy?” asked Matilda, severely, “when every
one is turned into something they weren’t meant to be? There’s your
dear father—he’s a desirable villa—the Prime Minister was a little boy,
and he got back again, and now he’s turned into a Comic Opera. Half the
Palace housemaids are breakers, dashing themselves against the Palace
crockery: the Navy, to a man, are changed to French poodles, and the
Army to German sausages. Your favourite nurse is now a flourishing
steam laundry, and I, alas! am too clever by half. Can’t that horrible
bird do anything to put us all right again?”
“No,” said the Princess, dissolved in tears at this awful picture, “he
told me once himself that when he laughed he could only change one or
two things at once, and then, as often as not, it turned out to be
something he didn’t expect. The only way to make everything come right
again would be—but it can’t be done! If we could only make him laugh on
the wrong side of his mouth. That’s the secret. He told me so. But I
don’t know what it _is_, let alone being able to do it. Could _you_ do
it, Matilda?”
“No,” said Matilda, “but let me whisper. He’s listening. Pridmore
could. She’s often told me she’d do it to me. But she never has. Oh,
Princess, I’ve got an idea.”
The two were whispering so low that the Cockatoucan could not hear,
though he tried his hardest. Matilda and the Princess left him
listening.
Presently he heard a sound of wheels. Four men came into the
rose-garden wheeling a great red thing in a barrow. They set it down in
front of the Cockatoucan, who danced on his perch with rage.
“Oh,” he said, “if only some one would make me laugh, that horrible
thing would be the one to change. I know it would. It would change into
something much horrider than it is now. I feel it in all my feathers.”
The Princess opened the cage-door with the Prime Minister’s key, which
a tenor singer had found at the beginning of his music. It was also the
key of the comic opera. She crept up behind the Cockatoucan and tickled
him under both wings. He fixed his baleful eye on the red Automatic
Machine and laughed long and loud; he saw the red iron and glass
change before his eyes into the form of Pridmore. Her cheeks were red
with rage and her eyes shone like glass with fury.
[Illustration: FOUR MEN CAME WHEELING A GREAT RED THING ON A BARROW.]
“Nice manners!” said she to the Cockatoucan, “what are you laughing at,
I should like to know—I’ll make you laugh on the wrong side of your
mouth, my fine fellow!”
She sprang into the cage, and then and there, before the astonished
Court, she shook that Cockatoucan till he really and truly did laugh on
the wrong side of his mouth. It was a terrible sight to witness, and
the sound of that wrong-sided laughter was horrible to hear.
But instantly all the things changed back as if by magic to what they
had been before. The laundry became a nurse, the villa became a king,
the other people were just what they had been before, and all Matilda’s
wonderful cleverness went out like the snuff of a candle.
The Cockatoucan himself fell in two—one half of him became a common,
ordinary Toucan, such as you must have seen a hundred times at the Zoo,
unless you are unworthy to visit that happy place, and the other half
became a weathercock, which, as you know, is always changing and makes
the wind change too. So he has not quite lost his old power. Only now
he is in halves, any power he may have has to be used without laughing.
The poor, broken Cockatoucan, like King you-know-who in English
history, has never since that sad day smiled again.
The grateful King sent an escort of the whole Army, now no longer
dressed in sausage skins, but in uniforms of dazzling beauty, with
drums and banners, to see Matilda and Pridmore home. But Matilda was
very sleepy. She had been clever for so long that she was quite tired
out. It is indeed a very fatiguing thing, as no doubt you know. And
the soldiers must have been sleepy too, for one by one the whole Army
disappeared, and by the time Pridmore and Matilda reached home there
was only one left, and he was the policeman at the corner.
The next day Matilda began to talk to Pridmore about the Green Land and
the Cockatoucan and the Villa-residence-King, but Pridmore only said—
“Pack of nonsense! Hold your tongue, do!”
So Matilda naturally understood that Pridmore did not wish to be
reminded of the time when she was an Automatic Nagging Machine, so of
course, like a kind and polite little girl, she let the subject drop.
Matilda did not mention her adventures to the others at home because
she saw that they believed her to have spent the time with her
Great-aunt Willoughby.
And she knew if she had said that she had not been there she would be
sent at once—and she did not wish this.
She has often tried to get Pridmore to take the wrong omnibus again,
which is the only way she knows of getting to the Green Land; but only
once has she been successful, and then the omnibus did not go to the
Green Land at all, but to the Elephant and Castle.
But no little girl ought to expect to go to the Green Land more than
once in a lifetime. Many of us indeed are not even so fortunate as to
go there once.