“And you won’t put coals in my panniers or unglue my feet from my green
grass-plot because I look more natural without wheels?”
“I give you my word,” said Fabian, “I wouldn’t think of such a thing.”
“Very well,” said the Mouse, “then I will tell you. It is a great
secret, but there is only one way to get out of this kind of town.
You—I hardly know how to explain—you—you just _walk out of the gate_,
you know.”
“Dear me,” said Rosamund; “I never thought of that!”
So they all went to the gate of the town and walked out, and there they
were in the library again. But when they looked out of the window the
All-Wool Mausoleum was still to be seen, and the terrible blue soldiers.
“What are we to do now?” asked Rosamund; but the clockwork mouse and
the donkey with panniers were their proper size again now (or else the
children had got bigger. It is no use asking me which, for I do not
know), and so of course they could not speak.
“We must walk out of this town as we did out of the other,” said Fabian.
“Yes,” Rosamund said; “only this town if full of blue soldiers and I am
afraid of them. Don’t you think it would do if we _ran_ out?”
So out they ran and down the steps that were made of the “Spectator”
and the “Rambler” and the “Tatler” and the “Observer.” And directly
they stood on the brown library carpet they ran to the window and
looked out, and they saw—instead of the building with Windsor Castle
and Rebecca’s head in it, and the All-Wool Mausoleum—they saw their own
road with the trees without any leaves and the man was just going along
lighting the lamps with the stick that the gas-light pops out of, like
a bird, to roost in the glass cage at the top of the lamp-post. So they
knew that they were safe at home again.
And as they stood looking out they heard the library door open, and
Mother’s voice saying—
“What a dreadful muddle! And what have you done with the raisins and
the candied fruits?” And her voice was very grave indeed.
Now you will see that it was quite impossible for Fabian and Rosamund
to explain to their mother what they had done with the raisins and
things, and how they had been in a town in a library in a house in a
town they had built in their own library with the books and the bricks
and the pretty picture blocks kind Uncle Thomas gave them. Because they
were much younger than I am, and even I have found it rather hard to
explain.
So Rosamund said, “Oh, Mother, my head does ache so,” and began to cry.
And Fabian said nothing, but he, also, began to cry.
And Mother said, “I don’t wonder your head aches, after all those sweet
things.” And she looked as if she would like to cry too.
“I don’t know what Daddy will say,” said Mother, and then she gave them
each a nasty powder and put them both to bed.
“I wonder what he _will_ say,” said Fabian just before he went to sleep.
“_I_ don’t know,” said Rosamund, and, strange to say, they don’t
know to this hour what Daddy said. Because next day they both had
measles, and when they got better every one had forgotten about what
had happened on Christmas Eve. And Fabian and Rosamund had forgotten
just as much as everybody else. So I should never have heard of it
but for the clockwork mouse. It was he who told me the story, just as
the children told it to him in the town in the library in the house
in the town they built in their own library with the books and the
bricks and the pretty picture blocks which were given to them by kind
Uncle Thomas. And if you do not believe the story it is not my fault:
I believe every word the mouse said, for I know the good character of
that clockwork mouse, and I know it could not tell an untruth even if
it tried.
_THE PLUSH USURPER_
THERE was a knock at the King’s study door. The King looked up from his
plans for the new municipal washhouses and sighed; for that was the
twenty-seventh knock that had come to his door since breakfast.
“Come in,” said the King, wearily.
And the Lord Chief Good-doer came in. He wore a white gown and carried
a white wand. If you had been there you would have noticed how clean
the King’s study looked. All the books were bound in white vellum, and
the floor was covered with white matting, and the window curtains were
of white silk. Of course, it would not be right for every one to have
such things, even if we were all kings because it would make such a lot
of work for the servants. But this king, whose name was Alban, had an
excellent housekeeper. She did all the cooking and cleaned everything
by white magic, which is better even than _nettoyage-à-sec_ (if you
know what that is), and only took the good lady five minutes every
morning.
“I am extremely sorry to disturb your Majesty,” said the Lord Chief
Good-doer, “but your Majesty’s long-lost brother Negretti has called
in from the Golden Indies, and he says he can’t stay more than half an
hour.”
The King jumped up, knocking over the white wood table where the White
Books were. (We call them Blue Books in England, but the insides are
just as dull whatever colour you put outside.)
“My dear brother! I haven’t seen him since we were boys together,” he
cried, and ran out to meet him, tucking up his royal white velvet robes
to run the quicker down the cool marble corridors.
At the front door of the Palace was the King’s brother just getting
off his elephant. He was a brown and yellow brother, withered and
shrivelled like a very old apple, and dressed in a suite of plush of a
bright orange, sown thick with emeralds. All the white marble terrace
in front of the Palace was crowded with the retinue of the new arrival.
Slaves of all colours—black, brown, yellow, and cream colour, dressed
in all sorts of bright hues, scarlet and blue and purple and orange,
with rubies and sapphires and amethysts and topazes sewn thickly on
them, so that the eye could hardly bear the glow and glitter of them as
they shone in the sunlight on the terrace.
“Welcome, welcome!” King Alban cried, and kissed his brother on both
cheeks, as is the fashion in Albanatolia and in many other civilised
lands. Then, still holding him by both hands, he led him into the
Palace. The jewelled gorgeous retinue followed him in, and the head
parlour-maid shut the front door and put the chain up, because she knew
it to be more than possible that a few odd rubies and sapphires and
things would drop off the retinue on to the floor, and she thought any
such little odds and ends might as well go into her dust-pan, when she
swept up after lunch, as into the pockets of any poor people who might
look in during the afternoon to ask the King’s advice, as they were
fond of doing. This was the beginning of the trouble that was wrought
by the coming of the King’s brother. Before this every door stood
unfastened all day long, because every one was contented, and therefore
honest.
King Alban entertained his brother royally for seven days in the good
old fashion, and then gave him a palace of his own to live in. The
Palace was of white marble, like most of the buildings in Albanatolia,
but the King’s brother had it painted red all over without a moment’s
delay. And then he began to give parties and to have processions and
to scatter money among the crowd, and every day the people loved him
more. He was a loud, jolly, joking sort of man, with a black beard,
and he always wore clothes of plush, a material hitherto unknown; and
he always blazed with jewels, and he had a circus set up at his own
expense in the field at the back of his Palace; and he introduced
horse-racing and animated photographs—all highly coloured—and thus
became extraordinarily popular: so much so that the people presently
began to forget all the good that King Alban had done for them, and to
wish secretly that the kingdom had happened to have a bright, cheerful
king like Prince Negretti.
For King Alban had worked so hard for his people’s good that he had
not had time to be amusing. He had never had processions and circuses,
preferring rather small tea-parties with the Lord Chief Good-doer, the
Commissioner of Public Health, and a few chosen spirits from the
Education Department, and loving best of all to wander alone, dreaming,
among the blossoming orchards or in the meadows beyond the river, where
the white jonquils grew, or in the lanes between the pearly may-bushes,
or in the terraced garden of his Palace, where the white roses hung in
heavy-scented clusters, and the white peacocks spread their tails upon
the marble balustrades. And wherever he went he thought of the people’s
good, and devised new ways of making them comfortable. Everything
was beautifully managed. Every one had enough to wear and enough to
eat, and enough to do, which is very important; but they had not
enough to play at, and this was what made them ready to lend long and
discontented ears to the whispers of the King’s brother.
[Illustration: “WELCOME! WELCOME!”]
Now Negretti was a Magician, and his was the black or coloured magic
which won’t wash clothes. He was always messing about with acids and
alkalis, and sulphites and bicarbonates, and retorts and furnaces, and
test-tubes, and pestles and mortars, and the like; and whenever he
happened to make a nice colour by mixing two or more of these things
together, he always put it in a bottle and stuck it up in one of the
Palace windows, so that at night his windows were brighter than any
chemist’s and druggist’s in any street, and the people said it was as
good as fireworks. The King’s palace windows only sent out a soft white
light like moonlight, and this was now considered very tame.
It was the Magician’s habit to wander about the town stirring up
discontent as easily as if it had been one of his chemical messes; and
though he was so well known among the people he was never recognised,
because he always took care to disguise himself as a respectable
person, and the disguise was quite impenetrable. (I hope you know what
that is?)
One night he sat disguised at the King’s Head—the finest of the
municipal alehouses—drinking dog’s-nose out of a pewter-pot, and the
grumbling of the people was music in his wicked ears.
“Alban is not my sort of king,” said the blacksmith.
“I’d make a better king out of a penn’orth of putty any day of the
week,” said the painter.
“What’s the good of a king if you never see him?” said the landlady.
“No processions, no flags, no gilt coaches, no rubies and diamonds and
sapphires, no royal robes of purple and gold—such as a loyal country
has a right to expect on its sovereign’s back! Only that old white
thing,” said the barmaid.
“No better than a velvet nightgown,” said the landlady.
“I like a bit of colour, I do,” said the painter. “Graining I don’t ask
for, for he’s not had the education to know its beauty; but a good warm
maroon, or a royal blue, now! But, no; it’s white, white, white, till
I’m sick of it. And us all wearing white by law, and washing done free,
by white magic, at the Palace, on Mondays from 10 to 4. And no one to
have more than a quart of beer of an evening! I tell you what it is, my
boys, we’re miserable, degraded slaves; that’s what we are!”
“If we must have a king,” said the blacksmith, “why not good old
Negretti? He’s something like a king, he is! Ah! if he only knew how
our free hearts beat with him, he’d be sitting on the throne to-morrow.”
Then Negretti threw off his disguise—the pewter with the municipal
arms on it rolled on the sanded floor, and spilt what was left of the
dog’s-nose on to the disguise—and the Magician stood before them, pale
but firm, his dark lantern in his hand. It was a magic lantern, of
course.
“Down-trodden slaves!” he cried, “poor benighted, oppressed people!
Follow me! Let us dethrone a king who seeks to mask tyranny with
hypocritical public kitchens, and cloaks his infamous autocracy with
free washing by white magic on a Monday! To the Palace, to the Palace!”
And they all finished up their beer and followed him, and half the town
beside joined the throng as it pressed through the streets towards the
Eastern gate, beyond which was the King’s Palace.
Now while the Magician was drinking his dog’s-nose, disguised as a
respectable person, the King in his white robes was walking under the
boughs of the white-blossomed pear-trees, for it was spring, and the
moon was at the full. And presently, coming along over the dewy grey
grass of the orchard, he saw a figure in white, and when it came close
to him he saw that it was a lady more fair than the fair stars of that
fair night.
“And who are you?” said the King.
[Illustration: “POOR BENIGHTED, OPPRESSED PEOPLE, FOLLOW ME!”]
“I am a poor Princess seeking my fortune,” said she.
“You will rest under my roof to-night,” said the King, and led her
through the long sweet grass under the blossoming boughs to the Palace
garden. When they came to the terrace the Princess loosed a lantern
from her girdle, set it on the stone balustrade close by where one of
the white peacocks perched in fluffy feathery slumber, kindled it, and
threw open the horn door. A flood of light streamed out, bright as
spring sunshine, and fell full upon her, and then the King saw that
her gown was not white, as it had seemed in the moonlight, but was the
colour of yellow gold, and her hair was red gold, and her eyes were of
gold and grey mingled. Then for the first time in all his life the King
thought of himself and of his own happiness, and he caught her hands
and said—
“Nothing will ever again content me, not even doing good to my people,
if I must part from you. Will you stay and be my Queen?”
The Princess said, “I am seeking my fortune. Do you think you are it?”
“I do not know, my dear,” said the King, “whether I am your fortune,
but I know well enough that _you_ are _mine_!”
Then the Princess clapped her hands and said, “That is the right
answer! I have travelled half round the world to hear it; and will you
love me always?”
“Always, my Queen,” said he, “exactly the same as you will love me. We
are not of the race that changes heart.”
So then they kissed each other as lovers should, and wandered along the
yew-tree avenue deep in lovers’ talk, and never even heard the crowd
that the Magician had brought to the front door. So when the crowd
found that the Palace door was locked for the night it went home again,
but it came back in the morning with trumpets and banners and scraps of
coloured stuff tied over its white clothing, and the King went out to
meet it.
When the crowd saw him every one began to shout: “Down with Alban!”
“Down with the White King!” “Free Beer!” “No more washing!” and things
like that.