“The end had to come,” said Audrey: “the end of the fairy-tale. We came
for a night and we’ve stayed for nearly a month. It was very nice of you
to let it go on so long.”
“If I’d had my way,” said Pendragon, “it would be still running. But the
Queen wandered out of the parlour and into the counting-house.”
“A most undignified act,” said Audrey de Lisle. “If she’d stuck to her
bread and honey, all would have been well.”
“It wasn’t undignified at all,” said the Lord of the Manor. “It was
purely feminine.”
“The truth is,” said Audrey, “you can take a maiden all forlorn and put
a crown on her head: but that doesn’t make her a Queen.”
“And a Queen,” said Christopher John, “can put off her crown and call
herself over the coals and say the fairy-tale’s over and get into her
car and drive out of the nursery rhyme: but that doesn’t alter the fact
that she’s a fine lady. ‘She shall have music wherever she goes.’”
Perched upon the broad balustrade, her little hands folded in her lap,
Audrey stared upon the flags.
“Why,” she said, “did the Lord of the Manor make the proposal he did?
Surely he never thought that I should accept it.”
“There was no reason why you shouldn’t. Sundial means everything to you.
I didn’t imagine you’d wire back ‘Every time,’ but I thought you’d
negotiate.”
“Christopher!”
“Why not? The offer was honourable—the sort of offer that’s made by a
King to a Queen.”
“Perhaps,” said Audrey slowly, “perhaps that’s why I didn’t take it.
Being only a maiden all forlorn, my tastes are more simple. Besides,
what makes you say that Sundial means everything to me?”
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“I’d like you to know,” he said, “that, if you’d negotiated, you would
have won hands down. The deeds would have been yours—with nothing to
pay.”
“What makes you say that Sundial means everything to me?”
Pendragon stared into the distance with eyes that saw nothing.
“A fool finds out things,” he said, “when a fool’s in love . . . I fell
in love with you. But then you know that. I loved you the moment I saw
you standing there by the stile. And you were so very nice that,
idiotically enough, I began to think that perhaps I meant something. It
was great presumption, of course—but I did. I thought perhaps I figured
in the nursery rhyme. . . . The trouble was that you were a Queen, while
I—well, I wasn’t a King. . . . And then one day you came right down
from your throne and kneeled at my feet—that morning, in the
courtyard. . . . Well, we both know what happened then. Late as it is,
my lady, I beg your pardon. But that’s by the way. The point is, it
opened my eyes. It showed me that Sundial _without me_ was still
Sundial, but that I _without Sundial_ was less than nothing at all—in a
word, that I did _not_ figure in the nursery rhyme.”
Audrey raised her straight eyebrows, and a faint smile played about her
beautiful mouth.
“You know,” she said dreamily, “it’s a shame about you.” The man
started. “You’re a King really, but you choose to masquerade as a ‘man
all tattered and torn.’ One day you find a ‘maiden all forlorn’ and put
a crown on her head. Then you’re all upset because you want to kiss
her—stay where you are, please—but you can’t do that because she’s a
Queen. So you sit all still and gloomy and listen to her railing against
the King. Then, having worked her anger against the King up to fever
heat, you tell her that you’re the King and try to kiss her. . . . Well,
whatever do you expect the poor girl to do?”
“May I move now?”
“Certainly not. Besides, how many times d’you think the man all tattered
and torn tried to kiss the maiden all forlorn before she let him do it?”
“Once,” said Pendragon, putting his arms about her and drawing her on to
her feet.