CHAPTER XIII.

THE FAIRY PRINCE.

They arrived in a few minutes at the house in Temple street, and were let in by Patrick. Wentworth had been complaining that something was hurting his foot, and sat down in the hall to take off his boot and see what was the matter, while Harrington went up-stairs into the library.

The jewel of the rich room was Muriel, and Muriel lay on a velvet couch, asleep. The young man noiselessly approached her, and stood tenderly watching her beauty in its repose. She lay in a glimmer of light from the western window, and the faint radiance lit her dreamful face, whose beauty was like a hymn of immortal joy. The draped arms lay restfully along her form, with the white hands lightly clasped together, and the expression of the figure was repose. Gazing at her with heavenly sadness, the lover saw her countenance gleam with an evanescent smile, and the lips murmured a word. It was “Richard.” A quick pang shot to his heart, and at the same instant Muriel started and awoke.

“John!” she exclaimed, coloring and smiling as she sprang up from her light sleep and gave him her hands, “you here! When did you come?”

“Just come,” he replied, holding her hands, and smiling into her face. “Why, Muriel, you looked like the Sleeping Beauty of the fairy tale.”

“Oh, John! And you like the fairy prince that woke the Sleeping Beauty up!” returned Muriel, gaily.

“That’s a compliment, I suppose,” said Harrington.

“Compliment for compliment,” said she.

“Oh, but mine was the truth,” he replied.

“And so was mine,” she answered. “So it’s arranged that I am the Sleeping Beauty awakened, and you the fairy prince that awakened me, and now I shall have to follow you through all the world, as she did him in Tennyson’s poem.”

Harrington’s color rose, and he dropped her hands. Muriel blushed too, for she felt that what she had said in thoughtless play had carried some deeper sense to him than she had intended.

“Pardon me, John,” she murmured, “I did not mean to offend you.”

“You offend me!” exclaimed Harrington, in astonishment. “You, Muriel! Indeed, no.”

“Then why did you color?” she asked archly, reassured.

“I? Oh—no matter. I was thinking of something.”

“Of what? Come now. Be frank, John. I desire—I command”—

Harrington looked confused for a moment. An impulse came to him.

“It is you who must tell me, Muriel,” he said in a low voice.

“I? What shall I tell you, John. I will tell you anything you ask.”

“Tell me then of the fairy prince who awakened you indeed, and whom you are to follow through all the world. Tell me of him, that I may congratulate you and him together.”

Muriel gazed at him in wonder. If he had not spoken with such sweet seriousness, she would have thought he was jesting.

“You said you would tell me anything I asked,” said Harrington, gravely. “Tell me this, then.”

“I will, John,” she replied slowly. “I will tell you of him—when I find him. Not till then.”

She turned away, musing. It was Harrington’s turn now to look at her with wonder. What did she mean? He had never seen any tokens of duplicity in her, but what was this?

Just then in came Wentworth, smiling. Harrington saw her face light as she went toward him, and wondered if she had understood what he had said to her. That’s it, he thought; she could not have understood me.

“Ha, Muriel. Good afternoon,” burst out Wentworth in his airy way. “Excuse me for not coming up at once, but I was ransacking my boot. And see what I found. A damson stone. Take it, Harrington, and be happy.”

“Come, no nonsense, Richard,” said Muriel. “Let’s go up to the studio, and fence.”

Wentworth darted at her, and she nimbly dodged him, flashed out of the room and flew up-stairs, laughing, followed by the young artist on the run. She vanished into the studio before he could come up with her, and Wentworth turned to wait for his friend, who was leisurely ascending the stairs.

“Lightfoot cannot outrun Atalanta,” said Harrington.

“Exactly so,” returned Wentworth.

They went up and into the studio, as it was called, together. It was a large, square, sunlit room, the floor covered with a thick, hard carpet, and it had two windows looking to the west, with boxes on the sills, filled with heliotrope and mignionette, which filled the air with their rich and delicate fragrance. Muriel’s table, with a small easel, cases of water-colors, and bristol-board, drawing paper, tinted sketches, and other artistic paraphernalia, stood near one of the windows. Not far from the other was a moulding stand, on which stood Emily’s bust of her friend, with a box of clay on the floor near it. The walls were a warm grey, and ornamented with three or four of Jullien’s crayons, some plaster medallions and bas-reliefs, and a set of hanging-shelves filled with books. Parallel-bars on one side of the room, a pair of large dumb-bells on the floor, several iron weights, with rings for lifting them, near by, and a set of gilded foils and masks on the wall, gave the studio something of the air of a gymnasium. A small piano, with books of music upon it, a low sofa, and a few plain arm-chairs, completed the furniture of the apartment.

The young men had sat talking a few minutes, waiting for Muriel, when Mrs. Eastman and Emily came in, and they rose again to make their salutations. Emily was in her most sumptuous mood, and smiled serenely as she entered and curtseyed down into a chair. Mrs. Eastman gave her hand to the young men, whom she loved as much as if they were her own sons, and standing near Harrington, with her arm in his, affectionately asked for his health.

“You are looking pale, John,” she said, with motherly solicitude. “Too much study I’m afraid.”

“Not at all, mother,” said Harrington, gaily—he always called Mrs. Eastman “mother.” “Celestial pale, the student’s proper hue, you know; and spite of my paleness, I’m strong and well.”

“Nevertheless, I wish you had some of Richard’s roses,” she said playfully.

“My roses, indeed!” rattled Wentworth. “Why, Mrs. Eastman, I’m so much in love with Harrington’s intellectual pallor that I’m thinking of trying some of Jules Hauel’s lily-white cosmetic to get my face of the same tint. For what is—hurrah! Here comes the fairy prince!” he cried, breaking off, as the door of a chamber adjoining the studio opened, and a beautiful and brilliant figure came forward into the room.

It was Muriel, transformed by the vivid and gorgeous dress of a fairy prince—such a dress as the artists of fairy books give to Percinet or Valentine; and in it she was courtly and noble as Shakspeare’s Rosalind, when Rosalind wore “man’s apparel” in the gay greenwood of Arden. A year before when she had resolved to take fencing lessons of Harrington, she had devised this dress, and with a woman’s natural disposition to ornamentation, and with her own special wish to throw festal grace and the hues of romance even on her hours of exercise, she had brought to the fashioning of her attire all the richness of her lavish fancy. To wear anything that was ugly even at her gymnastics, or to make her exercise a sober business and not a poetic pleasure, was quite impossible for Muriel. She must clothe her muscularities with beauty, as Harmodius wreathed his sword with myrtle. So she gilded her foils and masks, and fashioned her garb in fairy magnificence. The dress was a cymar of vivid crimson silk, loosely belted at the waist, and adorned with broidered arabesques of gold. The bodice, cut loose to the form, with large sleeves, ruffled with lace at the wrists, had a frilled ruffle of lace emerging from the bosom, and rising in a sort of fraise around the neck, in exquisite keeping with the refined beauty of the countenance which bloomed above it. A little crimson cap, with a thick, swailing, white plume, rested lightly on the head, and the glorious amber hair was arranged to lie on the back of the neck like the locks of a page. The skirt of the dress, also of crimson silk, broidered with golden arabesques, and deeply bordered with heavy, gold fringe, fell in graceful folds, ending just above the knee, and white silk hose, with crimson satin slippers, completed the poetic and splendid costume. Never had Muriel appeared more fascinating than in this attire, which showed the full perfection of a form, straight, supple, tall and strong, whose every rounded outline was elegance, and whose free strength was harmonized in grace and beauty.

“By Jupiter!” cried Wentworth, “I never see Muriel in that costume, without thinking that the long skirts are a tremendous shame. There’s a figure for you!”

“Yes, but please remember,” said Emily, “that there are some of us women who are not endowed with such fine forms as Muriel.”

“Oh, I’m pretty well,” said Muriel, with a light laugh. “But it’s mainly due to my life-long muscular exercise, Emily.”

“Indeed, Muriel,” replied Emily, “nature must have contributed largely in the first instance, to a form like yours.”

“Thanks for compliments,” said Muriel gaily, doffing her plumed cap and bowing.

“You’re inclined to underrate muscular exercise, Emily,” said Harrington, laughing.

“Well, perhaps so, John,” she replied, with a slow smile.

“And yet,” he pursued, “I’m not sure, that to make women a race of gymnasts, wouldn’t be one of the surest ways of securing their social enfranchisement.”

“Why, John,” returned Emily, laughing, “do you want to make us athletic enough to get our rights by the strong hand?”

“Oh, no,” he rejoined, amusedly. “But men could not help respecting women, if women were on a grander scale, and justice might be born of that respect. And, to make women all they latently are, gymnastics are a very important instrument. I am inclined to think physical training the foundation of all noble culture. You get from it health, strength, beauty of form, grace of carriage, dexterity of movement and action, a very potent safeguard against all diseases, mental vigor, cheerfulness, courage, self-reliance, a spirit that nourishes and promotes self-respect, independence, generosity, moral purity, heroic desires, large sympathies; in fact, all the virtues. I do not say that gymnastics bestow the great intellectualities and moralities; but they encourage, develop, and sustain them. You know what Dr. Johnson said—‘a sick person is a scoundrel;’ and I think a pretty large sermon might be preached from that text, in these days. At all events, I am quite sure that you will see grander and more womanly women, and an increase of social happiness, when a vigorous muscular training is made part of women’s culture.”

“Bravo!” cried Muriel. “I feel inspired. The foils, Harrington—the foils!”

Harrington-who had been admiring while he spoke, the free, beautiful figure—started and went to the wall to take the weapons down.

“First, some exercise to get the muscles in order,” said Muriel.

She threw down her cap, and bounding forward, with the light strong spring of a bayadere, to the parallel bars, put her hands on the poles, and leaped up between them. Then, with a succession of springs, she traversed the whole length, leaping along the bars on her hands; then, back again to the centre, where she swung to and fro for an instant; and, as she rose again, vaulted over and alighted in the middle of the room, tossing the air into perfume.

“Bravo!” cried Wentworth. “That’s religion, as Emerson says.”

“Emerson!” chided Mrs. Eastman, amusedly. “Emerson never said any such thing.”

“More shame for him,” retorted Wentworth, gaily. “Kingsley says so, at any rate.”

“Kingsley!” she replied, in the same amused, chiding tone.

“Yes, _ma mère_,” asserted Wentworth. “That’s what Kingsley calls muscular Christianity, and I’m going in for some of it.”

He bounded forward to the bars just as Muriel was running up to them again. She stopped and stood a little one side, watching him as he swung and leaped forward.

“You don’t do it half as well as Muriel,” said Mrs. Eastman, very truly.

“Take care now, Richard, that’s dangerous,” cried Muriel in a warning voice, as Wentworth was swinging, preparatory to vaulting over.

Wentworth laughed recklessly, and flung himself over the bars. Muriel’s warning was not without reason, for as he came over, his foot struck the pole, and, with a cry from Emily which proved her interest in him, he pitched head downward. Muriel sprang on the instant, caught him with all her strength, and set him on his feet. Wentworth reddened, and looked dazed.

“Careless boy,” she chided, playfully giving him a light cuff on the ear, “you came nigh breaking your neck.”

“That he did,” exclaimed Harrington; and “indeed he did,” exclaimed the others in chorus.

“Saved by a fairy prince,” cried Wentworth in a mock-tragic tone. “By Jupiter, Muriel, but you’re as strong as you’re quick. I wonder how many young ladies there are in the world that could catch a fellow when he’s tumbling over neck and heels to destruction. Well, I guess I won’t try that again. Thank you, dear fairy prince.”

He put her hand gallantly to his lips as he said the last words.

“I declare,” cried Emily, laughing, “what would society say if it could behold these operations! I can’t help thinking how our minister at Cambridge, and all my Episcopal friends would stare at you, Muriel.”

“Yes, flower of the world,” replied Muriel, “we should be awfully scandalized, no doubt. But there’s virtue in our games, nevertheless, for health is there, and health is a virtue that beckons the others on. The fencing, however, is the perfection of exercise.”

“Why is that so superior?” asked Emily.

“Because it develops bodily strength and activity more harmoniously than any other,” replied Muriel. “So Roland says.”

“Roland?” inquired Emily.

“Yes. Roland is the author of the best modern work on fencing,” answered Muriel. “Stay, I’ll read you what he says.”

She went to the book-shelves, and returned with the volume—Roland’s “Theory and Practice of Fencing.”

“Here it is,” she observed, finding the page. “Listen: ‘Perhaps there is no exercise whatever more calculated for these purposes (developing and cultivating bodily strength and activity) than fencing. Riding, walking, sparring, wrestling, running, and pitching the bar are all of them certainly highly beneficial, but beyond all question there is no single exercise which combines so many advantages as fencing. By it the muscles of every part of the body are brought into play; it expands the chest and occasions an equal distribution of the blood and other circulating fluids through the whole system. More than one case has fallen under the author’s own observation, in which affections of the lungs, and a tendency to consumption have been entirely removed by occasional practice with the foil; and he can state, upon the highest medical authority, that since the institution of the School of Arms at Geneva, scrofula, which was long lamentably prevalent there, had been gradually disappearing.’”

Just then a tap was heard at the door. Muriel dropped the book, and made one nimble spring through the entrance into her chamber, while Harrington went to the door. It was Patrick come to say that Mr. Witherlee was down-stairs.

“Tell him we’re engaged, Patrick, and ask him to excuse us,” rang the silver voice of Muriel through the half open entrance of her room.

Patrick departed, and as the door closed, Muriel emerged, laughing, from her hiding-place.

“That was a stroke of policy,” she said. “If Fernando were to see me in this costume, it would be town talk to-morrow, and in the papers the day after. Fernando’s mind is a perfect colander—all that gets into it runs out of it.”

She was more than ever like a fairy prince the next instant as she stood with the light bright foil in her gloved hand, and her face covered by the gilt mask, over which waved a thick crimson plume. Harrington, similarly arrayed, save for the plume, with the golden wires envisoring his features, advanced toward her.

“You have not forgotten your plastron, have you?” he said.

“No: it’s under the dress,” she replied.

Firm and true as he, she struck guard, and the foils crossed with a clash.

“By George! this is delicious,” exclaimed Wentworth, in perfect rapture.

And so it was, for Muriel was like some unimagined fairy chevalier as she stood in the beautiful attitude of the exercise, the rich crimson lights of her dress glowing, and its golden ornaments tremulously flashing in the sun-ray, and the sumptuous radiance resting on the proud and elegant flowing curves of her figure. Lithe, superb and strong, an image of health and grace, a form of lyric beauty, she might have stood in her armed posture for the spirit of the foil.

Emily had crossed over to the piano, and sitting behind it with her eyes fixed upon the combatants, began to play a low drumming strain of Bacchic fury in the pause preluding the game. Fierce, monotonous and dreamful, a congeries of bass tones swarming grumly from the keys, with low minor notes faintly chirping at intervals between, it suddenly rang up, pierced with one sharp tingling treble, like a cry, as with a loud clash of the foils, the agile and vivid figure of Muriel darted forward in a superb lunge. Harrington uttered a low ejaculation, for the thrust had nearly reached him, and he had parried in the compass of a ring. Muriel stood on guard again, her gold and crimson tremulously glowing and flashing in the sun, and her bright plume dancing, while the dark and furious music, swarming and drumming loudly from the bass keys, sunk away into the low, monotonous and dreamful strain, with the chirping notes still fluttering and sounding in. It did not rise again, but ran sombrely swarming on, as Harrington reached in his long arm in a quick and quiet lunge, which was deftly parried with only a faint clink of the foils, and then, with another splendid flash of glitter and color, Muriel sprang, lunging nimbly home, and clash on clash, with a rapturous clamor of steel, came pass and parry on either side, while the hurrying music rose and rang in whirling riot, like a wild, tumultuous race of Mænads, with heavy bars of thunderous sound striking through the loud, triumphant swarming fury of the melody. Clash and flash, amidst the strumming whirl and anvil blows of the melodious choral, flew the bright foils, and stamp and tramp, advancing and retreating, sinking and rising, low to the lunge, and high to the parry, swayed and darted the lords of the fairy duel—Muriel’s crimson feather tossing and dancing in time to the gathering and racing of the music, like a delirious sprite of combat.

Suddenly—snap—jingle—the contest ceased, and the music flittered off into a light and brilliant strain, like the tinkling laughter of elves. Harrington stood with a dazed air, looking at the fragment of the foil he held, the rest of which lay on the floor. Muriel broke into a merry peal of laughter, in which Wentworth and her mother joined, while Emily, still playing, smiled indolently over the piano.

“Plague!” exclaimed Harrington. “That’s the second foil I’ve seen broken to-day. They make these things miserably bad.”

“It’s the last pair we have, so that ends our fun for this day,” cried Muriel, taking the gilt mask from her bright, flushed face. “Serves me right for not always having half a dozen sets on hand, a thing I’ll do in future.”

“By Jupiter!” exclaimed Wentworth, while Muriel crossed to hang up her mask and foil, “that was tall fencing, while it lasted, anyhow. I’m sorry the foil’s broken, Muriel, for I wanted to fence with the fairy prince myself.”

“You ought to learn, Emily,” said Mrs. Eastman. “Then you and Richard could match John and Muriel.”

Emily stopped playing, and glanced at Wentworth with a slight curl of her lip, which did not escape the young artist.

“Indeed, Mrs. Eastman,” she said, “it’s not in my line, and I should make a poor figure at it, I know.”

“But it’s as beautiful as dancing,” said Mrs. Eastman.

“And a great deal more womanly than waltzing,” put in Wentworth, interrupting, to have his fling at Emily, who was very fond of the waltz.

Emily reddened, and fixed her lustrous eyes on Wentworth, hurt and angered by his remark.

“Come, come,” interposed Muriel, gaily, “I won’t have Emily badgered into doing anything it is not her genius to do. Fencing is not in her line, as she says; but music, dear Emily,” she added, putting her arms around her friend, “music _is_ in your line, and charmingly you played for us. Your improvisation inspired our battle, and I should fence twice as well if I always had you to play for me.”

“Faith, Emily, there’s something in that, I believe,” remarked Harrington. “But you fence wonderfully, Muriel, for one who has had only a year’s practice.”

“Are you sure you don’t spare her, Harrington?” said Emily, slily.

“Spare her? Indeed I don’t. I’d scorn to do such a thing!” answered Harrington, with animation.

“That’s right, John,” said Muriel in a tone of gay gratitude; “it’s always a shame for a woman to be treated like a weak sister, and there’s a subtle assumption of our inferiority in the consideration we women get from men in this polite age, which does not please me at all. No effeminate culture for me! What I know or do, I will know or do thoroughly and vigorously, or not at all.”

“Bravo, Muriel!” said Mrs. Eastman, rising, “so your father would say, if he were with us. There’s no reason, he used to observe, why girls shouldn’t be as vigorously trained as boys, and even supposing woman’s sphere to be purely and simply that of a wife and mother, said he, she ought, on the most ultra conservative principles, to have every power and faculty fully developed that she may fitly educate her children.”

“Good! Woman’s rights doctrine, that,” said Wentworth, playfully. “Muriel, do you vote?” he added, with a quizzical air.

“Yes,” answered Muriel, so naively, that Wentworth was taken aback. “Do you want to know how? Every election day, Patrick comes to ask me how he shall vote, and I tell him, and he votes. That is my ballot, for my judgment casts it. But what do you think of the good sense of a community that allowing me capable of instructing a man how to vote, will not allow that I am capable of voting myself? What do you think of the good sense of a country that denies to a cultured woman a right which it accords to the uncultured man who opens her street door?”

“Well,” returned Wentworth, laughing, “we are not all such fools, Muriel, as to think the arrangement you criticise right and proper.”

“Come, children,” said Mrs. Eastman, after a pause, “since the play is over, let us adjourn to the library.”

And she departed, followed by the others. Harrington, seeing Muriel linger, half-absently, paused near her. Becoming aware that he was looking at her, she looked up from her musing, with a quiet smile.

“Well, fairy prince,” he said, lightly.

“Ah,” she replied, with pensive playfulness, “you recognize the fairy prince in me, then, do you? And that is the fairy prince I am to follow through all the world.”

She had approached him as she spoke, and while he looked at her with an inquiring face, seeking to fathom the riddle of her speech, she passed close by him, with a light waft of delicate perfume, and vanished into her chamber.

He stood for a moment, lost in a sense of some unravelled mystery lurking in her words and manner, and then suddenly turned and went down-stairs.