Part 3
Then out of Hugh's mouth came a purple speech, and a speech of the color of gold; and little iridescent mists floated through the air, while a rose-colored bubble rested for a moment on the white eyelids of the maiden. The dull-paneled room was as the breaking of a rainbow; yet all he had said was, "Wilt not wed me, Blanche?" But he said it in rose color and purple and gold.
"What have I done?" cried the maiden sorrowfully; and he rejoiced to see that the look upon her face was as it had been when she had listened to the Necromancer's philosophies and faiths.
Then he turned and smiled, saying: "I love thee, Blanche," and he spoke in the juggler's speech, which made a glory on the maiden's hair, and about her gown of green. With outstretched hands she came toward him, and she laid her head upon his breast, smiling up at him.
"I was mad but now, Hugh," she breathed. "Our two souls be but one."
"Wilt come with me to the market-place this afternoon?" he asked.
"Nay," sighed the maiden. "I care not for the market-place, for I am happy here, where I have found my home."
"I speak there," he said bluffly, "at two P.M."
"Thou!" and the maiden's laughter rang out like the touch of silver bells, "and of what?"
"Of phases of occult thought," he answered gravely.
"Ay," cried Blanche, and she raised her face to kiss him. "Ay, Hugh, be sure that I shall be there when thou dost talk philosophies."
The young merchant was good as his word, and that afternoon he stood in the market-place upon a counter, rattling the juggler's bags as he waited. As before, men, women, and maidens came, by tens, by twenties, by hundreds, till there was no spot where he could look without meeting a pair of wistful eyes.
"It looks to be but plain Hugh, the merchant," whispered one to another.
"Hath he undertaken to sell his wares here?" asked one.
"He hath choice pearls," whispered a maiden who was not yet wholly given over to occult thought.
But Hugh had begun to speak, and faces of wonder were lifted to him, for he was strong of lung, and the breath from the magic bags went farther than ever before.
"Our friend the Necromancer is indisposed, and I must take his place," he began. "Like him, I have chosen a theme from the depths of human thought; and now, hear! hear! hear!"
Then eloquence poured forth from the man's lips so fast, so full a stream, that the very welkin was rose-tinted, and a great rainbow seemed to overspread the sky. Gray clouds above the tallest spires broke into tints of opal, and all the air shaded into the violet and purple of exclamation points, and of the pet hiatus, which was hard to work, but came well off. Golden glory haunted carven door and window, and words of flame crept around the tracery of arch and gable. Women sobbed for very joy; others wrote madly on their tablets; maidens gasped with red lips slightly opened; never, during the whole lecture season, had come so big a wind from out the bags, and honest Hugh blushed with mingled shame and triumph when he saw the face of his betrothed, for it wore the look of one who had seen the white vision of naked truth.
Following the fashion of the Necromancer, he had taken a maxim, and had dressed it up so that men knew it not, and so that it came forth as revelation. All that he had said from the first to the last was the truth that he knew best: "Honesty is the best policy;" but this was the way in which he had said it, with constantly shifting color:
"Glory awaits the equable! All-hails are the portion of him, who, unswerving, with eyes upon the path ahead, with lofty head erect, perambulates his chosen path through this world's tangled wilderness, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, though golden cohorts beckon. The goal is for the upright feet. The crown waits.... What matter if the victor be sobbing and breathless, so that he be conqueror?" (Observe the hiatus.) "So saith golden-tongued Plato; so saith heavy-browed Aristotle of persuasive speech; so saith Aulus Gellius, withdrawn in his inner truth, and his brother, Currant Gellius, whose essence clings; so say the holy fathers, subtle Basil, myriad-minded Chrysostom; so saith the copy-book."
When the speech was over, and the bags hidden away, Hugh bore as best he might the tears and congratulations of the women, their murmured plaudits, and inspired looks.
"'Tis the first time I have ever failed to give honest measure," he said shamefacedly to himself as they flocked about him.
That night, as he sat with the maiden and her father, he spoke of departing on the morrow with a ship that would sail for Morocco to be gone many months, and his sweetheart came to him, creeping into his arms.
"Do not leave me, Hugh," she pleaded. "It is so far away."
"I must go, little one," he answered, smoothing her fair hair. "Men sit not ever by the fire to hear tabby purr."
"Say them again," she pleaded, "say again the words thou didst speak this morning, that I may have them with me when thou art far away."
"Far in illimitable recesses of time and of space," he began shamefacedly, "before phenomena existed, thy bodiless soul and mine met and mingled as one"--
"Where hast learned that jargon, Hugh?" asked the old merchant, with a loud guffaw.
"Hush!" said Hugh, with loving hands upon the maiden's ears so that she might not hear. "All is fair in love, father!"
But Hugh was still an honest merchant, and never in his long and happy life did he use the stolen vocabulary in bargaining, or to gain dishonest advantage in trade. Only, when the face of Blanche, his wife, grew sad, he would take out the colored bags, which he kept secretly locked in an iron chest, and then the old smiles would come back to her beautiful face, and with them the look of awe wherewith she regarded her husband, as the mist of purple, and the flecks of rose color, and the bubbles of gold, fell on hair and eye and ear.
THE PRINCESS AND THE MICROBE
THE PRINCESS AND THE MICROBE
The Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine sat on a stone seat by the mermaid fountain in the royal gardens, crying bitterly because she was not a prince. The sun was warm, the water splashed merrily over the mermaids' tails, and not far away two infant counts, an archduckling, and a baby baroness were playing on the green grass, but the Princess would have none of their game of tag. She only howled with her mouth open, and paused for breath, and howled again. Then Lady Marie Françoise Godolphin and the Duchess Louise of Werthenheim, who were pacing the garden paths by box hedge and rose bed (Lady Marie was superb in pink chiffon over white silk, and the Duchess wore blue embroidered tulle looped with clusters of artificial lilies), frowned and whispered to each other that the naughty child ought to be punished, which was manifestly unfair, as it was all their fault. Never would the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine have thought of being wickedly ungrateful for the privilege of being a girl, if the following conversation had not reached her through the box hedge:--
_Lady Marie_: His Majesty will be _so_ relieved that it is a son. Think, the boy will be Auguste Philippe the Twenty-fourth!
_The Duchess_: I distinctly remember the grief of both the King and Queen when the Princess turned out to be a girl.
It was then that the Princess Victorine, who had been dandling her doll and gaining great comfort from this distinctly feminine occupation, threw this same doll from her with violence, unconscious of the symbolic character of the act, and digging her little fists into her eyes, burst into weeping so loud that Lady Marie Françoise and Duchess Louise dragged their buckram-stiffened trains away over the grass to escape from their victim's cries.
Presently sobbing became hard work, and the Princess sat still in the sunshine, thinking. Her blue eyes had red rims about them, her yellow hair was dried in wisps on her forehead, her fat legs hung dejectedly down. She was reaching back farther and farther into her dim little consciousness, trying to remember how she ever came to make that dreadful initial mistake. She had disappointed the Queen, her mother--here the sobs began again, for the Princess loved that royal lady; she had chosen, though she could not remember when, and had chosen wrongly. Then she began to wonder what it was to be this thing that the King and Queen and Lady Marie and the Duchess were so grateful for, a boy. She candidly thought that she was nicer than the two little counts and the archduckling, and she found her riddle hard to read, for no one had ever before suggested to her, much less explained, the disgrace of sex.
Crying was difficult, and thinking was harder still--for the Princess. Presently she jumped down from her bench and trotted away almost joyfully, for a happy thought had struck her. The Princess was the sweetest, most obliging little soul in the world, and helpful withal. A way of escape had suggested itself to her: she would find out what boys were like and be one. The Queen, her mother, should be no longer disappointed in her, nor should any ladies of the court make invidious remarks through box hedges. Whatever happened, she would never again turn out to be a girl. So, in an unfortunate comparison, made by two people who could obviously ill afford to be critics, began the evolution of that unnatural monster, more "fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea," a mannish woman.
At first the Princess Victorine prayed about it. Every night, in her little golden crib, which had the arms of her house--a spotless leopard, _couchant_--embroidered on the blue satin hangings, she shut her eyes and begged to be made into a prince with yellow love-locks and scarlet doublet and pink hose. Would he be Olivero Rinaldo Victor the Twenty-fourth, she wondered? But every morning she wakened with indignation to the fact that she was still a girl. As her faith in miracle weakened, her determination to succeed by her own efforts grew stronger, and she never doubted that she could do it if she tried hard enough. Her face took on an expression of firmness, "most unfeminine," said Lady Marie, who was her governess.
"Do not run, my dear--it is so masculine," said Lady Marie, often; or "Do not climb trees, your Highness--such rough playing is fit only for boys."
Then the Princess would look at her with non-committal, wide-opened eyes and say nothing. She had a secret, inner knowledge, dating from that moment of revelation in the garden, of the superiority of being a boy, and henceforward nothing could take it from her, not precept, nor example, nor soft insinuation of the beauty and propriety of womanliness. She knew that people were trying to deceive her; she had heard of conspiracies before--but she never let them see that she knew. On occasions like this she had a way of looking stupid which was nearer cleverness than anything else that she ever did.
Now, there are people for whom one idea, with variations, will last a lifetime, and the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine was one of them. As to questions about the whys and wherefores of things, she never asked one in her life, nor answered one. Very systematically she set about her life-work. As his Highness, her baby brother, grew up, she imitated him. Once she was found standing with her sturdy legs apart and her arms akimbo, whistling. Lady Marie and the Queen both wept, and deprived the Princess that day of her bread and jam, but to no effect. She seemed inspired by the energy of the small boy or the demon. Her legs could not keep still; she ran, she jumped, she leaped, she climbed, she played all boyish games, and once, but my ink blushes red in recording this, she was caught by the Duchess turning somersaults in the garden. Terrible were the reproaches heaped upon her, and her misdeeds seemed greater because they went unexplained. On this occasion Lady Marie and the Duchess were both sent to discipline her. (Lady Marie was attired in rose satin covered with black lace, and the Duchess was charming in Nile-green brocade, with pearls.) When Lady Marie said, with her scented handkerchief at her eyes: "My dear, your actions are bringing me into disrepute; what will their Majesties think of me?" the Princess, who detested scents, only turned red and said nothing. Not once did she retort that she never would have tried to be a boy if these two had not taught her the desirability of it; she only trudged on in her own way toward the longed-for goal, sure that the scoldings, the reproaches, and, saddest of all, her mother's tears, came because she had not tried hard enough and had not succeeded.
There were times when the Princess Victorine surpassed Auguste Philippe. One sunshiny morning, when the two were playing knight and ogre in the courtyard, the Prince announced that he meant to climb the castle wall. He did it only out of bravado, for, being a boy, with a boy's common sense, he knew that it was impossible.
"I'm going to climb it, too," said Olivera Rinalda Victorine stubbornly.
"Pshaw, you can't! You're only a girl," said Auguste Philippe, strutting up and down in his slashed velvet doublet and his feathered cap.
"And you are only a boy," said the Princess, meditatively eying him. She did not say it to be saucy--she was only thinking. Then she deliberately took the hem of her embroidered blue satin skirt in her teeth and began to climb the wall, while Auguste Philippe watched from below with wrath and terror in his eyes. By means of a niche here, a clinging ivy vine there, a window ledge, and, now and then, a friendly, grinning gargoyle, the Princess succeeded, and stood at last triumphant upon the battlements, waving her blue skirt for a flag. But all that she got for it was a scolding, and, to the day of his death, Auguste Philippe never admitted that it was true. In fact, he never entirely believed it, though he had watched every step from the courtyard below.
Better even than boyish sports, the Princess loved stories of knightly deeds, and the very pith and marrow of chivalry entered into her bones. She could not read, but that did not matter, for the story-tellers could not write, but oh! they could tell tales. Stories of dragons slain and ogres vanquished, stories of maidens rescued, enchanters caught and prisoned, stories of caitiff knights thrust through at the moment of their greatest villainy by the swords of heroes, all these the Princess Victorine drank up with greedy ears and mind, and her heroic little heart throbbed within her. Often--it was most unmaidenly--she furtively felt of her muscle in leg or arm, wondering when she would be strong enough to go forth in quest, for not one tale roused in her the desire to become a teller of stories herself--she only wanted to act one. Once she took Auguste Philippe aside, saying:--
"I'll tell you a secret, if you won't tell."
"Go ahead!" said Auguste Philippe graciously. He had doubly the air of a sovereign, being at once a brother and heir presumptive.
"I'm going out to find and fight a dragon," said Princess Victorine.
"Huh!" sneered the Prince. "There aren't any dragons any more. You are behind the times."
"Aren't any dragons!" cried the Princess. "What do you mean?"
"There haven't been any for a long time," remarked Auguste Philippe nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets. But the Princess would not have the foundations of her faith shaken too easily.
"What do they mean by telling us about them all the time?" she demanded. "Every minstrel that comes here does, and so does old Lord Jean, and the Countess Madeline, and everybody nice."
"I don't care," asserted the Prince. "There aren't any--there's only the Microbe."
"What's the Microbe?" gasped the Princess.
"It's worse than dragons, that's what it is," said Auguste Philippe viciously.
"What does it do?" asked the Princess.
"It bites," answered the Prince. "It stays somewhere in the woods and swamps, and every year it eats a great number of youths and maidens, and old men and children. It's always hungry."
"Why doesn't somebody go and kill it?" said the Princess.
"Dunno!" answered Auguste Philippe.
"What does it look like?"
"It has one great eye," answered the Prince unhesitatingly, knowing that life demanded that he should instruct the feminine mind whether he had information or not; "it has ten great rows of teeth, and what it does not bite with one set it bites with another. It never roars--that makes it worse than a dragon, for you can't tell when it is coming. And it has a hundred thousand claws reaching everywhere."
The Princess went and sat by a rosebush, wearing her most enigmatical expression. If she was overawed, she was too plucky to show it. Prince Auguste Philippe looked at her, not without remorse. He was aware that he knew nothing of the Microbe save its name, but he decided not to confess--it would only shake a sister's confidence, so he went away to fly his kite.
Now, years flew past, and every day the Princess's bosom swelled with knightly ardor, and every waking thought was of the slaying of the Microbe. The words of Auguste Philippe that day by the rosebush became the second inspiration of her life, and the second only completed and strengthened the first. At eighteen, as at six, the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine was round of face and pink of cheek. Her big blue eyes, set in the baby fairness of her face under the yellow hair, had the confiding look of a little child. All this was very pretty, but manly sports had developed her physique far beyond the bounds of feminine propriety. There were muscles on her lovely shoulders, and they made her tiring-women weep. As for her biceps, she had always to wear loose, flowing sleeves, for the strong arms broke through the embroidery of tight ones. She was taller than she should have been, and her waist refused to taper. If her sex had been different, the royal parents would have gloried in her strength and her agility, but as it was, they cast down their eyes in her presence and begged her, if she had any filial reverence, to talk mincingly and small, at least in their presence.
One day the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine sought out Lady Marie.
"I am going on a quest, to find and fight the Microbe," she remarked briefly. Lady Marie gave her one look, and fainted, and the Princess revived her by means of her vinaigrette.
"My dear!" whimpered Lady Marie, "think how many gray hairs you are bringing down in sorrow. I do not mean mine," she added hastily; and, in truth, hers were no longer gray.
"It's got to be killed," said the Princess sturdily. "It's a pest."
"But what is it?" whispered Lady Marie, blushing through her rouge. "Is it a thing that a young girl ought to know about?"
There was hubbub in the court for ten days. Counts, marchionesses, dukes, and earls gathered in corners and talked under their breath. Some thought that the Princess should be imprisoned in a dungeon; others spoke of her with pity, believing her mad. One party, headed by old Lord Jean and the Countess Madeline, said that it was all nonsense. Everybody knew that there was no such thing as the Microbe; it was only a new heresy, wickedly devised to shake the established faith in dragons. The Princess might just as well be allowed to go the way of her folly and find out the truth. Another faction, made up of believers, spoke darkly of the mystery that enshrouded the foe, for he lived in a fog, and went out to kill veiled in cloud, and they hinted that if the Princess went to find him, she would not return alive. His Majesty and her Majesty, bewildered, agreed with both parties, wept, protested, but did not forbid the Princess to go, for fear that she would not mind. Auguste Philippe said a bad word.
At first the Princess tried to reason with them--an unwonted occupation for her.
"It really is a combat that a lady could very well engage in," she said earnestly. "It isn't as if it were a dragon, you know." But they only pooh-poohed and ha-haed until she shut her lips very tightly together, and went on her way as usual, unexplained.
Just here attention was diverted from her, for his Majesty, who had been hurt in hunting, sickened and died, and amid sobs and whisperings and discussions, Auguste Philippe the Twenty-fourth came to the throne. There were many rumors and whispers of how the late King had come to his death: some said that it was a fall from his steed; others hinted the Microbe, shivering with horror at the name. No one was sure of anything, and the court physicians very cleverly gave out that they could not explain at length his Majesty's ailment because nobody knew enough to understand.
But the Princess Victorine, who was not a person of doubts, was convinced from the first. With her head held very erect, she went to the court armorer, and gave orders that he dared not disobey; then she went to the royal stables and made her choice, while all stood still to watch her, spellbound, no one venturing to lift a hand. Her Majesty was too much overcome with grief to care what happened; Lady Marie and the Duchess were absorbed and happy getting the court into mourning, and so there was no one but Auguste Philippe to say good-by to the Princess when she went away. He had risen very early, and stood upon the battlements to see her go.
It was one brave June day when the Princess Olivera Rinalda Victorine, armed _cap-à-pie_, went forth to war. She was mounted on a charger of dapple gray; a palfrey she would not have. On her head was a shining steel helmet, through the back of which her tawny hair floated down her back--there was not room to do it high. Through her visor her blue eyes sparkled with a steady light. On her arm she carried a blue shield, for even in her battle mood she could not forget what color was becoming. It bore the device that she had chosen for herself, a virgin _rampant_, gules. The armor that covered her from head to foot was of wrought rings of finest steel, made with a flowing skirt that fell in protecting folds about her feet. Her right hand held a spear; with her left she guided her steed.
"Good-by, dear!" called the Princess, waving her hand to Auguste Philippe.
"You are a silly thing," he remarked, affectionately, from the battlements. "You won't do anything but tear your clothes."
He did not try to stop her. In the strain of becoming Auguste Philippe the Twenty-fourth he found that there were many things he was not so sure of as he had been before. The flame in his sister's eyes he did not understand, and he wondered why she was not content to stay at home and play at quoits and dance to music, as he was; but he resolved that Victorine should make a fool of herself in her own way, and that it should not cost her too dear. So he stood long watching her as she went shining across the great green plain with the light flashing from a thousand glittering points on her armor.
Now, the Princess rode by night and day, and not once did her courage fail or her arm grow weary. She left behind the green plain and the pleasant trees, and traveled in a grievous waste beyond the songs of birds, and anon she came to a woodland that was dark and old. She was sorely puzzled as to the habitat of the Microbe, for in his raids he came from east and west and north and south, and no one could tell if he had a permanent abiding-place. Often in the dusky shadows of the wood, she stopped to call a challenge: "What, ho! Come out and try thy skill!" But that was not his way of fighting, and he stayed hidden. Sometimes she inquired at a cottage door or at a shepherd's hut on the edge of the wood, but all thought that the lovely lady in armor was surely mad, wearing such strange clothing and asking such strange questions. Once she came upon a witch-wife who was gathering simples by a swamp in the wood.