The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library) (26 page)

“You!!” repeated all the gentleman- and ladies-in-waiting.

“You!!!” echoed the heralds and pages—and they began to blow the silver trumpets in order to stop all further conversation.

The Prince’s procession formed itself for returning—the King and his train having already moved off towards the palace—but on the topmost step of the marble stairs stood, right in front of all, the little old woman clothed in grey.

She stretched herself on tiptoe by the help of her stick, and gave the little Prince three kisses.

“This is intolerable!” cried the young lady nurse, wiping the kisses off rapidly with her lace handkerchief. “Such an insult to his Royal Highness! Take yourself out of the way, old woman, or the King shall be informed immediately.”

“The King knows nothing of me, more’s the pity,” replied the old woman, with an indifferent air, as if she thought the loss was more on his Majesty’s side than hers. “My friend in the palace is the King’s wife.”

“Kings have not wives, but queens,” said the lady nurse, with a contemptuous air.

“You are right,” replied the old woman. “Nevertheless, I know her Majesty well, and I love her and her child. And—since you dropped him on the marble stairs” (this she said in a mysterious whisper, which made the young lady tremble in spite of her anger)—“I choose to take him for my own, and be his godmother, ready to help him whenever he wants me.”

“You help him!” cried all the group, breaking into shouts of laughter, to which the little old woman paid not the slightest attention. Her soft grey
eyes were fixed on the Prince, who seemed to answer to the look, smiling again and again in the causeless, aimless fashion that babies do smile.

“His Majesty must hear of this,” said a gentleman-in-waiting.

“His Majesty will hear quite enough news in a minute or two,” said the old woman sadly. And again stretching up to the little Prince, she kissed him on the forehead solemnly.

“Be called by a new name which nobody has ever thought of. Be Prince Dolor, in memory of your mother Dolorez.”

“In memory of!” Everybody started at the ominous phrase, and also at a most terrible breach of etiquette which the old woman had committed. In Nomansland, neither the King nor the Queen was supposed to have any Christian name at all. They dropped it on their coronation-day, and it never was mentioned again till it was engraved on their coffins when they died.

“Old woman, you are exceedingly ill-bred,” cried the eldest lady-in-waiting, much horrified. “How you could know the fact passes my comprehension. But even if you did know it, how dared you presume to hint that her most gracious Majesty is called Dolorez?”

“
Was
called Dolorez,” said the old woman, with a tender solemnity.

The first gentleman, called the Gold-stick-in-waiting, raised it to strike her, and all the rest stretched out their hands to seize her; but the grey mantle melted from between their fingers like air. And, before anybody had time to do anything more, there came a heavy, muffled, startling sound.

The great bell of the palace—the bell which was heard only on the death of some one of the royal family, and for as many times as he or she was years old—began to toll. They listened, mute and horror-stricken. Someone counted: One—two—three—four—up to nine-and-twenty—just the Queen’s age.

It was, indeed, the Queen. Her Majesty was dead! In the midst of the festivities she had slipped away out of her new happiness and her old sufferings, not few nor small. Sending away all her women to see the grand sight—at least they said afterwards, in excuse, that she had done so, and it was very like her to do it—she had turned with her face to the window, whence one could just see the tops of the distant mountains—the Beautiful Mountains, as they were called—where she was born. So gazing, she had quietly passed away.

When the little Prince was carried back to his mother’s room, there was no mother to kiss him. And, though he did not know it, there would be for him no mother’s kiss any more.

As for his godmother—the little old woman in grey who called herself so—whether she melted into air, like her gown when they touched it, or
whether she flew out of the chapel window, or slipped through the doorway among the bewildered crowd, nobody knew—nobody ever thought about her.

Only the nurse, the ordinary homely one, coming out of the Prince’s nursery in the middle of the night in search of a cordial to quiet his continual moans, saw, sitting in the doorway, something which she would have thought a mere shadow had she not seen shining out of it two eyes, grey and soft and sweet. She put her hands before her own, screaming loudly. When she took them away the old woman was gone.

Everybody was very kind to the poor little Prince. I think people generally are kind to motherless children, whether princes or peasants. He had a magnificent nursery and a regular suite of attendants, and was treated with the greatest respect and state. Nobody was allowed to talk to him in silly baby language, or dandle him, or above all to kiss him, though perhaps some people did it surreptitiously, for he was such a sweet baby that it was difficult to help it.

It could not be said that the Prince missed his mother—children of his age cannot do that; but somehow after she died everything seemed to go wrong with him. From a beautiful baby he became sickly and pale, seeming to have almost ceased growing, especially in his legs, which had been so fat and strong. But after the day of his christening they withered and shrank. He no longer kicked them out in either passion or play, and when, as he got to be nearly a year old, his nurse tried to make him stand upon them, he only tumbled down.

This happened so many times that at last people began to talk about it. A prince, and not able to stand on his own legs! What a dreadful thing! What a misfortune for the country!

Rather a misfortune to him also, poor little boy! but nobody seemed to think of that. And when, after a while, his health revived, and the old bright look came back to his sweet little face, and his body grew larger and stronger, though still his legs remained the same, people continued to speak of him in whispers, and with graves shakes of the head. Everybody knew, though nobody said it, that something, it was impossible to guess what, was not quite right with the poor little Prince.

Of course, nobody hinted this to the King his father. It does not do to
tell great people anything unpleasant. And besides, his Majesty took very little notice of his son, or of his other affairs, beyond the necessary duties of his kingdom.

People had said he would not miss the Queen at all, she having been so long an invalid, but he did. After her death he never was quite the same. He established himself in her empty rooms, the only rooms in the palace whence one could see the Beautiful Mountains, and was often observed looking at them as if he thought she had flown away thither, and that his longing could bring her back again. And by a curious coincidence, which nobody dared inquire into, he desired that the Prince might be called, not by any of the four-and-twenty grand names given him by his godfathers and godmothers, but by the identical name mentioned by the little old woman in grey—Dolor, after his mother Dolorez.

Once a week, according to established state custom, the Prince, dressed in his very best, was brought to the King his father for half-an-hour, but his Majesty was generally too ill and too melancholy to pay much heed to the child.

Only once, when he and the Crown Prince, who was exceedingly attentive to his royal brother, were sitting together, with Prince Dolor playing in a corner of the room, dragging himself about with his arms rather than his legs, and sometimes trying feebly to crawl from one chair to another, it seemed to strike the father that all was not right with his son.

“How old is his Royal Highness?” said he suddenly to the nurse.

“Two years, three months and five days, please your Majesty.”

“It does not please me,” said the King, with a sigh. “He ought to be far more forward than he is now—ought he not, brother? You, who have so many children, must know. Is there not something wrong about him?”

“Oh, no,” said the Crown Prince, exchanging meaning looks with the nurse, who did not understand at all, but stood frightened and trembling with the tears in her eyes. “Nothing to make your Majesty at all uneasy. No doubt his Royal Highness will outgrow it in time.”

“Outgrow—what?”

“A slight delicacy—ahem!—in the spine; something inherited, perhaps, from his dear mother.”

“Ah, she was always delicate; but she was the sweetest woman that ever lived. Come here, my little son.”

And as the Prince turned round upon his father a small, sweet, grave face—so like his mother’s—his Majesty the King smiled and held out his arms. But when the boy came to him, not running like a boy, but wriggling awkwardly along the floor, the royal countenance clouded over.

“I ought to have been told of this. It is terrible—terrible! And for a prince, too! Send for all the doctors in my kingdom immediately.”

They came, and each gave a different opinion and ordered a different mode of treatment. The only thing they agreed in was what had been pretty well known before: that the Prince must have been hurt when he was an infant—let fall, perhaps, so as to injure his spine and lower limbs. Did nobody remember?

No, nobody. Indignantly, all the nurses denied that any such accident had happened, was possible to have happened, until the faithful country nurse recollected that it really had happened, on the day of the christening. For which unluckily good memory all the others scolded her so severely that she had no peace of her life, and soon after, by the influence of the young lady nurse who had carried the baby that fatal day, and who was a sort of connection of the Crown Prince—being his wife’s second cousin once removed—the poor woman was pensioned off and sent to the Beautiful Mountains from whence she came, with orders to remain there for the rest of her days.

But of all this the King knew nothing, for, indeed, after the first shock of finding out that his son could not walk, and seemed never likely to walk, he interfered very little concerning him. The whole thing was too painful, and his Majesty never liked painful things. Sometimes he inquired after Prince Dolor, and they told him his Royal Highness was going on as well as could be expected, which really was the case. For, after worrying the poor child and perplexing themselves with one remedy after another, the Crown Prince, not wishing to offend any of the differing doctors, had proposed leaving him to Nature; and Nature, the safest doctor of all, had come to his help and done her best. He could not walk, it is true. His limbs were mere useless appendages to his body; but the body itself was strong and sound. And his face was the same as ever—just his mother’s face, one of the sweetest in the world.

Even the King, indifferent as he was, sometimes looked at the little fellow with sad tenderness, noticing how cleverly he learned to crawl and swing himself about by his arms, so that in his own awkward way he was as active in motion as most children of his age.

“Poor little man! he does his best, and he is not unhappy—not half so unhappy as I, brother,” addressing the Crown Prince, who was more constant than ever in his attendance upon the sick monarch. “If anything should befall me, I have appointed you Regent. In case of my death, you will take care of my poor little boy?”

“Certainly, certainly; but do not let us imagine any such misfortune. I assure your Majesty—everybody will assure you—that it is not in the least likely.”

He knew, however, and everybody knew, that it was likely, and soon after it actually did happen. The King died as suddenly and quietly as the Queen had done—indeed, in her very room and bed; and Prince Dolor was left without either father or mother—as sad a thing as could happen, even to a prince.

He was more than that now, though. He was a king. In Nomansland, as in other countries, the people were struck with grief one day and revived the next. “The King is dead—long live the King!” was the cry that rang through the nation, and almost before his late Majesty had been laid beside the Queen in their splendid mausoleum, crowds came thronging from all parts to the royal palace, eager to see the new monarch.

They did see him—the Prince Regent took care they should—sitting on the floor of the council-chamber, sucking his thumb! And when one of the gentlemen-in-waiting lifted him up and carried him—fancy carrying a king!—to the chair of state, and put the crown on his head, he shook it off again, it was so heavy and uncomfortable. Sliding down to the foot of the throne, he began playing with the golden lions that supported it, stroking their paws and putting his tiny fingers into their eyes, and laughing—laughing as if he had at last found something to amuse him.

“There’s a fine king for you!” said the first lord-in-waiting, a friend of the Prince Regent’s (the Crown Prince that used to be, who, in the deepest mourning, stood silently beside the throne of his young nephew; he was a handsome man, very grand and clever-looking). “What a king! who can never stand to receive his subjects, never walk in processions, who to the last day of his life will have to be carried about like a baby. Very unfortunate!”

“Exceedingly unfortunate,” repeated the second lord. “It is always bad for a nation when its king is a child; but such a child—a permanent cripple, if not worse.”

“Let us hope not worse,” said the first lord in a very hopeless tone, and looking toward the Regent, who stood erect and pretended to hear nothing. “I have heard that these children with very large heads, and great broad foreheads and staring eyes, are—well, well, let us hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. In the meantime—”

“I swear,” said the Crown Prince, coming forward and kissing the hilt of his sword—“I swear to perform my duties as Regent, to take all care of his Royal Highness—his Majesty, I mean,” with a grand bow to the little child, who laughed innocently back again. “And I will do my humble best to govern the country, Still, if the country has the slightest objection—”

But the Crown Prince being generalissimo, having the whole army at his beck and call, so that he could have begun a civil war in no time, the country had, of course, not the slightest objection.