The heralds sounded their trumpets and the trial began. To two
long rolling speeches made by people in wigs the poor Princess was
far too anxious to listen. The boy was being accused of treason, but
he did not seem to be listening either. The King sat listening sadly;
he had never thought the party he gave for his daughter could end
in such a way: his wish all along had been to make the Princess and
everyone else happy. He suddenly put up his hand to make the long
speech stop, leaned forward and said to the boy kindly:
“Didn’t you
know
you were rude to the Princess?”
The boy, looking up at the King, said: “No, Your Majesty.”
“But didn’t you think?”
“No, Your Majesty. Why should I?”
The King, who always thought for rather too long before he
could do anything, looked perplexed.
“I didn’t think,” said the boy. “I just threw the ball.”
The King cleared his throat and said: “But why do you think the
Princess threw the ball to you?”
“I don’t know,” said the boy. “I suppose she wanted to.”
“Did you not see she was doing you an honour?”
“Well, no,” said the boy. “I thought it was just fun.”
“Fun or no fun,” said the King, “why didn’t you throw it back to
her?”
The boy looked puzzled. “I couldn’t,” he said; “I had thrown it
back to that girl.” He glanced at the blonde little girl, who was
looking less pretty today in plain grey cloth.
“Now listen,” went on the King. “By the law of the land you
are threatened with a very serious punishment. People have been
beheaded for treason, you know. Your only chance is to tell us why
you did what you did. Why did you throw the ball to that young
lady instead of to the Princess?”
The boy looked amazed – perhaps that such a long question
should have such a simple answer as he was going to give.
“Because her dress was so pretty.”
There was a sensation in the court. The ladies present could not
help being pleased by the reply: they whispered among themselves
and said how poetic the boy was. A man in a wig got up and,
shaking his finger sternly, said: “But the Princess’s dress was
exceedingly beautiful.”
“But I like emerald green better than white.”
There was another buzz. The King, holding up his hand for
silence, said: “You seem to be speaking the truth; nobody could
invent this. I have one other question to ask: are you sorry for what
you have done?”
“Yes, I was at once,” said the boy, “because the Princess looked so
fearfully disappointed. If I could have had the ball back I would have
thrown it to her. She had a nicer face than anyone else there. The
young lady in green has a dull face. When I saw how she opens her
mouth when she’s trying to catch things, and how butter-fingered
she was, I was sorry at once. Then the guard arrested me. But I am
sorry still.”
The blonde little girl went into hysterics, and had to be carried
screaming out of the court. (What the boy said about her having a
dull face stuck to her all her life and she never married.)
The King said: “Will you tell the Princess you are sorry?”
The boy turned to the Princess’s throne. Bowing, he said in a cold
voice: “I am sorry I hurt Your Royal Highness’s feelings.”
Everyone who was present turned to look at the Princess. She
said in a small sad voice: “Oh, that is quite all right.”
The King announced: “I command that this charge of treason be
withdrawn.”
The guards took their hands from the boy’s shoulders: he bowed
to both thrones, turned, and walked out of the court.
The next dress the Princess had made was emerald green, and
everybody pretended not to know why. On her small white pony,
followed by her governess on a black mare and four palace guards
on chargers, she rode through the streets every day. People used to
set their clocks by her, for she always followed the same route,
through the poorer parts of the town where she thought she was
most likely to meet the boy. She bowed to right and left, trying not
to look anxious. For weeks she was unlucky; she thought he must
have left town. Then one day she saw him lying on the steps of a
fountain, quite idle, sunning himself like a dog. She pulled up her
pony, her governess reined in her mare, the four chargers were
pulled back on their haunches.
The boy stood up and bowed.
“Thank you,” she said, “for what you so kindly said about my
face.”
“Oh, it’s quite true,” said the boy; “I have often thought about
you.”
“Have you?” said the Princess.
“Yes; so many people have so much nonsense about them, but
there seems to be no nonsense about you.”
“Oh,” said the Princess.
“Yes,” said the boy warmly, “I have written a poem.” He fished
about in his pocket and brought out a piece of paper, very crumpled
and grey.
The Princess read: –
“Dear kind Princess in white
I did not mean, indeed, to ruin your delight.
The roses were so red, the fountains were so bright
That when you threw the ball
I did not think at all.
“You did not understand
What made me lose my head. The goldfish and the band.
The sunshine was so bright, the trumpets were so grand
That when you looked at me
I did not even see.
“When you stood still in white
She ran about in green, the green was oh so bright,
But she was oh so wrong and you were oh so right.
I did not see you till,
Too late, you stood so still.
“You must not be so sad.
“May I keep it?” said the Princess.
I cannot bear to see the sorry smile you had.
The fountains are so small, the music is so bad,
The roses wither, when
I think I hurt you then.”
The boy looked doubtful. “Yes, all right,” he said. “I think I
remember it.”
“I am wearing green today,” said the Princess timidly.
“So I see,” said the boy. “But I think white suits you better.”
He bowed, and the Princess rode on, tucking the poem carefully
into her pocket.
When she got back to the palace, they all saw an extraordinary
thing had happened.
The Princess was ten minutes late for lunch
. When she
saw the clock, something seemed to slip or come unhooked inside
her character: she did not know whether she were sorry or glad. As
luck would have it, her two Fairy Godmothers had arrived for lunch.
They had not been back since the christening, but, both being on
their way from a committee in Fairyland, had happened to find
themselves in the air above the palace and, as they had forgotten
their sandwiches, thought they would drop in. They may not have
known how unpopular they were with the King ever since they had
made his dear Queen so unhappy at the Princess’s christening. If
they had known it might not have stopped them: fairies are not
sensitive. So here they sat in the hall with their reticules, waiting for
the Princess to come home.
“I am sorry,” said the Princess, “I’m afraid I am late.”
“
What
!” said the Fairy who had given her Punctuality.
“I am late,” repeated the Princess.
“Well, no gift I gave has
ever
not worked before!”
“It has not worked today.”
“Why?” said the Fairy who had given her Commonsense.
“I stopped to talk to a boy.”
“Is he a member of the Princess Angelica Children’s Self-Help
Guild?”
“No. He writes poetry.”
“And you stopped to
talk
! Then where was your Commonsense?”
“I don’t know,” said the Princess with a happy smile.
“Miserable child,” said the two Fairies in chorus, “you prove
yourself unworthy of our two great gifts.”
“Well, I didn’t ask for them,” said the Princess politely but firmly.
“And they have stopped work of their own accord today.”
The Fairies looked at each other. “We will take them away,” they
said in one terrible voice. “You shall have instead what has brought
many Princesses to bad ends: Good Looks and a Sense of the
Ridiculous. Some day you will be sorry.”
The Princess tried to quail. But even before the Fairies had
finished speaking, she had a curious sensation in the tips of her hair:
it began violently curling. In two minutes, it was in tight little
clusters, like brown silk rosebuds, all over her head. Her eyes,
opened wide in surprise, turned from grey to the brightest blue, and
a pair of lovely dimples appeared in her smiling cheeks. At the same
time, the sight of the two Fairy Godmothers sitting side by side in
the hall, looking at her triumphantly and balefully, made her burst
out into fits of hysterical laughter. “There, you
see
,” said the Fairies.
“Your bad end is beginning.” They rose, spread their musty brown
wings and flew off down the hall, through the arch and away over
the palace to look for lunch somewhere else. The pages standing out
in the courtyard saw their reticules, sensible boots and tight poke
bonnets disappear in the sky, and thought they looked as ugly as a
couple of crows.
The Princess did not come to a bad end. Fairy Godmothers may
do much to spoil (or, if they are nicer than hers, to improve) your
chances, but they cannot really interfere with the nice character you
have inherited from your father and mother and the right way you
are brought up. Curls, bright blue eyes and dimples did not make
the Princess’s face less kind and good. She exercised her Sense of the
Ridiculous by making her father turn out a good many silly courtiers
who had been making the palace fussy, prim and dull. She preferred
amusing people, but, if you look closely at it, only nice people stay
amusing for long, so the new appointments she saw to worked very
well. Her advice became still more valuable to the King her father,
and while all the countries round them were having revolutions, he
continued to reign. As for her good looks – which increased as she
grew older – everybody fell in love with her: this pleased and
excited her so much that for some years she, quite naturally, forgot
the red-haired boy. But one day she turned up his poem in the
pocket of her out-grown emerald green dress. She showed it to the
King, who said: “By the way, that reminds me: we have no court
poet. How would it be . . . ” So they arranged a poetry competition,
which the red-haired boy, who was now nearly grown-up, won.
So he came to court, in discreet black clothes, and walked about,
refusing to show his poetry and looking critically at the Princess: he
did not dare to presume on their former meeting.
One day the Princess, who was now grown-up, passing him in a
passage, said: “Why do you look so cross?”
The red-haired young man said: “The appointment leads to
nothing; I want to be important. I am a Third Son, and I ought to
have more luck.”
The Princess started. “Third Son?” she said. “Whose?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “I only know that.”
“What would you like best to do?” she said.
“Marry you,” said he. “I do not think curls and dimples suit you,
but there is still no nonsense about you and you have the nice good
face that I always liked. Marry you, yes, and then take charge of this
country. The court is all very well, but everything outside it ought
to be run on much more modern lines. The unpunctuality nowadays
is appalling, and the laws should be overhauled from a common
sense point of view. If I have to write any more poetry, I shall go
mad.”
The Princess sighed. She thought of all the nice princes who
came from miles away to tell her she was perfect. But, unfortunately,
she always laughed at them.
“Very well,” she said, “I will ask my father.”
The King said: “There is nothing I should like better. Times are
changing. But I thought that young man was here to write poetry.
Are
you
not disappointed?”
“No,” said the Princess.
The Princess’s children did not have Fairy Godmothers.
Comfort and Joy
A
t school they twitted the two about their couple of
Christmas-carol names. They were both new girls that autumn term;
they were both twelve; they were inseparables – that is, until the
end of the school day, when Joy, day-boarder only, mounted her
bicycle and whizzed home, and poor Comfort, boarder who did not
like boarding-school, resigned herself to an evening spaced out by
bells and to the rigid classroom in which she did her prep. Comfort
was a fastidious, rather exquisite child who should not have been
sent to boarding-school. Not only did she miss her mother but
she missed the warm, pretty side of her home life. Almost every
Saturday, every Sunday Comfort obtained leave to go out to tea
with Joy. It may have been the possession of a home so near that
endeared rough, intense little Joy to her friend. Joy lived the other
side of the common – from the upper front windows of Helmbourne
Hall School the Devises’ house (low, white, with green porch and
gables) was to be seen. That Joy should sleep every night in her own
bed, do as she liked at weekends, be tucked up by her mother, made
her, in Comfort’s eyes, almost glamorous. Comfort’s own home in
London had been closed since the war.
And certainly Comfort had glamour, for Joy. Joy was a country
child, whose awe-struck glimpses of London had been on half-day
excursions with her family. Though London was only thirty miles
from Helmbourne, it might have been in another world. Comfort,
on the other hand, was a little Londoner to her finger-tips: she
spoke with ease of theatres, she had assured, cool manners, she wore
her blonde hair in a sleek, page-boy bob. Her experience was (it
seemed to Joy) immense. Comfort’s mother’s white satin bed, the
white rugs, the crystal lamps, the lilies, the harpsichord in the (now
shut) flat overlooking the park made fairy-land images in Joy’s mind.
So much so, that she had brought Comfort home with her, on the
first of those Saturday afternoons, with a certain amount of timidity.
But Comfort, thrilled to be out of school, found nothing lacking in
the Devises’ home. She soon established her right to one deep chair.
She had not Joy’s ardent nature: she could take what there was.