Oswald Bastable and Others Part 47

'Then there's nothing for it but for me to wish not to love you,' said Muscadel, 'for I really can't bear loving you to this desperate degree when you don't care a snap of your Royal fingers for me. Lend me the jewel a moment. You shall have it back. If you don't care for me, I don't want to care for anything. I'll live and die a red-faced, red-eared, red-haired, red-handed archer, so I will.'

The Princess lent him the jewel, and he wished and waited. Then, 'It's no good,' he said; 'I adore you as much as ever--more, if possible.'

'Ah, I see,' said the Princess; 'there _is_ one thing that the magic ring won't touch. I suppose that's love. How funny!'

'I don't think it's funny at all,' said he. 'I suppose really it's because you're not the sort of person that could love the sort of person I am.'

'Well, then,' said she, 'I'll wish I was the sort of person who _could_.

I won't be made a silly of by a stupid magic jewel. Only let me call my father, because goodness knows what sort of person the person who could love you would be like. _I_ can't imagine anyone who could!'

'You may be as cruel as you like now,' said Muscadel, 'if only somehow or other you'll get to love me afterwards. I will call the King.'

So he went to the door and shouted:

'Hi, your Majesty! Step this way for a moment, will you, please?'

And His Majesty stepped.

'Look here, daddy,' said the Princess, 'I'm real Princess size again, so give me a kiss!'

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'A blowzy, frowzy dairymaid.' Page 363.]

When this was done she said very quickly, and before the King could stop her:

'I wish I was the kind of person that could love this archer.'

And then and there, before the horrified eyes of the other two, the Princess turned into the kind of person who could love the archer.

'Bless my soul and body!' said the King, turning purple.

'Oh, my heart!' said Muscadel, turning white.

For the kind of person the Princess had changed into was a blowzy, frowzy dairymaid, with oily black hair and s.h.i.+ning red cheeks, and little black eyes like the currant eyes in gingerbread pigs. Her hands were fat and red, and her feet would not bear looking at for a moment.

'Good old Muscadel!' said the dairymaid that Pandora had turned into; 'now we'll be married and live as happy as two mice in a cheese!'

'Never in this world!' cried Muscadel, s.n.a.t.c.hing the ring from her hand, which was not manners, but we must remember that he was very much upset.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the ring, and he rushed out of the room and out of the palace, and when he got to the archers' quarters he flung himself face down among the rushes on the floor, and lay there till his comrades began to mock him and even to kick him as he lay; and then he got up and fought them with his red fists, one down, t'other come on, till seven of them had owned that they did not want any more.

'Oh dear! oh dear!' said the King in his palace; 'I'd rather have had you flower-fairy size for life than like this! We must get back the jewel and make you into your old self.'

'Not a bit of it,' said the dairymaid Princess. 'I never was so happy in my life. I love that lovely archer, and if I'm a Princess you can order him to marry me, and he'll have to.'

'Lackaday!' said the King. 'Dairymaids don't seem to love like Princesses do.'

'I dare say not,' said she, 'but we know our own minds. I tell you I'm happy, governor, and I'll stay as I am.'

The dairymaid Princess called for cold pork and cheese and beer, and, having had quite enough of all three, she went to bed in the Princess's green and white bedroom.

Now, when all the archers had gone to sleep poor Muscadel stole out and wandered through the palace gardens, and looked at the white fountains rising and falling in the moonlight. He saw the white lilies sleeping standing up, just like real live sentinels. He saw the white pea-c.o.c.ks roosting in the yew-trees, and the white swans cuddled up among the reeds by the lake. He went hither and thither through the cold white beauty of the night, and he thought and thought, but he could not think any thought that was worth the trouble of thinking.

And at last he sat down on a marble bench and very nearly wished that he were dead. Not quite, of course, because people very seldom do that; and if he had there would have been an end to this story.

The silence and the moonlight soothed him; his poor brain felt clearer and brighter, and at last he had the sense to say, without at all knowing that he was saying anything sensible, 'I wish I was clever.'

And instantly he was.

The change was so great, so sudden, and so violent that it nearly choked him. He drew two or three difficult breaths, and then he said:

'Oh, I see! How stupid of me! I wish I were the kind of person the real Princess could love.'

And he felt his body change. He grew thinner, and his face seemed to grow a different shape. He hastened to the lake and leaned over it, and saw by the moonlight the reflection of his own face in the water. It was not particularly handsome, but he was not ashamed of the deep-set eyes, largish nose, and firm lips and chin.

'So that's the sort of man she could love!' he said, and went home to bed like a sensible person.

Early in the morning he went out into the palace garden, and it was not all gray and white, as it had been the night before, with moonlight and white lilies, but gold and red, with suns.h.i.+ne and roses, and hollyhocks and carnations.

He went and waited under the Princess's window, for he had grown clever enough to know that the Princess, since she was now a dairymaid, would be awake betimes. And sure enough the green silk curtains were presently drawn back, and the drowsy, blowzy, frowzy face of the dairymaid looked out.

'Halloa!' she said to Muscadel, among the roses, 'what are _you_ up to?'

'I am the archer you love,' said Muscadel, among the roses.

'Not you,' she said.

'But indeed!' said he.

[Ill.u.s.tration: '"You've got a face as long as a fiddle."'--Page 367.]

'Lawks!' said the dairymaid.

'Don't you love me like this?' said Muscadel.

'Not a bit,' said she; 'go along, do! You've got a face as long as a fiddle, and I never could abide black hair.'

'I'm going to stay like this,' said he.

'Then what's to become of me?' she asked, and waited for an answer with her mouth half open.

'I'll tell you,' said Muscadel. 'You can stay as you are all your life, and go on loving an archer who isn't anywhere at all, or I'll lend you the magic jewel, and then you can change back into the Princess. And when you're the Princess, you'll love me ever so much more than you ever loved the archer.'

'Humph!' said the dairymaid, fingering the Princess's pearl necklace.

'Well, if my dear archer really isn't any more, anywhere---- As you say, the really important thing is to love someone.' Although she was a silly dairymaid she had the sense to see that. 'Give me the jewel,' she said.

He threw it up, and she caught it overhand, put it on, and said:

'I wish I was the Princess again.'