Atlantic Narratives Part 17

'I shall have to have the Royal Dressmaker make me another one soon. Let me see--what color shall I choose? I'd _like_ my gold-colored velvet made up. I'm tired of wearing royal purple dresses all the time, though of course I know they're appropriater. I wonder what color the Prince would like best? I should rather choose that color.'

The Princess's little brown hands were clasped about one knee, and she was rocking herself slowly back and forth, her eyes, wistful and wide, on the path the Prince would come. She was tired to-day and it was harder to wait.

'But when he comes I shall say, "Hear, O Prince. Verily, verily, I did not know which color you would like to find me dressed--I mean arrayed--in, and so I beseech thee excuse--_pardon_, I mean, mine infirmity."'

The Princess was not sure of 'infirmity,' but it sounded well. She could not think of a better word.

'And then--I _think_ then--he will take me in his arms, and his face will be all sweet and splendid like the Mother o' G.o.d's in the picture, and he will whisper,--I don't think he will say it out loud,--oh, I'd rather not!--"Verily, Princess," he will whisper, "oh, verily, _verily_, thou hast found favor in my sight!" And that will mean that he doesn't care what color I am, for he--loves--me.'

Lower and lower sank the solemn voice of the Princess. Slower and slower rocked the little lean body. The birds themselves stopped singing at the end. In the Secret Place it was very still.

'Oh, no, no, no,--not _verily_!' breathed the Princess, in soft awe.

For the wonder of it took her breath away. She had never in her life been loved, and now, at this moment, it seemed so near! She thought she heard the footsteps of the Prince.

They came nearer. The crisp twigs snapped under his feet. He was whistling.

'Oh, I can't look!--I can't!' gasped the little Princess, but she turned her face to the west,--she had always known it would be from the west,--and lifted closed eyes to his coming. When he got to the Twisted Willow she might dare to look--to the Little Willow Twins, anyway.

'And I shall know when he does,' she thought. 'I shall know the minute!'

Her face was rapt and tender. The miracle she had made for herself,--the gold she had coined out of her piteous alloy,--was it not come true at last?--Verily, verily?

Hus.h.!.+ Was the Prince not coming through the willows? And the suns.h.i.+ne was trickling down on his hair! The Princess knew, though she did not look.

'He is at the Twisted Willow,' she thought. '_Now_ he is at the Little Willow Twins.'

But she did not open her eyes. She did not dare. This was a little different, she had never counted on being afraid.

The twigs snapped louder and nearer--now very near. The merry whistle grew clearer, and then it stopped.

'Hullo!'

Did princes say 'Hullo!'

The Princess had little time to wonder, for he was there before her. She could feel his presence in every fibre of her trembling little being, though she would not open her eyes for very fear that it might be somebody else. No, no, it was the Prince! It was his voice, clear and ringing, as she had known it would be. She put up her hands suddenly and covered her eyes with them to make surer. It was not fear now, but a device to put off a little longer the delight of seeing him.

'I say, hullo! Haven't you got any tongue?'

'Oh, verily, verily,--I mean hear, O Prince, I beseech,' she panted.

The boy's merry eyes regarded the shabby small person in puzzled astonishment. He felt an impulse to laugh and run away, but his royal blood forbade either. So he waited.

'You are the Prince,' the little Princess cried. 'I've been waiting the longest time,--but I knew you'd come,' she added simply. 'Have you got your velvet an' gold buckles on? I'm goin' to look in a minute, but I'm waiting to make it spend.'

The Prince whistled softly. 'No,' he said then, 'I didn't wear _them_ clo'es to-day. You see, my mother--'

'The Queen,' she interrupted; 'you mean the Queen?'

'You bet I do! She's a reg'lar-builter! Well, she don't like to have me wearin' out my best clo'es every day,' he said gravely.

'No,' eagerly, 'nor mine don't. Queen, I mean,--but she isn't a mother, mercy, no! I only wear silk dresses every day, not my velvet ones. This silk one is getting a little faded.'

She released one hand to smooth the dress wistfully. Then she remembered her painfully practiced little speech and launched into it hurriedly.

'Hear, O Prince. Verily, verily, I did not know which color you 'd like to find me dressed in--I mean _arrayed_. I beseech thee to excuse--oh, _pardon_, I mean--'

But she got no further. She could endure the delay no longer, and her eyes flew open.

She had known his step; she had known his voice. She knew his face. It was terribly freckled, and she had not expected freckles on the face of the Prince. But the merry, honest eyes were the Prince's eyes. Her gaze wandered downward to the home-made clothes and bare, brown legs, but without uneasiness. The Prince had explained about his clothes.

Suddenly, with a shy, glad little cry, the Princess held out her hands to him.

The royal blood flooded the face of the Prince and filled in all the s.p.a.ces between its little gold-brown freckles. But the Prince held out his hand to her. His lips formed for words and she thought he was going to say, 'Verily, Princess, thou hast found favor--'

'Le' 's go fis.h.i.+n',' the Prince said.

THE TWO APPLES

JAMES EDMUND DUNNING

WHEN the morning of the sixteenth day broke out from the gray battlements to the east'ard, only two live men remained on the raft which more than two weeks before had left the splintered side of the barkentine; besides, there was one dead man, and his body counted three out of a dozen who had clung to the raft until ten starved to death because they could not live on red apples and brine.

Zadoc roused as much as a man can when every morning he wakens less and less until some day he does not waken at all. Jeems lay staring at the sun as at a stranger's face.

'Turn out, Jeems,' said Zadoc, when he had worked some life back into his thickening tongue, 'till we put him over.'

They rolled the body into the sea with no words or ceremonials to mark the end, except that Jeems, when some part of the splash stung his face, struck off the drops with trembling, horrified hands.

'Two apples left,' said Zadoc, not in any tentative sounding of possibilities, but with finality forced home by a fact so plain and near as to render evasion needless.

'One for to-day,' said Jeems, 'the--the other one for to-morrow.'

'The _last_ one for to-morrow!' returned Zadoc, bold as ever. 'Let us wait as long as we can before breakfast!'

The raft drifted many hours, following the sun around the fatal, empty bowl. Jeems broke that vast silence.

'Zadoc, I must eat something. My head is--you know--my head!'

'So does mine,' said Zadoc. 'Cut the first apple in two.'

It takes so little to satisfy, when one is starving, and that little goes so very fast! When Zadoc put his furred teeth into half the first apple, it was as if he had not tasted such since he left Cape Cod a dozen years before. His mind, strained with a long, unrealized hope, forgot the timbers on which his bent muscles clung, and went back to an orchard he had known--where such apples always grew. The cool air from the shadows underneath the tree-rows seemed interlaid with waves of heat and the loved odors of the sunlit seaside farm,--that long slope from the meadow land up, up and up beneath the slant uncertain fence to where the white top-sides of the house were vividly set off in green,--till Zadoc came to himself and understood that the smell was only the damp breath of the Atlantic, and the heat the plunging agony which flowed from his own tense heart. The first apple was gone.

The two men's eyes conversed in brief. Then Zadoc said,--

'I'm going to sleep again, if it _is_ sleep. Anyway, I'm tired. Can you stay up a while?'