Part 61

'Oh! no,' cried Kenneth, 'you helped me back and I'll help you back,' and he caught the Carp from the hands of the uncle and flung it out in the moat.

'Your head's not quite right yet, my boy,' said the uncle kindly. 'Hadn't you better go in and lie down a bit?'

But Alison understood, for he had told her the whole story. He had told her that morning before breakfast while she was still in deep disgrace; to cheer her up, he said. And, most disappointingly, it made her cry more than ever.

'Your poor little fins,' she had said, 'and having your feet tied up in your tail. And it was all my fault.'

'I liked it,' Kenneth had said with earnest politeness, 'it was a most awful lark.' And he quite meant what he said.

XII

THE MAGICIAN'S HEART

We all have our weaknesses. Mine is mulberries. Yours, perhaps, motor cars. Professor Taykin's was christenings--royal christenings. He always expected to be asked to the christening parties of all the little royal babies, and of course he never was, because he was not a lord, or a duke, or a seller of bacon and tea, or anything really high-class, but merely a wicked magician, who by economy and strict attention to customers had worked up a very good business of his own. He had not always been wicked. He was born quite good, I believe, and his old nurse, who had long since married a farmer and retired into the calm of country life, always used to say that he was the duckiest little boy in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs. But he had changed since he was a boy, as a good many other people do--perhaps it was his trade. I dare say you've noticed that cobblers are usually thin, and brewers are generally fat, and magicians are almost always wicked.

Well, his weakness (for christenings) grew stronger and stronger because it was never indulged, and at last he 'took the bull into his own hands,' as the Irish footman at the palace said, and went to a christening without being asked. It was a very grand party given by the King of the Fortunate Islands, and the little prince was christened Fortunatus. No one took any notice of Professor Taykin. They were too polite to turn him out, but they made him wish he'd never come. He felt quite an outsider, as indeed he was, and this made him furious. So that when all the bright, light, laughing, fairy godmothers were crowding round the blue satin cradle, and giving gifts of beauty and strength and goodness to the baby, the Magician suddenly did a very difficult charm (in his head, like you do mental arithmetic), and said:

'Young Forty may be all that, but I say he shall be the stupidest prince in the world,' and on that he vanished in a puff of red smoke with a smell like the Fifth of November in a back garden on Streatham Hill, and as he left no address the King of the Fortunate Islands couldn't prosecute him for high treason.

Taykin was very glad to think that he had made such a lot of people unhappy--the whole Court was in tears when he left, including the baby--and he looked in the papers for another royal christening, so that he could go to that and make a lot more people miserable. And there was one fixed for the very next Wednesday. The Magician went to that, too, disguised as a wealthy.

This time the baby was a girl. Taykin kept close to the pink velvet cradle, and when all the nice qualities in the world had been given to the Princess he suddenly said, 'Little Aura may be all that, but I say she shall be the ugliest princess in all the world.'

And instantly she was. It was terrible. And she had been such a beautiful baby too. Every one had been saying that she was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen. This sort of thing is often said at christenings.

Having uglified the unfortunate little Princess the Magician did the spell (in his mind, just as you do your spelling) to make himself vanish, but to his horror there was no red smoke and no smell of fireworks, and there he was, still, where he now very much wished not to be. Because one of the fairies there had seen, just one second too late to save the Princess, what he was up to, and had made a strong little charm in a great hurry to prevent his vanishing. This Fairy was a White Witch, and of course you know that White Magic is much stronger than Black Magic, as well as more suited for drawing-room performances. So there the Magician stood, 'looking like a thunder-struck pig,' as some one unkindly said, and the dear White Witch bent down and kissed the baby princess.

'There!' she said, 'you can keep that kiss till you want it. When the time comes you'll know what to do with it. The Magician can't vanish, Sire. You'd better arrest him.'

'Arrest that person,' said the King, pointing to Taykin. 'I suppose your charms are of a permanent nature, madam.'

'Quite,' said the Fairy, 'at least they never go till there's no longer any use for them.'

So the Magician was shut up in an enormously high tower, and allowed to play with magic; but none of his spells could act outside the tower so he was never able to pass the extra double guard that watched outside night and day. The King would have liked to have the Magician executed but the White Witch warned him that this would never do.

'Don't you see,' she said, 'he's the only person who can make the Princess beautiful again. And he'll do it some day. But don't you go asking him to do it. He'll never do anything to oblige you. He's that sort of man.'

So the years rolled on. The Magician stayed in the tower and did magic and was very bored,--for it is dull to take white rabbits out of your hat, and your hat out of nothing when there's no one to see you.

Prince Fortunatus was such a stupid little boy that he got lost quite early in the story, and went about the country saying his name was James, which it wasn't. A baker's wife found him and adopted him, and sold the diamond buttons of his little overcoat, for three hundred pounds, and as she was a very honest woman she put two hundred away for James to have when he grew up.

The years rolled on. Aura continued to be hideous, and she was very unhappy, till on her twentieth birthday her married cousin Belinda came to see her. Now Belinda had been made ugly in her cradle too, so she could sympathise as no one else could.

'But I got out of it all right, and so will you,' said Belinda. 'I'm sure the first thing to do is to find a magician.'

'Father banished them all twenty years ago,' said Aura behind her veil, 'all but the one who uglified me.'

'Then I should go to him,' said beautiful Belinda. 'Dress up as a beggar maid, and give him fifty pounds to do it. Not more, or he may suspect that you're not a beggar maid. It will be great fun. I'd go with you only I promised Bellamant faithfully that I'd be home to lunch.' And off she went in her mother-of-pearl coach, leaving Aura to look through the bound volumes of The Perfect Lady in the palace library, to find out the proper costume for a beggar maid.

Now that very morning the Magician's old nurse had packed up a ham, and some eggs, and some honey, and some apples, and a sweet bunch of old-fashioned flowers, and borrowed the baker's boy to hold the horse for her, and started off to see the Magician. It was forty years since she'd seen him, but she loved him still, and now she thought she could do him a good turn. She asked in the town for his address, and learned that he lived in the Black Tower.

'But you'd best be careful,' the townsfolk said, 'he's a spiteful chap.'

'Bless you,' said the old nurse, 'he won't hurt me as nursed him when he was a babe, in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs ever you see.'