Part 12

‘We shall have a war, Sire, depend on it,’ says the Minister. ‘His father, King Padella. . .’

‘His father, King WHO?’ says the King. ‘King Padella is not Giglio’s father. My brother, King Savio, was Giglio’s father.’

‘It’s Prince Bulbo they are hanging, Sire, not Prince Giglio,’ says the Prime Minister.

‘You told me to hang the Prince, and I took the ugly one,’ says Hedzoff. ‘I didn’t, of course, think Your Majesty intended to murder your own flesh and blood!’

The King for all reply flung the plate of sausages at Hedzoff’s head. The Princess cried out ‘Hee-kareekaree!’ and fell down in a fainting fit.

‘Turn the cock of the urn upon Her Royal Highness,’ said the King, and the boiling water gradually revived her. His Majesty looked at his watch, compared it by the clock in the parlour, and by that of the church in the square opposite; then he wound it up; then he looked at it again. ‘The great question is,’ says he, ‘am I fast or am I slow? If I’m slow, we may as well go on with breakfast. If I’m fast, why, there is just the possibility of saving Prince Bulbo. It’s a doosid awkward mistake, and upon my word, Hedzoff, I have the greatest mind to have you hanged too.’

‘Sire, I did but my duty; a soldier has but his orders. I didn’t expect after forty-seven years of faithful service that my sovereign would think of putting me to a felon’s death!’

‘A hundred thousand plagues upon you! Can’t you see that while you are talking my Bulbo is being hung?’ screamed the Princess.

‘By Jove! she’s always right, that girl, and I’m so absent,’ says the King, looking at his watch again. ‘Ha! there go the drums! What a doosid awkward thing though!’

‘Oh, papa, you goose! Write the reprieve, and let me run with it,’ cries the Princess--and she got a sheet of paper, and pen and ink, and laid them before the King.

‘Confound it! where are my spectacles?’ the Monarch exclaimed. ‘Angelica! go up into my bedroom, look under my pillow, not your mamma’s; there you’ll see my keys. Bring them down to me, and--Well, well! what impetuous things these girls are!’ Angelica was gone, and had run up panting to the bedroom, and found the keys, and was back again before the King had finished a muffin. ‘Now, love,’ says he, ‘you must go all the way back for my desk, in which my spectacles are. If you would but have heard me out. . . Be hanged to her! There she is off again. Angelica! ANGELICA!’ When His Majesty called in his LOUD voice, she knew she must obey, and came back.

‘My dear, when you go out of a room, how often have I told you, SHUT THE DOOR. That’s a darling. That’s all.’ At last the keys and the desk and the spectacles were got, and the King mended his pen, and signed his name to a reprieve, and Angelica ran with it as swift as the wind. ‘You’d better stay, my love, and finish the muffins. There’s no use going. Be sure it’s too late. Hand me over that raspberry jam, please,’ said the Monarch. ‘Bong! Bawong! There goes the half-hour. I knew it was.’

Angelica ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. She ran up Fore Street, and down High Street, and through the Market-place, and down to the left, and over the bridge, and up the blind alley, and back again, and round by the Castle, and so along by the Haberdasher’s on the right, opposite the lamp-post, and round the square, and she came--she came to the EXECUTION PLACE, where she saw Bulbo laying his head on the block!!! The executioner raised his axe, but at that moment the Princess came panting up and cried ‘Reprieve!’ ‘Reprieve!’ screamed the Princess. ‘Reprieve!’ shouted all the people. Up the scaffold stairs she sprang, with the agility of a lighter of lamps; and flinging herself in Bulbo’s arms, regardless of all ceremony, she cried out, ‘Oh, my Prince! my lord! my love! my Bulbo! Thine Angelica has been in time to save thy precious existence, sweet rosebud; to prevent thy being nipped in thy young bloom! Had aught befallen thee, Angelica too had died, and welcomed death that joined her to her Bulbo.’

‘H’m! there’s no accounting for tastes,’ said Bulbo, looking so very much puzzled and uncomfortable that the Princess, in tones of tenderest strain, asked the cause of his disquiet.

‘I tell you what it is, Angelica,’ said he, ‘since I came here yesterday, there has been such a row, and disturbance, and quarrelling, and fighting, and chopping of heads off, and the deuce to pay, that I am inclined to go back to Crim Tartary.’

‘But with me as thy bride, my Bulbo! Though wherever thou art is Crim Tartary to me, my bold, my beautiful, my Bulbo!’

‘Well, well, I suppose we must be married,’ says Bulbo. ‘Doctor, you came to read the Funeral Service--read the Marriage Service, will you? What must be, must. That will satisfy Angelica, and then, in the name of peace and quietness, do let us go back to breakfast.’

Bulbo had carried a rose in his mouth all the time of the dismal ceremony. It was a fairy rose, and he was told by his mother that he ought never to part with it. So he had kept it between his teeth, even when he laid his poor head upon the block, hoping vaguely that some chance would turn up in his favour. As he began to speak to Angelica, he forgot about the rose, and of course it dropped out of his mouth. The romantic Princess instantly stooped and seized it. ‘Sweet rose!’ she exclaimed, ‘that bloomed upon my Bulbo’s lip, never, never will I part from thee!’ and she placed it in her bosom. And you know Bulbo COULDN’T ask her to give the rose back again. And they went to breakfast; and as they walked, it appeared to Bulbo that Angelica became more exquisitely lovely every moment.

He was frantic until they were married; and now, strange to say, it was Angelica who didn’t care about him! He knelt down, he kissed her hand, he prayed and begged; he cried with admiration; while she for her part said she really thought they might wait; it seemed to her he was not handsome any more--no, not at all, quite the reverse; and not clever, no, very stupid; and not well bred, like Giglio; no, on the contrary, dreadfully vul--

What, I cannot say, for King Valoroso roared out ‘POOH, stuff!’ in a terrible voice. ‘We will have no more of this shilly-shallying! Call the Archbishop, and let the Prince and Princess be married offhand!’

So, married they were, and I am sure for my part I trust they will be happy.

XII. HOW BETSINDA FLED, AND WHAT BECAME OF HER

Betsinda wandered on and on, till she passed through the town gates, and so on the great Crim Tartary road, the very way on which Giglio too was going. ‘Ah!’ thought she, as the diligence passed her, of which the conductor was blowing a delightful tune on his horn, ‘how I should like to be on that coach!’ But the coach and the jingling horses were very soon gone. She little knew who was in it, though very likely she was thinking of him all the time.

Then came an empty cart, returning from market; and the driver being a kind man, and seeing such a very pretty girl trudging along the road with bare feet, most good-naturedly gave her a seat. He said he lived on the confines of the forest, where his old father was a woodman, and, if she liked, he would take her so far on her road. All roads were the same to little Betsinda, so she very thankfully took this one.

And the carter put a cloth round her bare feet, and gave her some bread and cold bacon, and was very kind to her. For all that she was very cold and melancholy. When after travelling on and on, evening came, and all the black pines were bending with snow, and there, at last, was the comfortable light beaming in the woodman’s windows; and so they arrived, and went into his cottage. He was an old man, and had a number of children, who were just at supper, with nice hot bread-and-milk, when their elder brother arrived with the cart. And they jumped and clapped their hands; for they were good children; and he had brought them toys from the town. And when they saw the pretty stranger, they ran to her, and brought her to the fire, and rubbed her poor little feet, and brought her bread and milk.

‘Look, father!’ they said to the old woodman, ‘look at this poor girl, and see what pretty cold feet she has. They are as white as our milk! And look and see what an odd cloak she has, just like the bit of velvet that hangs up in our cupboard, and which you found that day the little cubs were killed by King Padella, in the forest! And look, why, bless us all! she has got round her neck just such another little shoe as that you brought home, and have shown us so often--a little blue velvet shoe!’

‘What,’ said the old woodman, ‘what is all this about a shoe and a cloak?’

And Betsinda explained that she had been left, when quite a little child, at the town with this cloak and this shoe. And the persons who had taken care of her had--had been angry with her, for no fault, she hoped, of her own. And they had sent her away with her old clothes--and here, in fact, she was. She remembered having been in a forest--and perhaps it was a dream--it was so very odd and strange--having lived in a cave with lions there; and, before that, having lived in a very, very fine house, as fine as the King’s, in the town.