The Black Poodle, and Other Tales

'I'm never made to take anything at all nasty,' she said – and the prince was indignant that any one should have dared to think otherwise.

'I suppose,' continued the boy, 'you didn't manage to get any of that cake the conjurer made in Uncle John's hat, did you?'

'No, indeed,' she said, and made a little face; 'I don't think I should like cake that came out of anybody's hat!'

'It was very decent cake,' he said; 'I got a lot of it. I was afraid it might spoil my appetite for supper – but it hasn't.'

'What a very greedy boy you are, Bertie,' she remarked; 'I suppose you could eat anything?'

'At home I think I could, pretty nearly,' he said, with a proud confidence, 'but not at old Tokoe's, I can't. Tokoe's is where I go to school, you know. I can't stand the resurrection-pie on Saturdays – all the week they save up the bones and rags and things, and when it comes up – '

'I don't want to hear,' she interrupted; 'you talk about nothing but horrid things to eat, and it isn't a bit interesting.'

Bertie allowed himself a brief interval for refreshment unalloyed by conversation, after which he began again: 'Mabel, if they have dancing after supper, dance with me.'

'Are you sure you know how to dance?' she inquired rather fastidiously.

'Oh, I can get through all right,' he replied. 'I've learnt. It's not harder than drilling. I can dance the Highland Schottische and the Swedish dance, any-way.'

'Any one can dance those. I don't call that dancing,' she said.

'Well, but try me once, Mabel; say you will,' said he.

'I don't believe they will have dancing,' she said; 'there are so many very young children here and they get in the way so. But I hope there won't be any more games – games are stupid.'

'Only to girls,' said Bertie; 'girls never care about any fun.'

'Not your kind of fun,' she said, a little vaguely. 'I don't mind hide-and-seek in a nice old house with long passages and dark corners and secret panels – and ghosts even – that's jolly; but I don't care much about running round and round a row of silly chairs, trying to sit down when the music stops and keep other people out – I call it rude.'

'You didn't seem to think it so rude just now,' he retorted; 'you were laughing quite as much as any one; and I saw you push young Bobby Meekin off the last chair of all, and sit on it yourself, anyhow.'

'Bertie, you didn't,' she cried, flushing angrily.

'I did though.'

'But I tell you I didn't!

'And I say you did!'

'If you will go on saying I did, when I'm quite sure I never did anything of the sort,' she said, 'please don't speak to me again; I shan't answer if you do. And I think you're a particularly ill-bred boy – not polite, like my brothers.'

'Your brothers are every bit as rude as I am. If they aren't, they're milksops – I should be sorry to be a milksop.'

'My brothers are not milksops – they could fight you!' she cried, with a little defiant ring in her voice that the prince thought perfectly charming.

'As if a girl knew anything about fighting,' said Bertie; 'why, I could fight your brothers all stuck in a row!'

'That you couldn't,' from Mabel, and 'I could then, so now!' from Bertie, until at last Mabel refused to answer any more of Bertie's taunts, as they grew decidedly offensive; and, finding that she took refuge in disdainful silence, he consumed tart after tart with gloomy determination.

And then all at once, Mabel, having nothing to do, chanced to look across to the white dome on which the prince was standing, and she opened her beautiful grey eyes with a pleased surprise as she saw him.

All this time the prince had been falling deeper and deeper in love with her; at first he had felt almost certain that she was a princess and his destined bride; he was rather small for her, certainly, though he did not know how very much smaller he was; but Fairyland, he had always been told, was full of resources – he could easily be filled out to her size, or, better still, she might be brought down to his.

But he had begun to give up these wild fancies already, and even to fear that she would go away without having once noticed him; and now she was looking at him as if she found him pleasant to look at, as if she would like to know him.

At last, evidently after some struggle, she turned to the offending Bertie, and spoke his name softly; but Bertie could not give up the luxury of sulking with her all at once, and so he looked another way.

'Is it Pax, Bertie?' she asked. (She had not had brothers for nothing.)

'No, it isn't,' said Bertie.

'Oh, you want to sulk? I thought only girls sulked,' she said; 'but it doesn't matter, I only wanted to tell you something.'

His curiosity was too much for his dignity. 'Well – what?' he asked, gruffly enough.

'Only,' she said, 'that I've been thinking over things, and I dare say you could fight my brothers – only not all together and I'm not sure that Charlie wouldn't beat you.'

'Charlie! I could settle him in five minutes,' muttered Bertie, only half appeased.

'Oh, not in five, Bertie,' cried Mabel, 'ten, perhaps; but you'd never want to, would you, when he's my brother? And now,' she added, 'we're friends again, aren't we, Bertie?'

He was a cynic in his way – 'I see,' he said, 'you want something out of me; you should have thought of that before you quarrelled, you know!'

Mabel contracted her eyebrows and bit her lip for a moment, then she said meekly —

'I know I should, Bertie; but I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind doing this for me. I can ask the boy on my other side – he's a stupid-looking boy, and I don't care about knowing him – still, if you won't do it – '

'Oh, well, I don't mind,' he said, softened at once. 'What is it you want?'

'Bertie,' she whispered breathlessly, 'you'll be quite a nice boy if you'll only get me that dear little sugar prince off the cake there; you can reach him better than I can, and – and I don't quite like to – only, be quick, or some one else will get him first.'

And in another second the enraptured prince found himself lying on her plate!

'Isn't he lovely?' she cried.

'Not bad,' said Bertie; 'give us a bit —I got him for you, you know.'

'Give you a bit!' she cried, with the keenest horror and disgust. 'Bertie! you don't really think I wanted him to – to eat.'

'Oh, the paint doesn't matter,' he said; 'I've eaten lots of them.'

'You really are too horrid,' she said; 'all you think about is eating things. I can't bear greedy boys. I won't have anything to do with you any more; after this we'll be perfect strangers.'

He stared helplessly at her; he had made friends and done all she asked of him, and, just because he begged for a share in the spoil, she had treated him like this! It was too bad of her – it served him right for bothering about a girl.

He would have told her what he thought about it, only just then there was a general rising. The prince was carried tenderly upstairs, entrusted with many cautions to a trim maid, and laid to rest wrapped in a soft lace handkerchief upon a dressing-table, to dream of the new life in store for him to the accompaniment of faintly heard music and laughter from below.

He had given up all his old ideas of recovering his kingdom and marrying a princess – very likely he might not be a fairy prince after all, and he felt now that he did not very much care if he wasn't.

He was going to be Mabel's for evermore, and that was worth all Fairyland to him. How bewitching her anger had been when Bertie suspected her of wanting the prince for her own eating. (The prince had already found out that eating meant the way in which these ruthless mortals made everything beautiful pass away between their sharp teeth.)

She had pitied and protected him; might she not some day come to love him? If he had only known what a little sugar fool he was making of himself, I think he would certainly have dissolved into syrup for very shame.

Mabel came up to fetch him at last; they had fastened something white and fleecy round her head and shoulders, and her face was flushed and her eyes seemed a darker grey as she took him out of the handkerchief, with a cry of delight at finding him quite safe, and hurried downstairs with him.

While she was waiting in the hall for her carriage, the prince heard the last of Bertie; he came up to her and whispered spitefully, 'Well, you've kept your word, you've not looked at me since supper, all because I thought you meant to eat that sugar thing off the cake! Now I just tell you this – you needn't pretend you don't like sweets – I wouldn't give much for that figure's lasting a week, now!'

She only glanced at him with calm disdain, and passed on under the awning to her carriage, where her brothers were waiting for her, and Bertie was left with a recollection that would make his first fortnight under old Tokoe's roof even bitterer than usual to him.

What a deliciously dreamy drive home that was for the prince; he lay couched on Mabel's soft palm, thinking how cool and satiny it was, and how different from the hot coarse hands which had touched him hitherto.

She said nothing to her brothers, who were curled up, grey indistinct forms, opposite; she sat quietly at the side of the servant who had come to fetch them, and now and then in the faint light the prince could see her smiling with half-shut sleepy eyes at some pleasant recollection.

If that drive could only have gone on for ever! but it came to an end soon, very soon.

A little later his tired little protectress placed him where she could see him when first she awoke the next day, and all that night the prince stood on guard upon the high mantelpiece in the night nursery, thinking of the kiss, half-childish and half-playful, she had given him just before she left him at his post.

The next morning Mabel woke up tired, and, if it must be confessed, a little cross; but the prince thought she looked lovelier than even on the night before, in her plain dark dress and fresh white pinafore and crossbands.

She took him down with her to breakfast, and stationed him near her plate – and then he made a discovery.

She, too, could make the solid things around her vanish in the very way of which he thought she disapproved so strongly!

It was done, as she seemed to do everything, very daintily and prettily – but still the things did disappear, somehow, and it was a shock.

She called the attention of her governess – who was a pale lady, with a very prominent forehead and round spectacles – to the prince's good looks, and the governess admitted that he was pretty, but cautioned Mabel not to eat him, as these highly-coloured confections invariably contained deleterious matter, and were therefore unwholesome.

'Oh,' said Mabel, defending her favourite with great animation, 'but not this one, Miss Pringle. Because I heard Mrs. Goodchild tell somebody last night that she was always so careful to get only sweets painted with "pure vegetable colours," she called it. But that wouldn't matter – for of course I shall never want to eat this little man!'

'Oh, of course not,' said the governess, with a smile that struck the prince as being unpleasant – though he did not know exactly why, and he was glad to forget it in watching the play of Mabel's pretty restless fingers on the table-cloth.

By-and-by the nurse came in, carrying something which he had never seen anything at all like before, and which frightened him very much. It was called as he soon found, a 'Baby,' and it goggled round it with glassy, meaningless eyes, and clucked fearfully somewhere deep down in its throat, while it stretched out feeble little wrinkled hands, exactly like yellow starfish.

'There, there, then!' said the nurse (which seems to be the right thing to say to a baby). 'See, Miss Mabel, he's asking for that to play with.'

Now that happened to be the sugar prince.

Mabel seemed completely in the power of this monster, for she dared not refuse it anything; she crossed almost timidly to it now, and laid the prince in one of its starfish, only entreating that nurse would not allow it to put him in its mouth.

But the baby did not try to do this; its vacant countenance only creased into an idiotic grin, as it began to take a great deal of notice of him; and its way of taking notice was to shake the prince violently up and down, till he was quite giddy.

After doing this several times, it ducked him quite suddenly down, head-foremost, into the nearest cup of tea.

The poor prince felt as if he were all softening and crumbling away into nothing, but it was only some of the paint coming off; and before he could be ducked a second time, Mabel, with a cry of dismay, rescued him from the indignant baby, which howled in a dreadful manner.

She dried him tenderly on her handkerchief, and then, as she saw the result, suddenly began to weep inconsolably herself. 'Oh, see what Baby's done!' she gasped between her sobs; 'all his lovely complexion ruined, spoilt … I wish somebody would just spoil Baby's face for him, and see how he likes it… If he isn't slapped at once– I'll never love him again!'

But nobody slapped the baby – it was soothed; and, besides, all the slaps hand could bestow would not bring back the prince's lost beauty.

His face was all the colours of the rainbow now; the yellow of his curls had run into his forehead, his brown eyes were smudged across his nose, and his cherry lips smeared upon his cheeks, while all the blue of his doublet had spread up to his chin.

He knew from what they were all saying that this had happened to him, but he did not mind it much, except at first; he had never been vain of his beauty, and it was delightful to hear Mabel's little tender laments over his misfortune; so long as she cared for him as he was – what did anything else matter?

In the schoolroom that morning he leaned against her writing-desk, and watched her turning fat books lazily over and inking her fair little hands, until she shut them all up with an impatient bang and yawned.

Why was it that at that precise moment the prince began to feel uncomfortable?

'Is it near dinner-time, Miss Pringle?' she asked. 'I'm so awfully hungry!'

The governess's watch showed an hour more to wait.

'I wonder if Comfitt would give me some cake if I ran down and asked her!' said Mabel next.

The governess thought Mabel had much better wait patiently till dinner-time without spoiling her appetite.

'Oh, very well,' said Mabel; 'what a bore it is to be hungry too soon, isn't it?'

Then she took the faded prince up and looked at him mournfully. 'What a shame of Baby!' she said; 'I wanted to keep him always to look at – but I don't see how I can very well now, do you, Miss Pringle? Do they make these things only for ornament, should you think?'

'I think it is time you finished that exercise,' was all the governess replied.

'Oh, I've almost done it,' said Mabel, 'and I want just to ask this question (it comes under "general information," you know) – aren't vegetable colours "dilly-whatever-it-is" colours I mean – harmless? And Dr. Harley said vegetables were so very good for me. I wonder if I might just taste him.'

Here the prince's dream ended: he saw it all at last – how she had petted and praised him only while he was pleasant to look at; and now that was over – he was nothing more to her than something to eat.

Presently he was lifted gently between her slim finger and thumb to her lips, and touched caressingly by something red and moist and warm behind them. It was not unpleasant exactly, so far, but he knew that worse was coming, and longed for her to make haste and get it over.

'Vanilla!' reported Mabel, 'that must be all right, Miss Pringle. Cook flavours corn-flour with it!'

Miss Pringle shrugged her sharp shoulders: 'You must use your own judgment, my dear,' was all she said.

And then – I am sorry to have to tell what happened next, but this is a true story and I must go on – then the prince saw Mabel's grey eyes looking at him from under their long lashes with interest for the last time, he saw two gleaming pearly rows closing upon him, he felt a sharp pang, of grief as well as pain, as they crunched him up into small pieces, and he slowly melted away and there was an end of him.

There is a beautiful moral belonging to this story, but it is of no use to print it here, because it only applies to sugar princes – until Mabel is quite grown up.

THE RETURN OF AGAMEMNON

Was ten years since Agamemnon, the mighty Argive monarch, had left his kingdom (somewhat suddenly, and after a stormy interview with the Queen, as those said who had the best opportunities of knowing), with the avowed intention of going to assist at the siege of Troy.

He had never written once since, but so many reports of his personal daring and his terrible wounds had reached the palace that Clytemnestra would often observe, with a touch of annoyance, that, if not actually dead by that time, he must be nearly as full of holes as a fishing-net.

So that she was scarcely surprised when they broke the intelligence to her one day that he really had gone at last, having fallen, fighting desperately, against the most fearful odds, upon the Trojan plain; and when, a little later, she formally announced to her faithful subjects her betrothal to Ægisthus, her youngest and favourite courtier, they were not surprised in their turn.

They told one another, with ribald facetiousness, that they had rather expected something of the kind.

They were celebrating their Queen's betrothal day with the wildest enthusiasm, for they were a simple affectionate people, and foresaw an impetus to local trade. It had been but a dull time for Argos during those weary ten years, and the city had become well-nigh deserted, as, one by one, all her bravest and her best had left her, to seek, as they poetically put it, 'a soldier's tomb.'

Several married men, in whom no such patriotic enthusiasm had ever been previously suspected, found out that their country required their services, left their wives and their little ones, and started for the field of battle. There were many pushing Argive tradesmen, too, who abandoned their business and sought – not ostentatiously, but with the self-effacement of true heroism – the seat of war upon which their sovereign had been sitting so long; while the real extent of their devotion was seldom appreciated until long after their departure, when it was generally discovered that, in their eagerness, they had left their affairs in the greatest confusion.

And very soon almost the only young men left were mild, unwarlike youths, who were respectable and wore spectacles, while the rest of the male population was composed of equal parts of prattling infants and doddering octogenarians.

This was a melancholy state of things – but then the absent ones wrote such capital letters home, containing such graphic descriptions of camp life and the fiercer excitements of night attacks and forlorn hopes, that the recipients ought to have been amply consoled.

They were not; they only remarked that it seemed rather odd that the writers should so persistently forget to give their addresses, and that it was a singular circumstance that while each letter purported to come direct from the Grecian lines, every envelope somehow bore a different postmark. And often would the older married women (and their mothers too) wish with infinite pathos that they could only just get the missing ones home and talk to them a little – that was all!

But all anxiety was forgotten in the celebration of the betrothal, for the Argives were determined to do the thing really well. So in the principal streets they had erected triumphal arches, typifying the chief local manufactures, which were (as it is scarcely necessary to inform the scholar) soda-water and cane-bottomed chairs; and from these arches chairs and bottles were constantly dropping, like a gentle dew, upon the happy crowd which passed beneath. All the public fountains spouted a cheap dinner sherry like water – 'very like water,' said some disaffected persons; householders were graciously invited to exhibit flags and illuminations at their own expense, and in the market-place a fowl was being roasted whole for the populace.

All was gaiety, therefore, at sunset, when the citizens assembled in groups about the square in front of the palace, prepared to cheer the royal pair with enthusiasm when they deigned to show themselves upon the balcony.

The well-meaning old gentlemen who formed the Chorus (for in those days every house of any position in society maintained a chorus, and even shabby-genteel families kept a semi-chorus in buttons) were twittering in a corner, prepared to come forth by-and-by with the ill-timed allusions, melancholy and depressing forebodings, and unnecessary advice, which were all that was expected of them, and the Mayor and Corporation were fussing about distractedly with a brass band and the inevitable address.

All at once there was a stir in the crowd, and the eyes of everyone were strained towards a tall and swaying scaffold on the royal house-top, where a small black figure, outlined sharply against the saffron sky, could be seen gesticulating wildly?

'Look at the watchman!' they whispered excitedly; 'what can be the matter with him?'

Now before Agamemnon left he had had fires laid upon all the mountain tops in a straight line between Argos and Troy, arranging to light the pile at the Troy end of the chain when it should become necessary to let them know at home that they might expect him back shortly.

The watchman had been put up on a scaffold to look out for the beacon, and had been there for years day and night, without being once allowed to quit his post – even on his birthday. It was expected that Clytemnestra would have let him come down for good when she was informed of Agamemnon's death on such excellent authority, but she would not hear of such a thing. She knew people would think it very foolish and sentimental of her, she said, but to take the watchman down would seem so like giving up all hope! So she kept him up, a proof of her conjugal devotion which touched everyone – except perhaps the watchman himself.

Clytemnestra and Ægisthus, who had happened to come out while all this excitement was at its height, found themselves absolutely ignored. 'Not a single cap off – not one solitary hurray,' cried the Queen with majestic anger. 'What have you been doing to make yourself so unpopular with my loyal Argives?' she demanded suspiciously.

'I don't think it's anything to do with me, really,' protested Ægisthus, feebly. 'They're only looking the other way just now, and – can't you see why?' he added suddenly, 'they've lit the beacon on the top of Arachnæus!'

Clytemnestra looked, and started violently, as on the mountain-top in question a red tongue of flame shot up through the gathering dusk: 'What does it mean?' she whispered, clutching him convulsively by the arm.

'Well,' said Ægisthus, 'it looks to me, do you know, rather as if your late lamented husband has changed his mind about dying, and is on his way to your arms.'

'Then he is not dead!' exclaimed Clytemnestra. 'He is coming home. I shall look upon that face, hear that voice, press that hand once again! How excessively annoying!'

'Confounded nuisance!' he agreed heartily, but his irritation sounded slightly overdone, somehow. 'Well, it's all over with the betrothal after this; don't you think it would be as well to get all the arches, and fireworks, and things out of the way? We shan't want them now, you know.'

'Why not?' said the Queen; 'they will all do for him; he won't know. Ye gods!' she cried, stretching out her arms with a tragic groan. 'Must I, too, do for him?'

'Any way,' said Ægisthus, with an attempted ease, 'you won't want me any longer, and so, if you will kindly excuse me, I – I think I'll retire to some quiet spot whither I can drag myself with my broken heart and bleed to death, like a wounded deer, don't you know!'