CHAPTER VI.
AT the upper end of the large oval chamber, a mile in length, which was the Royal Wardrobe, a thin slow waterfall, as transparent as glass, parted off the narrowed tip of the oval, making it a comfortable saloon, of considerable dimensions indeed, as a room, but, from its comparative smallness, offering to the vastness of the wardrobe hall a contrast of retirement and privacy. Here, seated in orderly rows, grouped according to their grades and occupations, or standing by long narrow work‐tables arranged with like preciseness, the numerous staff of what was familiarly known as the Plenipotentiary Department were collected at their tasks of sorting, cutting, and putting together, garments for use during that day and night.
Seated amid them, on a dais under a canopy of marsh marigolds with broad green leaves, the great disposer of Croäxaxican comfort and grace was leaning back, her paws folded on her lap, in an attitude of internal contemplation. The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary of Croäxaxica was a person of such remarkable gifts that, until the dawning fame of Prince Brekekex startled the delighted nation, she page: 70 was recognised as the first and far peerless genius in the world. This did not interfere with the just renown of the Regius Professor of Everything and the Head Royal Physician, nor did it disturb their satisfaction with themselves and her: they were not geniuses and did not desire to be considered anything of the sort; for genius, they felt, is a matter of chance, and their wisdom was the result of perfected study. Nor did the growing feeling in Croäxaxica that the poet Prince was perhaps the first genius in the world put the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary really in the position of only second; for she could not make poems and he could not make dresses, so that there was no rivalry between them in their gifts and she remained undisputably paramount in hers.
But, in spite of this dazzling celebrity, and in spite of her exalted position and authority, her manner was characterised by a modesty which, from its contrast, kept all in mind of her greatness, and her apparel by a simplicity which marked her out as the one person in Croäxaxica not in bondage to the Plenipotentiary Department. To the frequent compliments she received on this modesty and simplicity, she would reply, with a gentle smile, “Why praise me for what my nature cannot help? Perhaps I have a little genius—at least the foolish world seems to fancy so—and humility is always the mark of true genius. I can’t help being humble, so I have nothing to boast of for being so.” She would also explain that the plainness and ease of her dress must not be ascribed to her humility alone, but to the high necessities of art. “Inspiration must be page: 71 free from the trammels of self,” she would say: “how could I plan costumes if I had to contemplate their physical inconveniences as about to affect myself? and how could I concentrate my thoughts if I had, like those who profit by the exercise of my constraining art, to keep my attention fixed on accommodating my movements to the requirements of my clothes and my body to their outline?” She habitually wore a tunic of some light bell‐flower, left to hang round her tall and stately figure in its natural shape, sleeveless, the armholes being merely edged by a daisy frill, and unaccompanied by the fashionable leg‐flounces of one flower, or row of flower petals, beneath another, beginning so narrow that the top flounce had to be arranged for by the leg being compressed to the size by a bandage of untearable sedge and so wide in the lowest flounces that the wearer could not place her feet less than a yard apart for fear of crushing the flowers—a garment her own latest invention and without which no noble lady but herself would have had the courage to show herself. But her crimson boots were surmounted by anklets of pearls gleaming out upon the yellow of her beautifully marked skin, and she wore on her forehead a jewel in some lights like a ruby and in some like a topaz, of priceless value, and on her wrists bracelets made of buds of the rarest toadstools. To‐day her tunic was a pale pink heather‐bell with a crimson edge, and Daffodil, as she stood before her, waiting for her attention, gazed with admiration on the smooth texture and delicate tint of the gigantic flower.
“Pre‐eminent Madam,” said the Head Secretary page: 72 Spinster of the Plenipotentiary Department, “Number Seventy Seven And A Half, Under Royal Wardrobe‐maid has at length returned.”
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary roused herself from her reverie. “Seventy Seven And A Half,” she said in reproving accents, “you have been a long while. The Queen has sent to know the reason we have not finished, and we have not even been able to begin.”
“I did my best; I did my very best, Pre‐eminent Madam. I’m ready to drop with running: Pre‐eminent Madam can see how out of breath I am. It was the human being. It would go here, and it wouldn’t go there, and it contradicted, and it sat down, and it scolded, and it disrespected me; and it’s a wonder I ever got here at all.”
“That is serious,” said the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. “The Queen understood it had been perfectly tamed. It will have to be taught by severe measures, poor thing. Go to your place, Seventy Seven And A Half: your excuse is sufficient.”
As she turned from the Under Royal Wardrobe‐maid she perceived Daffodil, and was startled into a little croak of surprise followed by a pause of speechless amazement. “Is this the being Her Majesty desires us to dress!” she gasped, rather than said. And every frog of her staff made gestures of despair or contempt, and croaked in sympathy.
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary had but the day before returned from a month’s retirement in a secluded wardrobe of her own to which she withdrew at times, with only one trusted attendant, to page: 73 give herself up undisturbed to her inspirations and carry out new inventions; consequently she had not been present at either of Daffodil’s appearances in the Great Throne Hall. “What can this wear?” she said mournfully, “I had planned—but no matter what I planned. It was described to me as but an ill‐contrived frog in form: but look at it! it is all in and out and round about. And its complexion! like a trout’s flesh. And that ball on a peg for a head!—like a button mushroom. What can it wear?”
“ As these remarks were divided from each other by minutes of reflection and by sighs of discouragement, Daffodil had time to think for herself. “Pre‐eminent Madam,” she said—first however making one of her successful curtseys, “if you will give me leave to choose for myself in the wardrobe, I think I can contrive a set of clothes that I can wear.”
“And so you shall,” cried the Plenipotentiary, much relieved. “And to me,” she continued, addressing the assembled staff, “and to me this shall be an opportunity of investigation and, who knows, perhaps of improvement. Who knows but what from the unsophisticated choice of this simple savage I may gain some needed lesson.”
“No! No! NO!!!” burst from the staff in chorus.
“You are wrong, my friends;” said the Plenipotentiary. “I have still much to learn, that...” but here the staff broke in with “NO!!!!!!” in a deprecating shout.
“So very much to learn,” resumed the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, “that even this poor creature may teach me somewhat. Ah, my friends, genius page: 74 —if I may venture to hope there is genius in my weak brain and faltering hand—genius is known by being ever a learner, and the more it is the more it knows that it isn’t.”
Murmurs of admiration went through the rows of frogs. The Plenipotentiary waited till they had died away, and then called on the Head Royal Dresspicker to attend her and bring half a dozen of her assistants, and, with no larger suite, she walked off into the Royal Wardrobe with Daffodil by her side.
Daffodil had been told to turn which way she pleased and guide the party. The first thing she did was to hurry to a group of white water‐lilies and take hold of the largest. A shriek burst forth from the Plenipotentiary and her attendants and was echoed from the saloon by the frogs within, who had sprung to the waterfall window to see what was the matter. Daffodil gave up her intention of breaking the lily off its stalk, and waited. The Plenipotentiary herself explained to her the cause of the consternation. The water‐lilies were sacred to Royalty in the most special manner. Excepting the Queen, who wore one on the anniversary of her wedding day, and only then, none might be clad in them but a Royal Princess, or the bride of a Royal Prince, at her marriage. These splendid flowers, with petal on petal of a radiant white that seemed to hold sunlight in them, were difficult to bring to perfection, and the few they were looking on were, the Plenipotentiary said, all that existed, for it would be the highest treason for a subject to possess one. No marriage in the Royal Family could be duly page: 75 solemnised unless the bride wore this lily dress. When one was to be used, the Queen herself selected which it should be, and it might only be picked in her presence and by the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary herself, assisted by the Head Royal Dresspicker in right of her office. “And one of those you actually almost gathered!!!” the Plenipotentiary concluded, in a tone thrilled with horror.
“Don’t you think it will be the best way for me to be taken to a part of the wardrobe where there are not such very particular flowers?” suggested Daffodil.
“It will certainly be more prudent to turn back from here; because the clothes growing here are what the Queen herself wears, though they are not all forbidden to subjects.”
“May I go where your dress was picked?”
There was a movement of indignation among the attendants at the impertinence of this request. But the Plenipotentiary, after she had recovered from the shock of the surprise, saw that Daffodil was not conscious of presumption, and she felt amused. “My own shelves are close at hand, to the left,” was all she replied.
All the shelves in the part of the Plenipotentiary’s enclosure in which she kept her dresses were filled chiefly with flowers of bell shapes. Daffodil recognised among them the beautiful pink heath of which the tunic she so greatly admired was made, and she was tempted to make her choice of that: but she felt that it would not be pleasant to the Plenipotentiary, who, as she had perceived, was deliberately unlike every one else, to have somebody page: 76 wearing a fellow tunic to the one she had on. She stopped before a crowded stalk of wild bluebells and asked if she might take the longest she could find for her dress.
“Not badly chosen,” said the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. “I wear those frequently. It has an instinct much like taste,” she remarked to the attendants.
“But your Pre‐eminence will not allow it to degrade one of your own costumes?” said the Head Royal Dresspicker.
“Why not?” answered the Plenipotentiary, unpretendingly. “The poor thing may be worthier of good clothes than I, for all we know. I would not be arrogant. And perhaps, after all, some might say, judging as so many do beyond my merit, that what I please to wear no other use, however base, can degrade. The phosphorescence of genius, if it lights even a sullied pool, makes that pool resplendent.”
So Daffodil was allowed a bluebell tunic.
Croäxaxicans do not use under‐clothing, and Daffodil caused considerable surprise by asking for some: but she was shown some white harebells from which she chose another tunic to wear inside her bluebell. She was offered flowers for the fashionable leggings and for sleeves of the same style, or for puff sleeves, pouch sleeves, bell sleeves, butterfly sleeves, all of which were in favour with the leaders of high society; but she noticed the Plenipotentiary’s own avoidance of embellishments, and resolved to make her her model. Only, after the dressmakers had prepared her tunics in the page: 77 workroom and had put into her bluebell some frilling of a peculiar pale kind of daisy she had selected, and when the Head Royal Lady’s‐maid and six of her staff had assisted her to dress, she found it would be much to her comfort if her tunics could be gathered in at the waist, instead of standing out all round her in a wide stiff bell, and she asked to be allowed a sash. The Head Lady’s‐maid was shocked, and so, of course, were her subordinates. “A sash with a bell‐flower tunic!” gasped the Head Royal Lady’s‐maid, and said no more.
But the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, who had herself accompanied Daffodil to the dressing‐room, said quietly, “Let it have its way,” and led her back to the wardrobe, attended as before by the dresspickers, to choose what she wished.
Daffodil quickly found some broad flexible leaves which seemed to be of the kind known as gardener’s garters, only softer, as well as larger. In the dressing‐room, when she was putting on this sash, she took from the soiled frock she had taken off a pin that had fastened to it the strange flower which had been the cause of her visit to Croäxaxica. The flower had disappeared, having vanished the moment she entered Croäxaxica, but there was the pin where it had been.
“Pre‐eminent Madam,” said the Head Royal Lady’s‐maid, “do you see what it is going to do?”
The Plenipotentiary, who had been looking another way, did not know that Daffodil had taken an article from her soiled clothes to wear again—a thing too unexpected to seem possible. What struck her at once was the extraordinary size and clumsi‐ page: 78 ness of the strange implement. “Take its weapon from it, take its weapon from it,” she screamed. “It is going to run it into its body and kill itself, and what will the Queen say?”
“I am only pinning my sash,” said Daffodil. But she dropped the pin in the confusion the Plenipotentiary’s agitation had caused her, and it was sought for in vain.
“I should have liked to put the thing into the Royal Public Museum,” said the Plenipotentiary, regretfully. “And now it is buried for ever under the carpet.”
Daffodil thought perhaps she might find another in the clothes she had cast off, and began to hunt for one. “Another!” exclaimed the Plenipotentiary. “Are you so daring that it should be likely you were carrying two of those implements upon you?” And I fear she and the attendants scarcely believed Daffodil’s account of her nation’s manners with regard to pins.
No other pin was found for the museum. Daffodil’s sash was fastened by the lady’s‐maids with stitches of the minute and almost invisible fish‐bones which the wealthier Croäxaxicans use for the purposes for which we have needles and thread and pins. Those who have to consult economy use instead of fish‐bones delicate prickles from the stalks of a plant which grows wild in profusion along the highway and byway canals.
Daffodil could not help feeling a little mournful as, when her toilet was completed, she heard the order that all the things she had taken off were to be removed by the under wardrobe‐maids and given page: 79 to the Royal Clothes‐Buriers to be put underground. She particularly regretted her stockings. And, although she found her new shoes of pale yellow foxglove very soft and easy, she thought that, if she should ever be again where there was hard ground to tread on, her leather ones that were going to be sunk under the mud and weeds in the Royal Clothes‐Bin, would be more serviceable. But she felt herself so much more comfortable in her new attire, which did not cling and drip with its wettings as her own had done, and she was so well pleased with her pretty bluebell frock, that she soon recovered from her vexation.
She had some time to rest before the critical event of her audience with the Queen, for by when the Plenipotentiary was able to send word that the human being was in a state to wait upon Her Majesty, Her Majesty was at lunch, and sent word that she would inspect the creature in the evening.
This was the pleasantest day Daffodil had had yet since her arrival in Croäxaxica. She walked among the wonderful flowers of the wardrobe, and the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary herself, who seemed to take an interest in her, took her into the palace gardens, and then into the Royal Larder Ground, which to Daffodil seemed more like a garden than the real gardens, and showed her the water‐cress pools and the minnow pools. And she found much pleasure in watching the work of the Plenipotentiary staff, and after a while, when the frogs found that her questions showed intelligence, they took good‐humored notice of her, and explained what they were doing. And at last the Head Royal Dress‐ page: 80 maker amused herself by teaching her how to join a seam, in which the pupil succeeded so well, for a first attempt, that there were cries of astonishment and the piece of work was carried to the Plenipotentiary, who gave orders that it should be put aside to be shown the Queen that evening. The frogs tried, too, to teach her to join in their choruses as they sat at their work: but in this she was less successful, not being able to catch the tune, and sometimes putting the other singers out of time, which they did not like.
Still it was all very pleasant, and Daffodil began to think she might not be so unsuited to Croäxaxican life as she had feared.
She got something to eat, too, which she liked better than minnows. The Plenipotentiary chose to see her take her food, and, noticing that of what was set before her she ate nothing but water‐cresses, she asked her if she could name anything else that would tempt her appetite.
“I think I have learnt to get on with mussels,” said Daffodil. “I managed them best of all the things I have had, except water‐cresses.”
“You have a dainty palate, I see,” said the Plenipotentiary, laughing. “But you shall have your mussels, and anything else you like.”
“Then, please, Pre‐eminent Madam,” said Daffodil, “let me have some button mushrooms instead.”
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary staggered as if she had been shot. The solemn frogs in Royal Livery who were waiting at table each dropped what he was holding. Amid the smashing sound of glass and china, the Plenipotentiary and her startled followers gasped out “Mushrooms!”
page: 81“Where can it have heard of mushrooms?” said the Plenipotentiary.
“You said my head was like one,” said Daffodil; “so I supposed they grew in this country.”
“They do, they do,” sighed the Plenipotentiary. “We don’t object to that, for it is impossible to help it. They grow everywhere in millions—a hundred kinds. As a feature in the landscape we don’t object to them: but the lower classes eat them!”
“They are poisonous kinds, I suppose,” said Daffodil. “What a pity!”
“No, they are far from being poisonous: they are exceptionally wholesome and nutritious. But there are millions of millions of them.”
“But one of the Royal Dressmakers told me those little toadstools of your bracelets are real ones,” Daffodil remarked.
“To be sure they are. Do you think the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary of Croäxaxica would wear imitation jewellery? But what has that to do with mushrooms?”
“I was only thinking that toadstools are much commoner than mushrooms.”
Daffodil’s argument was answered by peals of laughter all round.
“You do not know what you are talking about, poor thing,” said the Plenipotentiary, when she could speak. “There is no relation between the choice treasure, the toadstool, and the homeliest of edibles, the mushroom. And the toadstool is as rare as it is precious: there never was but one toad in Croäxaxica, and he only sat upon one stool. The original toadstool has long since perished, but others have sprung page: 82 from it. To preserve their worth never more than one bud a day is allowed to live. If there should be a second on the same day it is destroyed, even if it is of a choicer colour. Look at these of mine‐‘Matchless as their talented wearer’s soul,’ Prince Brekekex acutely, though too flatteringly, says: you will not find two of precisely the same tint any more than you could find me repeating my humble masterpieces.”
Daffodil praised the toadstools, but she returned to the subject of mushrooms. Might she have some, though they were so common? She was not a high personage, but only a little girl: and then she was so hungry and, if the mushrooms were so wholesome and nutritious, they would do her so much good. “They are the creature’s natural food, I will let her follow her instincts,” said the Plenipotentiary, and sent for mushrooms. And, when they came, several sorts in different dishes that she might choose, Daffodil found that some tasted like chicken, and some like roast mutton, and some like what she was accustomed to in mushrooms, and some like mashed potato. And she thought to herself that she need not starve among the inimitable Croäxaxicans, for, even if mushrooms were too vulgar to be served to her at meals, she could gather some every day from among the millions the Plenipotentiary had told her of.
Naturally as, well clothed, well fed, and at rest from lessons and anxieties, she recovered full possession of her thoughts, she began to wonder how she was to get back to her parents. They would not be anxious about her at present, she reflected, as page: 83 they would think she was among the river people, whom they had given her leave to visit if ever she had an opportunity; but they would not approve of a long absence. And she would be unhappy if she could not return to them as soon as she had seen a little more of the foreign country she had accidentally reached. She did not perceive that there was a way out, but, as she reasoned, a few days ago she had not yet perceived that there was a way in, so that was no reason for uneasiness. Thus, with composed mind, she turned to nearer matters and awaited the summons of the Queen.
