CHAPTER X.
THE festivities in honour of the Crown Prince’s wedding did not end with the wedding‐day—nor, indeed, did the wedding itself. An ordinary Croäxaxican can be married in one day, a Nobleman in three, but it takes nine days for a Royal Prince. Every morning the procession set forth, but with the bride in crimson and purple robes instead of in the water‐lily sacred to the first occasion, and every day there were marriage ceremonies, which, however, became shorter each time till the last solemnity only took five minutes. In the evenings there were balls and concerts and State Evening Parties, at which the Croäxaxican aristocracy outvied each other in splendour and novelty. And these went on for six weeks.
And now a peculiar manifestation took place in the dress and bearing of the Croäxaxican young ladies of distinction. Daffodil’s unlikeness to those around her had made her a prominent figure in the procession; surprise at the honour conferred on her, too, had made her the theme of much conversation, and wherever she went attention was attracted to her. By degrees gentlemen of credit for cultivated page: 125 taste got to saying that they could detect a sort of savage charm in her hideousness, and the ladies took to thinking whether there was not something romantic in looking so odd. And when rumours went about that the Crown Prince had said she was delightfully ridiculous, and when Prince Brekekex had called her in a couplet “Loathsome sweet, renown’dly queer, A quaint, abnormal, frightful, dear,” there was a sudden conviction that to be picturesque and original a froggess must imitate Daffodil. Headpieces of dried‐up rushes or grasses were invented to represent hair; throats were stretched up and dresses cut with a deep curve to suggest the effect of a neck; gestures and gait were copied—so far that is as possibilities and the limits of grace and decorum allowed—and the more enterprising of the Croäxaxican beauties even adopted Daffodil’s costume of the untrimmed tunic with the eccentricity of the girding in at the waist. The froggesses were, of course, far from wishing to acquire a real resemblance to their model: they felt that the piquancy of their imitation lay very much in the fact that they never could be like her enough not to remind everybody who saw them that they were decidedly different and had all the perfections of froggesses. A few froggesses, exaggerating the fashion, as foolish people sometimes will, took to pinching in their mouths in order to reduce them a little nearer to the size of hers, but even they would have greatly resented being mistaken for her.
As to Daffodil, some annoyance mingled at first with her surprise at beholding bevies of distant likenesses of herself. She was not without vanity, and page: 126 though she behaved herself respectfully to her hosts, she cherished in her secret mind a notion that human beings were, after all, of a higher order than other people and that the differences between her and these foreigners were points in her favour. Therefore she felt almost as if the froggesses were taking a liberty in adopting her appearance, and she could not for a while get rid of a sensation that the copies of her were unflattering. And, when she got used to the prevailing fashion, it was mortifying to perceive that the more a froggess contrived to look like her the more absurd the froggess looked, and the plainer. “I never quite believed it before, when you all said I was so ugly,” she remarked despondingly to the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, who always admitted her freely to her presence: “I thought it was only because you did not understand our faces: but now I begin to think I must have grown different from what I was at home, without noticing it. I must really be something strange, for everybody that grows at all like me loses every bit of good looks and turns into a figure of fun. I must be getting dreadful.”
“On the contrary,” replied the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary encouragingly: “You are growing much more like us.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Daffodil.
“What is it?” said the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, in kindly anxiety. “Have you hurt yourself?”
“No; Pre‐eminent Madam; it was—it was something that startled me,” said Daffodil, turning very red at nearly having had the rudeness to show her Pre‐eminence that she did not think it nice to be like a page: 127 Croäxaxican. “But do you think it is really that I am growing like frogs? Don’t you think perhaps it is that there is so much dressing up on my pattern?”
“It may be so, indeed,” said the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. “Yes, it may be so. You are modest. And you are wise not to overrate the improvement in yourself. But this fashion must not make a lasting stamp on Croäxaxican costume. I have indulged it—nay encouraged and guided it—but I cannot allow this cultivation of ugliness to be permanent. The imitation is getting near its climax: for a while after it has reached the climax I shall rest in calm; but then, suddenly, when all eyes have grown accustomed to monstrosity and will feel its absence a shock, I shall burst upon them with a contrast—a return to the boldest and broadest frog type. The prerogative of genius is to metamorphose. In a year’s time not a froggess at Court but shall be squashing her head flat and stretching her mouth and trying to look as if she had a tadpole tail growing on her: I have designed some very good artificial tails in my brain already. When the reaction comes it will be easier to see how far your development has gone. But I do think you are growing less peculiar.”
“Your Pre‐eminence is more used to my looks,” said Daffodil. “Don’t you think it may be that?” she added rather anxiously.
Her Pre‐eminence smiled. “There is a sort of sight,” she said, “that never gets used to anything. It sees everything differently each time it looks, and can never be mistaken. That sight is the sight of page: 128 genius. I am lowly, little‐lettered, merely spontaneous; were it not for the enthusiasm of a partial world I might be obscure; yet I have somewhat of that sight. You may trust my judgment, for I am destitute of the faculty: I have only inspiration. And my judgment tells me that, although you can never hope to pass for a native Croäxaxican, you are beginning to be about to cease to look unnatural.”
After that Daffodil used to look at herself very often in the clear shallow looking‐pools with black floors, and with bright waters placed to throw the right light on them, which abound in the houses of the Croäxaxicans—who are very fond of enjoying the sight of themselves. But, with all her examination, she could not detect any signs of her growing more like a frog than she was before she came to Croäxaxica.
In some things, however, she now possessed a considerable resemblance to those among whom she was living: and of that she was very glad. She had acquired their accomplishments—not to perfection, indeed, but still enough to share their higher pleasures and to take part in them creditably. She could join advantageously in a chorus; she could play on the splash‐splash—an instrument made of a huge bowl full of water, performed on by means of slaps on the water with a seed‐bladder in size and appearance something like an ostrich egg a little magnified; and she could even blow the croak‐tube—but it was better she should do that singly, as she was rather variable in her execution, and that caused surprises to other players in a concerted piece. It page: 129 takes most people the best hours of ten years to attain so much musical proficiency, and Daffodil’s rapid arrival at it was a source of wonder and amusement to her protectors. She could act in hoppades—a kind of silent dramatic representation in a peculiar measured quick step, in which fashionable Croäxaxicans are fond of displaying their vivacity of mind: and, although her appearance confined her to inferior comic parts, the accurate manner in which she remembered what she ought to do often caused regret in hoppade managers’ minds that her faculty could not be transferred to some beautiful froggess who might play heroine.
But, while the speed with which she shot up to her competence in these higher arts startled the Croäxaxicans, her clumsiness in acquiring the matter‐of‐course art of swimming confirmed them in their opinion of her possessing an inferior intelligence to that which gave their race its supremacy. Her flounderings and her sinkings, her feeble successes in accomplishing two or three strokes, her relapses into failure, her jerking action and kicking up of her feet, seemed to reveal an impassable gulf between them and her—the difference between the frog and the oyster, between reason and instinct. “It will never swim,” they said. “Nature has put that outside its comprehension.” But she did learn to swim, getting quite self‐possessed in the exercise by her twelfth lesson, and, by frequent practice, she became expert enough to beat the Head Royal Physician, who was a very deliberate frog, in a race.
She got on much more quickly with dancing; but, then, she never reached anything like so nearly page: 130 to the Croäxaxican ideal as she managed to do in swimming. The Queen amused herself by teaching her. Daffodil easily mastered the Slow‐and‐Low hops and the Short Jumps and the Strides; and Her Majesty began with these in her lessons, as is the usual course of instruction. But, when it came to the High‐and‐Fly Hops and the Long Jumps and the Bounds‐Rebounded and, almost more impossible, the various Dozen‐in‐an‐Inch steps, she made such desperate efforts all to no purpose, and had so many slips and tumbles, that the Queen would laugh herself dumb from hoarseness. Nevertheless, one or two persons who were allowed to see the lessons, and especially the Crown Prince and Prince Brekekex and the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, said there was an individuality in Daffodil’s dancing, in the steps in which she did not tumble down, that did the Queen great credit. And the Queen herself did not disdain to practise a glide her pupil employed for getting over distances she could not bound, and to display her rendering of it at a Sociable Evening. The movement was much admired for its novelty, and became celebrated under the name of the Royal Raucacöaxine Slipping Step, after the name of the Majestic inventress.
That Sociable Evening had another noticeable feature besides Her Majesty’s new step. There were present a big gentleman and a little lady who sat one on each side of the Queen and who were, from time to time, addressed by her, in a very loud voice, as Duke and Duchess Unknown. And all the high Court dignitaries who had the right of being greeted by Her Majesty and the Royal Family turned after‐ wards to this pair and shouted with much solemnity “How do you do, Duke Unknown? Good evening, Duchess Unknown.” And Prince Brekekex sang, accompanying himself on the splash‐splash, a song at which he had been busy with Daffodil most of that week—for he had composed both the words and the music:
“Hail to the strangers, guests in our land, Where is their own we can’t understand: He’s Duke Unknown, his Duchess is she, And now we’re as wise as ’tis needful to be.”
At the moment that the lotus buds of the great clock in the ceiling opened for twelve o’clock, the gentleman and lady rose and bowed to the Queen. She gave them her hand to kiss, and said politely “Good‐bye, my dear Duke and Duchess Unknown. I do not expect ever to see you again. I wish you a pleasant journey.” On this they withdrew, and the Queen remarked “Let us resume our conversation,” but, after a few minutes’ pause, back came the big gentleman and the little lady, with coronets and mantles on, and the Queen jumped up and kissed them and called out “What! my dear Crown Prince and Crown Princess! Just arrived from Grachidichika! How lucky it is you are in time for our Sociable Evening.” And the Royal Family and the Court dignitaries welcomed the Crown Prince and Princess just returned from Grachidichika. And the company, rising and bowing and curtseying, with the Regius Professor of Everything for spokesman, took the liberty of entreating that the Princesses would sing the national song in felicitation of this auspicious event.
page: 132It is a matter of indispensable form that, at the end of the six weeks of the marriage festivities, the Royal Bride and Bridegroom—unless it is the Sovereign of Croäxaxica himself who is the bridegroom—shall set out in state for Grachidichika, there to perform a honeymoon of nine weeks’ duration. But sometimes, when the Royal Matrimonial Family had been numerous, there had not been accommodation for a visitor to the kingdom and it had had to be connived at that the newly‐married pair, after a grand public reception, should slip out of Grachidichika by the back gate and return to Croäxaxica to live there in a sort of secrecy. As the Croäxaxican Princes and Princesses very much disapproved of being cooped up in Grachidichika, this exceptional manner of staying there gradually became the rule, and the Royal Princely Bridal Pairs always returned to Croäxaxica immediately after their reception at the court of Grachidichika, concealing their identity by assumed names. The Crown Prince’s nine weeks’ honeymoon had expired the night before the Queen’s Sociable Evening; twenty‐four hours were counted for the journey from Grachidichika for, although that country was in the back garden not ten minutes’ walk from the room where the Sociable Evening was held, it would not have been deferential to it to treat a journey from it as a trifling matter: and thus it was that the departure of the Duke and Duchess Unknown and the return of the Prince and Princess took place at midnight in the course of a Sociable Evening.
It was now necessary that there should be a series of festivities in honour of this return. The page: 133 entertainments were less ceremonious, but not less brilliant, than those belonging to the wedding period. And they were more varied. Hoppades and swimming tournaments were in favour, and there were picnics and reviews and garden parties and public state promenades. One day there was a great gathering of all the Royal Household Officers and Servants in the Queen’s Royal Private Garden, and they were all allowed to wind round the dais on which the Royal Family were seated, so that each of them might see the bride. It took a good many hours, although everybody, as directed, bounded by at a flying pace—so many hours that there had to be a great temporary structure with sleeping rooms and a refreshment room for the members of the Royal Family to go to when they chose. And the Crown Princess would spend most of the day there, eating all sorts of things which had been too expensive to have at home in her father’s palace; but, whenever she was not in her place on the dais, her coronet and mantle were put on her chair to represent her and prevent disappointment. After the filing round was over, the Queen made some promotions, and presented decorations in her own name and the King’s, and the Crown Prince presented decorations in the name of his father‐in‐law. There had been a great deal of promoting and giving orders at the time of the marriage, but that was for the Great Nobility and the holders of high offices in the kingdom: the titles and the badges now were of the kind called Merit and Civility Distinctions, and they were conferred on superintending officials and specially approved subordinates in the departments in the personal service page: 134 of Royalty. The Head Royal Dressmaker received an order of the first grade—she had the second grade already; the Head Royal Dresspicker and the Head Secretary Spinster received the order of the second grade; the Second Secretary Spinster got the order of the third grade; and badges of honour, of importance proportioned to each recipient’s position or favour, were allotted to other members of the Plenipotentiary Department. Then suitable distinctions were bestowed among the chiefs of the strictly household bodies—among which the Royal Cookery Service, of course, held a special rank and precedence. The Queen’s arm began to ache long before the decoration giving was done, and the Crown Prince got tired too; so they went away. But Prince Brekekex and the Princesses, his sisters, went on with it for them; and the Princesses, who did not often get a chance of taking the chief parts in public, did their work slowly to make it last longer, and looked, for their ages, quite like Queens.
Daffodil was highly pleased at the shower of honours that had fallen on the department in which she was enrolled, and felt happy in witnessing the pride and delight of the fortunate ones as they pranced about imposingly, wearing their decorations. She little thought that she herself had been very near to receiving the recognition of a badge. All the Royal Family wished it—including the Crown Princess, who had taken a great liking to her, running to her whenever she saw her—the Queen herself had been the first to think of it; and it was with regret that they all came to the conclusion that the Lord Chamberlain was right in pointing out page: 135 that there would be a want of reverence to those honours from Royalty in conferring them on one in her comparatively humble position, unless on the ground of some exceptional and remarkable act of signal merit. “To have made me wish her to have it is signal merit,” the Queen had replied when the Lord Chamberlain made this suggestion: but, on thinking it over by herself, she decided that she did not care quite enough about Daffodil’s having a badge for the merit to be signal on this occasion. Accordingly the badge in question was given Seventy Seven And A Half in mistake for Seven And A Half, who had been recommended for devotion in sitting forty‐eight hours holding the water‐lily bud for the bride’s dress, so that it might not open too soon, and going without food all the time in order that her hands might be cold enough to chill it and keep it back.
Another day there was a “Popular Demonstration” in the great gardens of the palace. Everybody, of whatever rank, was admitted, providing he or she carried a flag. A space was railed off for the Royal Family and those with them to promenade in, and all the people waved their flags over their heads till the whole place looked like a kaleidoscope in a hurry.
But what delighted Daffodil more than any other of the grand shows and entertainments was the Water‐work Display: she had never seen anything so dazzling and so fantastic as that. At one moment there were thousands of jets of every hue flashing and mingling in the air; at another a single stream of transparent gold or silver or of some beautiful tint would glide and widen high overhead page: 136 till the whole vault glowed with light, and then, sometimes gathering together again, sometimes separating into many, would descend at last in a thousand snaky coils, or in a radiant sea of foam. Then again a soft cloud of spray would spread over everything, and in the middle of it a fountain would spring up and flash its coloured light, which the spray reflected in softened tones and mingled with rainbows; then the fountain would die down, and another of a different colour would rise suddenly in its place. A simpler sort of water‐works was used frequently between the grander spectacles—these were networks and scrolls and intricate patterns traced, now on the ground, now on the ceiling, by numbers of thread‐like rills. Once the expanse of the vault overhead, almost as far as could be seen, was studded with tiny pools: “Oh! it is like great stars in the sky!” exclaimed Daffodil. But no one could tell what she meant, for there is no sky in Croäxaxica: all is roofed in. They have let the word sky slip out of their language, and they do not know any stars except two triangle‐shaped leaves fastened across each other.
