Victorian Women Writers Project

Search Options

CHAPTER V.

DAFFODIL slept exactly a week. When she woke, she was at first much puzzled at finding herself inside what seemed a great green globe and lying on a couch of wet moss, with an array of strange creatures round her. “Dear me, what an odd dream!” she said, rubbing her eyes. But, the more awake she grew, the plainer she saw the frogs and the green hall she was in. “It actually must be real, and not a dream,” said she. “Pray, Mr. Frog, are you real?”

But the Head Royal Physician, to whom she spoke, made no reply, for he did not understand her. He offered her a plate of mussels, for which he had sent one of the soldiers as soon as he saw her begin to open her eyes.

The sight of the mussels aroused her memory at once. “No, thank you,” said she, in good Croäxaxican. “No mussels: I feel quite as clever as I want to be this morning. But, if you could give me some tea and toast for breakfast. I am so hungry.”

Nobody there had ever heard of tea and toast. But, after some consultation, a soldier was sent with page: 55 a message to the Head Royal Cook, and presently returned with water‐cresses and minnows, which he offered to her. She thought this a strange sort of breakfast; however, she saw she had no chance of anything more like what she had at home and she made a good meal of water‐cresses and the plateful of mussels, which the Head Royal Physician forced her to eat and which, in her hunger, she found she enjoyed. The minnows she declined, as politely as she could: “They are very fine and very fresh, I am sure,” she said. “But I am not used to them quite so under‐done.” For she thought it would be rude to call them raw.

She felt revived by her breakfast, and was now quite able to accompany the Head Royal Physician to her former quarters in the Royal State Prison. The soldiers, of course, formed an escort as before.

As the Head Royal Physician was kind in manner, she took courage to ask him if she might be allowed to wash and dress. “And if somebody would be so kind as to lend me some clothes while these are washed!” she added imploringly.

“While these are buried, you mean,” said the Head Royal Physician.

“They will wash,” she replied.

“What can you mean?” said the Head Royal Physician.“Wash clothes! And such soiled clothes as these! The servants will bury them in the proper bog for that purpose.”

“But I have no others,” pleaded Daffodil.

“Whether you have others or no, these will be buried,” said the Head Royal Physician, with a wave of his hand to settle the question. “We inimitable page: 56 Croäxaxicans are more particular about cleanliness than the foreign and less advanced races of the world, and for us to allow clothes nearly a fortnight old to go about on any one! Faugh! Unheard of! Besides, as your medical adviser, I could not allow it. But never mind,” he added good‐naturedly, seeing that she was distressed. “If you want clothes, I will tell the Queen, to whom I must now report my complete cure of you, and no doubt Her Majesty will allow you some. If she does not, you could find some on the first highway: plenty of them in Croäxaxica. Now then, in for your bath, and off I go.”

He had pushed her into the canal as he spoke, and he was out of the room before she had recovered breath.

The bath proved very refreshing, but her clothes became but little the cleaner for it. She was still trying to rub out the stains the river mud had made on her frock, when the Lieutenant of the State Prison entered the room, followed by a company of soldiers. He greeted her with much courtesy, and even hopped round to her—only once indeed, but he would not have done more even to a frog, unless of the highest rank. On her part, as she had learnt the rules of behaviour from the Regius Professor of Everything, she hopped twice round to him, and did it twice over to show deference to so high a functionary of the state.

“Creature.” said the Lieutenant of the State Prison, who did not know what else to call her, “you are to leave the prison forthwith: whether to return or not I am unable to say. You will be under the escort of this troop of armed and determined grenadiers. page: 57 I warn you to make no attempt at escape: it would be punished as High Treason.”

“And I should not know where to escape to” said Daffodil.

“Precisely so,” said the Lieutenant of the State Prison. “It is vain for the boldest to think to escape from the inimitable Croäxaxicans: though human, you have intelligence. Go then, creature, and be obedient. I wish you good fortune.”

Thereupon the soldiers surrounded her, and she was blindfolded and marched off.

After about ten minutes’ progress, sometimes on moss and sometimes on mud and weeds and sometimes through canals, the soldiers halted. The prisoner’s eyes were unbound, and she found herself under an archway,—or, rather, in a tunnel. It was everywhere lined with short close‐grown grass, and was lighted, not very brightly, by a runlet on each side. The frog in command of the guard was a little way ahead in conversation with two frogs in the Royal Livery who seemed to be watchmen, and who stood on the right and left of what looked like a dark cave. Presently she was marched into this cave and left alone with the watchmen, who were loudly uttering a “Ghchhxhxxsrrrrrrrrrrr” which seemed to be a call. Then they were still, and she heard, the measured flopping of the departing soldiers as they got more and more distant. She was in the dark and could only listen; it was of no use trying to see. Next she heard a faint sound of water, and then a louder, and, all at once, a stream, rushing into its channel beside her, filled the place with light. Then she saw it was not a cave, but a very long page: 58 low corridor. At the far end stood a figure in bright clothes—pink and blue with a white apron. This was a maid‐servant whom the watchmen had summoned by their call, and who, after turning on the lighting water, was waiting for Daffodil.

“Is this the new arrival we’re to find clothes for?” said the maid‐servant, when the watchmen came up to her with Daffodil. “Well it is an object!”

“It has to be made as pretty as you, Miss,” said one of the watchmen: and the maid‐servant tittered, and both the watchmen grinned at the joke.

“I don’t like the charge of it,” said the servant, eyeing Daffodil askance, when she had recovered her gravity.

“It can’t escape,” one of the watchmen replied. “We are to stay here; and the guard is at the outer courtyard entrance, if it could get past us.”

“I daresay,” said the servant: “but how about my escaping, if it turns on me?” And she looked uneasily at Daffodil’s teeth and nails.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Daffodil. “I will not give you any trouble.”

The servant was so startled at being addressed in good Croäxaxican by the strange being she had thought a sort of deaf and dumb savage that she gave a loud scream.

“Don’t be frightened, Miss,” said one of the watchmen. “They tell me it’s only a foreign sort of frog. And you see how naturally it’s learned to talk already.”

“I am a Human Being,” said Daffodil, drawing herself up.

“Ah! poor thing! That’s it—a human being” page: 59 said the good‐natured watchman. “It can’t help it: it’s nature. And the Regius Professor of Everything will soon make it just like one of us.”

“Well, come along then, human being,” said the servant. “And mind you don’t go anywhere without my leave.”

The corridor through which Daffodil had come opened only into another corridor crossing it at right angles. Along this second corridor she now followed the servant, almost in the dark, for some minutes. Then there was a wide canal to cross, and a low entrance to grope through, and she was in what seemed to be a large nursery garden—a nursery garden not only floored, but walled and roofed, with lines of large oblong flower‐beds cut out in the moss, filled each with one kind of flower. This was the Queen’s Royal Wardrobe room, and the oblong flower‐beds were in fact wardrobe‐shelves, arranged, like the Croäxaxican bookshelves, with strips of moss between them. The clothes in Croäxaxican wardrobes are placed on the floor or on the walls or on the ceiling, according to whether their manner of growth is upright, climbing, or drooping. The ceiling is always pitched very low, so that the clothes growing there may be within reach.

“What enormous flowers!” said Daffodil. “How do you get them to grow to such a size?”

“What a silly question!” said the maid. “What use would they be to us if they were too small?”

Daffodil observed that the rows between which they were passing were of the same sort of flowers as the servant’s skirt. “Is this where you got your pretty frock?” she inquired.

“It’s where the Royal Dresspickers picked it this morning,” said the servant. “All these shelves we’re among now are for the clothes of the Royal Wardrobe‐maids to grow in: where we’ve come is for the Royal Cook‐maids: and those shelves there to the right, that you can see if you peep between the stalks of these jackets, are for the Royal Housemaids: and these common things we are just coming to are for the Royal Scullery‐maids. But where yours are to come from, I can’t imagine. The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary won’t surely match you with Royal Scullery‐maids.”

They were just entering the shelves for the scullery‐maids. “I should not mind,” replied Daffodil; “I think these are prettier than the other clothes.”

“What! these common blue and lilac things! Well! You are a judge! And just feel how thin they are compared to what we superior classes wear.”

“Are they very common?” asked Daffodil. “I never saw any like them. They look as if they were big hare‐bells made out of the clouds at the end of sunset.”

“They’re not to say common,” was the answer. “We of the Royalty don’t any of us wear common things, and there are not many of this sort outside the Royal Wardrobe: but the Royal Scullery‐maids don’t count high compared with the other orders of Royal Servants, and of course their clothes count according.”

“And you think these are what I shall have to wear?” said Daffodil.

“You!” the servant exclaimed in a tone which did not sound complimentary. “That I don’t. I page: 61 don’t suppose it would be thought of to put upon the Royal Scullery‐maids that way. Didn’t I tell you so just now?”

“We will not talk about it any more,” said Daffodil gravely. She meant her manner to be a reproof; for certainly the frog was not polite. But the frog servant‐maid, instead of feeling corrected, burst out laughing. It was the first laugh Daffodil had heard in Croäxaxican, and it startled her so that she turned first white and then red. For a moment she thought the frog was cracking to pieces and this was the noise of the explosion.

“My!” said the servant when she could speak. “The Regius Professor of Everything has taught you to be somebody! I suppose you think yourself quite a frog!”

Daffodil replied only by a dignified silence, at which her companion laughed still louder than before.

They went on through rows of flowers which seemed to Daffodil interminable. At last she said “Is there much more of this garden?”

“Garden!” was the astonished reply. “You can’t see the garden from here.”

“I mean the garden we are in” said Daffodil.

“I never! Hasn’t the Regius Professor of Everything taught you what’s a garden and what’s a wardrobe? This is a wardrobe. Wardrobe—wardrobe; you see—for clothes.” And she repeated several times, very loud, “Wardrobe,” “Clothes,” pointing all round, so that Daffodil might understand.

“What is the difference, then, between a wardrobe and a garden?” inquired Daffodil.

The frog went off into another fit of laughter. “Well, you are fun!” she said, when it was over. “Difference between a wardrobe and a garden! Why, one’s a garden and the other’s a wardrobe. Can’t you understand?”

“Not yet,” said Daffodil.

“Dear! dear! what a deal of explaining you take! There’s no difference between them—at least it’s all difference: one’s one and the other’s the other.”

“Yes,” said Daffodil “that is how it is where I come from, too. But what is a garden?”

“What should it be but a garden? A place where people go to do nothing and look at the patterns.”

“Are the flowers in your gardens as big as these?”

“Flowers! You don’t suppose gardeners allow flowers in a garden?”

“Do they have only leaves, then?”

“Leaves? Flowers and leaves in a garden! That would be fine untidiness. What do you suppose gardeners are for, if they don’t scrape away everything that tries to grow?”

“Your gardens must be different from ours,” was all Daffodil could say.

“I should think that very likely,” said the frog pointedly. Then, seeing that Daffodil showed no enjoyment of her joke, she checked as well as she could the laughter it had excited in herself, and said “Come don’t be downcast: I won’t laugh at you any more; and of course it can’t be expected that human beings should have gardens, or anything page: 63 else, as good as ours. It’s no blame to you; why, there’s nothing in the world to match us. Don’t you know we’re called the inimitable Croäxaxicans?”

“Who call you so?” Daffodil asked, a little tartly.

“We shouldn’t be called so if it weren’t true and known to everybody,” was the answer. “But, come, I don’t believe you’ve ever seen a real garden: would you like a peep at the Queen’s Royal Private one?”

“That I should,” said Daffodil, whose curiosity was excited.

The wardrobe‐maid, turning into a shelf on the right hand, led the way in and out among rows of clothes till they came to some canals and corridors much like those by which they had entered. These led them to a corridor so low that Daffodil had to stoop, to avoid touching the top with her head. It was quite dark.

“I can’t see here,” said Daffodil, hesitating about going on.

“How should you? Do they see in the dark in your country?”

“But we put lights in our dark passages.”

“Then how do you manage to keep them dark?”

“They are not dark passages when the lights are lit: that is true,” said Daffodil, thinking she saw the point.

“I don’t mean whether you call them light or call them dark: but, if you put light into the passages to the garden, where do you get the darkness to pass out of?”

“I don’t think I quite understand you,” said Daffodil.

“I never thought you did,” said the frog, with a giggle. “Look here, I’ll explain. Darkness is darkness and light is light: you know that much?”

“Yes.”

“And, when people want darkness, they don’t go and light a place full of light: now, do they?”

“No,” said Daffodil. “Nobody would do that.”

“Well then, now you know that, you understand why nobody would think of lighting the entrance to a garden.”

“I don’t quite,” said Daffodil, as she continued to grope along the passage, keeping close behind her guide.

But, all at once, the corridor turned a corner: the light burst on her eyes as she stood in front of what seemed a blaze of colours. Then she understood that the Croäxaxicans pass to their gardens through a dark passage in order that they may come suddenly on the broad open space with its flashing canals, and thus see the many‐hued patterns in a brilliancy beyond the reality, from the contrast with the dusk out of which they have come upon them.

The garden seemed to Daffodil an immense hall walled, paved, and ceiled, with patterns of every shape and colour in mosaic of some rough material. On the floor the patterns were bordered and traced out by runlets and canals, some but an inch wide, some a yard or two, and by geometrically shaped pools. A large waterfall plunged from the roof into a round lake in the centre of the central pattern, and, along the walls, at regular intervals, were smaller waterfalls descending into pools framed in variegated page: 65 curves and zigzags. Here and there, beside the more important patterns, and in the spray of the waterfalls, were placed rustic seats constructed of shells and fish‐bone lattice.

“Oh! what lovely water!” exclaimed Daffodil. “It looks like green fire.”

“It’s the best; and there’s plenty of it,” replied the frog‐servant. “But there’s nothing so particular about that: anybody has that in their garden. But did you ever see such lots of patterns and such lots of colours? They take money to get them. And look at the blue earth: the dye’s a secret, and you won’t see that in anybody’s garden but ours. It’s only Royalty may use it.”

“Is that blue stuff earth?” asked Daffodil, surprised, as she looked at the blue vandykes to which her attention had been called.

“Of course it’s earth. It’s all earth here but the water and the seats. Don’t the gardeners in your country use earth for the garden beds?”

“Yes, but they don’t dye it. They put flowers into it for the patterns.”

“The juices of flowers, you mean—to colour it. That’s how our gardeners do, too.”

“No, they don’t colour the earth; they leave it brown and they plant—”

“Never mind; they’ll learn some day,” interrupted the frog, who did not care to listen to Daffodil’s explanation of so uncivilised a system of gardening. “But let me hear what you think of the garden. Did you ever see such lovely bright colours?”

“They are not so bright as some of the flowers in the wardrobe,” said Daffodil.

“That’s nothing. The flowers grow that way: this is all artificial.”

At that moment there advanced into the garden, from an entrance just opposite to where Daffodil and her guide were standing, two frogs smaller than any Croäxaxicans Daffodil had yet seen, followed by two full‐grown frogs holding huge round green leaves over the little ones’ heads, for parasols. Other frogs, apparently nurse‐maids and pages, were coming on behind these, but Daffodil had no time to observe the procession, for the Royal Wardrobe‐maid, exclaiming “Good gracious! the Royal Nursemaids!” dragged her into the passage and scrambled back with her to the Royal Wardrobe as fast as they could get along.

“What is the matter?” asked Daffodil, when they stopped to take breath, safe among the shelves again.

“Those were the youngest Royal Princesses,” replied the servant.

“But why had we to run away from them?”

“It isn’t so much them; it’s the Royal Nursemaids, nasty jealous tell‐tales! But they hadn’t time to get their eyes undazzled before we were out of sight.”

“Were we trespassing, then?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know” said the frog, snappishly. “You’ll only give me a very low opinion of you. You can’t make me believe you’ve had the Queen’s leave to go into her Royal Private Garden whenever you choose.”

“I must ask you,” said Daffodil, “to be so kind as not again to take me anywhere where I am a trespasser. I am not used to go into people’s premises in an underhand way.”

“Then it’s to be supposed you don’t call breaking in through their Royal Throne Hall ceiling, and calling all their army out to keep you quiet, going into people’s premises in an underhand way,” retorted the frog.

“That was an accident.”

“Well, all I know is you’re a trespasser wherever you go in Croäxaxica: so perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me where I am to take you.” And the frog sat down, as if to wait for Daffodil’s instructions.

“This is not right of you,” said Daffodil. “You must take me where you have been told.”

The frog, being vexed at her own imprudence at going into the garden against orders and uneasy lest harm should come of it, naturally was glad to be put into a pet. So she jumped up and began to scold satisfactorily. “Not right, indeed!” exclaimed she. “Who are you to talk to me? And what is it to you where I was told to take you.”

“Not anything,” Daffodil replied quietly. “But I think we ought to go on.”

The frog drew herself up to her full height. “Do you know who you are speaking to?”

“Not quite clearly,” Daffodil made answer. “I should like to know, if you do not mind telling me.”

“I don’t mind telling you, now you ask respectfully,” said the frog, mollified by the politeness of the inquiry. “I am a Royal Under Wardrobe‐maid.”

“And you have charge of these beautiful flowers?” said Daffodil.

“Well, not exactly charge. You see there are the Upper Royal Wardrobe‐maids, and the Royal Lady’s‐ page: 68 maids, and the Royal Dresspickers, and the Royal Dressmakers. But it’s all the same: we’re all in the Plenipotentiary Department, and that’s the highest there is.”

“Shall you ever get higher than Under Wardrobe‐maid?” asked Daffodil sympathisingly.

But the question jarred on the Under Royal Wardrobe‐maid’s sensitiveness: it seemed as if Daffodil thought lightly of her present rank. “Higher!” she cried with a toss of her head, “I think I’m too high as it is to be gossiping with a human being. Do come on. The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary will be tired of waiting for us,” and, taking Daffodil’s hand, she rushed off, hopping and bounding, at such a rate that Daffodil, although a swift runner, was dragged on at a speed far beyond all former experience of her own powers, and which she felt she could not keep up for long. Dashing and splashing on through shelves of flowers that seemed to whirl away as she passed, she ran, as if for her life, until her guide stopped and let go her hand and, after almost losing her balance by the jerk, she found herself in the presence of the highest personage in the country after the Royal Family, the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary.