CHAPTER XI.
AMID all these splendours and gaieties there was one person mournful. It was the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. A great mortification had come upon her, and she would have liked, had it been possible, to flee from Croäxaxica to some remote enchanted world where genius and dressmaking were unknown and she could be a contented nobody among contented nobodies.
No great exercise of her gifts had been possible during the wedding and the entertainments belonging to it. For the wedding itself, every costume in its turn, and every fringe or loop of every costume, was settled by immutable rule; and, the dresses to be worn by the Royal Family and their Lords and Ladies in Waiting and the great officers of state at the balls and banquets and concerts in honour of the Wedding, being also prescribed, it would have been improper for the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary to introduce any creation of importance at such a season. But the period of rejoicings after the honeymoon was especially the time for new fashions, caprices, startling effects. It was the time, then, for her to arise and eclipse all former triumphs of the page: 138 art of dress with a new masterpiece. The Court, the world, looked to her for this—and she could not do it! Invention failed her: nothing would come.
No one suspected what was amiss: people saw her lost in reverie and they supposed she was working out great designs in her mind; they found her moody and cross and they felt sure she was wearing herself out by carrying on too many inspirations at once. When she once or twice said petulantly “I have thought of nothing—absolutely nothing,” they only smiled and expected some great thing all the more. All this confidence in her, and all this applauding expectation, distressed her worse, and seemed too to make it still more impossible for her to command her genius and devise anything. She withdrew for days to her isolated studio‐house: nothing came of her communings with solitude but trifles, or variations on well‐known past or present modes, She came back again to mingle with the gadding throng and excite her mind by the pomp and stir and hurry of the giddy hour; but she was left weary and emotionless, less than ever able to strike out a great idea.
This was a sorrow she could not trust to closest friend or faithfullest servant. But no one had ever thought it worth while to keep up appearances to Daffodil, who, on her part, made the incaution harmless by never talking about what she saw were private matters—and now the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary found a solace in pouring her laments into the simple ears of her favourite. “This,” she said, “is the curse of genius, not to be able to find itself when it wants itself. Look at me! What a fate! page: 139 The power is in me—I know! I feel it!—but it won’t come out. It has never come out. All my life I have felt the lack of strange occasions, magnificent needs—those calls to genius from without: they never came till now, and now there is something wrong somehow and I feel as if it had been somebody else that had my genius all ready to be called.”
“Never mind it now, it will be just as you want it at some other opportunity,” said Daffodil sympathisingly.
“Another opportunity!” repeated the Plenipotentiary, sadly, “Can I hope for one like this? No, I never had an opportunity before for exerting my full power; I never shall have one again.” And she wrung her hands and sobbed piteously. “Oh,” she exclaimed through her tears, “What can be done? One high‐day after another passed with all its clothes, and my idea not produced!”
“I really don’t think it matters so very much,” Daffodil put in, in a consolatory tone, “they all seem to be enjoying themselves nicely in the sort of clothes they had before.”
“Ah!” said the Plenipotentiary bitterly, “Yes, they are enjoying themselves. It is ever thus. Genius pines, and toils, and bleeds, apart, and a ruthless world waits not for the treasures it would give it, but goes on never missing them and—enjoys itself!”
“I am sure they would be sorry, if they knew how vexed you are,” said Daffodil.
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary laughed hysterically, “They shall not know,” she said. “Let me page: 140 wear the reveller’s mask of smiles as hitherto, and be one among them. Only a simple creature like you shall know how I am all the while toiling and suffering and spending myself for them.”
“But, dear Pre‐eminent Madam, why should you go on doing anything of the kind?” urged Daffodil. “If they don’t want the things, why should you put yourself to so much inconvenience to let them have them?”
“Why! Can you ask why? Think of the loss to the Universe if it is robbed of my idea! Understand, if your faculties permit you: I am nothing—a mere ordinary mortal, with perhaps rather an extra share of intelligence—but I am the responsible distributor of my genius. I may not keep for myself, hidden in unknown depths, some priceless jewel which should be a nation’s joy.”
But more high‐days went by and still Croässaquagha had not been able to get the jewel out of the unknown depths. People began to wonder what could be the cause of her inaction, and the Queen, who had been surprisingly patient, was heard to remark that the treason of a Prime Minister had been wanting to do too much, but that the first signs of disaffection in a Dressmaker Plenipotentiary might possibly be doing too little. The great event of all was now near at hand—an evening State Reception called “The Soirée of Honour”—and the unhappy Plenipotentiary begged permission to withdraw once more to the seclusion of her private retreat to complete the bringing out of her great idea. The Queen became in a good humour with her again on hearing of a great idea, but she remarked that she hoped page: 141 that she would also bring out a good many middling‐sized and small ideas in her intervals of leisure from the great one.
Alas! No idea of any size at all to speak of would let itself be brought out any more than before. The Plenipotentiary sat all day long, and often all night long too, lost in despondency. “Oh! why, why, was I born different from other people?” she would exclaim when Daffodil came to see how she was getting on, “Why was I not made to enjoy this simple happy life of doing nothing at all? Why was I given this fatal gift of genius? And, since I was given it, why won’t it be in working order when it’s wanted?”
“It does seem a pity,” was all Daffodil could reply. She did her best to console and encourage her patroness, and was constant in her visits, but she could find no useful service to render in such a calamity as this.
Daffodil, meanwhile, had a perplexity of her own, which, though of a trivial nature, threatened to be more than embarrassing. She had been as tall as the tallest frog in Croäxaxica when she arrived, and she was growing; consequently she needed for her tunics the longest bell flowers in ordinary cultivation,—to say the least of it. She had now a small wardrobe compartment of her own assigned to her, and the Plenipotentiary had given orders that care should be taken to keep it supplied with flowers of extra growth; but the pressure upon all the servants of the department in this stirring time caused a neglect of minor duties like this, and, as the great demand made the finest flowers less plentiful, those trans‐ page: 142 planted into her wardrobe, taken, as they were, haphazard from what the dresspickers did not claim for higher use, were puny things, ill adapted to her stature. And, moreover, less and less pains being bestowed on the general cultivation of the shelves in the Royal Wardrobe establishment as the amount of attention required to keep up a sufficient stock of the choicest specimens increased, the flowers not marked for special cultivation were being so ill looked after that they began what, if their cultivation had not been energetically resumed a little later, would have been a return to the size of their original kindred, from which many hundred years of skilful rearing had brought them. Thus, while Daffodil was growing longer fast, her tunics were growing shorter faster. The dwindling became such as to cause her grave apprehensions: several times she had been on the point of laying the matter before the Plenipotentiary, but it seemed too great an intrusion while she had so much on her mind.
But one day—the day that was to culminate in the “Soirée of Honour”—when she got up in the morning and went to her wardrobe for a dress, there were but two tunic flowers blown—two bright blue campanulas, one dark and the other forget‐me‐not colour—and these two were alarmingly small.
“They look as if they had been grown for the Crown Princess,” said she to herself. “And only two for all to‐day, when there are four different sorts of festivals to dress for, besides the Soirée, where I am to hold the Crown Prince’s pocket‐handkerchief again. Well, I can’t help it: I must make the dark one do for everything all day, and the light one must be page: 143 kept for the Soirée.” But, when she had put on the dark flower, she found she could not possibly let herself be seen in it: it did not reach quite to her knees. She took it off and tossed it away in a pet. “It is too provoking! Now I must take the light one, and I shall have to wear it all limp and fading at the Soirée, and with tatters in it too very likely, after all it will go through in the day.” And she put on the light flower. But, no; she could not go about in that either; it was but little longer than the other.
Now this really was extremely awkward. For she could not go about to try and obtain another dress, cutting the figure she would in either of these short‐skirted garments; she must remain where she was till somebody came to look for her. And, as there was so much going on that day, she might not be missed till the time for holding the Crown Prince’s pocket‐handkerchief had come. Nay, very likely she might not be looked for even then. And there was not a single bud to blow next day. “Anyhow, I suppose somebody will come before I am starved to death,” she said resignedly, and sat down in her light blue kilt to wait.
But presently she thought of a better way than that. “They will nearly crack themselves with laughing at my queer costume,” said she; “but being laughed at is less disagreeable than staying here wondering if any one will come to help me.” And she picked up the dark campanula from where she had thrown it, took off the one she had on, and set to work. With a sharp dressmaking knife of fishbone she cut off the upper half of the shorter cam‐ page: 144 panula, leaving a sort of deep flounce which she proceeded to stitch round the bottom of the other flower. In doing this, as she had no experience in cutting, she got her dress longer than she intended, and, moreover, at the back, from an accidental unevenness in the piece she had stitched on, it drooped in a train. Croäxaxican needlework cannot be unpicked—there is no taking out the stitches or needles, as they are called indifferently, without making rents in the flower material—so she could not alter what she had done, she would only have made even that dress unwearable. But it did not matter very seriously; her intention was to go at once to the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary by the private ways, where she would perhaps meet no one at all, and to beg her to have her provided with a long length tunic.
The few people who saw Daffodil pass out—servants at work—scarcely looked at her, and thought she was carrying a bundle, for she had thrown her train over her arm. Putting her train out of her way in this manner shortened the front of her skirt, too, or else she would not so easily have escaped attracting attention. She hurried as fast as she could, for she did not like the notion of becoming a laughing‐stock. It was not pleasant to have to appear thus before her Pre‐eminence; but from her there would be no rough jeers, and, if she did have a good laugh at the spectacle, Daffodil felt that it would be so satisfactory to see her roused out of her despondency that she should scarcely mind it.
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary was alone. Daffodil, who was allowed unceremonious access page: 145 like a child or a pet oyster, found her seated in a dejected attitude, gazing dreamily at a plot of marigolds. She said in a weary tone “One could put frills of these on an iris‐petal mantle. But what is there new in frills?”
“Well, no; they’re not very new,” said Daffodil. “Most people have got them, I’m afraid.”
“Everybody,” sighed the Plenipotentiary, continuing to gaze at the marigolds.
“I shall be actually glad if she laughs at me,” thought Daffodil; “she does want rousing.” Presently, finding the Plenipotentiary did not look up, she said “Please look at me, Pre‐eminent Madam. Just see what an object I am.” She was standing with her train spread out on the ground, and the points of her light blue upper skirt had all curled up, because of the stitches in them, and stood in a bristling sort of way above the dark skirt joined on.
The Plenipotentiary looked at her. She seemed struck dumb. So amazed a face Daffodil had never seen in her life; “I know I look rather strange,” she said deprecatingly.
The Plenipotentiary replied “Hail, mighty artist, let me kiss thy feet.”
It was Daffodil’s turn to be surprised now, for the Plenipotentiary had evidently made her remarkable observation in a serious spirit. For a moment she feared that Her Pre‐eminence must be going mad; but she remembered that madness is unknown in Croäxaxica. She waited for explanation; and the Plenipotentiary sat and stared at her.
“Is it possible?” murmured the Plenipotentiary. “Has this simple, half‐savage creature been inspired page: 146 with the immortal idea I have failed to reach?” Then, rising, and approaching Daffodil, she said solemnly, “Tell me on your highest faith, oh, Her Majesty’s Royal Private Jester, was this conception yours?—yours alone?”
“I thought by myself of stitching one tunic on to another, because each of them was much too short separate,” answered Daffodil.
“Come to the Queen,” said the Plenipotentiary, and, taking her by the hand, she led her off in breathless haste, without a word more all the way.
The Queen was paying a visit to the youngest Royal Princesses in their nursery. When she was told that her Pre‐eminence the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary desired an interview and appeared in urgent haste, she felt sure it was about the great idea. “I hope nothing has gone wrong to prevent her giving it me for this evening,” said she, and ordered that the Plenipotentiary should be shown into the Royal Nursery immediately.
In rushed the Plenipotentiary, without the least pause for ceremony, leading Daffodil. “Behold” she said, and turned Daffodil slowly round and round for exhibition.
The Queen was so struck with what she beheld that she never thought of being indignant at her subject’s omission of the proper signs of respect. “My dear Plenipotentiary,” she cried in enthusiasm, “this is an idea!”
“It is a revelation,” replied the Plenipotentiary.
“So much as that?” said the Queen inquiringly.
“Does not Your Majesty perceive the combinations that may be made upon this marvellous type? page: 147 How the dark tunic might be uppermost instead of the light? How the colours might be different altogether? There could be a frill round the upper tunic; or round the lower—or even round both! Oh! the vista for the future, of fancy upon fancy springing from this commencement, is infinite! INFINITE!!!” And the Plenipotentiary broke into sobs of ecstasy.
“Why does it go down over the ground that way at the back?” asked the Queen.
“It’s a train, Your Majesty,” said Daffodil; “but it was a mistake.”
“I don’t want a mistake,” said the Queen.
“Mistake!” ejaculated the Plenipotentiary, clasping her hands, “The inspired creature is unconscious or mocks us. It is the crowning perfection. It is beyond words. Observe, Your Majesty, the dignity, the superb grace of the arrangement. Oh! you will look thrice yourself in this wondrous appendage.”
“Well,” said the Queen, “I will admit that your great idea has been worth your keeping me waiting for it all this while.”
“Royal Madam,” the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary answered, in a voice thrilled with emotion, “I have to tell you that, not I, but one with a mightier genius than mine, a genius such as the world has not known till now, has found the idea I was looking for. Not mine this immortal creation; it is Daffodil’s!”
“But what did she put it on for?” said Her Majesty, who, during this speech, had been looking discontentedly at Daffodil. “It is very improper and impertinent that she should be wearing my page: 148 new style of dress first; even if she did invent it. You have never done such a thing yourself.”
The matter was explained, and the Queen, though still a little displeased, sent for the largest tunic procurable, for Daffodil to put on at once in exchange for the dress which was to be the model for that in which Her Majesty would enrapture her court that evening. Her Majesty, moreover, expressed her approbation of what Daffodil had done in inventing so striking a dress, and promised that, if the effect of it were successful at the Soirée of Honour, she should have some high reward—perhaps even a merit distinction order of the first grade, her achievement being so extraordinary.
That evening, when Her Majesty waggled in her long skirt and train through a lane of her most distinguished subjects, the astonishment was so great that you could have heard a needle drop while people drew in their breaths. Then, ascending the raised platform on which the thrones were prepared, instead of at once taking her seat beside the King, who, having entered separately with his suite, was already calmly reposing in his place, she walked up and down the platform two or three times and turned about, as she did so, that the train might be the better displayed. The whole room was carried away by irrepressible enthusiasm, and burst into loud and long applause. The King himself stared, and said “Splendid!” twice.
“Thanks, my friends,” said the Queen, when the transports had somewhat calmed and she had taken her seat, “I accept your appreciation. But there is one whom you must congratulate with me. Let page: 149 her Pre‐eminence the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary advance.”
The Plenipotentiary had, in right of her high office, a seat on the platform almost beside the youngest Royal Princess. She came forward at the summons and knelt before the Queen.
“Dressmaker Plenipotentiary,” said the Queen, “accept, as a mark of my approbation, this jewelled fillet. It shall henceforth be, in addition to your jewelled star of office, the token of your exalted post.” And she fastened the fillet round the Plenipotentiary’s head.
The Plenipotentiary rose, and reverently made the hops of homage. Then, before there was time for the Queen to give the assembly the smile which, under the circumstances, would have authorised them to express their feelings in murmurs of satisfaction, she said, in a loud slow voice that all might hear, “Never, Your Majesty, can I forget your condescension of this evening, never can I forget this stupendous recognition of genius in my poor person. From my heart I thank you; genius thanks you through my lowly voice.”
She stopped, the Queen looked at the audience, and a buzz of applause greeted her words. Then she resumed,—still more loud and distinct, “And now I have a duty to perform—a duty to the world. To me it shall owe the possession of its greatest artist, now left in inglorious obscurity to be lost to it. My Sovereigns, my Princes, Croäxaxicans, not to me was the immense idea you beheld this evening vouchsafed, but—yes, hear it—to MY SUPERIOR.” Thereupon, springing to where Daffodil was kneeling page: 150 behind the Crown Prince’s chair, holding his pocket‐handkerchief, she dragged her forward and knelt to her.
“Oh, please, don’t,” said Daffodil.
“See,” said the Plenipotentiary, rising; “I have knelt to her. Let it be told of me to future ages that I knew her and knelt to her.”
“It certainly is a remarkable proceeding,” said the Queen, much puzzled.
The Plenipotentiary addressed Daffodil: “Inspired imaginer,” she said, “teacher for all artists for ever, to thee I surrender my office. Be to Croäxaxica what I have been—and More.” She took the fillet from her head and transferred it to Daffodil’s.
“I would much rather not—” began Daffodil. But at that moment the King roused himself and, his glance falling on the Queen’s dress, he murmured “The very thing!” and everybody said “Hush‐sh‐sh” to Daffodil for interrupting his Majesty. And, as it was understood that His Majesty expressed approbation of the arrangement proposed by the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, the matter was looked on as settled. Not even the Queen would have contested a ratification so authoritatively given.
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary led Daffodil to the Queen, pushed her on her knees, and, kneeling beside her, removed the fillet just placed on her own head, and laid it on the Queen’s lap. “Royal Madam,” said she, “I implore you, accepting my resignation of my post in favour of one greater than myself, to set the honoured token of office on her head with your own perfuming hands. The star of office, which I cannot get off without tearing my dress, she shall possess to‐morrow.”
page: 151“To be sure,” said the Queen. “But it seems rather odd. She is not a Croäxaxican.”
“All geniuses are our fellow‐countrymen,” replied the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. “Whoever has genius is a Croäxaxican.”
“Well,” said the Queen, “it’s all right, I suppose. Only I had quite made up my mind to give her the merit distinction order of the first grade on the very next opportunity; and I have no doubt she would have been quite contented.” And she began to put the fillet on Daffodil, but, stopping suddenly: “Wait a moment,” she said; “things must be properly settled. If she is Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, what will you be?”
“Nothing,” said the Plenipotentiary.
“That will do very well,” said the Queen. “But what title can you have? It will not be possible for a person who has been Dressmaker Plenipotentiary to be without a title.”
“Ex‐Pre‐eminence will suffice,” was the reply.
“Her Ex‐Pre‐eminence, the Nothing,” mused the Queen. “That hardly seems enough. Remember you have been the first person in our kingdom, next to the Royal Family: it is due to us that you should preserve fitting dignity. No, you must be Her Grandeur the Private Under‐Princess. You deserve some reward for your services, and for all this trouble you have taken to get a better Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. Rise, Private Under‐Princess and Her Grandeur.”
The new Private Under‐Princess rose, overcome with gratitude. The Queen tied the fillet on Daffodil’s head and said “We appoint you Dressmaker page: 152 Plenipotentiary of this realm, with all the authority and precedence of the office, the titles of Pre‐eminence and Pre‐eminent Madam, and the right of the jewelled fillet and the jewelled star,” and Daffodil rose also. The Under‐Princess led her to the seat which had been her own, and pushed her into it—she had to push her, for Daffodil was reluctant to take so exalted a position, and, above all, to leave the Private Under‐Princess without a seat, in consequence. But the Private Under‐Princess insisted on standing behind her chair, while the ceremonies of the evening progressed. Every one, even the Royal Princes and Princesses had to be ceremonially presented to the King and Queen. The new Private Under‐Princess waited for her turn, which came next after Daffodil’s, and then quietly went out of the room, leaving Daffodil in her chair of state—the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary of Croäxaxica!
