CHAPTER XII.
WHEN Daffodil awoke next morning, she thought she had dreamed the events of the Soirée of Honour, so incredible did it seem that she should have become the chief personage, after Royalty, of the government of Croäxaxica. But, looking round, she saw that she really was in the magnificent apartments assigned to the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, in which she had been sleepily thinking that she must have dreamed that she had gone to bed. “I don’t think I shall like it at all,” she thought; “and I shan’t know how to behave. But I can easily invent dresses for them, since they are so pleased with two things sewed together and a draggling bit at the back.”
There came a splash at her door, and she called “Come in.”
“Pre‐eminent Madam,” said the Head of the Upper Royal Wardrobe‐maids, who had the privilege of calling the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary every morning and receiving her first orders for the day, “the Head Royal Dresspicker and the Head Royal Dressmaker request audiences of Your Pre‐eminence before you rise, as Your Pre‐eminence did not give them orders last night for the first morning dresses of the page: 154 Royal Ladies, nor for your own. The Head Royal Lady’s‐maid is in attendance with her staff to know if you have instructions to give before she goes with them to the Royal Apartments. The Head Secretary Spinster requests your commands as to the hour at which she shall wait on you to submit for your corrections the lists and descriptions of the dresses of the Royal Family and the Court at yesterday’s entertainments.”
“Oh dear! Can I possibly do all that?” sighed Daffodil.
She managed pretty well, however. Great part of the business, she found, was mere matter of form, for the persons to whom she had to give orders had been in the habit of suggesting to her predecessor what she should desire them to do, and much which seemed to require express arrangement for the day was really a matter of routine. For instance the Head Royal Dresspicker helped her out with “Your Pre‐eminence will perhaps wish foxgloves used this morning—it is the second Thursday of the month,” and the Head Royal Dressmaker with “I presume I shall be carrying out Pre‐eminent Madam’s wishes by making the pouch‐sleeve the fashion for the day—it’s the twentieth in turn.” The Royal Lady’s‐maids she dismissed to their duties with the complimentary remark that she was sure they thoroughly knew them and would perform them beautifully. She rejoiced the Head Royal Secretary Spinster by conferring on her the extraordinary honour of an invitation to breakfast: and, after breakfast, she requested her to read the reports aloud, but, finding that process would take two or three hours, she re‐ page: 155 quested her to leave off, turned over every page conscientiously, and wrote at the foot of the last, “I have looked at all this set of reports and I think the handwriting very good.
(Signed) DAFFODIL, THE DRESSMAKER PLENIPOTENTIARY.”
“It turned out easier than I thought it would,” she said to herself; “but I don’t much believe I shall get fond of it.”
It felt strange to take the grand seat under the canopy of marsh marigolds where the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary sat amid her subordinates. And, when she had got over her first shyness, she discovered that it was very dull to sit alone and silent in that vice‐regal state. By way of something to do she called the Head Royal Dressmaker to her and began to discuss the rotation of sleeves, which the Head Royal Dressmaker had suggested might be a little transposed with advantage: but, just as she was beginning to get interested, an urgent summons came from the Queen.
“It would be unreasonable,” said the Queen, “to urge your Pre‐eminence to have another great inspiration so soon after yesterday’s, but I think, as this is your first day in office, you might signalise it by some nice invention that would make everybody admire me at the Court Promenade to‐day. It mustn’t be the same as last night, and it must be different from everything else.”
“I will go to the wardrobe and manage some new sort of contrivance,” answered Daffodil promptly.
“That’s a dear!” said Her Majesty. “You quite page: 156 deserve your promotion. I am glad I did it—though it was rather unusual. But, unusual or not, the world has learnt that I always reward true merit: and you certainly are an extraordinary sample of it”
“I feel extraordinary,” said Daffodil; “but I suppose I shall get used to it.”
She selected in the Queen’s wardrobe a red flower and a purple, of different kinds, with which she arranged a dress something like a fuchsia. The fuchsia is not known in Croäxaxica, nor is any flower of that form, so this combination of hers would, she knew, be as novel to the Croäxaxicans as her first. And in fact it produced scarcely less enthusiasm. The Queen was radiant with triumph as she paraded in it. “I see I have made a judicious choice in your appointment,” she said to Daffodil. “Go on as you are doing and you will repay my confidence.”
Daffodil did go on as she was doing. She did not, indeed, devise a new costume every day—that would have become difficult and was not desirable. Her great ideas were to be for great occasions, or when some event was needed in times of monotony. But her ingenuity was always ready at need, and her success was each time overwhelming. She became one of the boasts of Croäxaxica.
Meanwhile Croässaquagha, the Private Under‐Princess, once Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, was living in unassuming retirement. Out of deference and loyalty, she appeared occasionally at Court; but she withdrew from all other participation in the splendours of society, and declared herself unsuited to etiquette. She did not encourage interruptions of callers; she page: 157 wanted to live with her soul, she said, and to make the acquaintance of her own deepest mind; and besides she did not feel qualified to understand ordinary people.
She was not entirely solitary, however. Prince Brekekex, Daffodil, the Regius Professor of Everything, and the Head Royal Physician, were frequently guests in the home which she smilingly called her hermitage, where, amid all the luxuries and refinements known to the Croäxaxicans, but with an absence of state and formalities which, she said, was to her at once novel and natural, like sea‐water to an oyster bred without a taste of it, they conversed on the equal footing of friends. Daffodil was, moreover, a welcome visitor at any hour, no matter how uncustomary, that she could find to slip away from her responsibilities and the Court. The two were so confidential that they sometimes when alone together called each other Daffodil and Croässaquagha, instead of by their strict titles.
Croässaquagha took a lively interest in Daffodil’s inventions and devices, but she could not be persuaded to continue her own artistic career. “No,” she would say, “I will no longer drag down my art to outward manifestations. The noblest creation, the most subtle completed work, is but a mockery of the far surpassing idea within us. And why should I drudge for results? The world has you, peerless Daffodil, to give it those. Your genius, stronger than mine, can submit to the trammels of execution and not be hampered; but mine feels the chain and faints. Let me leave the frail exquisite spirit to its limitless freedom.”
page: 158“But you must want something to do,” said Daffodil.
“I watch these natural artists make themselves into clothes,” said Croässaquagha, pointing to the flowers growing in the shelves. The two friends were sitting in the Under‐Princess’s wardrobe.
“They are lovely,” said Daffodil. “But still you can’t look at them the whole day every day, can you?”
“Surely,” replied the Under‐Princess, “why not? It is a high employment. I learn much from them.”
“Then you are thinking of doing something in your art after all,” said Daffodil.
“Oh dear, no. My Art is Me and I am my Art: why should I do anything? I feel myself becoming greater; and that is all that is necessary.”
“Well, I suppose it is,” Daffodil answered musingly. “If people have nothing they can do except what is not very useful, and they dislike doing that, doing nothing seems to be all that it’s necessary for them to do. But I should call it dreadfully tiring work.”
The Private Under‐Princess, however, did not show any signs of getting tired, as time went on: she looked the picture of content, and was every day more conscious of becoming greater.
Daffodil’s own intervals of independent leisure were not very numerous. The duties of her office required much of her time, for, even when there was nothing for her to do but to sit under her canopy, she could not be somewhere else while she was doing it. And she was in continual request among the members of the Royal Family. She was a favourite with them all, and, though they had now to treat her with the page: 159 condescending respect due to her lofty station, they could not lose the habit of intimacy with her they had formed. They wanted her help, they wanted her society. Then, the second Princess, the Princess Guachapeara, developed a taste for art, and became Daffodil’s pupil. And Prince Brekekex wanted her more than ever about his rhymes, for he was writing a tragedy in what are called decimalets, and had to make every ten lines rhyme together.
Moreover, this proved a year of great events in Croäxaxica, and not very many weeks would pass without a demand on the energy and talents of the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. There was the beginning to learn to read of the youngest Princess but one; then the coming of age of the Princess Guachapeara; the opening of a new main canal; the betrothal of the Princess Royal to the new‐born son of the Duke of Happypool, a distant cousin of her Royal parents; most important of all, the birth of the Crown Prince’s future heir.
This last event gave Daffodil an opportunity, of which she had long been desirous, of visiting the kingdom of Grachidichika. When the time came at which it was necessary for the Crown Prince and Princess to make a ceremonial visit to their Matrimonial Majesties, to introduce to them the baby Prince, their grandchild, the Crown Princess requested her to go as the Lady in Attendance, and she, although it was usual to offer this honour to ladies of a rank secondary to hers, was glad to consent. It was with the pleasure of an inquiring traveller setting out under favourable auspices that she found herself starting in the procession about to swim, as page: 160 if on a journey, to the back garden and Grachidichika. The route the procession took led them through almost all the principal canals of the town; then, by a more direct circuit, they reached the frontier, and, following round the whole ring of the boundary canal, arrived at the sole entrance to this isolated country, the low tunnel pierced through its massive earthen wall, or, rather, mound.
It seemed to Daffodil, as, after issuing from the tunnel, they passed along to the palace by a short but broad canal and then went turning about among corridors and house canals, that she was still in Croäxaxica after all. The Great Throne Hall, too, seemed as if it were a bit of the Croäxaxican palace; it was but little smaller than the Croäxaxican throne hall and was very much like it—only somewhat in need of doing up. It looked over large for the assemblage waiting in it—although that was more numerous than she had expected. Everybody in Grachidichika, in fact, was there: there could have been no Court there at all if this had not been done. Titles and high offices are borne for State occasions by most of the Grachidichikan inhabitants: these become invalid in ordinary moments, and the holders of them are then footmen or maids or whatever their vocation may be, and do not wear their robes of State. The Guard of Honour consisted of the whole Army: but twelve seemed few to Daffodil, who had become accustomed to the hosts of the inimitable Croäxaxicans.
The Matrimonial King Regnant was sitting on the back of his throne with his feet on its arms, dandling a doll and croaking to it—which seemed page: 161 to Daffodil rather odd, and in marked contrast to the reverend calm of the Croäxaxican Monarch, of which his subjects were so proud. He winked at her, too. He was a shrivelled puny thing, looking top‐heavy in his crown, and altogether Daffodil did not think much of him for a king. The Queen was a homely visaged person, of robust frame but looking very old. Her cheeks were rough with wrinkles, her hands were knobbed and hard like those of one who has done a great deal of rough work. She sat slouchingly, and with her legs crossed anyhow, but her bearing otherwise was not without dignity, and she had a good business‐like countenance, and looked as if nothing on earth would ever put it into her head to sit on the back of her throne unless the throne could happen to have no seat.
The State reception was short—because the baby cried. This was caused by the King Regnant’s insisting on having it instead of his doll, which he handed in exchange to the Crown Princess. He was quite willing to return it, however, when he found the noise it made. He took back his doll with delight, and, as the visitors were departing in the solemn dignity with which they had entered, called back his daughter to inform her that that was the person he had selected to be his next wife.
