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CHAPTER XV.

QUEEN RAUCACOÄXINE was too much pleased with her scheme for the settlement of the Grachidichikan difficulty to waste time in reconsidering it. She set to work at once. The first thing she did was to send for the Princess Guachapeara and tell her all about the Dressmaker Plenipotentiaryship. Guachapeara was overjoyed. Although she had, of course, been aware that, as soon as she had made progress enough to allow of attention being called to her selection of a tasteful career, her position as a Royal Artist would be of the most distinguished character, she had not been able to anticipate so marked an announcement to the world of her exceptional capacity as was now proposed. She kissed her mother over and over again. “You dear magnificent darling!” she said enthusiastically, “What a thing it is to have a mother who can appreciate one! I was beginning to think I should never learn to be an artist after all, because of Art being so stupid and wasting one’s time so after things that always turn out different from how one expected, but now I feel quite sure I shall get on. Of course a Dressmaker Plenipotentiary always is a great artist.”

“Quite so,” said the Queen, fondly stroking her daughter’s cheek.

“The greatest of living artists, mustn’t she be?” continued the delighted young princess.

“It is her privilege to be so—and in fact her duty,” replied Her Majesty. “And, my dear Guachapeara, I hope, young as you are, that you will remember duty. Of course I shall see that you have some one to take all trouble off your hands; but I shall expect you to have genius like the other great artists, your predecessors—or in fact rather more. It is only to make up your mind that you will.”

“Oh yes,” said Princess Guachapeara,“ I promise you that that shall be all right,” and, clapping her hands in glee, she exclaimed “Only think! it was but yesterday that that horrid Lady Grufrana and the Duke of Happypool were agreeing it was ridiculous for me to be taking lessons from the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary—‘I was a born bungler like you’—and now they’ll see that, instead of being a bungler like you, I have been able to be actually a Dressmaker Plenipotentiary when I am but just of age. There never can have been a Dressmaker Plenipotentiary only just of age before. As to Daffodil, one can see by her size that she must have come of age twenty years ago and gone on growing ever since.”

But, while Guachapeara was running on thus triumphantly, the Queen was leaning back faint and gasping. “Oh! What is the matter!” cried Guachapeara, when, pausing and looking for an answer, she observed her mother’s condition. But the Queen was unable to speak.

In a fright, the Princess splashed water over the sufferer, and then, screaming for help the while, set page: 192 to shaking her vigorously. Under this treatment, the Queen recovered herself. “Hush! hush!” she said, as soon as she could command a voice, “Call no one. What has passed must never be revealed. A BUNGLER LIKE ME!!! Guachapeara, the awful words must be forgotten. There is only one expiation possible for the crime of Happypool and his aunt—the Boa Constrictor. And, if I allow this expiation to Happypool, your sister Zumbarzabulixine cannot marry his son, and Brekekex cannot marry his daughter when she gets born, and there won’t ever again be a husband or a wife in the world for one of all the Royal Family. But, remember, the crime of such words is unforgivable—forgiveness itself would be a crime. Therefore I am not aware of them: you are not aware of them: nobody is aware of them: in fact they never were spoken. Who repeated them to you?”

“I overheard them myself,” answered the Princess. “It was at the Lord Chamberlain’s pond party. They thought no one was near them; but I happened to have swum under a floating sofa to fasten my head‐rushes, and they came and sat on it.”

“Then bear in mind not to have heard them,” said the Queen.

“I will make a point of forgetting,” said Guachapeara, obediently.

“And mind,” urged the Queen, to add yet more weight to her injunction, “if you let this fearful secret pass your lips, you will not be a Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. Everything depends on our arranging so that a wife can be born for Brekekex, and, if you stop her having a father, there is an end of it all.”

It may well be imagined that, in spite of her Majesty’s anxiety not to have to deal with the Duke of Happypool as a traitor, she was more than ever convinced of his disqualifications for the throne of Grachidichika, and that, even if the heir‐apparent whose position had to be made sure had not been her own son, she would have been resolute in any measure that would prevent a necessity for his being set aside in favour of so evil‐minded a rival.

The naive joy of Guachapeara confirmed her also in her choice of a wife for King Grenoulcrawk. It was only by this promotion of Daffodil that the post of Dressmaker Plenipotentiary could well be at her disposal. And, moreover, the obstacles in the way, if she were to try to select any other bride, were serious, for, except her own daughters and Lady Grufrana, who was married, there was no existing person besides Daffodil whom the law recognised as able to contract marriage with a member of either of the Reigning Houses.

The ambassador of Grachidichika, summoned to Queen Raucacoäxine’s presence, listened in bewilderment and kept agreeing to everything. But, when at last he made out what was proposed, he expressed unlimited acquiescence in a scheme so admirably adapted to promote every one’s interests, and only suggested that, although the marriage was to be that of a Grachidichikan Junior Prince and not of a King of Grachidichika, his fee for ambassadorial attendance on the occasion ought to be what it would if the King could have remained King during the marriage days. To this Her Majesty graciously consented. The marriage, of course, was to be celebrated on the page: 194 simpler scale prescribed for that of a Younger Prince, and not as that of a Sovereign, and also, on the excuses of King Grenoulcrawk’s being in mourning for his Queen and of his infirm health and of the bride’s not being of Royal Kin, it was to be of the shortest and simplest kind allowable for a Junior Prince in an emergency, so as only to take three days and not to require the attendance of an official embassy from Croäxaxica. Thus the alternate abdications of Grenoulcrawk and Brekekex—which were an awkward part of the transactions—would be over before anything about them was known in Croäxaxica, and would scarcely be heard of, and the peculiar circumstances of the marriage would not be forced on public attention. The ambassador felt sure of King Grenoulcrawk’s co‐operation, if the matter was put before him in an encouraging light, and undertook to get him through the proceedings in a sufficiently satisfactory manner.

So far all had gone in the smoothest possible way; but now the poor Queen was destined to meet with contradiction and grumbling on every side. There was the King, to begin with: instead of simply approving her project and giving her instructions to do whatever she liked about it, he, in a wholly unprecedented way, insisted on considering the subject, and demurred. There might have been Sovereigns who abdicated, either among the Croäxaxicans themselves or among the neighbouring nations in the almost pre‐historic of the inimitable Croäxaxicans’ times dwelling above ground—at any rate such an event was admitted by abstruse writers as an abstract possibility in the scheme of government—but there page: 195 was no known instance of anything of the sort. The King did not at all like introducing the notion in a practical shape. “Reflect,” he said portentously: “if a King abdicates, a King will have abdicated.” It was only by the most pertinacious entreaties and preventing his going to sleep that Raucacoäxine convinced him of the desirability of his consenting. And, even after his consent had been won, his dissatisfaction was testified for many hours by voluminous snores—a sure sign of sulkiness in that usually sedate monarch.

Then the Crown Prince gave way to second thoughts, and became full of doubt and discontent. It had occurred to him that, even if the Duke of Happypool had another daughter besides the one that was to be born for Brekekex, his eldest son, if he happened to have become Crown Prince by the time he was old enough to take a wife, could not marry her unless her father were King of Grachidichika. At this the Queen went into a violent passion, and even threatened to have him charged with treason and conspiracy. The Crown Prince, though he admitted that it was hard on his brother to suggest his being passed over to let the Duke of Happypool have the crown of Grachidichika, protested that he had a right to speak of such a thing in the interests of the Croäxaxican dynasty; and, as he did not know what good reason his mother had to be infuriated at the very name of Happypool, he could not understand how he had so greatly provoked her by what he had been saying, and he considered himself aggrieved. He withdrew in dudgeon, and would not appear at court.

The next trouble was with Prince Brekekex. He too had been thinking over the scheme and had discovered that he did not like it. He thought it very hard on Daffodil that she was to be married in a way which would make her very soon a prisoner in the Workhouse for Failures, and very hard on himself that he was to be thus permanently deprived of her services as his purveyor of rhymes. And he urged these views so eloquently that the Queen burst into tears and, declaring that her own son, for whose sake she was undergoing so much labour and vexation, was accusing her of cruelty, ordered him to his own apartments under arrest.

Next the Regius Professor of Everything came with an anxious face. After reflection and research, he had arrived at the conclusion that it was doubtful whether a Dressmaker Plenipotentiary was legally eligible as a wife for any Grachidichikan Prince. The enlargement of the list of persons with whom junior members of the Royal Family could incur marriage if persons of equally royal birth were not available had been made for the Croäxaxican Family only, it having been always held that the destiny of members of the Royal Matrimonial Family of Grachidichika was to provide the Royal Family of Croäxaxica with wives and husbands, and no other provision than their Workhouse having been thought necessary for those of them who failed to fulfil their destiny. Her Majesty was highly displeased at the Professor’s statement, which she looked on as disrespectful to the Royal house of Croäxaxica. “If a person is equal by law to marrying a member of our Royal House, I should think she must be legal page: 197 enough for Grachidichika!” she exclaimed indignantly. The Professor, alarmed, began trying to explain that he had meant to explain that it was because of the inferiority of the Grachidichikan dynasty to the Croäxaxican that the obstacle he mentioned existed, but his nervousness confused him, and he only made the Queen more dissatisfied with the irreverent conceptions she understood him to be expressing. And she ended by banishing him from the court and capital, with the assurance that, if he ventured to repeat such sentiments to any one whatever, the State Boa Constrictor should end his treasonable discourses.

The Head Royal Physician annoyed her almost as much. He came, by the Crown Prince’s direction, to communicate his opinion on the possibility of King Grenoulcrawk’s living long enough for her plan for a wife for Prince Brekekex to be carried out. Nothing but a miracle, he said, could keep the decrepit and enfeebled monarch alive long enough for the baby to be born and married to Prince Brekekex before his throne became vacant. “Sir,” said the Queen—superb rebuke in her voice and mien—“the interests at stake are those of two Kingdoms and My son. If a miracle is necessary, there will be a miracle.” The Head Royal Physician felt very uneasy at having anything more to say after that, but he was still more afraid of not warning her Majesty of a danger to her plans which it might afterwards ruin him to have concealed from her. He told her that King Grenoulcrawk, unable to understand the meaning of his temporary abdication, had been so unpleasantly agitated on the page: 198 ambassador’s mentioning it to him, that he had had a fit, and that there was much reason to fear that his bewilderment and the excitement and fatigue of the marriage solemnities might throw him into a sudden and fatal illness. On this Her Majesty gave vent to an indignation which wavered in its cause between distrust of the Head Royal Physician’s veracity in his statements about King Grenoulcrawk’s condition and disgust at his incompetence and blundering in not having his Royal Patient in fitting health at so important a crisis. She ordered him off at once to Grachidichika, there to remain by the King night and day. In consequence of which when, that night, she found herself suffering from a headache caused by all these annoyances, there was no Head Royal Physician available in her need.

And, as if all this opposition was not enough to bear, the Queen was still further oppressed by the lamentations of her daughters over their loss of Daffodil. The Princesses of all ages, and even including Guachapeara who had so much to gain by Daffodil’s departure, were full of the many ways in which they should miss her, and they could not reconcile themselves to her being, first by her exaltation to Queendom in Grachidichika, with its necessary isolation, and then by her inevitable degradation to namelessness in the Workhouse for Failures, wholly removed from their reach. They had, indeed, no adverse arguments with which to tease the Queen: as the Princess Royal said, they could not be so selfish as to wish to see Daffodil prevented from receiving the extraordinary promotion intended for her and they did not grudge her the boon—nay they declared page: 199 her quite worthy of it, surprising as the rise of her fortunes seemed—but they could not help harping on their own grievances in the matter of her loss. The Queen, who herself shared some of these feelings and looked on it as vexatious that she could not both make Daffodil King Grenoulcrawk’s Queen and caretaker and keep her to be useful in Croäxaxica, was so fretted by these lamentations that she had to avoid her daughters’ company.

In all these troubles her Majesty’s spirits were somewhat kept up by the amusement and pleasure with which she thought of the surprise she was going to give the unconscious Queen‐elect. She would not let Daffodil know anything about what was going on until all, even to the details of the wedding and the date and ceremonies for Daffodil’s own coronation and for the recrowning of Grenoulcrawk after his abdication was over, had been agreed by both sides and all the treaties and contracts were finally signed. The negotiations were not allowed to take more than a day or two—time being so valuable—and therefore it was not very difficult to keep them a secret, even from the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary. As soon as all was irrevocably settled, the Queen sent for the bride and, chuckling to herself over the shock of startled delight she would experience at the sudden news, told her the story of her greatness. But what was her amazement when Daffodil, instead of going out of her senses with elation at the incredible honour bestowed upon her, flatly refused to be the King of Grachidichika’s wife. “I don’t mind Grachidichika much, and I don’t see that the Workhouse would be page: 200 inconvenient for a person that hasn’t been brought up to Croäxaxican luxuries,” said Daffodil, when Her Majesty spoke against what she supposed to be her objections, “but I would rather not marry that King: though, as it is such a great honour, it was very kind of you to think of it for me.”

The Queen had no time for arguing, so she at once explained the important considerations, as to Prince Brekekex’s succession to the throne of Grachidichika and the matrimonial question, which necessitated Daffodil’s marriage to King Grenoulcrawk, supposing that such a statement would at once end all objection. But, to her horror, Daffodil, after pausing to reflect, replied with a counter proposal that the law should be altered and that Prince Brekekex should be made able to marry anybody he and his parents liked, instead of having to wait for somebody to be born on purpose. And, perceiving the Queen’s speechless consternation at such a suggestion, the misguided child endeavoured to justify the policy of it by the argument that perhaps the requisite baby might never come at all, or might die before it grew up.

Perhaps the Queen might have borne Daffodil’s conduct with more patience if she had not already been so grievously tried by the others: as it was, she was in no mood for controversy. “Be silent,” she cried, “and answer this moment. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” replied Daffodil, submissively, “only I do not know what to answer to.”

“That is final,” said the Queen. And she left the room.

Daffodil, in some anxiety, but sure that, at all page: 201 events, she could not be compelled to marry King Grenoulcrawk in spite of herself, and hoping the Queen meant to renounce her project, returned to her own apartment. It was getting on towards evening and, as it happened that there was no special engagement to tie her, she had been intending to go and dine with the Private Under‐Princess. But she considered that she should feel embarrassed in keeping from her friend the critical position in which she found herself; and she did not think it would be prudent to reveal it. She feared, moreover, that, if she had to be in disgrace for refusing to yield to the Queen’s wish, Croässaquagha might, were she to be with her at this critical moment, be entangled in her misfortune. So she remained at home by herself, feeling very lonely. She was not afraid, but she felt that she should have been less as if she were going to be afraid if she had had somebody to whom she could talk about it.

All the evening she kept expecting some message from the Queen, or that something would happen, or somebody come. But the hours went on and no notice was taken of her. “I should have liked to know whether I am to be in disgrace or not,” she said to herself, at last; “but it is too late now for there to be any chance of the Queen’s sending for me tonight. I had better go to bed. And I shall know all about it to‐morrow. I daresay it will all come right, like the other things that have happened to me here.”

But in the middle of the night a sound at the entrance to her sleeping place awoke her, and she beheld the Officer in Command, with six soldiers ranged behind him. “Hush!” said the Officer in page: 202 Command, in a great whisper which sounded like the sea on the shingles in a storm. “Hush‐sh‐sh! be careful not to wake any one. Get up, and come to prison.”

Daffodil objected; but the Officer in Command showed her his warrant from the Queen, and explained to her that he should have to carry her away by force if she did not obey. “And we must be very quiet,” said he; “for the Queen does not want any one to know.”

“Oh, as to that,” replied Daffodil, “if the Queen chooses to be so disobliging as to have me waked out of my sleep and sent to prison without consulting me, I don’t see why I should oblige her by making no disturbance. Besides,” she added, with the dignity of a Dressmaker Plenipotentiary, “I require the assistance of some of my attendants.”

“Any one Your Majest—I mean Your Pre‐eminence disturbs and makes aware of your being a prisoner will have to go to prison too, and, to insure silence, for life,” said the Officer in Command. He spoke with decision, but with a deference which was reassuring, though she did not like the slip by which he had nearly called her Your Majesty. It looked as if he might be expecting her to become Queen of Grachidichika, in spite of her being sent to prison. But she was determined nothing that could be done to her should frighten her into consenting to that. As to going to prison, however, she saw it was best to yield with a good grace; so she told the Officer in Command she would get up at once and would give him no trouble.

“You will tell me what is going to be done with page: 203 me, won’t you?” said the prisoner, as she accepted the arm of the Officer in Command and passed into the corridor which led from her apartments.

“We cannot talk till I have Your Maj— I mean Your Pre‐eminence in safety,” was all the answer.

The Lieutenant of the State Prison was waiting to receive her. He hopped round three times, but did not speak. Daffodil wished to return his salutation with equal courtesy to his own; but, when she began the third round, he stopped her by a deprecating gesture and another series of hops, exclaiming “Nay, Your Maje— Pre‐eminence, I cannot presume to accept so much condescension.”

When she had been escorted to her former rooms in the prison, the Officer in Command with respectful hops, took leave of her, adding significantly “It will not be for long. I am to be Your Majes— Your—Your—your escort on the occasion.”

“Oh, do stay a moment,” cried Daffodil. “You know you were to tell me what is going to be done with me now I am here.”

“A Croäxaxican soldier is bound not to reveal his Sovereign’s secrets,” replied the Officer in Command. “But, on this occasion, military honour does not forbid my revealing the exact truth. I know nothing on the subject.”

“But do stop a moment,” she said urgently. “Tell me, at any rate, why you keep almost calling me Your Majesty.”

“The respectful zeal of my tongue causes it to be tempted to the slip of giving you your rightful title too soon,” he replied; “that is all, Your M— Preeminence.”

“But it is not my rightful title. It never will be.”

“It will be, the day after to‐morrow,” said the Officer in Command. With these words he withdrew before she could stop him again.

“The day after to‐morrow?” said she to the Lieutenant of the State Prison. “What does he mean?”

“That is the time fixed for your marriage, Your M— Pre‐eminent Madam,” answered the Lieutenant.

“What foolish nonsense!” exclaimed Daffodil. “The idea of fixing my marriage day when I have not the slightest intention of being married! How can the Queen be so ridiculous?”

“Permit me to remark, with the fearless loyalty of an inimitable Croäxaxican, that my Queen is not ridiculous,” said the Lieutenant of the State Prison, with asperity. “And I must remind you that your intention cannot make the slightest difference to your marriage.”

“It can prevent my marriage,” said Daffodil doggedly.

“I ask Your Maj— Your present Pre‐eminence’s pardon,” said the Lieutenant, with some difficulty checking a smile of amusement at her fancied independence: “that is exactly what it can not.”

“I will resist for ever!” she replied energetically.

“That could make no practical difference,” was the quiet answer. “And it would be a pity for it would start you badly in your relation to the Sovereigns of Croäxaxica, as well as, perhaps, to your husband, King Grenoulcrawk. But I am transgressing; I was forbidden to discourse with Your Majest— Royal Bridality.”

“Well, you had better let Her Majesty know my determination,” said Daffodil, trying to keep up the appearance of a confidence that was beginning to desert her.

But the Lieutenant of the State Prison only replied by an irrepressible smile and the ceremonial hops preparatory to his departure.

“Don’t go hopping at me as if I were a Queen, I tell you,” she called out to him snappishly.

The Lieutenant of the State Prison stopped his hopping so suddenly that he almost lost his balance. “I obey Your Majesty,” he said with courtly deference, and departed with an obedient celerity which made Daffodil ashamed of her rudeness. And there was something about this prompt breaking of his salutation, even more than in the salutation itself, that struck into her heart the unwelcome conviction that she was stamped irrevocably Queen Consort of Grachidichika.