The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (110 page)

“Then the hundred years are over? How the yew hedges have grown! Which of you is my Prince that aroused me from my deep sleep of so many long years?”

“I did,” said Jimmy fearlessly, for she did not look as though she were going to slap anyone.

“My noble preserver!” said the Princess, and held out her hand. Jimmy shook it vigorously.

“But I say,” said he, “you aren’t really a Princess, are you?”

“Of course I am,” she answered; “who else could I be? Look at my crown!” She pulled aside the spangled veil, and showed beneath it a coronet of what even Jimmy could not help seeing to be diamonds.

“But—” said Jimmy.

“Why,” she said, opening her eyes very wide, “you must have known about my being here, or you’d never have come. How
did
you get past the dragons?”

Gerald ignored the question. “I say,” he said, “do you really believe in magic, and all that?”

“I ought to,” she said, “if anybody does. Look, here’s the place where I pricked my finger with the spindle.” She showed a little scar on her wrist.

“Then this really
is
an enchanted castle?”

“Of course it is,” said the Princess. “How stupid you are!” She stood up, and her pink brocaded dress lay in bright waves about her feet.

“I said her dress would be too long,” said Jimmy.

“It was the right length when I went to sleep,” said the Princess; “it must have grown in the hundred years.”

“I don’t believe you’re a Princess at all,” said Jimmy; “at least—”

“Don’t bother about believing it, if you don’t like,” said the Princess. “It doesn’t so much matter what you believe as what I am. She turned to the others.

“Let’s go back to the castle,” she said, “and I’ll show you all my lovely jewels and things. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“Yes,” said Gerald with very plain hesitation. “But—”

“But what?” The Princess’s tone was impatient.

“But we’re most awfully hungry.”

“Oh, so am I!” cried the Princess.

“We’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast.”

“And it’s three now,” said the Princess, looking at the sun-dial. “Why, you’ve had nothing to eat for hours and hours and hours. But think of me! I haven’t had anything to eat for a hundred years.” Come along to the castle.”

“The mice will have eaten everything,” said Jimmy sadly. He saw now that she really was a Princess.

“Not they,” cried the Princess joyously. “You forget everything’s enchanted here. Time simply stood still for a hundred years. Come along, and one of you must carry my train, or I shan’t be able to move now it’s grown such a frightful length.”

CHAPTER II

When you are young, so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true—such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening. And, as I am always telling you, the most wonderful things happen to all sorts of people, only you never hear about them because the people think that no one will believe their stories, and so they don’t tell them to any one except me. And they tell me, because they know that I can believe anything.

When Jimmy had awakened the Sleeping Princess, and she had invited the three children to go with her to her palace and get something to eat, they all knew quite surely that they had come into a place of magic happenings. And they walked in a slow procession along the grass towards the castle. The Princess went first, and Kathleen carried her shining train; then came Jimmy, and Gerald came last. They were all quite sure that they had walked right into the middle of a fairy-tale, and they were the more ready to believe it because they were so tired and hungry. They were, in fact, so hungry and tired that they hardly noticed where they were going, or observed the beauties of the formal gardens through which the pink-silk Princess was leading them. They were in a sort of dream, from which they only partially awakened to find themselves in a big hail, with suits of armour and old flags round the walls, the skins of beasts on the floor, and heavy oak tables and benches ranged along it.

The Princess entered, slow and stately, but once inside she twitched her sheeny train out of Jimmy’s hand and turned to the three.

“You just wait here a minute,” she said, “and mind you don’t talk while I’m away. This castle is crammed with magic, and I don’t know what will happen if you talk.” And with that, picking up the thick goldy-pink folds under her arms, she ran out, as Jimmy said afterwards, “most unprincesslike,” showing as she ran black stockings and black strap shoes.

Jimmy wanted very much to say that he didn’t believe anything would happen, only he was afraid something would happen if he did, so he merely made a face and put out his tongue. The others pretended not to see this, which was much more crushing than anything they could have said. So they sat in silence, and Gerald ground the heel of his boot upon the marble floor. Then the Princess came back, very slowly and kicking her long skirts in front of her at every step. She could not hold them up now because of the tray she carried.

It was not a silver tray, as you might have expected, but an oblong tin one. She set it down noisily on the end of the long table and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh! it
was
heavy,” she said. I don’t know what fairy feast the children’s fancy had been busy with. Anyhow, this was nothing like it. The heavy tray held a loaf of bread, a lump of cheese, and a brown jug of water. The rest of its heaviness was just plates and mugs and knives.

“Come along,” said the Princess hospitably. “I couldn’t find anything but bread and cheese—but it doesn’t matter, because everything’s magic here, and unless you have some dreadful secret fault the bread and cheese will turn into anything you like. What
would
you like?” she asked Kathleen.

“Roast chicken,” said Kathleen, without hesitation.

The pinky Princess cut a slice of bread and laid it on a dish.

“There you are,” she said, “roast chicken. Shall I carve it, or will you?”

“You, please,” said Kathleen, and received a piece of dry bread on a plate.

“Green peas?” asked the Princess, cut a piece of cheese and laid it beside the bread.

Kathleen began to eat the bread, cutting it up with knife and fork as you would eat chicken. It was no use owning that she didn’t see any chicken and peas, or anything but cheese and dry bread, because that would be owning that she had some dreadful secret fault.

“If I have, it
is
a secret, even from me,” she told herself.

The others asked for roast beef and cabbage and got it, she supposed, though to her it only looked like dry bread and Dutch cheese.

“I
do
wonder what my dreadful secret fault is,” she thought, as the Princess remarked that, as for her, she could fancy a slice of roast peacock. “This one, she added, lifting a second mouthful of dry bread on her fork, “is quite delicious.”

“It’s a game, isn’t it?” asked Jimmy suddenly.

“What’s a game?” asked the Princess, frowning.

“Pretending it’s beef the bread and cheese, I mean.”

“A game? But it
is
beef. Look at it,” said the Princess, opening her eyes very wide.

“Yes, of course,” said Jimmy feebly. “I was only joking.”

Bread and cheese is not perhaps so good as roast beef or chicken or peacock (I’m not sure about the peacock. I never tasted peacock, did you?); but bread and cheese is, at any rate, very much better than nothing when you have gone on having nothing since breakfast (gooseberries and ginger-beer hardly count) and it is long past your proper dinner-time. Everyone ate and drank and felt much better.

“Now,” said the Princess, brushing the bread crumbs off her green silk lap, “if you’re sure you won’t have any more meat you can come and see my treasures. Sure you won’t take the least bit more chicken? No? Then follow me.”

She got up, and they followed her down the long hall to the end where the great stone stairs ran up at each side and joined in a broad flight leading to the gallery above. Under the stairs was a hanging of tapestry.

“Beneath this arras,” said the Princess, “is the door leading to my private apartments.” She held the tapestry up with both hands, for it was heavy, and showed a little door that had been hidden by it.

“The key,” she said, “hangs above.”

And so it did, on a large rusty nail.

“Put it in,” said the Princess, “and turn it.”

Gerald did so, and the great key creaked and grated in the lock.

“Now push,” she said; “push hard, all of you.”

They pushed hard, all of them. The door gave way, and they fell over each other into the dark space beyond.

The Princess dropped the curtain and came after them, closing the door behind her.

“Look out!” she said; “look out! There are two steps down.”

“Thank you,” said Gerald, rubbing his knee at the bottom of the steps. “We found that out for ourselves.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Princess, “but you can’t have hurt yourselves much. Go straight on. There aren’t any more steps.”

They went straight on in the dark.

“When you come to the door, just turn the handle and go in. Then stand still till I find the matches. I know where they are.”

“Did they have matches a hundred years ago?” asked Jimmy.

“I meant the tinder-box,” said the Princess quickly. “We always called it the matches. Don’t you? Here, let me go first.”

She did, and when they had reached the door she was waiting for them with a candle in her hand. She thrust it on Gerald.

“Hold it steady,” she said, and undid the shutters of a long window, so that first a yellow streak and then a blazing great oblong of light flashed at them, and the room was full of sunshine.

“It makes the candle look quite silly,” said Jimmy.

“So it does,” said the Princess, and blew out the candle. Then she took the key from the outside of the door, put it in the inside keyhole, and turned it.

The room they were in was small and high. Its domed ceiling was of deep blue with gold stars painted on it. The walls were of wood, panelled and carved, and there was no furniture in it whatever.

“This,” said the Princess, “is my treasure chamber.”

“But where, asked Kathleen politely, “are the treasures?”

“Don’t you see them?” asked the Princess.

“No, we don’t,” said Jimmy bluntly. “You don’t come that bread-and-cheese game with me not twice over, you don’t!”

“If you
really
don’t see them,” said the Princess, “I suppose I shall have to say the charm. Shut your eyes, please. And give me your word of honour you won’t look till I tell you, and that you’ll never tell anyone what you’ve seen.”

Their words of honour were something that the children would rather not have given just then, but they gave them all the same, and shut their eyes tight.

“Wiggadil yougadoo begadee leegadeeve nowgadow?” said the Princess rapidly; and they heard the swish of her silk train moving across the room. Then there was a creaking, rustling noise.

“She’s locking us in!” cried Jimmy.

“Your word of honour,” gasped Gerald.

“Oh, do be quick!” moaned Kathleen.

“You may look,” said the voice of the Princess. And they looked. The room was not the same room, yet—yes, the starry-vaulted blue ceiling was there, and below it half a dozen feet of the dark panelling, but below that the walls of the room blazed and sparkled with white and blue and red and green and gold and silver. Shelves ran round the room, and on them were gold cups and silver dishes, and platters and goblets set with gems, ornaments of gold and silver, tiaras of diamonds, necklaces of rubies, strings of emeralds and pearls, all set out in unimaginable splendour against a background of faded blue velvet. It was like the Crown jewels that you see when your kind uncle takes you to the Tower, only there seemed to be far more jewels than you or anyone else has ever seen together at the Tower or anywhere else.

The three children remained breathless, open-mouthed, staring at the sparkling splendours all about them, while the Princess stood, her arm stretched out in a gesture of command, and a proud smile on her lips.

“My word!” said Gerald, in a low whisper. But no one spoke out loud. They waited as if spellbound for the Princess to speak.

She spoke.

“What price bread-and-cheese games now?” she asked triumphantly. “Can I do magic, or can’t I?”

“You can; oh, you can!” said Kathleen.

“May we—may we
touch
?” asked Gerald.

“All that’s mine is yours,” said the Princess, with a generous wave of her brown hand, and added quickly, “Only, of course, you mustn’t take anything away with you.”

“We’re not thieves!” said Jimmy. The others were already turning over the wonderful things on the blue velvet shelves.

“Perhaps not,” said the Princess, “but you’re a very unbelieving little boy. You think I can’t see inside you, but I can.
I
know what you’ve been thinking.”

“What?” asked Jimmy.

“Oh, you know well enough,” said the Princess. “You’re thinking about the bread and cheese that I changed into beef, and about your secret fault. I say, let’s all dress up and you be princes and princesses too.”

“To crown our hero,” said Gerald, lifting a gold crown with a cross on the top, “was the work of a moment.” He put the crown on his head, and added a collar of SS and a zone of sparkling emeralds, which would not quite meet round his middle. He turned from fixing it by an ingenious adaptation of his belt to find the others already decked with diadems, necklaces, and rings.

“How splendid you look!” said the Princess, “and how I wish your clothes were prettier. What ugly clothes people wear nowadays! A hundred years ago—”

Kathleen stood quite still with a diamond bracelet raised in her hand.

“I say,” she said. “The King and Queen?”

“
What
King and Queen?” asked the Princess.

“Your father and mother, your sorrowing parents,” said Kathleen. “They’ll have waked up by now. Won’t they be wanting to see you, after a hundred years, you know?”

“Oh—ah—yes,” said the Princess slowly. “I embraced my rejoicing parents when I got the bread and cheese. They’re having their dinner. They won’t expect me yet. Here,” she added, hastily putting a ruby bracelet on Kathleen’s arm, “see how splendid that is!”

Kathleen would have been quite content to go on all day trying on different jewels and looking at herself in the little silver-framed mirror that the Princess took from one of the shelves, but the boys were soon weary of this amusement.

“Look here,” said Gerald, “if you’re sure your father and mother won’t want you, let’s go out and have a jolly good game of something. You could play besieged castles awfully well in that maze—unless you can do any more magic tricks.”

“You forget,” said the Princess, “I’m grown up. I don’t play games. And I don’t like to do too much magic at a time, it’s so tiring. Besides, it’ll take us ever so long to put all these things back in their proper places.”

It did. The children would have laid the jewels just anywhere; but the Princess showed them that every necklace, or ring, or bracelet had its own home on the velvet—a slight hollowing in the shelf beneath, so that each stone fitted into its own little nest.

As Kathleen was fitting the last shining ornament into its proper place, she saw that part of the shelf near it held, not bright jewels, but rings and brooches and chains, as well as queer things that she did not know the names of, and all were of dull metal and odd shapes.