Читать книгу Yellow-Cap and Other Fairy-Stories For Children - Julian Hawthorne - Страница 5

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A good many years ago—before Julius Cæsar landed at Dover, in fact, and while the architect's plans for Stonehenge were still under consideration—England was inhabited by a civilised and prosperous people, who did not care about travelling, and who were renowned for their affability to strangers. The climate was warm and equable; there were no fogs, no smoke, no railways, and no politics. The Government was an absolute monarchy; one king, who was by birth and descent an Englishman, lived in London all the year round; and as for London, it was the cleanest, airiest, and most beautiful city in the whole world.

A few miles outside of the city walls lay a small village called Honeymead. It had some fifteen or twenty thatched cottages, each with its vegetable garden and its beehives, its hencoop and its cowshed. Around this village fertile meadows spread down to the river banks, bringing forth plenteous crops for the support of the honest and thrifty husbandmen who tilled them. There was only one public-house in the place, and the only drink to be had there was milk. A case of drunkenness was, consequently, seldom heard of; though, on the other hand, women, girls, and even small children might be seen lingering about the place as well as men.

This public-house was called the Brindled Cow, and it was kept by a young woman whose name was Rosamund. She was the prettiest maiden in the village, as well as the most good-natured and the thriftiest; though she had a keen tongue of her own when occasion demanded. As might be supposed, all the young men in the neighbourhood were anxious to marry her; but she gave them little or no encouragement. She used to tell them that she was well able to take care of herself, so what good would a husband be to her? She didn't want to support him, and she didn't need his support. It was better as it was. As for falling in love, that was a thing she couldn't pretend to understand; but her maiden aunt had once told her that it was more bother than it was worth, and she thought it very likely. Moreover, if by any accident she should one day happen to fall in love, she would take great care that it should not be suspected, because the man she loved would then become so puffed up with conceit there'd be no bearing him!

Such was Rosamund's declared opinion upon matrimony; and it caused gloom to dwell in the heart of many a love-sick swain. But (what was strange) the more love-sick they grew the fatter and rosier they became. The reason probably was that they were for ever going to the Brindled Cow under pretence of being thirsty—but in reality to feast their eyes on Rosamund's lovely face; and since, thirsty or not, she insisted upon their drinking, as long as they stayed, at the rate of a pint of rich unskimmed milk every ten minutes, you will easily understand that it soon became possible to measure the ardour of their affection in pounds avoirdupois. So that by-and-by, when the elders of the village would see their sons waxing great of girth and blowzy of visage, they would shake their heads and murmur sadly—

'Ah! poor lad, how healthy he's getting! 'Tis plain he's in love with Mistress Rosamund!'

There was one young fellow, however, who was seldom seen among the tipplers at the Brindled Cow. He was a slender youth, rather pale, with straight black eyebrows and large thoughtful eyes, which always seemed to be gazing at something far away. There was a romantic story about him, which you shall hear. When he was a small child, only three years old, his mother (who took in washing, and would be called a laundress nowadays) was up to her elbows one Tuesday afternoon in soapsuds and shirts; and Raymond—that was the child's name—was sitting beside the washing-tub, blowing soap-bubbles. All of a sudden the tramp of a horse was heard in the street without, and the woman, looking up from her scrubbing-board had a glimpse through the window of a magnificent horseman, in silk and velvet, with rosettes on his shoulders, and wearing a gold cap with a tall peacock's feather in it. He got off his horse; and in another moment he had opened the cottage door and walked into the washing-room.

The poor woman was at first vastly frightened, for she thought this must be the King, and that he was going to cut off her head because she used chemicals in her washing—though she had never done such a thing except when she was very much pressed for time, or when the water was so hard that the soap would not make suds. However, like a wise woman as she was, she made up her mind not to ask for mercy until she had heard her accusation; so she dropped half a dozen curtseys, and begged to know what his Gracious Royal Majesty's Highness wanted.

Meanwhile, the little boy, from his seat beside the wash-tub, stared and stared at the magnificent stranger, and was sure he never could stare at him enough. The stranger was tall, thin, and as straight as a hop-pole; had a huge aquiline nose, with a pair of long moustachios jutting out beneath it and curling up to his eyes; and on his chin was a sharp-pointed beard. The steam from the wash-tub filled the little room and swam in misty clouds round this singular figure; while the last soap-bubble which the little boy had blown from his pipe rose in the air and circled round and round the yellow cap like a planet round the sun. Altogether he looked like an Eastern genie in an English court-dress—an uncommon sight in the times I write of.

This personage now made two profound obeisances, one to the washerwoman and one to the little boy. This done, he threw back his silk-lined cloak, and taking from the pocket of his doublet a bundle of something done up in gold paper, he opened his mouth and said—

'O yez! O yez! O yez! Whereas his Transparent Majesty King Ormund, Emperor of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and so forth, and so forth, did, while riding through this village called Honeymead, splash with mud his left Transparent stocking: now, therefore, O washerwoman, it is his gracious will and pleasure that you do hereby wash the same, with all due and proper diligence and despatch, and with the smallest possible amount of unnecessary procrastination. Long live his Transparency King Ormund!'

In fact, the gold paper contained a fine pink silk stocking, with embroidered clocks, a hole in the toe, and seven spots of mud spattered over it. The washerwoman had understood very little of the speech, but she could see that the stocking needed washing; so without more ado she plunged it into the soapsuds, and in five minutes it was as clean as the day it came out of the shop, and was dried before the fire. All this time the stranger had stood bolt upright in the centre of the little room, swathed in the steam, and with the soap-bubble still revolving round his head like a planet; and the little boy still stared up at him, as if he never could stare enough.

When the stocking was quite dry the washerwoman rolled it up again in the gold paper and gave it to the stranger, who put it back in the pocket of his doublet. Then he took from the purse that hung at his belt a new spade guinea, gave it a fillip into the air, and down it fell in the little boy's lap. Then, with a third profound obeisance, he made a long step back towards the door.

Up jumped the little boy in a great hurry and excitement.

'If you please, sir,' he cried out, 'who are you?'

The stranger stopped; and as the steam from the wash-tub wound around him more and more, and the soap-bubble burst on the bridge of his aquiline nose, he replied—

'Little boy, I am an Appanage of Royalty!'

'Please will you give me your yellow cap?' asked Raymond again.

'Not to-day,' said the Appanage of Royalty, with a queer smile.

'To-morrow, then?' demanded Raymond.

'Some day—perhaps!' the other replied, still with that queer smile. And then he disappeared; but whether he dissolved into steam, or exploded like a soap-bubble, or went out by the door in the regular way, the little boy could never be quite sure. It was enough for him that an Appanage of Royalty had said that some day, perhaps, he would give him his gold cap. And Raymond never forgot this adventure; and as a kind of pledge of its reality he ever afterwards wore the spade guinea round his neck by a silken string. He believed that sooner or later it would be the means of bringing him fame and greatness.