When I Was a Little Girl/Chapter 7

by Zona Gale

VII

THE PRINCESS ROMANCIA

That night I could not go to sleep with the knowledge. If only I, as I am now, might have sat on the edge of the bed and told a story to me as I was then! I am always wishing that we two might have known each other—I as I am now and I as I was then. We should have been so much more interested in each other than anybody else could ever be. I can picture us looking curiously at each other through the dark, and each would have wished to be the other—how hard we would have wished that. But neither of us would have got it, as sometimes happens with wishes.

Looking back on that night, and knowing how much I wanted to be like the rest, I think this would be the story that I, as I am now, would have told that Little Me.

Once upon a time to the fairy king and queen there was born a little daughter. And the king, being a modern fairy, determined to invite to the christening of his daughter twelve mortals—a thing never before countenanced in fairy ceremony. And of course all unreal people are always very particular about their ceremonies being just so.

It was a delicate and difficult task to make out that mortal invitation list, for it was very hard to find in the world twelve human beings who, at a fairy party, would exactly fit in. After long thought and consultation with all his ministers and councillors, the king made out the following list:—

A child; a poet; a scientist; a carpenter; a prophet; an artist; an artisan; a gardener; a philosopher; a woman who was also a mother; a man who was also a father; and a day labourer.

“Do you think that will do at all?” the fairy king asked the fairy queen, tossing over the list.

“Well, dear,” she replied, “it’s probably the best you can do. You know what people are.” She hesitated a mere breath a fairy’s breath—and added: “I do wonder a little, though, just why the day labourer.”

“My dear,” said the king, “some day you will understand that, and many other things as well.”

The christening room was a Vasty Hall, whose deep blue ceiling was as high as the sky and as strange as night. Lamps, dim as the stars, hung very high, and there was one silver central chandelier, globed like the moon, and there were frescoes like clouds. The furnishings of the Vasty Hall were most magnificent. There were pillars like trees spreading out into capitals of intricate and leafy design. Lengths of fair carpet ran here and there, as soft and shining as little streams; there were thick rugs as deep as moss, seats of native carved stone, and tapestries as splendid as vistas curtaining the distance. And the music was like the music of All-night, all done at once.

To honour the occasion the fairy guests had all come dressed as something else—for by now, of course, the fairies are copying many human fashions. One was disguised as a Butterfly with her own wings prettily painted. One represented a Rose, and she could hardly be distinguished from an American Beauty. One was made up as a Light, whom nobody could recognize. One was a White Moth and one was a Thistle-down, and there were several fantastic toilettes, such as a great Tulle Bow, a Paper Doll, and an Hour-glass. As for the Human Beings present, they all came masked as themselves, as usual; and their names I cannot give you, though sometimes I see someone with dreaming eyes whom I think may possibly have been one of those twelve—for of course it must have made a difference in their looks ever afterward. It was a very brilliant assemblage indeed, and everyone was most intangible and elusive, which are fairy terms for well-behaved.

While the guests were waiting for the fairy baby princess to be brought in, they idled about, with that delightful going-to-be-ice-cream feeling which you have at any party in some form or another, only you must never say so, and they exchanged the usual pleasant nothing-at-alls. It is curious how very like human nothings fairy nothings are.

For example:—

“There is a great deal of night about,” said the Butterfly Fairy with a little shiver. “If I were a truly butterfly, I should never be able to find my way home.” {{nop} “And there is such a fad for thunder-and-lightning this season,” added the Paper Doll Fairy, agreeably.

“Do you remember,” asked the White Moth Fairy, “the night that we all dressed as white moths and went to meet the moon? We flew until we were all in the moonlight, and then we knew that we had met her. I wonder why more people do not meet the moon-rise?”

“That reminds me,” said the Thistle-down Fairy, “of the day we all made up as snowflakes and went to find the Spring. Don’t you know how she surprised us, in the hollow of the lowland? And what a good talk we had? I wonder why more people do not go to meet the Spring?”

“A charming idea!” cried the Rose Fairy to the Light Fairy, and the Light Fairy shone softly upon her, precisely like an answer.

Then somebody observed that the wind that night was a pure soprano, and the guests amused themselves comparing wind-notes; how on some nights the wind is deep bass, like a man’s voice, raging through the world; and sometimes it is tenor, sweet, and singing only serenades; and sometimes it is all contralto and like a lullaby; and sometimes, but not often, it is like harp music played on the trees.

Suddenly the whole dark lifted, like a garment; and moonlight flooded the Vasty Hall. And as if they had filtered down the air with the light, the fairy christening party entered—not as we enter a room, by thresholds and steps, but the way that a thought comes in your head and you don’t know how it got there.

The christening party wore robes of colours that lie deep between the colours and may hardly be named. And, in a secret ceremony, such as attends the blooming of flowers, the fairy baby was christened Romancia. Then the fairies brought her many offerings; and these having been received and admired, a great hush fell on the whole assembly, for now the twelve Human Beings came forward with their gifts. And everyone, except, indeed, the princess herself, was wild with curiosity to see what they had brought.

No one left a card with any gift, but when the fairy king came to look them over afterward, he felt certain who had brought each one. The gifts were these: A little embroidered gown which should make everyone love the princess while she wore it; a gazing crystal which would enable the princess to see one hundred times as much as anybody else saw; certain sea secrets and sea spells; a lyre which played itself; a flask containing a draught which should keep the princess young; a vial of colours which hardly anyone ever sees; flowers and grasses and leaves which could be used almost like a dictionary to spell out other things; an assortment of wonderful happy fancies of every variety; a new rainbow; a box of picture cards of the world, every one of which should come true if one only went far enough; and a tapestry of the universe, wrapped around a brand-new idea in a box.

When these things had been graciously accepted by the king, there was a stir in the company, and sweeping into its midst came another Human Being, one who thought that she had every right to be invited to the christening, but who had not been invited. All the fairies shrank back, for it was an extraordinary-looking Human Being. She was tall and lithe and wore a sparkling gown, and her face had the look of many cities, and now it was like the painted cover of an empty box, and all the time it had the meaning only of those who never look at the stars, or walk in gardens, or think about others rather than themselves, or listen to hear what it is right for them to do. This kind of Human Being is one who not often has any good gift to give to anyone, and this the fairies knew.

The Vasty Hall became very quiet to see what she had brought, for no one understood what she could possibly have to bestow upon a baby. And without asking leave of the king or the queen, she bent over the child and clasped on her wrist the tiniest bracelet that was ever made in the world, and she snapped its lock as fast as the lock on a fetter, and held up the tiniest key that ever was wrought.

“The princess,” she cried, “shall seem different from everyone else. She shall seem like nobody who is or ever has been. As long as she wears her bracelet, this shall be true; and that she may never lose it, I shall hold her bracelet’s key. Hail to this little princess child, who shall seem like nobody in the world!”

Now, no one present was quite certain what this might mean, but the lady’s robe was so beautifully embroidered and sparkling, and her voice was such a thing of loops and curves, that nearly everyone accepted the gift as something fine after all, and the queen gave her her hand to kiss. But the king, who was a very wise fairy, said nothing at all, and merely bowed and eyed the bracelet, in deep thought.

His meditation was interrupted by a most awkward incident. In the excitement of the bestowal of gifts by the Human Beings, and in the confusion of the entrance of the thirteenth and uninvited Human Being, one of them all had been forgotten and had got himself shuffled well at the back of everyone. And now he came pressing forward in great embarrassment, to bring his gift. It was the day labourer, and several of the Human Beings drew hastily back as he approached the dais. But everyone fell still farther back in consternation when it was seen what he had brought. For on the delicate cobweb coverlet of the little princess’s bed, he cast a spadeful of earth.

“It’s all I've got,” the man said, “or I'd brought a better.”

The earth all but covered the little bed of the princess, and it was necessary to lift her from it, which the fairy queen did with her own hands, flashing a reproachful glance at her husband, the king. But when the party had trooped away for the dancing,—with the orchestra playing the way a Summer night would sound if it were to steep itself in music, so that it could only be heard and not seen,—then the king came quietly back to the christening chamber and ordered the spadeful of earth to be gathered up and put in a certain part of the palace garden.

And so (the Human Beings having gone home at once and forgotten that they had been present), when the music lessened to silence and the fairies stole from note to note and at last drifted away as invisibly as the hours leave a dial, they passed, in the palace garden, a great corner of the rich black earth which the day labourer had brought to the princess. And it was ready for seed sowing.

The Princess Romancia grew with the days and the years, and from the first it was easily to be seen that certainly she seemed different from everyone in the world. As a baby she began talking in her cradle without having been taught—not very plainly, to be sure, or so that anybody in particular excepting the fairy queen understood her—but still she talked. As a little girl she seemed always to be listening to things as if she understood them as well as she did people, or better. When she grew older, nobody knew quite how she differed, but everybody agreed that she seemed different. And this the princess knew better than anybody, and most of the time it made her hurt all over.

When the fairies played at thistle-down ball, the princess often played too, but she never felt really like one of them all. She felt that they were obliged to have her play with them because she was the princess, and not because they wanted her. When they played at hide-and-go-seek in a flower bed, somehow the others always hid together in the big flowers, and the princess hid alone in a tulip or a poppy. And whenever they whispered among themselves, she always fancied that they were whispering of her. She imagined herself often looked at with a smile or a shrug; she began to believe that she was not wanted but only endured because she was the princess, and she was certain that no one liked her for herself alone, because she was somehow so different. Little by little she grew silent, and refused to join in the games, and sat apart alone. Presently she began to give blunt answers and to take exception and even to

Little by little she grew silent and refused to join in the games.

disagree. And, of course, little by little the court began secretly to dislike her, and to cease to try to understand her, and they told one another that she was hopelessly different and that that was all that there was to be said about her.

But in spite of all this, the Princess Romancia was very beautiful, and the fame of her beauty went over the whole of fairyland. When enough years had gone by, fairy princes from this and that dominion began to come to the king’s palace to see her. But though they all admired the princess’s great beauty, many were of course repelled by her sharp answers and her constant suspicions.

But at last the news of the princess’s beauty and strangeness reached the farthest border of fairyland and came to the ears of the young Prince Hesperus. Now Prince Hesperus, who was the darling of his father’s court and beloved of everybody, was tired of everybody. “Every fairy is like every other fairy,” he was often heard saying wearily. “I do wish I could find somebody with a few new ways. One would think fairies were all cut from one pattern!” Therefore, when word came to him of the strange and beautiful Princess Romancia, who was believed to be different from everyone else in the world, you can imagine with what haste he made ready and set out for her father’s place.

Prince Hesperus arrived at the palace at twilight, when the king’s garden was wrapped in that shadow light which no one can step through, if he looks, without feeling somewhat like a fairy himself and glad to be one. He sent his servants on ahead, folded his wings, and proceeded on foot through the silent gardens. And in a little arbour made of fallen petals, renewed each day, he came on the Princess Romancia, asleep. He, of course, did not recognize her, but never, since for him the world began, had the prince seen anyone so beautiful.

His step roused her and she sprang to her feet. And as soon as he looked at her, Prince Hesperus found himself wanting to tell her of what he had just been thinking, and before he knew it he was doing so.

“I have just been thinking,” he said, “what a delightful pet a leaf-shadow would make, if one could catch it and tame it. I wonder if one could do it? Think how it would dance for one, all day long.”

The Princess Romancia stared a little.

“But when the sun went down,” she was surprised into saying, “the shadow would be dead.”

“Not at all,” the prince replied, “it would only be asleep. And it would never have to be fed, and it could live in one’s palace.”

“I would like such a pet,” said the princess, thoughtfully.

“If I may walk with you,” said the prince, “we will talk more about it.”

They walked together toward the palace and talked more about it, so that the Princess Romancia quite forgot to be more different than she was, and the prince forgot all about everything save his companion. And he saw about her all the gifts of tenderness and vision and magic, of sea secrets and sea spells, of music and colours and knowledge and charming notions which the Human Beings had brought her at her birth, though these hardly ever were visible because the princess seemed so different from everybody else. And when, as they drew near the palace, their servants came hastening to escort them, the two looked at each other in the greatest surprise to find that they were prince and princess. For all other things had seemed so much more important.

Their formal meeting took place that evening in the Vasty Hall, where, years before, the princess had been christened. Prince Hesperus was filled with the most joyous anticipation and awaited his presentation to the princess with the feeling that fairyland was just beginning. But the princess, on the other hand, was no sooner back in the palace among her ladies than the curse of her terrible christening present descended upon her as she had never felt it before. How, the poor princess thought, could the prince possibly like her, who was so different from everybody in the world? While she was being dressed, every time that her ladies spoke in a low tone, she imagined that they were speaking of her; every time that one smiled and shook her head, the princess was certain that it was in pity of her. She fancied that they knew that her walk was awkward, her voice harsh, her robe in bad taste, and an old fear came upon her that the palace mirrors had all been changed to conceal from her that she was really very ugly. In short, by the time that she was expected to descend, poor Princess Romancia had made herself utterly miserable.

Therefore, when, in her gown of fresh cobweb, the princess entered the hall and the prince hastened eagerly forward, she hardly looked at him. And when, at the banquet that followed, he sat beside her and tried to continue their talk of the arbour and the walk, she barely replied at all.

“How beautiful you are,” he murmured.

“So is the night,” said the princess, “and you do not tell the night that it is beautiful.”

“Your eyes are like stars,” the prince said.

“There are real stars above,” said the princess.

“You are like no one else!” cried the prince.

“At least you need not charge me with that,” said the poor princess.

Nor would she dance with him or with anyone else. For she imagined that they did not wish to dance with her, and that her dancing was worse than anyone’s. And as soon as she was able, and long before cock-crow, she slipped away from them all and went to sleep in a handy crocus cup.

Now at all this the king and queen were nearly as distressed as the prince, and they were obliged to tell Prince Hesperus the whole story of the christening. When he heard about the uninvited Human Being who had given the baby princess this dreadful present and had kept the key to the bracelet which was its bond, he sprang up and grasped his tiny sword.

“I will go out in the world and find this Human Being,” he cried, “and I will bring back the bracelet key.”

Without again seeing the princess, Prince Hesperus left the palace and fared forth on his quest. And when she found that he was gone, she was more wretched than ever before. For in her life no one had ever talked to her as he had talked, speaking his inmost fancies, and when she had lost him, she wanted more than ever to talk with him. But the king, who was a very wise fairy, did not tell her where the prince had gone.

And now the Princess Romancia did not know what to do with herself. The court was unbearable; all her trivial occupations bored her; and the whole world seemed to have been made different from all other worlds. Worst to endure was the presence of her companions, who all seemed to love and to understand one another, while she only was alone and out of their sympathy.

“Oh,” she cried, “if only I had a game or a task to do with somebody or something that didn’t know I am different—that wouldn’t know who I am!”

And she thought longingly of the prince’s fancy about the leaf-shadow for a pet which should dance with one all day long.

“A leaf-shadow would not know that I am not like everybody else!” the poor princess thought.

One night, when a fairy ring had been formed in an open grassy space among old oaks, the princess could bear it all no longer. When the music was at its merriest and a band of strolling goblin musicians were playing their maddest, she slipped away and returned to the palace by an unfrequented path and entered a long-disused part of the garden. And there, in a corner where she had never before walked, she came on a great place of rich, black earth, which, in the sweet Spring air, lay ready for the sowing. It was the spadeful of earth which the day labourer had brought to her christening; and there, for all these years, the king had caused it to remain untouched, its own rank weed growth enriching its richness, until but a touch would now turn it to fruitage. And seeing it so, and being filled with her wish for something which should take her thought away from herself and from her difference from all the world, the Princess Romancia was instantly minded to make a garden.

Night being the work time and play time of the fairies, the princess went at once to the palace granaries and selected seeds of many kinds, flower and vegetable and fern seeds, and she brought them to this corner of rich earth, and there she planted them, under the moon. She would call no servants to help her, fearing lest they would smile among themselves at her strange doing. All night she worked at the planting, and when morning came, she fell asleep in a mandrake blossom, and woke hungry for a breakfast of honeydew and thinking of nothing save getting back to her new gardening.

The Wind helped her, and as the days passed, the Sun and the Rain helped her, and she used certain magic which she knew, so that presently her garden was a glory. Poppies and corn, beans and berries, green peas and sweet peas, pinks and potatoes, celery and white phlox, melons and cardinal flowers—all these grew wonderfully together, as it were, hand in hand, as they will grow for fairy folk, and in such great luxuriance that the princess wrought early and late to keep them ordered and watered. She would have no servants to help her, for she grew more and more to love her task. For here at last in her garden she had found those whom she could not imagine to be smiling among themselves at anything that she said or did; but all the green things responded to her hands like friends answering to a hand clasp, and when the flowers nodded to one another, this meant only that a company of little leaf-shadows were set dancing on the earth, almost as if they had been tamed to be her pets, according to the prince’s fancy.

Up at the palace the queen and the ladies-in-waiting to the queen and the princess regarded all this as but another sign of poor Romancia’s strangeness. From her tower window the queen peered anxiously down at her daughter toiling away at sunrise.

“Now she is raising carrots and beets,” cried the queen, wringing her hands. “She grows more different from us every moment of her life!”

“She seems to do so,” admitted the king; but he was very wise; and, “Let her be,” he commanded everybody. “We may see what this all means, and a great many other things as well.”

Meanwhile Prince Hesperus, journeying from land to land and from height to valley, was seeking in vain for the one person who, as he thought, could remove from the princess the curse of her difference from all the rest of the world. And it was very strange how love had changed him; for now, instead of his silly complaint that every fairy is like every other fairy, and his silly longing for a different pattern in fairies, he sought only for the charm which should make his beloved princess like everybody else. Where should he find this terrible Human Being, this uninvited one who held the key to the princess’s bracelet that was so like a fetter?

He went first to the town nearest to fairyland. The people of the town, having no idea how near to fairyland they really were, were going prosaically about their occupations, and though they could have looked up into the magic garden itself, they remained serenely indifferent. There he found the very mother who had been at the christening of the princess; and alighting close to a great task that she was doing for the whole world, he tried to ask her who it was who makes folk different from all the rest. But she could not hear his tiny, tiny voice which came to her merely as a thought about something which could not possibly be true. In a pleasant valley he came on that one who, at the christening, had brought the lyre which played of itself, but when the prince asked him his question, he fancied it to be merely the wandering of his own melody, with a note about something new to his thought. The poet by the stream singing of the brotherhood of man, the prophet on a mountain foreseeing the brotherhood as in a gazing crystal, the scientist weaving the brotherhood in a tapestry of the universe—none of these knew anyone who can possibly make folk different from everybody else, nor did any of the others on whom Prince Hesperus chanced.

When one day he thought that he had found her, because he met one whose face had the look of many cities and was like the painted cover of an empty box, straightway he saw another and another and still others, men and women both, who were like her, with only the meaning of those who never look at the stars, or walk in gardens, or think about others rather than themselves, or listen to hear what is right for them to do. And then he saw that these are many and many, who believe themselves to be different from everybody else and who try to make others so, and he saw that it would be useless to look further among them for that one who had the key for which he sought.

So at last Prince Hesperus turned sadly back toward the palace of the princess.

“Alas,” said the prince, “it is for her own happiness that I seek to have her like other people. For myself I would love her anyway. But yet, what am I to do—for she seems so different that she will never believe that I love her!”

It was already late at night when the prince found himself in the neighbourhood of the palace, and being tired and travel-worn, he resolved to take shelter in the cup of some flower and wait until the palace revelries were done. Accordingly he entered the garden of an humble cottage and crept within the petals of a wild lily growing in the long, untended grass.

He had hardly settled himself to sleep when he heard from the cottage the sound of bitter crying. Now this is a sound which no fairy will ever pass by or ever so much as hear about without trying to comfort, and at once Prince Hesperus rose and flew to the sill of an open lattice.

He looked in on a poor room, with the meanest furnishings. On a comfortless bed lay the father of the house, ill and helpless. His wife sat by his side, and the children clung about her, crying with hunger and mingling their tears with her own. The man turned and looked at her, making a motion to speak, and Prince Hesperus flew into the room and alighted on the handle of a great spade, covered with earth, which stood in a corner.

“Wife,” the man said, “I've brought you little but sorrow and hunger. I would have brought you more if I had had better. And now I see you starve.”

“I am not too hungry,” the wife said—but the children sobbed.

Prince Hesperus waited not a moment. He flew into the night and away toward the palace, and missing the fairy ring where among old oaks the fairies were dancing, he reached the palace by an unfrequented path and entered a disused part of the palace garden. And there, in a corner which he had never visited, Prince Hesperus saw a marvellous mass of bloom and fruit—poppies and corn, beans and berries, green peas and sweet peas, pinks and potatoes, celery and white phlox, melons and cardinal flowers—all growing wonderfully together, as it were, hand in hand. And above them, in a moon-flower clinging to the wall, sat the Princess Romancia, rocking in the wind and brooding upon her garden.

“Come!” cried Prince Hesperus. “There is a thing to do!”

The princess looked at him a little fearfully, but he paid almost no attention to her, so absorbed he was in what he wished to have done.

“Hard by is a family,” said the prince, “dying of hunger. Here is food. Hale in these idlers dancing in the light of the moon, and let us carry the family the means to stay alive.”

Without a word the princess went with him, and they appeared together in the fairy ring and haled away the dancers. And when these understood the need, they all joined together, fairies, goblin musicians and all, and hurried away to the garden of the princess.

They wove a litter of sweet stems and into this they piled all the food of the princess’s tending. And when the queen would have had them send to the palace kitchen for supplies, the king, who was a wise fairy, would not permit it and commanded that all should be done as the prince wished. So when the garden was ravaged of its sweets, they all bore them away, and trooped to the cottage, and cast them on the threshold. And then they perched about the room, or hovered in the path of the moonlight to hear what should be said. And Prince Hesperus and Princess Romancia listened together upon the handle of the poor man’s spade.

At sight of the gifts the wife sprang up joyfully and cried out to her husband, and the children wakened with happy shouts.

“Here is food—food!” they cried. “Oh, it must be from the fairies.”

The sick man looked and smiled.

“Ay,” he said, “the Little Folk have remembered us. They have brought us rich store in return for my poor spadeful of earth.”

Then the prince and princess and all the court understood that this poor man whom they had helped was that very day labourer who had come to the christening of the princess. And swift as a moonbeam—and not unlike one—Prince Hesperus darted from beside the princess and alighted on the man’s pillow.

“Ah,” he cried, “can you not, then, tell me who it is who has the power to make one different from everybody else in the world?”

In half delirium the day labourer heard the voice of the prince and caught the question. But he did not know that it was the voice of the prince, and he fancied it to be the voice of the whole world, as it were throbbing with the prince’s question. And he cried out loudly in answer:—

“No one has that power! No one is different! Those who seem different hold no truth. We are all alike, all of us that live!”

Swiftly the prince turned to the king and the queen and the court.

“The uninvited Human Being,” he cried, “did she say that the princess should be different from all the world, or that she should merely seem different?”

The queen and the court could not remember, but the king, who was a wise fairy, instantly remembered.

“She said that she should seem different,” he said.

Then the prince laughed out joyfully.

“Ay,” he cried, “seem different, indeed! There are many and many who may do that. But this man speaks truth and out of his spadeful of earth we have learned it, “We are all alike, all of us who live!”

With that he grasped his tiny sword and flew to the side of the princess and lifted her hand in his. And with a swift, deft stroke he cut from her wrist the bracelet that was like a fetter, and he took her in his arms.

“Ah, my princess,” he cried. “You have seemed different from us all only because you would have it so!”

The Princess Romancia looked round on the court, and suddenly she saw only the friendliness which had always been there if she could have believed. She looked on her father and mother, the king and the queen, and she saw only tenderness. She looked on the day labourer and his family and understood that, fairy and princess though she was, she was like them and they were like her. Last, she looked in the face of the prince—and she did not look away.

Invisibly, as the hours leave a dial, the fairies drifted from the little room and back to the fairy ring among the old oaks to dance for very joyousness. The labourer and his family, hearing them go, were conscious of a faint lifting of the dark, as if morning were coming, bringing a new day. And to the Princess Romancia, beside Prince Hesperus, the world itself was a new world, where she did not walk alone as she had thought, but where all folk who will have it so walk together.