CHAPTER XI.
THE GRAND TRANSFORMATION SCENE.
'What is that? What people are those in the cart?' demanded Yellow-cap, rising in his stirrups to get a better view.
'Please your Majesty they are prisoners of State,' said the Home Doggerel, who had turned rather pale. 'It is quite a mistake their coming here; they should have been taken to another theatre. However, since they are here your Majesty cannot do better than sign their death-warrant. I have a pen and ink here; or, if your Majesty happens not to know how to sign your name, I can——'
'Hold your tongue,' interrupted Yellow-cap sharply. He was looking very hard at the veiled figure of the woman. After a pause he said—
'Before signing my name (which I am perfectly able to do) to the death-warrant I will know what crime these persons have committed. Tell them to come nearer, that I may question them.'
'Sire,' exclaimed the Home Doggerel, in evident dismay, 'the law of England does not permit an accused person to be questioned.'
'Why not?'
'Because it might lead to a discovery.'
'What discovery?'
'The discovery of the truth, Sire; and where would you and all of us be then?'
At this a man in the pit began to hiss, and the police tried to take him into custody; but they could not find out his address, and therefore let him alone.
'Where would we be indeed!' murmured King Yellow-cap thoughtfully. 'Nevertheless,' he continued, again fixing his eyes upon the veiled woman, 'I am resolved to question these people; and this pantomime shall not go on until I have done so.'
'I humbly beg your Majesty to think what you are about,' said the Lord Privy Gander in an agitated tone; 'you are in danger not only of hearing the truth but of violating etiquette.'
'It might bring about a reform,' added the First Lord of the Seesaw, with a shudder.
'At all events let the woman be condemned unheard,' said Silvia. 'She looks dangerous, and may intend to do your Majesty some harm.'
'Be silent, everyone!' thundered King Yellow-cap at the top of his voice. 'I say I will hear these persons, and I will hear the woman first. Stop—where is the Headsman?'
'Here I be, your Majesty, quite at your service,' said the Headsman, shouldering through the crowd, and saluting the young King with his axe. He was an immensely strong man, seven feet high, with short red hair standing up over his head, and a butcher's apron tied on in front of him.
'Headsman,' said the King, 'if anyone stirs or says a word except by my leave, off with his head! Do you understand?'
For answer the Headsman tossed his terrible axe high up in the air, caught it lightly as it came down, and then, swinging it round his head, he cut off the tall feather that was fastened in the cap of the Chancellor of the Jingle. An inch more would have buried the blade in his skull.
'Very good,' said King Yellow-cap; 'I see you know your business. Now, then, bring me hither that cart. Let the woman come down.'
Amidst a total silence, during which the Headsman was seen to feel the edge of his axe with his thumb—keeping his right eye upon King Yellow-cap the while, and the left upon the Home Doggerel—the veiled woman got down from the cart and came forward to the donkey which served the King as a throne. Here she dropped a curtsey.
King Yellow-cap gazed steadfastly upon her for several moments. The black veil still hung before her face, but round her neck was visible a bit of pink ribbon.
'Who are you?' he asked at last.
'I am a village maiden, Sire,' she answered in a voice so sweet and clear that it was heard all over the theatre.
'Of what crime are you accused?'
'Of high treason, Sire.'
'In what way did you commit it?'
At this question the Home Doggerel and the other members of the Cabinet made a movement as if they wished to step behind the scenes; but King Yellow-cap noticed it, and in an awful voice he cried out—
'Headsman!'
'Ready, your Majesty,' said that officer, poising his axe to strike.
'One step more,' said the King, turning to the six courtiers, 'and your heads fly into the pit. Keep your axe poised,' he added to the Headsman.
'Right you are, young man!' said the person in the pit whom the police had tried to arrest for hissing. 'Right you are, Master Yellow-cap; you're just about the sort of king I goes in for, and so I tells you.'
'And now go on with your story,' said the King to the veiled woman.
'May it please your Majesty,' she replied, 'the way it happened was this. As I was taking the butter out of my churn yesterday afternoon there came into my dairy-room an ugly little long-armed man, with a hook nose and a great pair of moustachios. I asked him what he wanted, and he said that he wanted me, and that I had promised to marry him.'
'Ha!' said King Yellow-cap. 'And what did you say to that?'
'I was very indignant, Sire,' said the maiden, 'because I had that very day promised to wed a young man of our own village, whom I had known and loved for many years. But this ugly dwarf said, "You belong to me; and to prove it, here is the other half of the spade guinea that is hanging round your neck!" Now, Sire, when I parted with the young man whom I love he had cut his spade guinea in two, and each of us had kept half, for a sign by which, as he said, we might know each other when we met, no matter what changes had come over us in the meantime. So, when I saw the token in this dwarf's hand, I feared my lover was dead, because I knew that no enchantment could make him look like the dwarf, and I could not believe that he would have given up his half of our spade guinea while he had life enough left to guard it.'
'Might your lover not have given it up for something that seemed to him more precious?' asked the young King in a tremulous voice.
'No,' said the maiden firmly, 'for he loved me, and nothing in this world is so precious as love.'
'Go on with your story,' said the King.
'There is little more to tell, please your Majesty. I told the dwarf to be gone; but he threw his arms round me and tried to carry me away. Then I screamed out, and all the young men in the village ran up, and there was a great fight. Then the dwarf said that he was the Lord High Sheepstealer of England, and that he arrested us all for high treason. So he bound us and tied veils over our faces, and brought us prisoners to London; and this morning we were carried hither in this cart.'
'And what do you wish me to do for you?' asked the King.
'I do not much care what becomes of me, Sire,' replied the maiden, 'for I fear my lover is dead, and if he is, then all the love I had for the world is dead with him. But if your Majesty would find out whether he still lives and loves me I will thank you more than for my life, and I will be content to die.'
'You shall have your wish,' said the King, 'though I fear your lover is not worthy of you. But first your eyes shall be unveiled, and you shall tell me whether, amidst this assembly, you can find the man who called himself the Lord High Sheepstealer of England.'
And now a wonderful thing happened.
When the six courtiers, in their white dominoes, heard the command of the King that the maiden's eyes should be unveiled they all got behind one another, and cowered down, shaking in their shoes. And when the maiden's glance rested on them they cowered down still more, as if they were trying to hide their heads in their necks and their necks in their shoulders. Still they shrivelled and shrunk, until they no longer appeared like six tall courtiers, but like half a dozen ugly little dwarfs, barely three feet high. And when they saw how small they had become they uttered a cry of terror, and seemed to rush into one another's arms. And with that—though how it came about would be impossible to say—there stood only a single dwarf, a great deal stouter and uglier than the six, but with precisely the same cast of features and general appearance.
'That is the creature that called itself the Lord High Sheepstealer of England,' said the maiden.
'What have you to say for yourself, sirrah?' said the King sternly.
'Mercy! spare my life!' cried the dwarf, falling on his knees. 'And bethink yourself that we are brothers, and that in destroying me you would unmake yourself.'
'That is the very thing that decides me to show you no mercy,' answered King Yellow-cap. 'I am sick of all this stage-play.'
'Have a care what you do, Sire,' said Silvia, with a frown on her face, which looked much older and less pretty than it had done hitherto. 'He is your brother, and you are bound to him by the vows of the Order.'
'I shall know how to break those bonds,' Yellow-cap replied. 'In the first place, let my guards loose all the prisoners who are in the cart and let them go free.'
When this had been done he turned to the village maiden.
'Get up behind me on the donkey,' he said, 'and put your arms round my waist.'
The maiden obeyed, the donkey standing quite still, and not so much as moving the end of its tail.
'Now let Assimund, Prince of Sprats, approach,' said the King.
'People of England,' he then continued, facing the audience, 'I have been King over you for half an hour, and I have had enough of it. But, before abdicating, I will place the crown on brows worthier to wear it than mine. Behold Prince Assimund, no longer a pretender, but to be hereafter your absolute and legitimate monarch. And behold Silvia, his fitting queen and consort, whose hand I place in his.' He suited the action to the word, and then, removing the crown, he set it upon Assimund's head.
But the audience murmured, and seemed dissatisfied; and Silvia smiled maliciously; and even the dwarf, over whom the Headsman was standing with uplifted axe, showed his teeth in an ugly grin.
'Silence!' shouted Yellow-cap. 'I have not yet done. Headsman—strike!'
Down came the heavy axe; and everyone thought that the dwarf must be cloven asunder from head to foot. But before the axe could reach him there was no dwarf there. Whether he melted into nothing, or whether he disappeared down one of those trap-doors which are to be found in every stage, or what else became of him, will probably never be known. At all events the blade of the axe came down upon the bare boards and buried itself six inches deep in the wood, and no dwarf was there, but only the glittering half of a spade guinea, strung on a broken thread of silk. This the Headsman placed in Yellow-cap's hand, and he hid it in his bosom.
'He lives still!' said Silvia, smiling again.
'But he will never again cross my path,' replied Yellow-cap. 'King Assimund,' he added, 'accept my parting gift before I go. With this and with your crown, and with Silvia to whisper worldly wisdom in your ear, it will be your own fault if you are not the mightiest sovereign in Christendom.'
So saying he snatched off the yellow cap from his own black locks and clapped it down upon Assimund's foolish poll. At the same moment he felt the arms of the village maiden tighten round his waist.
He struck his heels into the donkey's sides and shook the rein. The donkey kicked up its heels, and seemed to spring bodily off the stage. Yellow-cap (but he was now Yellow-cap no longer) had a momentary glimpse of Assimund, now wearing an aspect of imperial magnificence, of Silvia, frowning and biting her lip, and of the whole great audience standing up and shouting; and then he had a feeling of passing rapidly through the air he knew not whither....
He came down very softly.
It was high noon. They were in the meadow beside the river. The donkey was feeding quietly near at hand; Raymond had fallen on his knees in the grass, and Rosamund was standing before him.
'Oh, Rosamund,' he said, 'you are my kingdom! Will you take me back?'
'You have been a very naughty boy,' she replied, 'and you deserve a scolding. But come home first and have some milk, for you must be hungry.'
Raymond looked up at her. She was more lovely than ever. There was a sparkle of laughter in her eyes and a beautiful blush in her cheeks. Beyond her rose the thatched roofs of Honeymead, overshadowed by the great lime-trees; the birds were singing, and the sky was blue.
'Come—do get up!' exclaimed Rosamund. 'Now that you belong to me you must give up these mooning dreamy ways of yours and behave sensibly. Come—make haste! Armand, and Dorimund, and all the rest of them have been invited, and our betrothal is to be formally announced.'
'How strange all this sounds!' said Raymond, getting to his feet in a bewildered way. 'You almost make me think that I have been——'
Before he could finish his sentence the donkey lifted its head and tail in the air and sent forth a long-drawn reproachful bray.
'Ah! no, it was real—I have not been dreaming,' Raymond said. 'If it had not been for that donkey where should we be now?'
'How stupid you are to-day—muttering to yourself like that!' cried Rosamund, briskly. 'Anyone would think you had a headache.'
'And so I had—a very bad one,' said Raymond.
Rosamund became tender immediately.
'Oh, my poor love!' murmured she. 'And what a horrid red mark that is round your forehead, as if you had been wearing a cap that was too tight for you. Stoop down a little—let me kiss it. There, does that feel better?'
'A great deal better,' Raymond answered, with a long sigh.
So they went back, hand in hand, through the meadow. The breeze came fresh and sweet upon their faces; they smelt the fragrance of the breath of cows. As they approached their home they walked more and more slowly. Rosamund was humming a little song to herself; she was as happy as a bird.
But Raymond was silent, and pondered many things.