A human person, with such progress behind him, would have been cocksure; but the fairies know better!
She showed her strength and content by an act of courage. She sent the crown back to Fairyland; Bim, as a special mark of honour, was privileged to take it.
The gnome, through this great trust--so responsible, so ennobling--was rapt up to the seventeenth realm of happiness. The privilege filled him with a fine humility. He did not presume to wear the crown; he held it with reverence in his hands, and when riding his pelican homewards--June procured one for that mission from St. James's Park--carried it carefully under his arm.
He reached the Violet Valley, delivered the crown to its mystical guardians, and then, eager to give expression to his wonderful adventures, told to excited groups of immortals tales of the doings of June. His words came forth in torrents. He had so much to say. He developed unexpected powers of expression. He found himself, while detailing his epic, shining with the graces of minor poetry. Nymphs, gathering about him as he spoke, sweetened his narrative with chords struck on harps of gold and starshine. His tales were repeated by tellers a hundredfold. A fairy "Iliad" was in the making. Not a flower or frog in Elfland failed to receive a full, true, and particular account of what the fairy and gnome had experienced, and of their ultimate triumph.
The result was better than glorious. Bim was acting as a first-rate recruiting officer. In consequence of his eloquence, the flow of fairies townwards grew rapidly in volume. The more he talked, the faster they flew. His ardour and loquacity were stimulated still further by this increasing--and vanishing--evidence of his success. Encouraged, he went on talking--explaining, appealing. He stood on a stump, an orator. His persuasiveness and powers of speech were depopulating Fairyland. They harkened, ruminated, and fled.
Oberon, made aware of this, was roused at last to the seriousness of things, and came back to Elfland in a panic.
"I told you so!" said Titania, with that inconsequence and gentle insistency her lord so loved.
The king airily murmured a royal "Pooh!" and hid his thoughts in a mist.
Never before had the real Fairyland been so silent. Many of the glades were empty. The flowers drooped. Noxious insects took courage and prowled. The murmurs of chained dragons, subterraneously entombed, were heard in the stillness for the first time for centuries; but they were securely prisoned.
The fairy knights, their warders, strong in their high chivalry and duteous devotion, resisted all inclination to follow the wings of their fellows. They remained, abiding and true, at their arduous, difficult posts, guarding the fiery caverns. Mankind has no idea of the dangers that threatened them. If those living, prehistoric creatures had escaped--but, no!--no!--no more of that! Let the horrors remain in the ghastly depths, to be remembered only on those rare occasions when, with their mighty convolutions, they cause earthquake.