The Princess Pourquoi

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

It came to pass, no one knows how, that nothing done by little Clementine escaped the notice of My Lord Rector, for his eyes followed her always. When he lectured, he lectured to Clementine; whether he said words of Latin or of the vulgar tongue, he spoke them to her eyes; and he was ashamed of the learned nonsense he was speaking when he gazed on Clementine. Sleeping, he saw her walking so-and-so under the shadow of Gothic arch with leaf shadows on her face, and he dreamed of taking the parchment from her white fingers and—But here he always woke, though he tried to dream farther. Clearly, something had happened to him that neither his experience as Sir Fool nor as Lord Rector had prepared him to understand.

Save for this haunting thought, he was very gay behind a solemn face. Dearly he loved his task, and none but the King and himself heard the faint tinkle of bells from under his scholar's cap. Always they greeted each other with Latin words, and they had many conferences wherein they chuckled together over the success of their plan, for they knew that they had drawn all these women forth to follow after the very shadow of learning, and that the end would leave them more ignorant than before. Always, however, in these moments of mirth, like a stab at the heart came to the Lord Rector the thought of deception practiced upon Clementine. Her trusting eyes, lifted to him in uttermost faith, reproached him by night and by day. If, by force, he put his conscience from him, he was sure to see her face as she listened, hiding in the recesses of her heart the silly words he said. Once, as she went alone toward the lodgings, and he followed at a great distance, a foot-pad set upon her in a dark corner, where a stone stairway gave shelter to thieves, and My Lord Rector, rushing forward, struck lustily about him right and left and felled the knave, taking from him the lady's netted purse and giving it back to her. She said no word save one of thanks, but after, when her eyes were raised, he saw that a new light had been added to the old, and that little Clementine reverenced him not only as a learned man, but as a brave one, too.

So weeks drifted by, and months, and then came a great event, for the maidens had determined to carry out a custom that belonged to that olden time and formed the final test of the scholar. All agreed that Clementine, brave, childish, perverse little Clementine, should initiate the new audacity. Therefore, one early morning, when the first rays of the sun were just peeping over the high stone city wall, she might have been observed stealing in academic garb of black over her white dress to the great oak, iron-studded door of the old Palace of Justice. Here, with a stone, she hammered a long parchment, and she established herself hard by, so that all who saw her knew that she was there to defend against all comers the theses she had nailed up. Now there were eight, and they ran as follows:—

1. That the ineffable and the intangible are not the same.

2. That all that is not, is, and all that seems to be, is not.

3. That—but it would be foolish to transcribe all the theses that little Clementine defended, for no one would understand. Suffice it to say that they were subtle beyond the mind of man, and clothed in words drawn from the deep abyss of the inane, where unborn thought goes ever crying for birth. One by one her six sisters came against her and argued, but to no avail, for little Clementine, no less skillful than David of yore, gathered together verb and adjective and slung them so unerringly that antagonist after antagonist went down, and she, often snubbed as being but the youngest, stood forth in the eyes of the admiring crowd a victor.

The picture that she made, standing against that gray stone wall flecked with green moss, with a grinning gargoyle leaning down toward her, was very sweet. In little Clementine the brown hair and the golden hair, the brown eyes and the gray eyes, of the family met in a peculiarly bewitching combination that had a chameleon quality of color constantly changing. Moreover, as she argued in well-chosen words, she was unconsciously establishing the unspoken thesis:—

That four dimples may exist at the same time in a maiden's face without seeming too many.

This My Lord Rector saw, and something gave way within him. When the argument was over and the audience was departing, he called Clementine to him inside the gate as one who would ask something, and then stood speechless. The maiden, who was flushed and weary, lifted her scholar's cap, and he saw, in the locks of hair that were neither brown nor gold, pearls woven; and above the collar of the gown showed the embroidered white samite of her dress.

"Little Clementine," said My Lord Rector, "your student life is almost done. Does that fact cause rejoicing?"