The Other Side of the Sun Part 7

Now, Prince Amaryllis had been waiting a great many days for some one to appear at the top of the wall, but now that some one really had appeared there and was looking so extremely glad to see him, he suddenly found he had nothing whatever to say to her. That is what occasionally happens to the most charming of princes. Fortunately, however, the Princess knew perfectly well what to say to him.

"I knew there would be something nice on the other side of my wall," she cried. "The wymp was quite wrong, wasn't he?"

"No doubt he was, if you say so," answered the Prince, who had never noticed the wymp at all. "But how is it, little lady, that you can see me?"

The Princess opened her big eyes and stared at him. "How can I help seeing you, if you are there?" she asked.

"But I'm not here, that's just it," explained Prince Amaryllis; "at least, I am not supposed to be. You see, I have been invisible all my life, and you are the first person, outside my own country, who has ever been able to see me. I am very glad you can see me," he added politely; "one gets a little tired sometimes of being heard and not seen."

"When I was a little girl," said Princess Gentianella, drawing herself up to her full height, "I was always taught to be seen and not heard.

That was very dull, too. But tell me, why is it that you are invisible?"

"Alas!" said the Prince. "The whole of my country is invisible, too.

Tell me what you can see, Princess, from the top of your wall."

"I can see you," answered the little Princess, promptly.

"But do you see nothing else?" asked Prince Amaryllis.

The Princess shaded her eyes with her hand and looked away into the distance. "I can see a large flat plain, with no trees and no rivers and no people and no houses," she answered presently.

Prince Amaryllis sighed. "You are looking right into my country," he said dolefully, "and it is every bit as full of trees and rivers and people and houses as anybody else's country. Do you not hear anything either?"

"Oh, yes," said Princess Gentianella; "I can hear the murmur of voices and the ripple of rivers and the rustle of trees. I have heard those sounds all my life, but I thought they were in the wind."

"Nothing of the sort," replied the Prince. "They are the sounds that belong to my country, where everybody is heard and not seen. It all began with a christening-party, a hundred years ago. My great-grandfather was King then, and he was the most absent-minded king that has ever ruled over us, and he forgot to ask the Witch to dance with him, which, of course, offended her deeply. And it happened that she was a witch who was always making experiments, so she experimented on my country at once by making it invisible, and it has been invisible ever since."

"How strange!" said Princess Gentianella. "I never remember hearing any one talk about your country."

"Of course not," sighed the Prince; "you can't expect people to talk about a thing that isn't there, can you? You have no idea how stupid it is to live in a place that no one can see."

"But why does not someone disenchant your kingdom?" asked the Princess, who had read quite enough history to know that kingdoms are always disenchanted sooner or later.

"That is what I am trying to do," answered Prince Amaryllis. "The spell can only be removed if a king's son will spend a whole year in this waste piece of ground and make it into a beautiful garden. But although I have been here nearly a year, I have not been able to make a single flower grow. It is a little tiresome," he added with another sigh, "for it is part of the spell that I shall have to be executed if I fail."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the little Princess. "You are much too nice to be executed! Won't you let me come and play in your garden? Perhaps I might help you to make the flowers grow."

Prince Amaryllis shook his head and smiled. "It is not a nice garden to play in," he said. "I think I will come and play in yours instead, and you shall teach me the way to make the flowers grow."

So the Prince jumped over the wall into the Princess's garden, and they walked about, hand in hand, among all the bright flower-beds that the fairies had planted there. They did not play very much, though, for they had so many things to talk about; and they talked and talked and talked, without stopping a moment, for the rest of the afternoon. For all that, when tea-time came and the Prince went back into his own garden, he remembered all sorts of things he might have said to the Princess if he had only thought of them in time; while Princess Gentianella, in the middle of her second cup of tea, also remembered all the things she might have said to the Prince, only she had not said them. That is always the way with princes and princesses who are carefully brought up.

After that, Princess Gentianella and Prince Amaryllis played together for a number of days. But they always played in the Princess's garden, because it was a much nicer garden to play in; and as for the Prince's garden, they seemed to have forgotten that altogether. Then, one afternoon, when the Princess ran out as usual into the hot suns.h.i.+ne, her Prince from over the wall met her with a very disconsolate face.

"The year has come to an end," he told her, "and since I cannot make the flowers grow in my garden, I shall have to go and be executed as soon as the Witch sends for me."

The little Princess's lips began to quiver, and her eyes grew large and round and s.h.i.+ning. "It is too bad," she declared, "to execute a really nice Prince like you!"

"Do not be distressed," replied Prince Amaryllis, in a resigned tone.

"Now that I have seen you, little lady, I shall be almost glad to be executed."

"You are talking nonsense," declared the Princess. "Why do you want to be executed?"

"Because, even if I knew the way to make the flowers grow," he replied, "my country would not be disenchanted unless I married Anemone, the Witch's daughter, as well. And, of course, I would sooner be executed than do that!"

"What!" exclaimed the Princess; "you have promised to marry a witch's daughter? Do you mean to say that all this while I have been playing with somebody else's Prince?"

There was no doubt that the Princess Gentianella was extremely angry; and the Prince could not help thinking that she was just a little bit unreasonable as well.

"You see, it was part of the disenchantment," he explained. "If _you_ had to be invisible all your life, you would promise anything to get disenchanted. Besides," he added, as the Princess showed no signs of being appeased, "they told me that Anemone, although a witch's daughter, was exceedingly beautiful."

"What difference does that make?" demanded the Princess. "You ought to have told me before, that you were somebody else's Prince. You haven't been playing fair!"

"It is true I forgot to mention it," said the Prince, a little crossly; "but one cannot remember everything, you know."

Princess Gentianella gathered up her train with much dignity and turned her back on the Prince.

"People who are as forgetful as that deserve to be invisible," she observed haughtily; and with that she swept up the garden path and into the palace. She lost all her dignity, however, as soon as she was out of the Prince's sight; and it was a very doleful little Princess who came to take tea with her royal parents that afternoon. When she even went so far as to say that she preferred bread-and-b.u.t.ter to plum-cake, the King and Queen began to be seriously alarmed.

"What is the matter with the child?" asked the Queen of the King.

"Perhaps she has a sunstroke," suggested the King, who thought that only illness could possibly prevent a daughter of his from eating her plum-cake at tea-time. The Queen knew better, but she waited until the King had gone back into his study before she said anything. Then she said the very best thing possible.

"What did you see when you looked over your wall, little daughter?" she asked.

"There was a prince on the other side," confessed the Princess Gentianella.

"To be sure, there was," smiled the Queen. "There is always a prince on the other side; but why should that make you unhappy? Is he not a nice prince?"

"He is a _real_ Prince," said her little daughter; "and I should not be at all unhappy if he had not just told me that he is somebody else's Prince!"

"Never mind," said the Queen, consolingly; "you will soon find another prince in your garden."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"But not _that_ Prince," wept the poor little Princess.

"One prince is much the same as another," said the Queen; but she did not think so for a moment, and no more did the little Princess.

Now, it was quite true that Prince Amaryllis had not been playing fair, and that his forgetfulness was enough to annoy the nicest little Princess in the world; but for all that, he was going to be executed, and it is difficult to be angry for long with anyone who is just going to be executed. So, when Princess Gentianella ran out once more into the suns.h.i.+ne on the following morning, she was fully prepared to make friends with her Prince from over the wall. She was greatly disturbed to find, however, that there was no one to make friends with; and although she called the Prince's name several times, not an answer came from the other side of the wall. Then the Princess Gentianella did what she had never been brave enough to do before,--she shut her eyes and jumped; and either she jumped higher than so small a princess ever jumped before, or else the wall was not nearly such a high wall as she had always thought it was, for the next moment she found herself on her two little feet in the very middle of the Prince's garden. She was very close to the invisible country now, and the people's voices were so loud that she could actually hear what they were saying. This was not really surprising, though, for they were all saying the same thing.

"Our Prince cannot make the flowers grow, and the Witch has taken him away to be executed," was what they were saying.

When the Princess Gentianella heard that, she dropped straight down on the ground and burst into tears, and her tears rained all over the garden in showers; and wherever they fell, the flowers began to grow,--first of all, snowdrops and primroses and daffodils, then red poppies and blue larkspurs and white lilies, then hollyhocks and nasturtiums and mignonette, and last of all, roses,--red roses, pink roses, yellow roses, all sorts of roses. And the scent from all these flowers was so delicious that the little Princess lifted her head at last and looked round.

"Oh!" she cried, starting to her feet; "some one _has_ made the flowers grow in the Prince's garden!"

"Some one certainly has," chuckled a voice from the top of the wall; and there sat the same wymp as before, looking just as though he had never gone away to the back of the sun at all. At the same instant, the people's voices sounded louder than ever from the kingdom close by.