Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers Part 15

"'Ah! you must feed me. I dare not move my hands. The water would run away directly.'

"'Good gracious!' said the princess, and she began at once to feed him with bits of biscuit, and sips of wine.

"As she fed him, he contrived to kiss the tips of her fingers now and then. She did not seem to mind it, one way or the other. But the prince felt better.

"'Now for your own sake, princess,' said he, 'I cannot let you go to sleep. You must sit and look at me, else I shall not be able to keep up.'

"'Well, I will do anything I can to oblige you,' answered she, with condescension, and, sitting down, she did look at him, and kept looking at him, with wonderful steadiness, considering all things.

"The sun went down, and the moon came up, and gush after gush the waters were flowing over the rock. They were up to the prince's waist, now.

"'Why can't we go and have a swim?' said the princess. 'There seems to be water enough just about here.'

"'I shall never swim more,' said the prince.

"'Oh! I forgot,' said the princess, and was silent.

"So the water grew and grew, and rose up and up on the prince. And the princess sat and looked at him. She fed him now and then. The night wore on. The waters rose and rose. The moon rose likewise, higher and higher, and shone full on the face of the dying prince. The water was up to his neck.

"'Will you kiss me, princess?' said he, feebly, at last, for the fun was all out of him now.

"'Yes, I will,' answered the princess, and kissed him with a long, sweet, cold kiss.

"'Now,' said he, with a sigh of content, 'I die happy.'

"He did not speak again. The princess gave him some wine for the last time: he was past eating. Then she sat down again, and looked at him.

The water rose and rose. It touched his chin. It touched his lower lip.

It touched between his lips. He shut them hard to keep it out. The princess began to feel strange. It touched his upper lip. He breathed through his nostrils. The princess looked wild. It covered his nostrils. Her eyes looked scared, and shone strange in the moonlight.

His head fell back; the water closed over it; and the bubbles of his last breath bubbled up through the water. The princess gave a shriek, and sprang into the lake.

"She laid hold first of one leg, then of the other, and pulled and tugged, but she could not move either. She stopped to take breath, and that made her think that he could not get any breath. She was frantic.

She got hold of him, and held his head above the water, which was possible, now his hands were no longer on the hole. But it was of no use, for he was past breathing.

"Love and water brought back all her strength. She got under the water, and pulled and pulled with her whole might, till, at last, she got one leg out. The other hastily followed. How she got him into the boat she never could tell; but when she did she fainted away. Coming to herself, she seized the oars, kept herself steady as best she could, and rowed and rowed, though she had never rowed before. Round rocks, and over shallows, and through mud, she rowed, till she got to the landing stairs of the palace. By this time, her people were on the sh.o.r.e, for they had heard her shriek. She made them carry the prince to her own room, and lay him in her bed, and light a fire, and send for the doctors.

"'But the lake, your Highness,' said the chamberlain, who, roused by the noise, came in, in his nightcap.

"'Go and drown yourself in it,' said she.

"This was the last rudeness of which the princess was ever guilty, and one must allow that she had good cause to feel provoked with the lord chamberlain.

"Had it been the king himself, he would have fared no better. But both he and the queen were fast asleep. And the chamberlain went back to bed. So the princess and her old nurse were left with the prince.

Somehow, the doctors never came. But the old nurse was a wise woman, and knew what to do.

"They tried everything for a long time without success. The princess vas nearly distracted between hope and fear, but she tried on and on, one thing after another, and everything over and over again.

"At last, when they had all but given it up, just as the sun rose, the prince opened his eyes."

CHAPTER XV.

LOOK AT THE RAIN!

The princess burst into a pa.s.sion of tears, and _fell_ on the floor.

There she lay for an hour, and her tears never ceased. All the pent-up crying of her life was spent now. And a rain came on, such as had never been seen in that country. The sun shone all the time, and the great drops, which fell straight to the earth, shone likewise. The palace was in the heart of a rainbow. It was a rain of rubies, and sapphires, and emeralds, and topazes. The torrents poured from the mountains like molten gold, and if it had not been for its subterraneous outlet, the lake would have overflowed and inundated the country. It was full from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.

"But the princess did not heed the lake. She lay on the floor and wept.

And this rain within doors was far more wonderful than the rain out of doors. For when it abated a little, and she proceeded to rise, she found, to her astonishment, that she could not. At length, after many efforts, she succeeded in getting upon her feet. But she tumbled down again directly. Hearing her fall, her old nurse uttered a yell of delight, and ran to her, screaming:--

"'My darling child! She's found her gravity!'

"'Oh! that's it, is it?' said the princess rubbing her shoulder and her knee alternately. 'I consider it very unpleasant. I feel as if I should be crushed to pieces.'

"'Hurrah!' cried the prince, from the bed. 'If you're all right, princess, so am I. How's the lake?'

"'Brimful! answered the nurse.

"'Then we're all jolly.'

"'That we are indeed!' answered the princess, sobbing.

"And there was rejoicing all over the country that rainy day. Even the babies forgot their past troubles, and danced and crowed amazingly. And the king told stories, and the queen listened to them. And he divided the money in his box, and she the honey in her pot, to all the children. And there was such jubilation as was never heard of before.

"Of course the prince and princess were betrothed at once. But the princess had to learn to walk, before they could be married with any propriety."

And this was not so easy, at her time of life, for she could walk no more than a baby. She was always falling down and hurting herself.

"'Is this the gravity you used to make so much of?' said she one day to the prince. 'For my part, I was a great deal more comfortable without it.

"' No, no; that's not it. This is it,' replied the prince, as he took her up, and carried her about like a baby, kissing her all the time.

'This is gravity.'

"'That's better,' said she. 'I don't mind that so much.'

"And she smiled the sweetest, loveliest smile in the prince's face. And she gave him one little kiss, in return for all his, and he thought them overpaid, for he was beside himself with delight. I fear she complained of her gravity more than once after this, notwithstanding.

"It was a long time before she got reconciled to walking. But the pain of learning it was quite counterbalanced by two things, either of which would have been sufficient consolation. The first was, that the prince himself was her teacher; and the second, hat she could tumble into the lake as often as she pleased. Still, she preferred to have the prince jump in with her, and the splash they made before was nothing to the splash they made now.

"The lake never sank again. In process of time it wore the roof of the cavern quite through, and was twice as deep as before.

"The only revenge the princess took upon her aunt was to tread pretty hard on her gouty toe the next time she saw her. But she was sorry for it the very next day, when she heard that the water had undermined her house, and that it had fallen in the night, burying her in its ruins; whence no one ever ventured to dig up her body. There she lies to this day.

"So the prince and princess lived and were happy, and had crowns of gold, clothes of cloth, shoes of leather, and children of boys and girls, not one of whom was ever known, on the most critical occasion, to lose the smallest atom of his or her due proportion of gravity."

GEORGE MACDONALD.