"They say--" said the lady who kept the stationer"s shop by the main entrance to the Palace, where the little Americans get their tickets for the State Apartments ...
And then:
"We are authorised to deny--" said "Picaroon" in _Gossip_.
And so the whole trouble came out.
IV.
"They say that we must part," the Princess said to her lover.
"But why?" he cried. "What new folly have these people got into their heads?"
"Do you know," she asked, "that to love me--is high treason?"
"My dear," he cried; "but does it matter? What is their right--right without a shadow of reason--and their treason and their loyalty to us?"
"You shall hear," she said, and told him of the things that had been told to her.
"It was the queerest little man who came to me with a soft, beautifully modulated voice, a softly moving little gentleman who sidled into the room like a cat and put his pretty white hand up so, whenever he had anything significant to say. He is bald, but not of course nakedly bald, and his nose and face are chubby rosy little things, and his beard is trimmed to a point in quite the loveliest way. He pretended to have emotions several times and made his eyes shine. You know he is quite a friend of the real royal family here, and he called me his dear young lady and was perfectly sympathetic even from the beginning. "My dear young lady," he said, "you know--_you mustn"t,"_ several times, and then, "You owe a duty.""
"Where do they make such men?"
"He likes it," she said.
"But I don"t see--"
"He told me serious things."
"You don"t think," he said, turning on her abruptly, "that there"s anything in the sort of thing he said?"
"There"s something in it quite certainly," said she.
"You mean--?"
"I mean that without knowing it we have been trampling on the most sacred conceptions of the little folks. We who are royal are a cla.s.s apart. We are worshipped prisoners, processional toys. We pay for worship by losing--our elementary freedom. And I was to have married that Prince--You know nothing of him though. Well, a pigmy Prince. He doesn"t matter.... It seems it would have strengthened the bonds between my country and another. And this country also was to profit. Imagine it!--strengthening the bonds!"
"And now?"
"They want me to go on with it--as though there was nothing between us two."
"Nothing!"
"Yes. But that isn"t all. He said--"
"Your specialist in Tact?"
"Yes. He said it would be better for you, better for all the giants, if we two--abstained from conversation. That was how he put it."
"But what can they do if we don"t?"
"He said you might have your freedom."
"_I!_"
"He said, with a stress, "My dear young lady, it would be better, it would be more dignified, if you parted, willingly." That was all he said. With a stress on willingly."
"But--! What business is it of these little wretches, where we love, how we love? What have they and their world to do with us?"
"They do not think that."
"Of course," he said, "you disregard all this."
"It seems utterly foolish to me."
"That their laws should fetter us! That we, at the first spring of life, should be tripped by their old engagements, their aimless inst.i.tutions!
Oh--! We disregard it."
"I am yours. So far--yes."
"So far? Isn"t that all?"
"But they--If they want to part us--"
"What can they do?"
"I don"t know. What _can_ they do?"
"Who cares what they can do, or what they will do? I am yours and you are mine. What is there more than that? I am yours and you are mine--for ever. Do you think I will stop for their little rules, for their little prohibitions, their scarlet boards indeed!--and keep from _you_?"
"Yes. But still, what can they do?"
"You mean," he said, "what are we to do?"
"Yes."
"We? We can go on."
"But if they seek to prevent us?"
He clenched his hands. He looked round as if the little people were already coming to prevent them. Then turned away from her and looked about the world. "Yes," he said. "Your question was the right one. What can they do?"
"Here in this little land," she said, and stopped.
He seemed to survey it all. "They are everywhere."
"But we might--"
"Whither?"