Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘Can you do magic?’ she abruptly asked.

  ‘A little,’ said he ironically.

  ‘Well,’ said she, ‘it’s like this. I’m so ugly no one can bear to look at me. And I want to go as kitchenmaid to the palace. They want a cook and a scullion and a kitchenmaid. I thought perhaps you’d give me something to make me pretty. I’m only a poor beggar maid.... It would be a great thing to me if....’

  ‘Go along with you,’ said Taykin, very cross indeed. ‘I never give to beggars.’

  ‘Here’s twopence,’ whispered poor James, pressing it into her hand, ‘it’s all I’ve got left.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered back. ‘You are good.’

  And to the Magician she said:

  ‘I happen to have fifty pounds. I’ll give it you for a new face.’

  ‘Done,’ cried Taykin. ‘Here’s another stupid one!’ He grabbed the money, waved his wand, and then and there before the astonished eyes of the nurse and the apprentice the ugly beggar maid became the loveliest princess in the world.

  ‘Lor!’ said the nurse.

  ‘My dream!’ cried the apprentice.

  ‘Please,’ said the Princess, ‘can I have a looking-glass?’ The apprentice ran to unhook the one that hung over the kitchen sink, and handed it to her. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘how very pretty I am. How can I thank you?’

  ‘Quite easily,’ said the Magician, ‘beggar maid as you are, I hereby offer you my hand and heart.’

  He put his hand into his waistcoat and pulled out his heart. It was fat and pink, and the Princess did not like the look of it.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said she, ‘but I’d rather not.’

  ‘But I insist,’ said Taykin.

  ‘But really, your offer....’

  ‘Most handsome, I’m sure,’ said the nurse.

  ‘My affections are engaged,’ said the Princess, looking down. ‘I can’t marry you.’

  ‘Am I to take this as a refusal?’ asked Taykin; and the Princess said she feared that he was.

  ‘Very well, then,’ he said, ‘I shall see you home, and ask your father about it. He’ll not let you refuse an offer like this. Nurse, come and tie my necktie.’

  So he went out, and the nurse with him.

  Then the Princess told the apprentice in a very great hurry who she was.

  ‘It would never do,’ she said, ‘for him to see me home. He’d find out that I was the Princess, and he’d uglify me again in no time.’

  ‘He sha’n’t see you home,’ said James. ‘I may be stupid but I’m strong too.’

  ‘How brave you are,’ said Aura admiringly, ‘but I’d rather slip away quietly, without any fuss. Can’t you undo the patent lock of that door?’ The apprentice tried but he was too stupid, and the Princess was not strong enough.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the apprentice who was a Prince. ‘I can’t undo the door, but when he does I’ll hold him and you can get away. I dreamed of you this morning,’ he added.

  ‘I dreamed of you too,’ said she, ‘but you were different.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said poor James sadly, ‘the person you dreamed about wasn’t stupid, and I am.’

  ‘Are you really?’ cried the Princess. ‘I am so glad!’

  ‘That’s rather unkind, isn’t it?’ said he.

  ‘No; because if that’s all that makes you different from the man I dreamed about I can soon make that all right.’

  And with that she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. And at her kiss his stupidness passed away like a cloud, and he became as clever as any one need be; and besides knowing all the ordinary lessons he would have learned if he had stayed at home in his palace, he knew who he was, and where he was, and why, and he knew all the geography of his father’s kingdom, and the exports and imports and the condition of politics. And he knew also that the Princess loved him.

  So he caught her in his arms and kissed her, and they were very happy, and told each other over and over again what a beautiful world it was, and how wonderful it was that they should have found each other, seeing that the world is not only beautiful but rather large.

  ‘That first one was a magic kiss, you know,’ said she. ‘My fairy godmother gave it to me, and I’ve been keeping it all these years for you. You must get away from here, and come to the palace. Oh, you’ll manage it — you’re clever now.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am clever now. I can undo the lock for you. Go, my dear, go before he comes back.’

  So the Princess went. And only just in time; for as she went out of one door Taykin came in at the other.

  He was furious to find her gone; and I should not like to write down the things he said to his apprentice when he found that James had been so stupid as to open the door for her. They were not polite things at all.

  He tried to follow her. But the Princess had warned the guards, and he could not get out.

  ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘if only my old magic would work outside this tower. I’d soon be even with her.’

  And then in a strange, confused, yet quite sure way, he felt that the spell that held him, the White Witch’s spell, was dissolved.

  ‘To the palace!’ he cried; and rushing to the cauldron that hung over the fire he leaped into it, leaped out in the form of a red lion, and disappeared.

  Without a moment’s hesitation the Prince, who was his apprentice, followed him, calling out the same words and leaping into the same cauldron, while the poor nurse screamed and wrung her hands. As he touched the liquor in the cauldron he felt that he was not quite himself. He was, in fact, a green dragon. He felt himself vanish — a most uncomfortable sensation — and reappeared, with a suddenness that took his breath away, in his own form and at the back door of the palace.

  The time had been short, but already the Magician had succeeded in obtaining an engagement as palace cook. How he did it without references I don’t know. Perhaps he made the references by magic as he had made the eggs, and the apples, and the handkerchief.

  Taykin’s astonishment and annoyance at being followed by his faithful apprentice were soon soothed, for he saw that a stupid scullion would be of great use. Of course he had no idea that James had been made clever by a kiss.

  ‘But how are you going to cook?’ asked the apprentice. ‘You don’t know how!’

  ‘I shall cook,’ said Taykin, ‘as I do everything else — by magic.’ And he did. I wish I had time to tell you how he turned out a hot dinner of seventeen courses from totally empty saucepans, how James looked in a cupboard for spices and found it empty, and how next moment the nurse walked out of it. The Magician had been so long alone that he seemed to revel in the luxury of showing off to some one, and he leaped about from one cupboard to another, produced cats and cockatoos out of empty jars, and made mice and rabbits disappear and reappear till James’s head was in a whirl, for all his cleverness; and the nurse, as she washed up, wept tears of pure joy at her boy’s wonderful skill.

  ‘All this excitement’s bad for my heart, though,’ Taykin said at last, and pulling his heart out of his chest, he put it on a shelf, and as he did so his magic note-book fell from his breast and the apprentice picked it up. Taykin did not see him do it; he was busy making the kitchen lamp fly about the room like a pigeon.

  It was just then that the Princess came in, looking more lovely than ever in a simple little morning frock of white chiffon and diamonds.

  ‘The beggar maid,’ said Taykin, ‘looking like a princess! I’ll marry her just the same.’

  ‘I’ve come to give the orders for dinner,’ she said; and then she saw who it was, and gave one little cry and stood still, trembling.

  ‘To order the dinner,’ said the nurse. ‘Then you’re — —’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aura, ‘I’m the Princess.’

  ‘You’re the Princess,’ said the Magician. ‘Then I’ll marry you all the more. And if you say no I’ll uglify you as the word leaves your lips. Oh, yes — you think I’ve just been amusing myself over my cooki
ng — but I’ve really been brewing the strongest spell in the world. Marry me — or drink — —’

  The Princess shuddered at these dreadful words.

  ‘Drink, or marry me,’ said the Magician. ‘If you marry me you shall be beautiful for ever.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the nurse, ‘he’s a match even for a Princess.’

  ‘I’ll tell papa,’ said the Princess, sobbing.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Taykin. ‘Your father will never know. If you won’t marry me you shall drink this and become my scullery maid — my hideous scullery maid — and wash up for ever in the lonely tower.’

  He caught her by the wrist.

  ‘Stop,’ cried the apprentice, who was a Prince.

  ‘Stop? Me? Nonsense! Pooh!’ said the Magician.

  ‘Stop, I say!’ said James, who was Fortunatus. ‘I’ve got your heart!’ He had — and he held it up in one hand, and in the other a cooking knife.

  ‘One step nearer that lady,’ said he, ‘and in goes the knife.’

  The Magician positively skipped in his agony and terror.

  ‘I say, look out!’ he cried. ‘Be careful what you’re doing. Accidents happen so easily! Suppose your foot slipped! Then no apologies would meet the case. That’s my heart you’ve got there. My life’s bound up in it.’

  ‘I know. That’s often the case with people’s hearts,’ said Fortunatus. ‘We’ve got you, my dear sir, on toast. My Princess, might I trouble you to call the guards.’

  The Magician did not dare to resist, so the guards arrested him. The nurse, though in floods of tears, managed to serve up a very good plain dinner, and after dinner the Magician was brought before the King.

  Now the King, as soon as he had seen that his daughter had been made so beautiful, had caused a large number of princes to be fetched by telephone. He was anxious to get her married at once in case she turned ugly again. So before he could do justice to the Magician he had to settle which of the princes was to marry the Princess. He had chosen the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, a very nice steady young man with a good income. But when he suggested the match to the Princess she declined it, and the Magician, who was standing at the foot of the throne steps loaded with chains, clattered forward and said:

  ‘Your Majesty, will you spare my life if I tell you something you don’t know?’

  The King, who was a very inquisitive man, said ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then know,’ said Taykin, ‘that the Princess won’t marry your choice, because she’s made one of her own — my apprentice.’

  The Princess meant to have told her father this when she had got him alone and in a good temper. But now he was in a bad temper, and in full audience.

  The apprentice was dragged in, and all the Princess’s agonized pleadings only got this out of the King —

  ‘All right. I won’t hang him. He shall be best man at your wedding.’

  Then the King took his daughter’s hand and set her in the middle of the hall, and set the Prince of the Diamond Mountains on her right and the apprentice on her left. Then he said:

  ‘I will spare the life of this aspiring youth on your left if you’ll promise never to speak to him again, and if you’ll promise to marry the gentleman on your right before tea this afternoon.’

  The wretched Princess looked at her lover, and his lips formed the word ‘Promise.’

  So she said: ‘I promise never to speak to the gentleman on my left and to marry the gentleman on my right before tea to-day,’ and held out her hand to the Prince of the Diamond Mountains.

  Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the Prince of the Diamond Mountains was on her left, and her hand was held by her own Prince, who stood at her right hand. And yet nobody seemed to have moved. It was the purest and most high-class magic.

  ‘Dished,’ cried the King, ‘absolutely dished!’

  ‘A mere trifle,’ said the apprentice modestly. ‘I’ve got Taykin’s magic recipe book, as well as his heart.’

  ‘Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose,’ said the King crossly. ‘Bless you, my children.’

  He was less cross when it was explained to him that the apprentice was really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and a much better match than the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, and he was quite in a good temper by the time the nurse threw herself in front of the throne and begged the King to let the Magician off altogether — chiefly on the ground that when he was a baby he was the dearest little duck that ever was, in the prettiest plaid frock, with the loveliest fat legs.

  The King, moved by these arguments, said:

  ‘I’ll spare him if he’ll promise to be good.’

  ‘You will, ducky, won’t you?’ said the nurse, crying.

  ‘No,’ said the Magician, ‘I won’t; and what’s more, I can’t.’

  The Princess, who was now so happy that she wanted every one else to be happy too, begged her lover to make Taykin good ‘by magic.’

  ‘Alas, my dearest Lady,’ said the Prince, ‘no one can be made good by magic. I could take the badness out of him — there’s an excellent recipe in this note-book — but if I did that there’d be so very little left.’

  ‘Every little helps,’ said the nurse wildly.

  Prince Fortunatus, who was James, who was the apprentice, studied the book for a few moments, and then said a few words in a language no one present had ever heard before.

  And as he spoke the wicked Magician began to tremble and shrink.

  ‘Oh, my boy — be good! Promise you’ll be good,’ cried the nurse, still in tears.

  The Magician seemed to be shrinking inside his clothes. He grew smaller and smaller. The nurse caught him in her arms, and still he grew less and less, till she seemed to be holding nothing but a bundle of clothes. Then with a cry of love and triumph she tore the Magician’s clothes away and held up a chubby baby boy, with the very plaid frock and fat legs she had so often and so lovingly described.

  ‘I said there wouldn’t be much of him when the badness was out,’ said the Prince Fortunatus.

  ‘I will be good; oh, I will,’ said the baby boy that had been the Magician.

  ‘I’ll see to that,’ said the nurse. And so the story ends with love and a wedding, and showers of white roses.

  The Short Stories

  Nesbit’s first husband, Hubert Bland (1855-1914), was to become in later years a socialist and one of the founders of the Fabian Society. Aged eighteen, Nesbit met Bland working as a bank clerk in 1877. Seven months pregnant, she married Bland on 22 April 1880, though she did not immediately live with him, as he initially continued to live with his mother. Their marriage was a stormy one. Early on Nesbit discovered another woman believed she was Hubert’s fiancée and had also borne him a child. A more serious blow came later when she discovered that her good friend, Alice Hoatson, was pregnant with his child.

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  THE EBONY FRAME.

  JOHN CHARRINGTON’S WEDDING.

  UNCLE ABRAHAM’S ROMANCE.

  THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMI-DETACHED.

  MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE.

  THE MASS FOR THE DEAD.

  PUSSY TALES

  TOO CLEVER BY HALF

  THE WHITE PERSIAN

  A POWERFUL FRIEND

  A SILLY QUESTION

  THE SELFISH PUSSY

  MEDDLESOME PUSSY

  NINE LIVES

  DOGGY TALES

  TINKER

  RATS!

  THE TABLES TURNED

  A NOBLE DOG

  THE DYER’S DOG

  THE VAIN SETTER

  THE BRISTOL BOWL

  BARRING THE WAY

  GRANDSIRE TRIPLES

  A DEATH-BED CONFESSION

  ACTING FOR THE BEST

  GUILTY

  SON AND HEIR

  ONE WAY OF LOVE

  COALS OF FIRE

  ALFRED THE GREAT

  PRINCE ARTHUR

  HENRY THE THIRD

  THE FIRST PRINCE OF
WALES

  EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE

  HENRY THE FIFTH AND THE BABY PRINCE

  A BRIEF LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE.

  A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

  THE TEMPEST

  THE WINTER’S TALE

  KING LEAR

  TWELFTH NIGHT

  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

  ROMEO AND JULIET

  PERICLES

  HAMLET

  CYMBELINE

  MACBETH

  THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

  THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

  TIMON OF ATHENS

  OTHELLO

  THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

  MEASURE FOR MEASURE

  TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

  ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

  QUOTATIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE

  THE BOOK OF BEASTS

  UNCLE JAMES, OR THE PURPLE STRANGER

  THE DELIVERERS OF THEIR COUNTRY

  THE ICE DRAGON, OR DO AS YOU ARE TOLD

  THE ISLAND OF THE NINE WHIRLPOOLS

  THE DRAGON TAMERS

  THE FIERY DRAGON, OR THE HEART OF STONE AND THE HEART OF GOLD

  KIND LITTLE EDMUND, OR THE CAVES AND THE COCKATRICE

  THE UNFAITHFUL LOVER

  ROUNDING OFF A SCENE

  THE OBVIOUS

  THE LIE ABSOLUTE

  THE GIRL WITH THE GUITAR

  THE MAN WITH THE BOOTS

  THE SECOND BEST

  A HOLIDAY

  THE FORCE OF HABIT

  THE BRUTE

  DICK, TOM, AND HARRY

  MISS EDEN’S BABY

  THE LOVER, THE GIRL, AND THE ONLOOKER

  THE DUEL

  CINDERELLA

  WITH AN E

  UNDER THE NEW MOON

  THE LOVE OF ROMANCE

  AN OBJECT OF VALUE AND VIRTUE

  THE RUNAWAYS

  THE ARSENICATORS

  THE ENCHANCERIED HOUSE

  MOLLY, THE MEASLES, AND THE MISSING WILL

  BILLY AND WILLIAM

  THE TWOPENNY SPELL

  SHOWING OFF; OR, THE LOOKING-GLASS BOY

  THE RING AND THE LAMP

  THE CHARMED LIFE; OR, THE PRINCESS AND THE LIFT-MAN

  BILLY THE KING

  THE PRINCESS AND THE CAT

  THE WHITE HORSE

  SIR CHRISTOPHER COCKLESHELL