When Prince Dolor sat up in bed, trying to remember where he was, whither he had been, and what he had seen the day before, he perceived that his room was empty.
Generally his nurse rather worried him by breaking his slumbers, coming in and "setting things to rights," as she called it. Now the dust lay thick upon chairs and tables; there was no harsh voice heard to scold him for not getting up immediately, which, I am sorry to say, this boy did not always do. For he so enjoyed lying still, and thinking lazily about everything or nothing, that, if he had not tried hard against it, he would certainly have become like those celebrated "Two little men Who lay in their bed till the clock struck ten."It was striking ten now, and still no nurse was to be seen. He was rather relieved at first, for he felt so tired; and besides, when he stretched out his arm, he found to his dismay that he had gone to bed in his clothes.
Very uncomfortable he felt, of course; and just a little frightened. Especially when he began to call and call again, but nobody answered. Often he used to think how nice it would be to get rid of his nurse and live in this tower all by himself--like a sort of monarch able to do everything he liked, and leave undone all that he did not want to do; but now that this seemed really to have happened, he did not like it at all.
"Nurse,--dear nurse,--please come back!" he called out. "Come back, and I will be the best boy in all the land."And when she did not come back, and nothing but silence answered his lamentable call, he very nearly began to cry.
"This won't do," he said at last, dashing the tears from his eyes. "It's just like a baby, and I'm a big boy--shall be a man some day. What has happened, I wonder? I'll go and see."He sprang out of bed,--not to his feet, alas! but to his poor little weak knees, and crawled on them from room to room. All the four chambers were deserted--not forlorn or untidy, for everything seemed to have been done for his comfort --the breakfast and dinner things were laid, the food spread in order. He might live "like a prince," as the proverb is, for several days.
But the place was entirely forsaken--there was evidently not a creature but himself in the solitary tower.
A great fear came upon the poor boy. Lonely as his life had been, he had never known what it was to be absolutely alone. A kind of despair seized him--no violent anger or terror, but a sort of patient desolation.
"What in the world am I to do?" thought he, and sat down in the middle of the floor, half inclined to believe that it would be better to give up entirely, lay himself down, and die.
This feeling, however, did not last long, for he was young and strong, and, I said before, by nature a very courageous boy. There came into his head, somehow or other, a proverb that his nurse had taught him--the people of Nomansland were very fond of proverbs:
"For every evil under the sun There is a remedy, or there's none;If there is one, try to find it--If there isn't, never mind it."
"I wonder is there a remedy now, and could I find it?" cried the Prince, jumping up and looking out of the window.
No help there. He only saw the broad, bleak, sunshiny plain--that is, at first. But by and by, in the circle of mud that surrounded the base of the tower, he perceived distinctly the marks of a horse's feet, and just in the spot where the deaf-mute was accustomed to tie up his great black charger, while he himself ascended, there lay the remains of a bundle of hay and a feed of corn.
"Yes, that's it. He has come and gone, taking nurse away with him. Poor nurse! how glad she would be to go!"That was Prince Dolor's first thought. His second--wasn't it natural?--was a passionate indignation at her cruelty--at the cruelty of all the world toward him, a poor little helpless boy.
Then he determined, forsaken as he was, to try and hold on to the last, and not to die as long as he could possibly help it.
Anyhow, it would be easier to die here than out in the world, among the terrible doings which he had just beheld--from the midst of which, it suddenly struck him, the deaf-mute had come, contriving somehow to make the nurse understand that the king was dead, and she need have no fear in going back to the capital, where there was a grand revolution, and everything turned upside down. So, of course, she had gone.
"I hope she'll enjoy it, miserable woman--if they don't cut off her head too."And then a kind of remorse smote him for feeling so bitterly toward her, after all the years she had taken care of him--grudgingly, perhaps, and coldly; still she had taken care of him, and that even to the last: for, as I have said, all his four rooms were as tidy as possible, and his meals laid out, that he might have no more trouble than could be helped.
"Possibly she did not mean to be cruel. I won't judge her," said he. And afterward he was very glad that he had so determined.
For the second time he tried to dress himself, and then to do everything he could for himself--even to sweeping up the hearth and putting on more coals. "It's a funny thing for a prince to have to do," said he, laughing. "But my godmother once said princes need never mind doing anything."And then he thought a little of his godmother.
Not of summoning her, or asking her to help him,--she had evidently left him to help himself, and he was determined to try his best to do it, being a very proud and independent boy, --but he remembered her tenderly and regret-fully, as if even she had been a little hard upon him--poor, forlorn boy that he was. But he seemed to have seen and learned so much within the last few days that he scarcely felt like a boy, but a man--until he went to bed at night.
When I was a child, I used often to think how nice it would be to live in a little house all by my own self--a house built high up in a tree, or far away in a forest, or halfway up a hillside so deliciously alone and independent.
