Uncle Joe's Stories. Baron Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen Brabourne
cried the king as he pushed the boy forward towards the princess, "there is the youth who will one day be your husband, child. Kiss her, boy, and make friends at once."
A deep blush suffused the face of the shrinking Belinda, who had not as yet even looked upon the other's countenance, and she trembled more than ever. But with a grace which no one had expected from the quarter from which it came, the boy, immediately on receiving the king's commands, stepped forward towards Belinda's chair, and, kneeling on one knee, raised her hand gently to his lips.
"Bravo, boy!" cried the king with another laugh. "I vow you're half a courtier already. Two or three years' training and you'll be perfect."
He then proceeded to inquire more particularly about the youth's age and condition, and found that he was called Zachariah Dickson, or usually "Zac" for shortness, that Farmer Dickson had several other sons and daughters, but that this boy, being just under the limit of age, had been selected as the rider of "Sandy Sue." He learned, moreover, that the education of the Dickson family had been somewhat neglected, and that though Master Zac could certainly read and write, he was no great proficient at either accomplishment. Altogether it appeared that the pig-race had secured for Belinda a husband so very much beneath her in rank, position, breeding and education that her future happiness could hardly be said to be very certain.
As, however, Fridolin had made the arrangement without any reference to its probable effect upon his daughter's happiness, but entirely to gratify his own whim, he was not greatly concerned with this reflection. He told the youth, indeed, that he had something to learn, before he could be really fit to be a king's son-in-law, but as in that country a king's word was always sacred, and as good as his bond, he never for one moment entertained the idea of trying to be off the bargain.
No: "Zac" Dickson should be Belinda's husband, come what might. "He had won her and he alone should wear her." So said the king again and again, at the same time avowing his determination that the boy should be forthwith sent at the royal expense to one of the best colleges in the country, in order that he might pursue his studies, and prepare himself to discharge the duties of that lofty position to which he had been called by the voice of Fate. This announcement was received with respectful submission by the boy, and with unfeigned satisfaction by old Dickson, who, besides having won a considerable sum of money on the race, now saw the prospect of having one of his boys entirely taken off his hands and better educated than he could possibly have been without such aid.
The king further declared that three years should elapse before the wedding, but that then, when the bridegroom was seventeen and the bride thirteen, the marriage should certainly be celebrated, youthful marriages being always the fashion in that country. After the interview on the royal Stand, the winner of the race was allowed to return home for the night, but with orders that he was to take up his abode at the palace upon the following day. Then the king ordered his carriages and the royal party left the course. The crowd was already broken up, and people were streaming in every direction over the common upon which the sport had taken place.
The common was ere long left desolate and alone, only tenanted by a grazing donkey or two, and a few wretched human creatures who wandered over every spot upon which carriages had stood and luncheons had been eaten, in the hope of finding something which they might convert into money in order to aid the necessities of their miserable lives. Soon, too, these took their departure: the crowd of people returning home grew smaller and smaller, gradually the road was less and less thronged, the people were only seen going along it by twos and threes, then at last these, too, had found their way home, silence reigned where all had so lately been talk and mirth, noise and revelry, and night came down upon the earth with her sable cloak, extinguishing the last flickering rays of the sun which had so gaily and brightly shone upon the day of the great pig-race.
The Princess Belinda woke next morning with a load upon her young heart, and a novel sense of responsibility which made her feel quite a different being from the child of the day before. She was, indeed, no ordinary child. Even in her appearance that could hardly be said of her, poor girl! for she was not so much ordinary as decidedly ugly, but the epithet was even less applicable to her intellectual powers, which were undeniably of a superior order. Having moreover been debarred by her deformity from the more active pastimes of childhood, she had from a very early period sought her pleasure in books, and was, even at the early age of ten, far better acquainted with the literature of the day than many young ladies of twice her age. Well informed, however, as she was, and fortified as she might be against the storms of the outside world, as much as the fortifications of a prudent heart and well-regulated temper can avail against such adversities, she nevertheless awoke, as I have already said, to a new feeling upon the morning after the pig-race. Her childhood seemed to be over, and the real cares of life to have commenced. She had no longer only her own life to regard, the life of another was thenceforth inseparably bound up with her own. The actual marriage, indeed, was to be deferred for three years, but the boy who had been presented to her as her future husband was practically, for the future, a part and parcel of her life, and his doings must be always of great and paramount interest and importance to her. To tell the truth, he had made a very favourable impression upon the heart of the youthful princess.
Unaccustomed to go much into that society of which her more fortunate sisters were at once the ornaments and the delights, Belinda was less struck than might otherwise have been the case by the somewhat rough and countrified bearing of the boy, and indeed, as has been already said, his action in kneeling before her on his first introduction had been far from ungraceful. She had remarked with pleasure the honest gaze of his blue eyes, and the healthy clearness of his fair complexion, whilst no one could deny that his form was well-shaped, and his figure lithe and active. Still, the age of ten is one at which it is somewhat early to be engaged to be married, and it is scarcely to be considered a matter of wonder that the little princess regarded her prospects with some apprehension.
The youthful Zac was brought to the palace next day, according to the king's orders, and forthwith took up his residence in the royal abode. It was a curious arrangement, and one that was made the subject of much comment by the court, although it was allowed on every hand that, since the king had determined upon bestowing the hand of his youngest daughter upon the winner of the pig-race, there was much good sense, as well as kindness, in his resolution to have that winner properly educated. It must be owned, too, that the lad did no discredit to his teachers. He was diligent, attentive, and showed no small capacity for learning. Whatever there had been of vulgarity in his accent rapidly disappeared, uncouth and ignorant language was banished from his hearing, and consequently very soon from his speech, while his errors of grammar speedily became things of the past. In short, it was confessed even by those who had at first shaken their heads with a gravity befitting the occasion, and had declared that the old proverb "you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" would be verified in this case, and that a person of humble birth could by no means be converted into a gentleman; even these persons, I say, began to take a different tone, to talk about another proverb, namely that "exceptions prove the rule," and to express their feelings towards Belinda's future husband in no unfavourable terms.
He made such progress in his books that his tutors were quite astonished, and Belinda was herself delighted. Once a week he was allowed to visit her for an hour, and from time to time she found a perceptible difference in his manners and conversation, and a decided improvement in both. In this manner a whole year passed over the heads of the people of whom we are speaking, and during that time no event occurred of a character so specially interesting as to require a separate allusion. People were born, married and died as usual. Whilst they lived they ate, drank, and paid their taxes – three things common to all mankind who happen to be resident in civilized countries – and after they were dead they were comfortably buried by their relations, who then went home and remembered them as long as people usually do, and no longer. The world, in short, went steadily on, and the inmates of the palace did much the same as the rest of the world. Lord Pompous, it is true, fell occasionally into disgrace, being rather a stupid man and apt to offend the king when he most wanted to please him. But as he always got out again very soon, this did not signify. Fridolin was rather fond of the old man, if the truth must be told, and though he enjoyed teasing him now and then, never really meant to get rid of him. So they jogged on together happily enough, and nothing occurred to seriously