The Doll Story MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett
on the clock, covering it all over with your wings, to prevent it from striking and frightening the mice. I heard you quite well when you called the mouse-king. Why didn’t you help Nutcracker? Why didn’t you help me, you nasty Godpapa? It’s nobody’s fault but yours that I’m lying here with a bad arm.’
Her mother, in much alarm, asked what she meant. But Drosselmeier began making extraordinary faces, and said, in a snarling voice, like a sort of chant in monotone:
‘Pendulums could only rattle—couldn’t tick, ne’er a click; all the clockies stopped their ticking: no more clicking; then they all struck loud cling-clang. Dollies! Don’t your heads downhang! Hink and hank, and honk and hank. Doll-girls! don’t your heads downhang! Cling and ring! The battle’s over—Nutcracker all safe in clover. Comes the owl, on downy wing—Scares away the mouses’ king. Pak and pik and pik and pook—clocks, bim-boom—grr-grr. Pendulums must click again. Tick and tack, grr and brr, prr and purr.’
Marie fixed wide eyes of terror upon Godpapa Drosselmeier, because he was looking quite different, and far more horrid, than usual, and was jerking his right arm backwards and forwards as if he were some puppet moved by a handle. She was beginning to grow terribly frightened at him when her mother came in, and Fritz (who had arrived in the meantime) laughed heartily, crying, ‘Why, Godpapa, you are going on funnily! You’re just like my old Jumping Jack that I threw away last month.’
But her mother looked very grave, and said, ‘This is a most extraordinary way of going on, Mr. Drosselmeier. What can you mean by it?’
‘My goodness!’ said Drosselmeier, laughing, ‘did you never hear my nice Watchmaker’s Song? I always sing it to little invalids like Marie.’ Then he hastened to sit down beside Marie’s bed, and said to her, ‘Don’t be vexed with me because I didn’t gouge out all the mouse-king’s fourteen eyes. That couldn’t be managed exactly; but, to make up for it, here’s something which I know will please you greatly.’
He dived into one of his pockets, and what he slowly, slowly brought out of it was—Nutcracker! Whose teeth he had put in again quite firmly, and set his broken jaw completely to rights. Marie shouted for joy, and her mother laughed and said, ‘Now you see for yourself how nice Godpapa Drosselmeier is to Nutcracker.’
‘But you must admit, Marie,’ said her Godpapa, ‘that Nutcracker is far from being what you might call a handsome fellow, and you can’t say he has a pretty face. If you like I’ll tell you how it was that the ugliness came into his family, and has been handed down in it from one generation to another. Did ever you hear about the Princess Pirlipat, the witch Mouseyrinks, and the clever Clockmaker?’
‘I say, Godpapa Drosselmeier,’ interrupted Fritz at this juncture, ‘you’ve put Nutcracker’s teeth in again all right, and his jaw isn’t wobbly as it was; but what’s become of his sword? Why haven’t you given him a sword?’
‘Oh,’ cried Drosselmeier, annoyed, ‘you must always be bothering and finding fault with something or other, boy. What have I to do with Nutcracker’s sword? I’ve put his mouth to rights for him; he must look out for a sword for himself.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Fritz, ‘so he must, of course, if he’s a right sort of fellow.’
‘So tell me, Marie,’ continued Drosselmeier, ‘if you know the story of Princess Pirlipat?’
‘Oh no,’ said Marie. ‘Tell it me, please—do tell it me!’
‘I hope it won’t be as strange and terrible as your stories generally are,’ said her mother.
‘Oh no, nothing of the kind,’ said Drosselmeier. ‘On the contrary, it’s quite a funny story which I’m going to have the honor of telling this time.’
‘Go on then—do tell it to us,’ cried the children; and Drosselmeier commenced as follows:—
THE STORY OF THE HARD NUT
Pirlipat’s mother was a king’s wife, so that, of course, she was a queen; and Pirlipat herself was a princess by birth as soon as ever she was born. The king was quite beside himself with joy over his beautiful little daughter as she lay in her cradle, and he danced round and round upon one leg, crying again and again,
‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah! Did anybody ever see anything so lovely as my little Pirlipat?’
And all the ministers of state, and the generals, the presidents, and the officers of the staff, danced about on one leg, as the king did, and cried as loud as they could, ‘No, no—never!’
Indeed, there was no denying that a lovelier baby than Princess Pirlipat was never born since the world began. Her little face looked as if it were woven of the most delicate white- and rose-colored silk; her eyes were of sparkling azure, and her hair all in little curls like threads of gold. Moreover, she had come into the world with two rows of little pearly teeth, with which, two hours after her birth, she bit the Lord High Chancellor in the fingers, when he was making a careful examination of her features, so that he cried, ‘Oh! Gemini!’ Quite loud.
There are persons who assert that ‘Oh Lord’ was the expression he employed, and opinions are still considerably divided on this point. At all events, she bit him in the fingers; and the realm learned, with much gratification, that both intelligence and discrimination dwelt within her angelical little frame.
All was joy and gladness, as I have said, save that the queen was very anxious and uneasy, nobody could tell why. One remarkable circumstance was, that she had Pirlipat’s cradle most scrupulously guarded. Not only were there life guardsmen always at the doors of the nursery, but—over and above the two head nurses close to the cradle—there had always to be six other nurses all round the room at night. And what seemed rather a funny thing, which nobody could understand, was that each of these six nurses had always to have a cat in her lap, and to keep on stroking it all night long, so that it might never stop purring.
It is impossible that you, my reader, should know the reason of all these precautions; but I do, and shall proceed to tell you at once.
Once upon a time, many great kings and very grand princes were assembled at Pirlipat’s father’s court, and very great doings were toward. Tournaments, theatricals, and state balls were going on on the grandest scale, and the king, to show that he had no lack of gold and silver, made up his mind to make a good hole in the crown revenues for once, and launch out regardless of expense. Wherefore (having previously ascertained, privately, from the state head master cook that the court astronomer had indicated a propitious hour for pork-butchering), he resolved to give a grand pudding-and-sausage banquet. He jumped into a state carriage, and personally invited all the kings and the princes—to a basin of soup, merely—that he might enjoy their astonishment at the magnificence of the entertainment. Then he said to the queen, very graciously:
‘My darling, you know exactly how I like my puddings and sausages!’
The queen quite understood what this meant. It meant that she should undertake the important duty of making the puddings and the sausages herself, which was a thing she had done on one or two previous occasions. So the Chancellor of the Exchequer was ordered to issue out of store the great golden sausage-kettle, and the silver casseroles. A great fire of sandal-wood was kindled, the queen put on her damask kitchen apron, and soon the most delicious aroma of pudding-broth rose steaming out of the kettle. This sweet smell penetrated into the very council chamber. The king could not control himself.
‘Excuse me for a few minutes, my lords and gentlemen, he cried, rushed to the kitchen, embraced the queen, stirred in the kettle a little with his golden scepter, and then went back, easier in his mind, to the council chamber.’
The important juncture had now arrived when the fat had to be cut up into little square pieces, and browned on silver spits. The ladies-in-waiting retired, because the queen, from motives of love and duty to her royal consort, thought it proper to perform this important task in solitude. But when the fat began to brown, a delicate little whispering voice made itself audible, saying, ‘Give me some of that, sister! I want some of it, too; I am a queen as well as yourself;