XI
The Good-Night Kiss
Then the door opened and Mother Marie entered. It was quite dark now, and the Queen could not see her face. But when the good mother bent over her and kissed her so tenderly, whispering the blessing and the good-night in her ear, the poor little Queen’s heart gave a great throb. Before she knew it she had thrown her arms around Marie’s neck and had pulled the rough cheek down close to hers. It was so good to feel a mother face close by! But then a queer thing happened. Mother Marie’s elbows pressed down upon the coverlet and the doll hidden on Clotilde’s breast. And from under the bedclothes came a faint little voice crying,—“Mamma!”
“Mercy on me! What is that?” cried the good woman, starting back from the bed. And the Queen, frightened by this sudden movement, bobbed up her head from the pillow. And just at that moment a ray of moonlight came in at the window and showed the curly yellow hair flowing all about the little face, quite different from the straight black braids of Nichette.
“Mercy on me!” screamed Mother Marie again. “It is not my Nichette. It is a changeling,—a fairy child!” But the little Queen did not wait to let her examine closer. For she had had a new fright. A man’s loud voice was ringing through the cottage, and a man’s heavy tread was approaching the room where Marie’s scream had sounded.
With one bound Clotilde sprang from the bed, still clasping the naughty Mignon, who had spoken when she should not. And before Mother Marie could stop her or Nichette come out of her closet to explain, she had popped out of the window by which she had entered.
Away and away she ran, as fast as her feet would take her, towards the garden, as she thought. She did not know what she feared. But the surprise of it all, the strangeness, had upset her nerves,—and Nichette had not been by to help. Besides, a man was coming,—some big, coarse, ugly man. The Queen hated loud-voiced, heavy-footed men, and she could not bear that one of her common subjects should find her hiding so in Nichette’s room.
So she ran on and on in the dark, thinking that soon she should find the garden and the little gate, and so get back to the palace lawn, her own lawn. (She forgot that Nichette had locked all the doors behind them!) But, though she did not know it, she was really going in the opposite direction. Clotilde was so unused to being out alone that her poor little head was easily turned, and she was as wrong as wrong could be.
Clotilde ran so fast for the first time in her life that soon she was tired and out of breath, and had to sit down on a stone to rest. Then she looked about her, and knew that she was lost.
Now she had something to be really frightened about. For she had no idea how to get back to her palace, and it was very dark and still. The lonesomest doll, who was to blame for it all, because she had cried out at the wrong moment, lay quiet now and had no help to offer in finding out the way. Clotilde did not know that all the servants, and officials, and relatives of the Queen were out hunting for her in every direction, and that bands of soldiers on horseback were galloping off into the neighboring towns to inquire whether she had been seen there or not.
She did not guess that even now Nichette, frightened and sobbing, was telling her father and mother all about it. It was Pierre’s big boots and his loud voice, full of anger and puzzlement over the loss of his keys, that had so frightened Clotilde. But she need not have been afraid. That loud voice belonged to a kind heart, and those big boots were now hurrying out along the road in loving pursuit of the little Queen in whose service they had tramped ever since she was a baby.
Alas! Pierre was tramping in the opposite direction, and so were the servants, officials, relatives, and soldiers. But other boots were striding along the road towards Clotilde. She heard them coming, but she was too tired to run away. Perhaps,—she hoped,—perhaps they might belong to friends.
No: these were the footsteps of no friends. In these boots were persons of another sort,—persons such as Clotilde had never seen until this night.