The Prince's Little Sweetheart

by Helen Hunt Jackson

THE PRINCE'S LITTLE SWEETHEART.

SHE was She belonged to the people, the common people. Her parents were poor, and could not buy any wedding trousseau for her. But that did not make any difference. A carriage was sent from the Court for her, and she was carried away "just as she was," in her stuff gown the gown the Prince first saw her in. He liked her best in that, he said; and, moreover, what odds did it make about clothes? Were there not rooms upon rooms in the palace, full of the most superb clothes for Princes' Sweethearts?

It was into one of these rooms that she was taken first. On all sides of it were high glass cases reaching up to the ceiling, and filled with gowns, and mantles, and laces, and jewels: everything a woman could wear was there, and all of the very finest. What satins, what velvets, what feathers and flowers! Even down to shoes and stockings, every shade and color of stockings, of the daintiest silk. The Little Sweetheart gazed, breathless, at them all. But she did not have time to wonder, for in a moment more she was met by attendants, some young, some old, all dressed gayly. She did not dream at first that they were servants, till they began, all together, asking her what she would like to put on. Would she have a lace gown, or a satin? Would she like feathers, or flowers? And one ran this way, and one that; and among them all, the Little Sweetheart was so flustered she did not know if she were really alive and on the earth, or had been transported to some fairy land; and before she fairly realized what was being done, they had her clad in the most beautiful gown that was ever seen. White satin with gold butterflies on it, and a white lace mantle embroidered in gold butterflies; all white and gold she was, from top to toe, all but one foot: and there was something very odd about that. She heard one of the women whispering to the other, behind her back: "It is too bad there isn't any mate to this slipper. Well, she will have to wear this pink one. It is too big, but if we pin it up at the heel she can keep it on. The Prince really must get some more slippers."

And then they put on her left foot a pink satin slipper, which was so much too big it had to be pinned up in plaits at each side, and the pearl buckle on the top hid her foot quite out of sight. But the Little Sweetheart did not care. In fact she had no time to think, for the Queen came sailing in and spoke to her, and crowds of ladies in dresses so bright and beautiful that they dazzled her eyes; and the Prince was there kissing her, and in a minute they were married, and went floating off in a dance, which was so swift it did not feel so much like dancing as it did like being carried through the air by a gentle wind.

Through room after room, there seemed no end to the rooms, and each one more beautiful than the last, from garden to garden, some full of trees, some width beautiful lakes in them, some full of solid beds of flowers, they went, sometimes dancing, sometimes walking, sometimes, it seemed to the Little Sweetheart, floating. Every hour there was some new beautiful thing to see, some new beautiful thing to do. And the Prince never left her for more than a few minutes; and when he came back he brought her gifts and kissed her. Gifts upon gifts he kept bringing, till the Little Sweetheart's hands were so full she had to lay the things down on tables or window-sills, wherever she could find place for them, which was not easy, for all the rooms were so full of beautiful things that it was difficult to move about without knocking something down.

The hours flew by like minutes. The sun came up high in the heavens, but nobody seemed tired; nobody stopped; dance, dance, whirl, whirl, song, and laughter, and ceaseless motion. That was all that was to be seen or heard in this wonderful Court to which the Little Sweetheart had been brought.

Noon came, but nothing stopped. Nobody left off dancing, and the musicians played faster than ever.

And so it was all the long afternoon and through the twilight; and as soon as it was really dark, all the rooms, and the gardens, and the lakes blazed out with millions of lamps, till it was lighter far than day, and the ladies' dresses, as they danced back and forth, shone and sparkled like butterflies' wings.

At last the lamps began, one by one, to go out, and by degrees a soft sort of light, like moonlight, settled down on the whole place, and the fine-dressed servants that had robed the Little Sweetheart in her white satin gown took it off, and put her to bed in a gold bedstead, with golden silk sheets.

"Oh!" thought the Little Sweetheart, "I shall never go to sleep in the world; and I'm sure I don't want to! I shall just keep my eyes open all night and see what happens next."

All the beautiful clothes she had taken off were laid on a sofa near the bed the white satin dress at top, and the big pink satin slipper, with its huge pearl buckle, on the floor, in plain sight. "Where is the other?" thought the Little Sweetheart. "I do believe I lost it off. That's the way they come to have so many odd ones. But, how queer, I lost off the tight one! But the big one was pinned to my foot," she said, speaking out loud before she thought. "That was what kept it on."

"You are talking in your sleep, my love," said the Prince, who was close by her side, kissing her.

"Indeed I am not asleep at all. I haven't shut my eyes," said the Little Sweetheart.

And the next thing she knew it was broad daylight, the sun streaming into her room, and the air resounding in all directions with music and laughter, and flying steps of dancers, just as it had been yesterday.

The Little Sweetheart sat up in bed and looked around her. She thought it very strange that she was all alone, the Prince gone, no one there to attend to her; in a few moments more she noticed that all her clothes were gone too.

"Oh," she thought, "I suppose one never wears the same clothes twice in this Court, and they will bring me others. I hope there will be two slippers alike to-day."

Presently she began to grow impatient; but, being a timid little creature, and having never before seen the inside of a Court or been a Prince's Sweetheart, she did not venture to stir or to make any sound, only sat still in her bed, waiting to see what would happen. At last she could not bear the sounds of the dancing, and laughing, and playing, and singing any longer. So she jumped up, and, rolling one of the golden silk sheets around her, looked out of the window. There they all were, the crowds of gay people, just as they had been the day before when she was among them, whirling, dancing, laughing, singing. The tears came into the Little Sweetheart's eyes as she gazed. What could it mean that she was deserted in this way, not even her clothes left for her? She was as much a prisoner in her room as if the door had been locked.

As hour after hour passed, a new misery began to oppress her. She was hungry, seriously, distressingly hungry. She had been too happy to eat, the day before. Though she had sipped and tasted many delicious beverages and viands, which the Prince had pressed upon her, she had not taken any substantial food, and now she began to feel faint for the want of it. As noon drew near, the time at which she was accustomed in her father's house to eat dinner, the pangs of her hunger grew unbearable.

"I can't bear it another minute," she said to herself. "I must and I will have something to eat. I will slip down by some back way to the kitchen. There must be a kitchen, I suppose."

So saving she opened one of the doors and timidly peered into the next room. It chanced to be the room with the great glass cases full of fine gowns and laces, where she had been dressed by the obsequious attendants on the previous day. No one was in the room. Glancing fearfully in all directions, she rolled the golden silk sheet tightly around her, and flew, rather than ran, across the floor and took hold of the handle of one of the glass doors. Alas, it was locked. She tried another, another; all were locked. In despair she turned to fly back to her bedroom, when suddenly she spied on the floor, in a corner close by the case where hung her beautiful white satin dress, a little heap of what looked like brown rags. She darted toward it, snatched it from the floor, and in a second more was safe back in her room. It was her own old stuff gown.

"What luck!" said the Little Sweetheart; "nobody will ever know me in this. I'll put it on and creep down the back stairs, and beg a mouthful of food from some of the servants, and they'll never know who I am; and then I'll go back to bed, and stay there till the Prince comes to fetch me. Of course he will come before long; and if he comes and finds me gone, I hope he will be frightened half to death, and think I have been carried off by robbers!"

Poor foolish Little Sweetheart! It did not take her many seconds to slip into the ragged old stuff gown; then she crept out, keeping close to the walls, so that she could hide behind the furniture if any one saw her.

She listened cautiously at each door before she opened it, and turned away from some where she heard sounds of merry talking and laughing. In the third room that she entered she saw a sight that arrested her instantly and made her cry out in astonishment: a girl, who looked so much like her that she might have been her own sister, and, what was stranger, wore a brown stuff gown exactly like her own, was busily at work in this room with a big broom killing spiders. As the Little Sweetheart appeared in the doorway, this girl looked up and said, "Oh, ho! There you are, are you? I thought you'd be out before long." And then she laughed unpleasantly.

"Who are you? " said the Little Sweetheart, beginning to tremble all over.

"Oh, I'm a Prince's Sweetheart," said the girl, laughing still more unpleasantly; and, leaning on her broom, she stared at the Little Sweetheart from top to toe.

"But——" began the Little Sweetheart.

"Oh, we're all Princes' Sweethearts," interrupted several voices, coming all at once from different corners of the big room; and before the Little Sweetheart could get out another word, she found herself surrounded by half a dozen or more girls and women, all carrying brooms, and all laughing unpleasantly as they looked at her.

"What!" she gasped, as she gazed at their stuff gowns and their brooms. "You were all of you Princes' Sweethearts? Is it only for one day, then?"

"Only for one day," they all replied.

"And always after that do you have to kill spiders?" she cried.

"Yes; that or nothing," they said. "You see it is a great deal of work to keep all the rooms in this Court clean."

"Isn't it very dull work to kill spiders?" said the Little Sweetheart.

"Yes, very," they said, all speaking at once. "But it's better than sitting still, doing nothing."

"Don't the Princes ever speak to you?" sobbed the Little Sweetheart.

"Yes, sometimes," they answered.

Just then the Little Sweetheart's own Prince came hurrying by, all in armor from head to foot, splendid shining armor that clinked as he walked.

"Oh, there he is!" cried the Little Sweetheart, springing forward; then suddenly she recollected her stuff gown, and shrunk back into the group. But the Prince had seen her.

"Oh, how d'do!" he said kindly. "I was wondering what had become of you. Good-bye! I'm off for the grand review to-day. Don't tire yourself out over the spiders. Good-bye!" and he was gone.

"I hate him!" cried the Little Sweetheart, her eyes flashing and her cheeks scarlet.

"Oh, no, you don't!" exclaimed all the spider-sweepers. "That's the worst of it. You may think you do, but you don't. You love him all the time after you've once begun."

"I'll go home!" said the Little Sweetheart.

"You can't," said the others. "It is not permitted."

"Is it always just like this, in this Court?" she asked.

"Yes, always the same, One day just like another; all whirl and dance from morning till night, and new people coming and going all the time, and spiders most of all. You can't think how fast brooms wear out in this Court!"

"I'll die!" said the Little Sweetheart.

"Oh, no, you won't," they said. "There are some of us, in some of the rooms here, that are wrinkled and gray-haired. The most of the Sweethearts live to be old."

"Do they? " said the Little Sweetheart, and burst into tears. . . .

Helen Jackson ("H. H.")