Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Part 26

"'Where is Pota.s.sium Pompey?'

"'Oh!' groaned Peterie, 'would I were as big as a bullfrog, that I might swallow you all at a gulp.'

"'Away with him, my friends,' cried the warlike policemen, 'to the hall of justice.'

"In the present state of Peterie's digestive organs, resistance was not to be thought of; so he quietly submitted to be led out with ten pairs of handcuffs on his wrists, and dragged along the street, followed by the hooting mob, who wanted to hang him on the spot; but a mult.i.tude of policemen now arrived, and being at the rate of three policemen to each civilian polyp, the hanging was prevented. The justice hall was a very large building right in the centre of Coral Town. There the judges used to sit night and day on a large pearl throne at one end to try the cases that were brought before them.

"Now Pota.s.sium Pompey was a very great favourite in Coral Town, so that when the wretched Peterie was dragged by fifteen brave policemen before the pearl throne, the hall was quite filled, and you might have heard a midge sneeze, if there had been a midge to sneeze, so great was the silence. The first accuser was Popkins, the miserly old polyp who was poor Peggy's father. He was too wretchedly thin and weak and old to hop in like any other polyp, so he came along the hall walking on his one foot and his twenty hands after the fashion of the looper caterpillar, which I daresay you have observed on a currant-bush.

"'Where is me chee--ild?' cried the aged miser, as soon as he could speak. 'Give me back me chee--ild?'

"'If that's all you've got to say,' said the judge, sternly, 'you'd better stand down.'

"'I merely want me chee--ild,' repeated Popkins.

"'Stand down, sir,' cried the judge.

"After hearing various witnesses who had seen Pompey enter Peterie's house and never return, the judge opened his mouth and spake, for Peterie had said never a word. The judge gave it as his unbia.s.sed opinion that, considering all things, the mysterious disappearance of Mrs Polypus, coupled with that of Pota.s.sium Pompey, whom every one loved and admired, the absence of all defence on the part of the prisoner, and the extraordinary rotundity of his corporation, as well as the fact that he had always been a spare man, there could be little doubt of the prisoner's guilt; 'but to make a.s.surance doubly sure,'

added the judge, 'let him at once be opened, to furnish additional proof, and the opening of the prisoner, I trust, will close the case.'

If guilty, the sentence of the Court was that he should then be dragged to the common execution ground, and there divided into one hundred pieces, and he, the judge, hoped it would be a warning to the prisoner in all future time."

[When a polyp is cut into pieces, each piece becomes a new individual.]

"Twenty policemen now rushed away and brought the biggest knife they could find; twenty more went for ropes, and having procured them, the wretched Mr Polypus was bound to a table, and before he could have said 'cheese,' if he had wanted to say 'cheese,' an immense opening was made in his side, and, lo and behold! out stepped first Pota.s.sium Pompey, and after him hopped, modestly hopped, poor Peggy. But the most wonderful part of the whole business was, that neither Peggy nor Pompey seemed a bit the worse for their strange incarceration. Indeed, I ought to say they looked all the better; for Pompey was all smiles, and Peggy was looking very happy indeed, and even Peterie seemed immensely relieved.

Pompey led Peggy before the throne, and here he told all the story about how Peggy was murdered, and then how he, Pompey, was murdered next.

And--

"'Enough! enough!' cried the judge; 'away with the doomed wretch! Let the execution be proceeded with without a moment's delay.'

"'Please, my lord,' said Peggy, modestly, 'may I have a divorce?'

"'To be sure, to be sure,' said the judge; 'you are justly ent.i.tled to a divorce.'

"'And please, my lord,' continued Peggy, 'may--may--'

"'Well? well?' said the judge, with slight impatience, 'out with it.'

"'She wants to ask if she may marry me,' said Pompey, boldly.

"'Most a.s.suredly,' said the judge, 'and a blessing be on you both.'

"In vain the unhappy Peterie begged and prayed for mercy; he was hurried away to the execution ground and led to the scaffold. In all that crowd of upturned faces, Peterie saw not one pitying eye. And now a large barrel was placed to receive the pieces, and, beginning with his head and arms, the executioners cut him into one hundred pieces, leaving nothing of Peterie but the foot.

"'Now,' cried the judge, 'empty the barrel on the floor.'

"This was done.

"And it did seem that wonders would never cease, for as soon as each piece was thrown on the floor it immediately _grew up into a real live polyp, and body and arms all complete and hopping_; and the foot, which had been left, and which was more especially Peterie's--being all that remained of him, you know--grew up into another polyp, and behold there was another and a new Peterie. He was at once surrounded by the ninety and nine new polyps, who all threw their arms--nineteen hundred and ninety arms--around his neck, and began to kiss him and call him dearest dada.

"'On my honour,' said Peterie, 'I think this is rather too much of a joke.'

"But n.o.body had any pity on him, and the judge said--'Now, Mr Polypus, let this be a lesson to you. Go home at once and work for your children, and remember you support them; if even one of them comes to solicit parish relief, dread the consequences.'

"'How ever shall I manage?' said poor Peterie.

"And he hopped away disconsolate enough amid his ninety and nine baby polyps all crying--

"'Dada dear, give us a fish.'

"'I think,' said the judge, when Peterie had gone--'I think, Mr Popkins, you cannot now do better than consent to make these two young things happy by letting them wed. Pompey, it is true, isn't a king, but he has an excellent business in the pota.s.sium line, and none of us can live without fire, you know.'

"'But I'm a king,' cried the aged miser; 'I have mines of wealth, and all I have is theirs. Come to your father's arms, my Peggy and Pompey.'

"'Hurrah!' shouted the mob; 'three cheers for the old miser, and three for Pompey the brave, and three times three for the bonny bride Peggy.'

"And away rolled Peggy in the golden chariot, with her father--such a happy, happy Peggy now; and Pompey was carried through the streets, shoulder high, to his old home.

"So nothing was talked about in Coral Town for the next month but the grandeur of the coming wedding, and the beauty of Peggy, and everybody was happy and gay except poor Peterie; for who could be happy with ninety-nine babies to provide for--ninety-nine breakfasts to get, ninety-nine dinners, ninety-nine teas and suppers all in one, two hundred and ninety-seven meals to provide in one day?

"There were no more fishing excursions for him, no more big dinners, and he worked and toiled to get ends to meet deep down in a pota.s.sium mine in the darkest, dismalest corner of Coral Town. And everybody said--

"'It serves him right, the cruel wretch.'

"What a wonderful house that was which Pompey built for his Peggy!

"It was charmingly situated on the slope of a wooded hill, quite in the country. Pompey spent months in furnishing and decorating it, and his greatest pleasure was to superintend all the work himself. Such trees you never saw as grew in the gardens and park, marine trees whose very leaves seemed more lovely than any terrestrial flower, and they were incessantly moving their branches backwards and forwards with a gentle undulating motion, as if they luxuriated in the sight of each other's beauty. Such flowers!--living, breathing flowers they were, and radiant with rainbow tints, flowers that whispered together, and beckoned and bowed and made love to each other. Then those delightful rockeries, half hidden here and there amid the wealth of foliage, and there were curious sh.e.l.ls of brilliant colours that made music whenever there was the slightest ripple in the water, and whole colonies of the quaintest little animals that ever you dreamt of crept in and crept out of every fissure or miniature cave in the rocks.

"At night the garden was all lighted up with phosph.o.r.escent lamps; but inside the palace itself, in the s.p.a.cious halls, along the marble staircases, and in the beautiful rooms, nothing short of diamond lights would satisfy Pompey; for you must know that Pompey thought nothing too good for Peggy. So each room was lighted up by a diamond, that shone in the centre of the vaulted roof like a large and beautiful star. Some of these diamonds suffused a rosy light throughout the apartment, the light from others was of a paley green, and from others a faint saffron, while in one room the light from the diamond was for ever changing as you may see the planet Mars doing, if you choose to watch--one moment it was a bright, clear, bluish white, next a rainbow green, and anon changing to deepest crimson. This was a very favourite dining-hall with Pompey, for the simple reason that no one could be sure how his neighbour looked.

For instance, if a lady blushed, it did not look like a blush--oh dear no--but a flash of rosy light; if an old gentleman indulged rather much in the pleasures of the table, and began to feel ill in consequence, not a bit of it, he was never better in his life--it was the bluish flash from the diamond; and so, again, if last night's lobster salad rendered any one yellow and bilious-looking, he could always blame the poor pretty diamond.

"In some rooms the chairs themselves were made of precious stones, and the ottomans and couches built of a single pearl.

"At length everything was completed to Pompey's entire satisfaction, and he had given any number of gay parties and b.a.l.l.s, just by way of warming the house. Pompey flattered himself he had the best provisions in his cellars and the best-trained servants in all Coral Town, and of course n.o.body cared to deny that. These servants were nearly all of different shapes: some were properly-made polyps; some rolled in when Pompey touched the gong, rolled in like a gig-wheel without the rim, all legs and arms, and the body in the centre; some were merely round b.a.l.l.s, and you couldn't see any head or legs or arms at all till they stopped in front of you, then they popped them all out at once; some walked in, others hopped, one or two floated, and one queer old chap walked on the crown of his head. If you think this is not all strictly true, you have only to take a microscope and look for yourself.

"'Heigho!' said Pompey one day, after he had finished a dinner fit to set before a polyp king, 'all I now want to make me perfectly happy is Peggy. Peggy--Peggy! what a sweetly pretty name it is to be sure!

Peggy!'

"And that came too; for if you wait long enough for any particular day, it is sure to come at last, just as whistling at sea makes the wind blow, which it invariably does--when you whistle long enough.

"And never was such a day of rejoicing seen in Coral Town. The bells were ringing and the banners all waving almost before the phosph.o.r.escent lamps began to pale in the presence of day.

"Then everybody turned out.

"And everybody seemed to take leave of his senses by special arrangement.

"All but poor Peterie, who was left all by himself to work away in the deep, dark pota.s.sium mine. The wedding took place in Peggy's father's-- Popkins's--house. The old miser, miser no more though, was half crazy with joy. And nothing would satisfy him but to have one of the upper servants cooked for his breakfast. He didn't care, he said, whether it was Jeames or the butler. So the butcher dressed the butler, and he was stewed for his master's breakfast with sauce of pearls powdered in ambrosia.

"And after the ceremony was performed, Pompey appeared on the balcony, clasping Peggy to his heart with ten arms, while he gave ten other hands to Popkins, his father-in-law, to shake as he cried--