Udo

“ Waidewuth the Unknown offered his hand to Udo, saying in a compassionate tone:—“Your misfortune, noble prince, bends you down, yet, know that a persevering man ought not to give way beneath its heavy load; but exercise his last remaining strength to throw off its burden, and become himself again. Before you determine upon dying, at least confide the cause of your sufferings to the bosom of him whom you believed formerly worthy of your friendship, and deny not yourself the consolation of knowing that there is one who participates in them: for this is comfort to a sufferer.” ”

“ CHAPTER XIX UDO BEHAVES LIKE A GENTLEMAN
"And now," said Coronel, "we'd better decide what to do."
"But I don't mind what we do now," said Hyacinth happily. "She may have the throne and Father and Udo, and—and anything else she can get, and I shan't mind a bit. You see, I have got you now, Coronel, and I can never be jealous of anybody again."
"That's what makes it so jolly. We can do what we like, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't come off. So just for fun let's think of something to pay her out." ”

“ Belvane smiled happily. One does not often get such a chance.
"And who," she asked sweetly, "will unmask your Royal Highness before the people, so that they may see the true Prince Udo underneath?"
"What do you mean?" said Udo, though he was beginning to guess.
"That noble handsome countenance which is so justly the pride of Araby—how shall we show that to the people? They'll form such a mistaken idea of it if they all see you like this, won't they?"
Udo was quite sure now that he understood. Hyacinth had understood at the very beginning. ”

“ It was too much for Udo. He forgot his manners and made a jump towards her. She glided gracefully behind the sundial in a pretty affectation of alarm . . . and the next moment Udo decided that the contest between them was not to be settled by such rough-and-tumble methods as these. The fact that his tail had caught in something helped him to decide.
Belvane was up to him in an instant.
"There, there!" she said soothingly, "Let me undo it for your Royal Highness." She talked pleasantly as she worked at it. "Every little accident teaches us something. ”

“ Udo Brand comes to himself again from the mystic depths of fever, and sorrow, and importunate desire, to see the same tender vision watching over him, and to breathe the same sweet perfume of fresh-culled flowers, and to feel the same restful joy which broke the darkness of his weary trance before. ”

“ Belvane was interested, but thought it all a little crude.
"You see the point," went on Udo. "A baby left to itself doesn't know what is good for it. Left to itself it would eat anything. Now turn a man suddenly into an animal and he is in exactly the same state as that baby."
"I hadn't thought of it like that," said Hyacinth.
"I've had to think of it! Now let us proceed further with the matter." Udo was thoroughly enjoying himself. He had not had such a time since he had given an address on Beetles to all the leading citizens of Araby at his coming-of-age. ”

“ What I am telling you now is that the Prince Udo is arriving to-morrow."
Belvane looked innocently puzzled.
"Prince Udo—Udo—would that be Prince Udo of Carroway, your Royal Highness? A tall man with three legs?"
"Prince Udo of Araby," said Hyacinth severely. "I think I have already mentioned him to your ladyship. He will make a stay of some months."
"But how delightful, your Royal Highness, to see a man again! We were all getting so dull together! We want a man to wake us up a little, don't we, Wiggs? I will go and give orders about his room at once, your Royal Highness. ”

“ There is no knowing with a woman like Belvane; and I believe she had purposely kept herself plain during these last few days so that she might have the weapon of her beauty to fall back upon in case anything went wrong. Things had indeed gone wrong; Udo had become a man again; and it was against the man that this last weapon was directed.
Udo himself was only too ready. The fact that he was once more attractive to women meant as much as anything to him. To have been attractive to Hyacinth would have contented most of us, but Udo felt a little uncomfortable with her. ”

“ He's quite right—she'll make a wonderful Queen. Oh, my dear, I feel I want everybody to be as happy as we're going to be."
"They can't be that, but we'll do our best for them. I can manage Udo all right. I only have to say 'rabbits' to him, and he'll do anything for me. Hyacinth, I don't believe I've ever kissed you in this room yet, have I? Let's begin now."
Merriwig came upon the other pair of lovers in Belvane's garden. They were sharing a seat there, and Udo was assuring the Countess that he was her own little Udo-Wudo, and that they must never be away from each other again. ”

“ Except Belvane.
She turned to Udo with her most charming smile. "Did you have a pleasant journey?" she asked sweetly.
"No," said Udo coldly.
"Oh, do tell us what happened to you?" cried Hyacinth. "Did you meet some terrible enchanter on the way? Oh, I am so dreadfully sorry."
When one is not feeling very well there is a certain type of question which is always annoying.
"Can't you see what's happened to me?" said Udo crossly. "I don't know how it happened. I had come two days' journey from Araby, when——"
"Please, your Royal Highness," said Wiggs, "is this your tail in the salt?" ”

“ THE DEMON OF THE RING.
A young prince, Udo by name, swayed the island of Rugen, on the Pomeranian shore, (long before the northern deluge had overwhelmed and buried the greater part of it in the depths of the sea, and at the time when the powerful race of the Obotrites inhabited its plains, [1] ) and resided in the town of Arcon the capital of his hereditary possessions, whose ruins now lie entombed since many centuries in the all engulphing ocean. He was married to Edda, the daughter of one of his vassals, and his petty principality was to him a terrestrial paradise. ”

“ How often had her faithful memory held up to her the portrait of St. Udo Brand—grand, bold, fearless as she had beheld him in that hour of his fury; when the white lights of scorn were flashing from his straightly-leveled eyes, and the wrath of a king sat on his regal brow.
How was it that he cringed in the doorway there and with a forced stare met her gaze of bewilderment? Why did his lurid eyeballs shift and shrink, and grow small and hare-like, when they had ever met hers, with the full glare of an eagle? ”

“ Wiggs and I have often talked about it together."
("What has happened to the child?" thought Belvane. "She isn't a child at all, she's grown up.")
"There's no holding Udo once he begins," volunteered Coronel. "He's the most desperate lover in Araby.
"My father will be so excited when he hears," said Hyacinth. "You know, of course, that his Majesty comes back to-morrow with all his army." ”

“ Udo felt no small embarassment at being received as a sovereign by the same king whom he had treated as a private man, and excused himself by alleging the strict incognito his majesty had chosen to preserve. To turn the thoughts of the sorrowful guest into another channel, Waidewuth explained to the prince all he wished to know respecting him when in his dominions, not yet having satisfied his curiosity upon that subject.
“I went travelling,” said the king, “to study mankind ”

“ Coronel stopped dropping his pebbles and turned to the Prince.
"May I hear about it?"
Udo held out the letter; then feeling that a lady's letter should be private, drew it back again. He prided himself always on doing the correct thing.
"It's from Princess Hyacinth of Euralia," he said; "she doesn't say much. Her father is away fighting, and she is alone and she is in some trouble or other. It ought to make rather a good adventure." ”

“ I leave that to Roger Scurvilegs. Between ourselves Roger is a bit of a snob. The degradation to a Prince of Araby to be turned into an animal so ludicrous, the delight of a Prince of Araby at regaining his own form, it is this that he chiefly dwells upon. Really, I think you or I would have been equally delighted. I am sure we can guess how Udo felt about it.
He strutted about the room, he gazed at himself in every glass, he held out his hand to an imaginary Hyacinth with "Ah, dear Princess, and how are we this morning?" Never had he felt so handsome and so sure of himself. ”

“ Does not Fortune grant crowns and principalities to whomsoe’er she pleases; if you require such for your happiness she may restore yours.” A good husbandman endeavours to regain the sum he has lost—a bad one laments his hard fate without exercising his resources and thus becomes ruined.”
The Prince, lost in deep sorrow, did not find such philosophy to his taste, but Waidewuth used language so persuasive that Udo finally agreed to follow the Unknown to the neighbouring cottage of a fisherman, where he was provided by his host with humble fisherman’s fare. ”

“ She was walking up and down the flagged walk between her lavender hedges, and as he came in she stopped and rested her elbows on her sundial, and looked mockingly at him, waiting for him to speak. "Between the showers I mark the hours," said the sundial (on the suggestion of Belvane one wet afternoon) , but for the moment the Countess was in the way.
"Ah, here we are," said Udo in rather a nasty voice.
"Here we are," said Belvane sweetly. "All of us." ”

“ The king frequently eluded Udo’s questions, but finally considering that suspension between hope and fear was more painful than the certainty of misfortune, determined to grant his desire, and, not having any good news to communicate, he used a common-place expression, saying:—“A half-severed nerve pains more than one entirely cut away; the pain of a crushed limb is alleviated by amputation. Listen then, my brother, your wife could not survive the anguish of the separation; her shadow already hovered around me ere you touched this shore ”

“ The effect of watercress sandwiches upon Udo's arrangements (however furnished) we have all just seen for ourselves; but what Roger neglects to lay stress upon is the fact that it was the effect of twenty-one or twenty-two watercress sandwiches. There is no denying that it was a disgraceful exhibition. If I had been there, I should certainly have written to his father about it.
Hyacinth looked at him uneasily. Her first feeling was one of sympathy. "Poor fellow," she thought, "he's had a hard time lately." ”

“ He liked the look of Coronel, he liked his manner, and he saw at once that he knew a good story—when he heard one.
"Of course," he said, "you'll have to win her."
"Anything your Majesty sets me to do. It's as well," he added with a disarming smile, "that you cannot ask for the whiskers of the King of Barodia. There is only one man who could have got those."
Truly an excellent young man.
"Well, we'll arrange something," said Merriwig, looking pleased. "Perhaps your Prince Udo would care to be a competitor too."
Hyacinth and Coronel interchanged a smile. ”

“ The Lady Belvane sits in her garden. She is very happy. An enormous quill-pen, taken from a former favourite goose and coloured red, is in her right hand. The hair of her dark head, held on one side, touches the paper whereon she writes, and her little tongue peeps out between her red lips. Her left hand taps the table—one-two, one-two, one-two, one-two, one-two. She is composing.
Wonderful woman!
You remember that scene with the Princess Hyacinth? "I feel we want a little outside help in our affairs." A fortnight of suspense before Prince Udo arrived. ”

“ Hyacinth looked at Wiggs in despair.
"There!" she said. "That's me. I don't know what it is about that woman, but I feel just a child in front of her. Oh, Wiggs, Wiggs, I feel so lonely sometimes with nothing but women all around me. I wish I had a man here to help me."
"Are all the men fighting in all the countries?"
"Not all the countries. There's—Araby. Don't you remember—oh, but of course you wouldn't know anything about it. But Father was just going to ask Prince Udo of Araby to come here on a visit, when the war broke out. ”

“ Then Abderrahman, seeing the land filled with the multitude of his army, pierces through the mountains, tramples over rough and level ground plunders far into the country of the Franks, and smites all with the sword, insomuch that when Eudo came to battle with him at the river Garonne, and fled before him, God alone knows the number of the slain. Then Abderrahman pursued after Count Eudo, and while he strives to spoil and burn the holy shrine at Tours, he encounters the chief of the Austrasian Franks, Charles, a man of war from his youth up, to whom Eudo had sent warning. ”

“ I mean Wiggs. We take the same view as Hyacinth: she was the best little girl in Euralia. It will come then as a shock to you (as it did to me on the morning after I had staggered home with Roger's seventeen volumes) to learn that on her day Wiggs could be as bad as anybody. I mean really bad. To tear your frock, to read books which you ought to be dusting, these are accidents which may happen to anybody. Far otherwise was Wiggs's fall.
She adopted, in fact, the infamous suggestion of Prince Udo. ”

“ He pushes the gate open, he enters the garden path, his hands are at last empty!
Along by the old gray wall, old Eudo is making his way, the incurable widower whose bad news still stubbornly persists, so that he bears it along around him, and it slackens his steps, and can be seen, and he takes up more space than he seems to take. A woman meets him, and her youth is disclosed in the twilight; it expands in her hurrying steps. It is Mina, going to some trysting-place. She crosses and presses her little fichu on her heart ”