The Wise Woman by George MacDonald (audio ebook reader TXT) 📕

a mistake, for she never did anything wicked, and had more power than any witch could have. As her fame was spread through all the country, the king heard of her, and, thinking she might perhaps be able to suggest something, sent for her. In the dead of the night, lest the princess should know it, the king’s messenger brought into the palace a tall woman, muffled from head to foot in a cloak of black cloth. In the presence of both their majesties, the king, to do her honour, requested her to sit, but she declined, and stood waiting to hear what they had to say. Nor had she to wait long, for almost instantly they began to tell her the dreadful trouble they were in with their only child—first the king talking, then the queen interposing with some yet more dreadful fact, and at times both letting out a torrent of words together, so anxious were they to show the wise woman that their perplexity was real, and their daughter a very terrible one. For a long while there appeared no sign of approaching pause. But the wise woman stood patiently folded in her black cloak, and listened without word or motion. At length silence fell, for they had talked themselves tired, and could not think of anything more to add to the list of their child’s enormities.

After a minute, the wise woman unfolded her arms, and her cloak dropping open in front, disclosed a garment made of a strange stuff, which an old poet who knew her well has thus described:

All lilly white, withoutten spot or pride,

That seemd like silke and silver woven neare;

But neither silke nor silver therein did appeare.

“How very badly you have treated her!” said the wise woman: “Poor child.”

“What! Treated her badly?” gasped the king.

“She is a very wicked child,” said the queen; and both glared with indignation.

“Yes, indeed,” returned the wise woman; “she is very naughty indeed, and that she must be made to feel; but it is half your fault too.”

“What!” stammered the king. “Haven’t we given her every mortal thing she wanted?”

“Surely,” said the wise woman. “What else could have all but killed her! You should have given her a few things of the other sort. But you are far too dull to understand me.”

“You are very polite!” remarked the king, with royal sarcasm on his thin, straight lips.

The wise woman made no answer beyond a deep sigh, and the king and queen sat silent also in their anger, glaring at the wise woman. The silence lasted again for a minute, and then the wise woman folded her cloak around her, and her shining garment vanished like the moon when a great cloud comes over her. Yet another minute passed and the silence endured, for the smouldering wrath of the king and queen choked the channels of their speech. Then the wise woman turned her back on them, and so stood. At this the rage of the king broke forth, and he cried to the queen, stammering in his fierceness:

“How should such an old hag as that teach Rosamond good manners? She knows nothing of them herself! Look how she stands! Actually with her back to us!”

At the word the wise woman walked from the room. The great folding doors fell to behind her, and the same moment the king and queen were quarreling like apes as to which of them was to blame for her departure. Before their altercation was over, for it lasted till the early morning, in rushed Rosamond, clutching in her hands a poor little white rabbit of which she was very fond, and from which, only because it would not come to her when she called it, she was pulling handfuls of fur, in the attempt to tear the squealing, pink-eared, red-eyed thing to pieces.

“Rosa! Rosamond!” cried the queen;—whereupon Rosamond threw the rabbit in her mother’s face. The king started up in a fury, and ran to seize her. She darted shrieking from the room. The king rushed after her, but, to his amazement, she was nowhere to be seen; the huge hall was empty.—No; just outside the door, close to the threshold, with her back to it, sat the figure of the wise woman, muffled in her dark cloak, with her head bowed over her knees. As the king stood looking at her she rose slowly, crossed the hall, and walked away down the marble staircase. The king called to her, but she never turned her head, or gave the least sign that she heard him. So quietly did she pass down the wide marble stair, that the king was all but persuaded he had seen only a shadow gliding across the white steps.

For the princess, she was nowhere to be found. The queen went into hysterics, and the rabbit ran away. The king sent out messengers, but in vain.

In a short time the palace was quiet—as quiet as it used to be before the princess was born. The king and queen cried a little now and then, for the hearts of parents were in that country strangely fashioned;—and yet I am afraid the first movement of those very hearts would have been a jump of terror if the ears above them had heard the voice of Rosamond in one of the corridors. As for the rest of the household, they could not have made up a single tear amongst them. They thought, whatever it might be for the princess, it was for every one else the best thing that could have happened; and as to what had become of her, if their heads were puzzled, their hearts took no interest in the question. The Lord Chancellor alone had an idea about it, but he was far too wise to utter it.

CHAPTER II.

The fact, as is plain, was, that the princess had disappeared in the folds of the wise woman’s cloak: when she rushed from the room, the wise woman caught her to her bosom and flung the black garment around her. The princess struggled wildly, for she was in fierce terror, and screamed as loud as choking fright would permit her; but her father, standing in the door, and looking down upon the wise woman, saw never a movement of the cloak, so tight was she held by her captor. He was indeed aware of a most angry crying, which reminded him of his daughter, but it sounded to him so far away, that he took it for the passion of some child in the street, outside the palacegates. Hence, unchallenged, the wise woman carried the princess down the marble-stairs, out at the palace-door, down a great flight of steps outside, across a paved court, through the brazen gates, along half-roused streets where people were opening their shops, through the huge gates of the city, and out into the wide road vanishing northwards—the princess struggling and screaming all the time, and the wise woman holding her tight. When at length she was too tired to struggle or scream any more, the wise woman unfolded her cloak and set her down, and the princess saw the light and opened her swollen eyelids. There was nothing in sight that she had ever seen before! City and palace had disappeared. They were upon a wide road going straight on, with a ditch on each side of it, that, behind them, widened into the great moat surrounding the city. She cast up a terrified look into the wise woman’s face that gazed down upon her gravely and kindly. Now the princess did not in the least understand kindness. She always took it for a sign either of partiality or fear. So when the wise woman looked kindly upon her, she rushed at her, butting with her head like a ram. But the folds of the cloak had closed around the wise woman, and when the princess ran against it, she found it hard as the cloak of a bronze statue, and fell back upon the road with a great bruise on her head. The wise woman lifted her again, and put her once more under the cloak, where she fell asleep, and where she awoke again only to find that she was still being carried on and on.

When at length the wise woman again stopped and set her down, she saw around her a bright moonlit night, on a wide heath, solitary and houseless. Here she felt more frightened than before, nor was her terror assuaged when, looking up, she saw a stern, immovable countenance, with cold eyes fixedly regarding her. All she knew of the world being derived from nursery tales, she concluded that the wise woman was an ogress carrying her home to eat her.

I have already said that the princess was, at this time of her life, such a low-minded creature, that severity had greater influence over her than kindness. She understood terror better far than tenderness. When the wise woman looked at her thus, she fell on her knees and held up her hands to her, crying,

“Oh, don’t eat me! don’t eat me!”

Now this being the best she could do, it was a sign she was a low creature. Think of it—to kick at kindness and kneel from terror! But the sternness on the face of the wise woman came from the same heart and the same feeling as the kindness that had shone from it before: the only thing that could save the princess from her hatefulness was that she should be made to mind somebody else than her own miserable Somebody.

Without saying a word, the wise woman reached down her hand, took one of Rosamond’s, and, lifting her to her feet, led her along through the moonlight. Every now and then a gush of obstinacy would well up in the heart of the princess, and she would give a great illtempered tug, and pull her hand away. But then the wise woman would gaze down upon her with such a look, that she instantly sought again the hand she had rejected—in pure terror lest she should be eaten upon the spot. And so they would walk on again, and when the wind blew the folds of the cloak against the princess, she found them soft as her mother’s camel-hair shawl.

After a little while the wise woman began to sing to her, and the princess could not help listening for the soft wind amongst the low dry bushes of the heath, the rustle of their own steps, and the trailing of the wise woman’s cloak, were the only sounds beside.

And this is the song she sang.—

Out in the cold,

With a thin-worn fold

Of withered gold

Around her rolled,

Hangs in the air the weary moon

She is old, old, old;

And her bones all cold,

And her tales all told,

And her things all sold,

And she has no breath to croon.

Like a castaway clout,

She is quite shut out!

She might call and shout,

But no one about

Would ever call back—Who’s there?

There is never a hut,

Not a door to shut,

Not a footpath or rut,

Long road or short cut,

Leading to anywhere!

She is all alone

Like a dog-picked bone,

The poor old crone!

She fain would groan,

But she cannot find the breath.

She once had a fire,

But she built it no higher,

And only sat nigher

Till she saw it expire;

And now she is cold as death.

She never will smile

All the lonesome while

Oh, the mile after mile,

And never a stile!

And never a tree or a stone!

She has not a tear:

Afar and anear

It is all so drear,

But she does not care,

Her heart is as dry as a bone.