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III.
The moon stared at the princess, and the princess stared at the
moon; but the moon had the best of it, and the princess began to
cry. And now the question was between the moon and the cottage. The
princess thought she knew the worst of the moon, and she knew
nothing at all about the cottage, therefore she would stay with the
moon. Strange, was it not, that she should have been so long with
the wise woman, and yet know NOTHING about that cottage? As for the
moon, she did not by any means know the worst of her, or even, that,
if she were to fall asleep where she could find her, the old witch
would certainly do her best to twist her face.
But she had scarcely sat a moment longer before she was assailed by
all sorts of fresh fears. First of all, the soft wind blowing gently
through the dry stalks of the heather and its thousands of little
bells raised a sweet rustling, which the princess took for the
hissing of serpents, for you know she had been naughty for so long
that she could not in a great many things tell the good from the
bad. Then nobody could deny that there, all round about the heath,
like a ring of darkness, lay the gloomy fir-wood, and the princess
knew what it was full of, and every now and then she thought she
heard the howling of its wolves and hyenas. And who could tell but
some of them might break from their covert and sweep like a shadow
across the heath? Indeed, it was not once nor twice that for a
moment she was fully persuaded she saw a great beast coming leaping
and bounding through the moonlight to have her all to himself. She
did not know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that
heath, or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up
and cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have
melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She
even imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down
the sky to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise
woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was
watching her at some little window. In this, however, she would have
been quite right, if she had only imagined enough--namely, that the
wise woman was watching OVER her from the little window. But after
all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than
that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder
whether it the moonlight to have her all to himself. She did not
know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that heath,
or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up and
cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have
melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She
even imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down
the sky to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise
woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was
watching her at some little window. In this, however, she would have
been quite right, if she had only imagined enough--namely, that the
wise woman was watching OVER her from the little window. But after
all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than
that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder
whether it her sadly through her gay silken slippers. She threw
herself on the heath, which came up to the walls of the cottage on
every side, and roared and screamed with rage. Suddenly, however,
she remembered how her screaming had brought the horde of wolves and
hyenas about her in the forest, and, ceasing at once, lay still,
gazing yet again at the moon. And then came the thought of her
parents in the palace at home. In her mind's eye she saw her mother
sitting at her embroidery with the tears dropping upon it, and her
father staring into the fire as if he were looking for her in its
glowing caverns. It is true that if they had both been in tears by
her side because of her naughtiness, she would not have cared a
straw; but now her own forlorn condition somehow helped her to
understand their grief at having lost her, and not only a great
longing to be back in her comfortable home, but a feeble flutter of
genuine love for her parents awoke in her heart as well, and she
burst into real tears--soft, mournful tears--very different from
those of rage and disappointment to which she was so much used. And
another very remarkable thing was that the moment she began to love
her father and mother, she began to wish to see the wise woman
again. The idea of her being an ogress vanished utterly, and she
thought of her only as one to take her in from the moon, and the
loneliness, and the terrors of the forest-haunted heath, and hide
her in a cottage with not even a door for the horrid wolves to howl
against.
But the old woman--as the princess called her, not knowing that her
real name was the Wise Woman--had told her that she must knock at
the door: how was she to do that when there was no door? But again
she bethought herself--that, if she could not do all she was told,
she could, at least, do a part of it: if she could not knock at the
door, she could at least knock--say on the wall, for there was
nothing else to knock upon--and perhaps the old woman would hear
her, and lift her in by some window. Thereupon, she rose at once to
her feet, and picking up a stone, began to knock on the wall with
it. A loud noise was the result, and she found she was knocking on
the very door itself. For a moment she feared the old woman would be
offended, but the next, there came a voice, saying,
"Who is there?"
The princess answered,
"Please, old woman, I did not mean to knock so loud."
To this there came no reply.
Then the princess knocked again, this time with her knuckles, and
the voice came again, saying,
"Who is there?"
And the princess answered,
"Rosamond."
Then a second time there was silence. But the princess soon ventured
to knock a third time.
"What do you want?" said the voice.
"Oh, please, let me in!" said the princess.
"The moon will keep staring at me; and I hear the wolves in the
wood."
Then the door opened, and the princess entered. She looked all
around, but saw nothing of the wise woman.
It was a single bare little room, with a white deal table, and a few
old wooden chairs, a fire of fir-wood on the hearth, the smoke of
which smelt sweet, and a patch of thick-growing heath in one
corner. Poor as it was, compared to the grand place Rosamond had
left, she felt no little satisfaction as she shut the door, and
looked around her. And what with the sufferings and terrors she had
left outside, the new kind of tears she had shed, the love she had
begun to feel for her parents, and the trust she had begun to place
in the wise woman, it seemed to her as if her soul had grown larger
of a sudden, and she had left the days of her childishness and
naughtiness far behind her. People are so ready to think themselves
changed when it is only their mood that is changed! Those who are
good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be ill-tempered when it
rains: their selves are just the same both days; only in the one
case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other the rainy.
Rosamond, as she sat warming herself by the glow of the peat-fire,
turning over in her mind all that had passed, and feeling how
pleasant the change in her feelings was, began by degrees to think
how very good she had grown, and how very good she was to have grown
good, and how extremely good she must always have been that she was
able to grow so very good as she now felt she had grown; and she
became so absorbed in her self-admiration as never to notice either
that the fire was dying, or that a heap of fir-cones lay in a corner
near it. Suddenly, a great wind came roaring down the chimney, and
scattered the ashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and
fell hissing on the embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was
darkness all about her. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a
peal of thunder, so terrified the princess, that she cried aloud for
the old woman, but there came no answer to her cry.
Then in her terror the princess grew angry, and saying to herself,
"She must be somewhere in the place, else who was there to open the
door to me?" began to shout and yell, and call the wise woman all
the bad names she had been in the habit of throwing at her nurses.
But there came not a single sound in reply.
Strange to say, the princess never thought of telling herself now
how naughty she was, though that would surely have been reasonable.
On the contrary, she thought she had a perfect right to be angry,
for was she not most desperately ill used--and a princess too? But
the wind howled on, and the rain kept pouring down the chimney, and
every now and then the lightning burst out, and the thunder rushed
after it, as if the great lumbering sound could ever think to catch
up with the swift light!
At length the princess had again grown so angry, frightened, and
miserable, all together, that she jumped up and hurried about the
cottage with outstretched arms, trying to find the wise woman. But
being in a bad temper always makes people stupid, and presently she
struck her forehead such a blow against something--she thought
herself it felt like the old woman's cloak--that she fell back--not
on the floor, though, but on the patch of heather, which felt as
soft and pleasant as any bed in the palace. There, worn out with
weeping and rage, she soon fell fast asleep.
She dreamed that she was the old cold woman up in the sky, with no
home and no friends, and no nothing at all, not even a pocket;
wandering, wandering forever, over a desert of blue sand, never to
get to anywhere, and never to lie down or die. It was no use
stopping to look about her, for what had she to do but forever look
about her as she went on and on and on--never seeing any thing, and
never expecting to see any thing! The only shadow of a hope she had
was, that she might by slow degrees grow thinner and thinner, until
at last she wore away to nothing at all; only alas! she could not
detect the least sign that she had yet begun to grow thinner. The
hopelessness grew at length so unendurable that she woke with a
start. Seeing the face of the wise woman bending over her, she threw
her arms around her neck and held up her mouth to be kissed. And the
kiss of the wise woman was like the rose-gardens of Damascus.
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