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VI.
Meantime the wise woman was busy as she always was; and her business
now was with the child of the shepherd and shepherdess, away in the
north. Her name was Agnes.
Her father and mother were poor, and could not give her many things.
Rosamond would have utterly despised the rude, simple playthings she
had. Yet in one respect they were of more value far than hers: the
king bought Rosamond's with his money; Agnes's father made hers with
his hands.
And while Agnes had but few things--not seeing many things about
her, and not even knowing that there were many things anywhere, she
did not wish for many things, and was therefore neither covetous nor
avaricious.
She played with the toys her father made her, and thought them the
most wonderful things in the world--windmills, and little crooks,
and water-wheels, and sometimes lambs made all of wool, and dolls
made out of the leg-bones of sheep, which her mother dressed for
her; and of such playthings she was never tired. Sometimes, however,
she preferred playing with stones, which were plentiful, and
flowers, which were few, or the brooks that ran down the hill, of
which, although they were many, she could only play with one at a
time, and that, indeed, troubled her a little--or live lambs that
were not all wool, or the sheep-dogs, which were very friendly with
her, and the best of playfellows, as she thought, for she had no
human ones to compare them with. Neither was she greedy after nice
things, but content, as well she might be, with the homely food
provided for her. Nor was she by nature particularly self-willed or
disobedient; she generally did what her father and mother wished,
and believed what they told her. But by degrees they had spoiled
her; and this was the way: they were so proud of her that they
always repeated every thing she said, and told every thing she did,
even when she was present; and so full of admiration of their child
were they, that they wondered and laughed at and praised things in
her which in another child would never have struck them as the least
remarkable, and some things even which would in another have
disgusted them altogether. Impertinent and rude things done by THEIR
child they thought SO clever! laughing at them as something quite
marvellous; her commonplace speeches were said over again as if they
had been the finest poetry; and the pretty ways which every
moderately good child has were extolled as if the result of her
excellent taste, and the choice of her judgment and will. They would
even say sometimes that she ought not to hear her own praises for
fear it should make her vain, and then whisper them behind their
hands, but so loud that she could not fail to hear every word. The
consequence was that she soon came to believe--so soon, that she
could not recall the time when she did not believe, as the most
absolute fact in the universe, that she was SOMEBODY; that is, she
became most immoderately conceited.
Now as the least atom of conceit is a thing to be ashamed of, you
may fancy what she was like with such a quantity of it inside her!
At first it did not show itself outside in any very active form; but
the wise woman had been to the cottage, and had seen her sitting
alone, with such a smile of self-satisfaction upon her face as would
have been quite startling to her, if she had ever been startled at
any thing; for through that smile she could see lying at the root of
it the worm that made it. For some smiles are like the ruddiness of
certain apples, which is owing to a centipede, or other creeping
thing, coiled up at the heart of them. Only her worm had a face and
shape the very image of her own; and she looked so simpering, and
mawkish, and self-conscious, and silly, that she made the wise woman
feel rather sick.
Not that the child was a fool. Had she been, the wise woman would
have only pitied and loved her, instead of feeling sick when she
looked at her. She had very fair abilities, and were she once but
made humble, would be capable not only of doing a good deal in time,
but of beginning at once to grow to no end. But, if she were not
made humble, her growing would be to a mass of distorted shapes all
huddled together; so that, although the body she now showed might
grow up straight and well-shaped and comely to behold, the new body
that was growing inside of it, and would come out of it when she
died, would be ugly, and crooked this way and that, like an aged
hawthorn that has lived hundreds of years exposed upon all sides to
salt sea-winds.
As time went on, this disease of self-conceit went on too, gradually
devouring the good that was in her. For there is no fault that does
not bring its brothers and sisters and cousins to live with it. By
degrees, from thinking herself so clever, she came to fancy that
whatever seemed to her, must of course be the correct judgment, and
whatever she wished, the right thing; and grew so obstinate, that at
length her parents feared to thwart her in any thing, knowing well
that she would never give in. But there are victories far worse than
defeats; and to overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his
strength, and ride away in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of
the poorest.
So long as she was left to take her own way and do as she would, she
gave her parents little trouble. She would play about by herself in
the little garden with its few hardy flowers, or amongst the heather
where the bees were busy; or she would wander away amongst the
hills, and be nobody knew where, sometimes from morning to night;
nor did her parents venture to find fault with her.
She never went into rages like the princess, and would have thought
Rosamond--oh, so ugly and vile! if she had seen her in one of her
passions. But she was no better, for all that, and was quite as ugly
in the eyes of the wise woman, who could not only see but read her
face. What is there to choose between a face distorted to
hideousness by anger, and one distorted to silliness by
self-complacency? True, there is more hope of helping the angry
child out of her form of selfishness than the conceited child out of
hers; but on the other hand, the conceited child was not so terrible
or dangerous as the wrathful one. The conceited one, however, was
sometimes very angry, and then her anger was more spiteful than the
other's; and, again, the wrathful one was often very conceited too.
So that, on the whole, of two very unpleasant creatures, I would say
that the king's daughter would have been the worse, had not the
shepherd's been quite as bad. But, as I have said, the wise woman
had her eye upon her: she saw that something special must be done,
else she would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till
feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their
hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they
grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards,
each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being
in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run
about forever looking for their own shadows, that they may worship
them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves
too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at
last there is but one who knows.
The wise woman, therefore, one day walked up to the door of the
shepherd's cottage, dressed like a poor woman, and asked for a drink
of water. The shepherd's wife looked at her, liked her, and brought
her a cup of milk. The wise woman took it, for she made it a rule to
accept every kindness that was offered her.
Agnes was not by nature a greedy girl, as I have said; but
self-conceit will go far to generate every other vice under the sun.
Vanity, which is a form of self-conceit, has repeatedly shown itself
as the deepest feeling in the heart of a horrible murderess.
That morning, at breakfast, her mother had stinted her in milk--just
a little--that she might have enough to make some milk-porridge for
their dinner. Agnes did not mind it at the time, but when she saw
the milk now given to a beggar, as she called the wise
woman--though, surely, one might ask a draught of water, and accept
a draught of milk, without being a beggar in any such sense as
Agnes's contemptuous use of the word implied--a cloud came upon her
forehead, and a double vertical wrinkle settled over her nose. The
wise woman saw it, for all her business was with Agnes though she
little knew it, and, rising, went and offered the cup to the child,
where she sat with her knitting in a corner. Agnes looked at it, did
not want it, was inclined to refuse it from a beggar, but thinking
it would show her consequence to assert her rights, took it and
drank it up. For whoever is possessed by a devil, judges with the
mind of that devil; and hence Agnes was guilty of such a meanness as
many who are themselves capable of something just as bad will
consider incredible.
The wise woman waited till she had finished it--then, looking into
the empty cup, said:
"You might have given me back as much as you had no claim upon!"
Agnes turned away and made no answer--far less from shame than
indignation.
The wise woman looked at the mother.
"You should not have offered it to her if you did not mean her to
have it," said the mother, siding with the devil in her child
against the wise woman and her child too. Some foolish people think
they take another's part when they take the part he takes.
The wise woman said nothing, but fixed her eyes upon her, and soon
the mother hid her face in her apron weeping. Then she turned again
to Agnes, who had never looked round but sat with her back to both,
and suddenly lapped her in the folds of her cloak. When the mother
again lifted her eyes, she had vanished.
Never supposing she had carried away her child, but uncomfortable
because of what she had said to the poor woman, the mother went to
the door, and called after her as she toiled slowly up the hill. But
she never turned her head; and the mother went back into her
cottage.
The wise woman walked close past the shepherd and his dogs, and
through the midst of his flock of sheep. The shepherd wondered where
she could be going--right up the hill. There was something strange
about her too, he thought; and he followed her with his eyes as she
went up and up.
It was near sunset, and as the sun went down, a gray cloud settted
on the top of the mountain, which his last rays turned into a rosy
gold. Straight into this cloud the shepherd saw the woman hold her
pace, and in it she vanished. He little imagined that his child was
under her cloak.
He went home as usual in the evening, but Agnes had not come in.
They were accustomed to such an absence now and then, and were not
at first frightened; but when it grew dark and she did not appear,
the husband set out with his dogs in one direction, and the wife in
another, to seek their child. Morning came and they had not found
her. Then the whole country-side arose to search for the missing
Agnes; but day after day and night after night passed, and nothing
was discovered of or concerning her, until at length all gave up the
search in despair except the mother, although she was nearly
convinced now that the poor woman had carried her off.
One day she had wandered some distance from her cottage, thinking
she might come upon the remains of her daughter at the foot of some
cliff, when she came suddenly, instead, upon a disconsolate-looking
creature sitting on a stone by the side of a stream.
Her hair hung in tangles from her head; her clothes were tattered,
and through the rents her skin showed in many places; her cheeks
were white, and worn thin with hunger; the hollows were dark under
her eyes, and they stood out scared and wild. When she caught sight
of the shepherdess, she jumped to her feet, and would have run away,
but fell down in a faint.
At first sight the mother had taken her for her own child, but now
she saw, with a pang of disappointment, that she had mistaken. Full
of compassion, nevertheless, she said to herself:
"If she is not my Agnes, she is as much in need of help as if she
were. If I cannot be good to my own, I will be as good as I can to
some other woman's; and though I should scorn to be consoled for the
loss of one by the presence of another, I yet may find some gladness
in rescuing one child from the death which has taken the other."
Perhaps her words were not just like these, but her thoughts were.
She took up the child, and carried her home. And this is how
Rosamond came to occupy the place of the little girl whom she had
envied in the picture.
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