A Double Story Read online

  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 nowthe question was between the moon and the cottage. The princess thoughtshe knew the worst of the moon, and she knew nothing at all about thecottage, therefore she would stay with the moon. Strange, was it not,that she should have been so long with the wise woman, and yet knowNOTHING about that cottage? As for the moon, she did not by any meansknow the worst of her, or even, that, if she were to fall asleep whereshe could find her, the old witch would certainly do her best to twisther face.

  But she had scarcely sat a moment longer before she was assailed by allsorts of fresh fears. First of all, the soft wind blowing gentlythrough the dry stalks of the heather and its thousands of little bellsraised a sweet rustling, which the princess took for the hissing ofserpents, for you know she had been naughty for so long that she couldnot in a great many things tell the good from the bad. Then nobodycould deny that there, all round about the heath, like a ring ofdarkness, lay the gloomy fir-wood, and the princess knew what it wasfull of, and every now and then she thought she heard the howling ofits wolves and hyenas. And who could tell but some of them might breakfrom their covert and sweep like a shadow across the heath? Indeed, itwas not once nor twice that for a moment she was fully persuaded shesaw a great beast coming leaping and bounding through the moonlight tohave her all to himself. She did not know that not a single evilcreature dared set foot on that heath, or that, if one should do so, itwould that instant wither up and cease. If an army of them had rushedto invade it, it would have melted away on the edge of it, and ceasedlike a dying wave.--She even imagined that the moon was slowly comingnearer and nearer down the sky to take her and freeze her to death inher arms. The wise woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottagelooked asleep, was watching her at some little window. In this,however, she would have been quite right, if she had only imaginedenough--namely, that the wise woman was watching OVER her from thelittle window. But after all, somehow, the thought of the wise womanwas less frightful than that of any of her other terrors, and at lengthshe began to wonder whether it might not turn out that she was noogress, but only a rude, ill-bred, tyrannical, yet on the whole notaltogether ill-meaning person. Hardly had the possibility arisen in hermind, before she was on her feet: if the woman was any thing short ofan ogress, her cottage must be better than that horrible loneliness,with nothing in all the world but a stare; and even an ogress had atleast the shape and look of a human being.

  She darted round the end of the cottage to find the front. But, to hersurprise, she came only to another back, for no door was to be seen.She tried the farther end, but still no door. She must have passed itas she ran--but no--neither in gable nor in side was any to be found.

  A cottage without a door!--she rushed at it in a rage and kicked at thewall with her feet. But the wall was hard as iron, and hurt her sadlythrough her gay silken slippers. She threw herself on the heath, whichcame up to the walls of the cottage on every side, and roared andscreamed with rage. Suddenly, however, she remembered how her screaminghad 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 thencame the thought of her parents in the palace at home. In her mind'seye she saw her mother sitting at her embroidery with the tearsdropping upon it, and her father staring into the fire as if he werelooking for her in its glowing caverns. It is true that if they hadboth been in tears by her side because of her naughtiness, she wouldnot have cared a straw; but now her own forlorn condition somehowhelped her to understand their grief at having lost her, and not only agreat longing to be back in her comfortable home, but a feeble flutterof genuine love for her parents awoke in her heart as well, and sheburst into real tears--soft, mournful tears--very different from thoseof rage and disappointment to which she was so much used. And anothervery remarkable thing was that the moment she began to love her fatherand mother, she began to wish to see the wise woman again. The idea ofher being an ogress vanished utterly, and she thought of her only asone to take her in from the moon, and the loneliness, and the terrorsof the forest-haunted heath, and hide her in a cottage with not even adoor for the horrid wolves to howl against.

  But the old woman--as the princess called her, not knowing that herreal name was the Wise Woman--had told her that she must knock at thedoor: how was she to do that when there was no door? But again shebethought herself--that, if she could not do all she was told, shecould, 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 elseto knock upon--and perhaps the old woman would hear her, and lift herin by some window. Thereupon, she rose at once to her feet, and pickingup a stone, began to knock on the wall with it. A loud noise was theresult, and she found she was knocking on the very door itself. For amoment she feared the old woman would be offended, but the next, therecame 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 thevoice came again, saying,

  "Who is there?"

  And the princess answered,

  "Rosamond."

  Then a second time there was silence. But the princess soon ventured toknock 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 fewold wooden chairs, a fire of fir-wood on the hearth, the smoke of whichsmelt sweet, and a patch of thick-growing heath in one corner. Poor asit was, compared to the grand place Rosamond had left, she felt nolittle satisfaction as she shut the door, and looked around her. Andwhat with the sufferings and terrors she had left outside, the new kindof 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 toher as if her soul had grown larger of a sudden, and she had left thedays of her childishness and naughtiness far behind her. People are soready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that ischanged! Those who are good-tempered because it is a fine day, will beill-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 otherthe rainy. Rosamond, as she sat warming herself by the glow of thepeat-fire, turning over in her mind all that had passed, and feelinghow pleasant the change in her feelings was, began by degrees to thinkhow very good she had grown, and how very good she was to have growngood, and how extremely good she must always have been that she wasable to grow so very good as she now felt she had grown; and she becameso absorbed in her self-admiration as never to notice either that thefire 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 theashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and fell hissing onthe embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was darkness all abouther. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder, soterrified the princess, that she cried aloud for the old woman, butthere came no answer to her cry.

  Then in her terror the princess grew angry, and saying to herself, "Shemust be somewhere in the place, else who was there to open the door tome?" began to shout and yell, and call the wise woman all the bad namesshe had been in the habit of throwing at her nurses. But there came nota single sound in reply.

  Strange to say, the princess never thought of telling herself now hownaughty she was, though that would surely have been reasonable. On thecontrary, she thought she had a perfect right to be angry, for was shenot most desperately ill used--and a princess too? But the wind howledon, and the rain kept
pouring down the chimney, and every now and thenthe lightning burst out, and the thunder rushed after it, as if thegreat lumbering sound could ever think to catch up with the swift light!

  At length the princess had again grown so angry, frightened, andmiserable, all together, that she jumped up and hurried about thecottage with outstretched arms, trying to find the wise woman. Butbeing in a bad temper always makes people stupid, and presently shestruck her forehead such a blow against something--she thought herselfit felt like the old woman's cloak--that she fell back--not on thefloor, though, but on the patch of heather, which felt as soft andpleasant as any bed in the palace. There, worn out with weeping andrage, she soon fell fast asleep.

  She dreamed that she was the old cold woman up in the sky, with no homeand no friends, and no nothing at all, not even a pocket; wandering,wandering forever, over a desert of blue sand, never to get toanywhere, and never to lie down or die. It was no use stopping to lookabout her, for what had she to do but forever look about her as shewent on and on and on--never seeing any thing, and never expecting tosee any thing! The only shadow of a hope she had was, that she might byslow degrees grow thinner and thinner, until at last she wore away tonothing at all; only alas! she could not detect the least sign that shehad yet begun to grow thinner. The hopelessness grew at length sounendurable that she woke with a start. Seeing the face of the wisewoman bending over her, she threw her arms around her neck and held upher mouth to be kissed. And the kiss of the wise woman was like therose-gardens of Damascus.