The Wise Woman, George MacDonald [epub e ink reader TXT] 📗

stroked the little girl’s bare feet, which were by her, half buried in the soft moss, and as she ended she laid her cheek on them and kissed them.

“Dear princess,” said the little girl, “the flowers will not always wither at your touch. Try now—only do not pluck it. Flowers ought never to be plucked except to give away. Touch it gently,”

A silvery flower, something like a snowdrop, grew just within her reach. Timidly she stretched out her hand and touched it. The flower trembled, but neither shrank nor withered.

“Touch it again,” said the child.

It changed colour a little, and Rosamond fancied it grew larger.

“Touch it again,” said the child.

It opened and grew until it was as large as a narcissus, and changed and deepened in colour till it was a red glowing gold.

Rosamond gazed motionless. When the transfiguration of the flower was perfected, she sprang to her feet with clasped hands, but for very ecstasy of joy stood speechless, gazing at the child.

“Did you never see me before, Rosamond?” she asked.

“No, never,” answered the princess. “I never saw anything half so lovely.”

“Look at me,” said the child.

And as Rosamond looked, the child began, like the flower, to grow larger. Quickly through every gradation of growth she passed, until she stood before her a woman perfectly beautiful, neither old nor young; for hers was the old age of everlasting youth.

Rosamond was utterly enchanted, and stood gazing without word or movement, until she could endure no more delight. Then her mind collapsed to the thought—had the pony grown too? She glanced round. There was no pony, no grass, no flowers, no bright-birded forest—but the cottage of the wise woman—and before her, on the hearth of it, the goddess-child, the only thing unchanged.

She gasped with astonishment.

“You must set out for your father’s palace immediately,” said the lady.

“But where is the wise woman?” asked Rosamond, looking all about.

“Here!” said the lady.

And Rosamond, looking again, saw the wise woman, folded as usual in her long dark cloak. “It was you, then, after all!” she cried in delight, and kneeled before her, burying her face in her garments.

“It always is me, after all,” said the wise woman, smiling.

“And it was you all the time?”

“It always is me all the time.”

“But which is the real you?” asked Rosamond; “this or that?”

“Or a thousand others?” returned the wise woman. “But the one you have just seen is the likest to the real me that you are able to see just yet—but-. And that me you could not have seen a little while ago.—But, my darling child,” she went on, lifting her up and clasping her to her bosom, “you must not think, because you have seen me once, that therefore you are capable of seeing me at all times. No; there are many things in you yet that must be changed before that can be. Now, however, you will seek me. Every time you feel you want me, that is a sign I am wanting you. There are yet many rooms in my house you may have to go through; but when you need no more of them, then you will be able to throw flowers like the little girl you saw in the forest.”

The princess gave a sigh.

“Do not think,” the wise woman went on, “that the things you have seen in my house are mere empty shows? You do not know, you cannot yet think, how living and true they are. Now you must go.

She led her once more into the great hall, and there showed her the picture of her father’s capital, and his palace with the brazen gates.

“There is your home,” she said. “Go to it.”

The princess understood, and a flush of shame rose to her forehead. She turned to the wise woman and said:—

“Will you forgive all my naughtiness, and all the trouble I have given you?”

“If I had not forgiven you, I would never have taken the trouble to punish you. If I had not loved you, do you think I would have carried you away in my cloak?”

“How could you love such an ugly, illtempered, rude, hateful little wretch?”

“I saw, through it all, what you were going to be,” said the wise woman, kissing her. “But remember you have yet only begun to be what I saw.”

“I will try to remember,” said the princess, holding her cloak, and looking up in her face.

“Go, then,” said the wise woman.

Rosamond turned away on the instant, ran to the picture, stepped over the frame of it, heard a door close gently, gave one glance back, saw behind her the loveliest palace—front of alabaster, gleaming in the pale-yellow light of an early summer-morning, looked again to the eastward, saw the faint outline of her father’s city against the sky, and ran off to reach it.

It looked much further off now than when it seemed a picture, but the sun was not yet up, and she had the whole of a summer-day before her.

CHAPTER XIV.

The soldiers sent out by the king, had no great difficulty in finding Agnes’s father and mother, of whom they demanded if they knew anything of such a young princess as they described. The honest pair told them the truth in every point—that, having lost their own child and found another, they had taken her home, and treated her as their own; that she had indeed called herself a princess, but they had not believed her, because she did not look like one; that, even if they had, they did not know how they could have done differently, seeing they were poor people, who could not afford to keep any idle person about the place; that they had done their best to teach her good ways, and had not parted with her until her bad temper rendered it impossible to put up with her any longer; that, as to the king’s proclamation, they heard little of the world’s news on their lonely hill, and it had never reached them; that if it had, they did not know how either of them could have gone such a distance from home, and left their sheep or their cottage, one or the other, uncared for.

“You must learn, then, how both of you can go, and your sheep must take care of your cottage,” said the lawyer, and commanded the soldiers to bind them hand and foot.

Heedless of their entreaties to be spared such an indignity, the soldiers obeyed, bore them to a cart, and set out for the king’s palace, leaving the cottage door open, the fire burning, the pot of potatoes boiling upon it, the sheep scattered over the hill, and the dogs not knowing what to do.

Hardly were they gone, however, before the wise woman walked up, with Prince behind her, peeped into the cottage, locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and then walked away up the hill. In a few minutes there arose a great battle between Prince and the dog which filled his former place—a well-meaning but dull fellow, who could fight better than feed. Prince was not long in showing him that he was meant for his master, and then, by his efforts, and directions to the other dogs, the sheep were soon gathered again, and out of danger from foxes and bad dogs. As soon as this was done, the wise woman left them in charge of Prince, while she went to the next farm to arrange for the folding of the sheep, and the feeding of the dogs.

When the soldiers reached the palace, they were ordered to carry their prisoners at once into the presence of the king and queen, in the throne room. Their two thrones stood upon a high dais at one end, and on the floor, at the foot of the dais, the soldiers laid their helpless prisoners. The queen commanded that they should be unbound, and ordered them to stand up. They obeyed with the dignity of insulted innocence, and their bearing offended their foolish majesties.

Meantime the princess, after a long day’s journey, arrived at the palace, and walked up to the sentry at the gate.

“Stand back,” said the sentry.

“I wish to go in, if you please,” said the princess gently.

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the sentry, for he was one of those dull people who form their judgment from a person’s clothes, without even looking in his eyes; and as the princess happened to be in rags, her request was amusing, and the booby thought himself quite clever for laughing at her so thoroughly. “I am the princess,” Rosamond said quietly.

“What princess?” bellowed the man. “The princess Rosamond. Is there another?” she answered and asked. But the man was so tickled at the wondrous idea of a princess in rags, that he scarcely heard what she said for laughing. As soon as he recovered a little, he proceeded to chuck the princess under the chin, saying—

“You’re a pretty girl, my dear, though you ain’t no princess.”

Rosamond drew back with dignity.

“You have spoken three untruths at once,” she said. “I am not pretty, and I am a princess, and if I were dear to you, as I ought to be, you would not laugh at me because I am badly dressed, but stand aside, and let me go to my father and mother.”

The tone of her speech, and the rebuke she gave him, made the man look at her; and looking at her, he began to tremble inside his foolish body, and wonder whether he might not have made a mistake. He raised his hand in salute, and said—

“I beg your pardon, Miss, but I have express orders to admit no child whatever within the palace gates. They tell me his majesty the king says he is sick of children.”

“He may well be sick of me!” thought the princess; “but it can’t mean that he does not want me home again.—I don’t think you can very well call me a child,” she said, looking the sentry full in the face.

“You ain’t very big, Miss,” answered the soldier, “but so be you say you ain’t a child, I’ll take the risk. The king can only kill me, and a man must die once.”

He opened the gate, stepped aside, and allowed her to pass. Had she lost her temper, as every one but the wise woman would have expected of her, he certainly would not have done so.

She ran into the palace, the door of which had been left open by the porter when he followed the soldiers and prisoners to the throne-room, and bounded up the stairs to look for her father and mother. As she passed the door of the throne-room she heard an unusual noise in it, and running to the king’s private entrance, over which hung a heavy curtain, she peeped past the edge of it, and saw, to her amazement, the shepherd and shepherdess standing like culprits before the king and queen, and the same moment heard the king say—

“Peasants, where is the princess Rosamond?”

“Truly, sire, we do not know,” answered the shepherd.

“You ought to know,” said the king.

“Sire, we could keep her no longer.”

“You confess, then,” said the king, suppressing the outbreak of the wrath that boiled up in him, “that you turned her out of your house?”

For the king had been informed by a swift messenger of all that had passed long before the arrival of the prisoners.

“We did, sire; but not only could we keep her no longer, but we knew not that she was the princess.”

“You ought to have known, the moment you cast your eyes upon her,” said the king.