But she had scarcely sat a moment longer before she was assailed1 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 rustling2, which the princess took for the hissing3 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 hyenas4. And who could tell but some of them might break from their covert5 and sweep like a shadow across the heath? Indeed, it was not once nor twice that for a moment she was fully6 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 wither7 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 frightful8 than that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder whether it might not turn out that she was no ogress, but only a rude, ill-bred, tyrannical, yet on the whole not altogether ill-meaning person. Hardly had the possibility arisen in her mind, before she was on her feet: if the woman was any thing short of an ogress, her cottage must be better than that horrible loneliness, with nothing in all the world but a stare; and even an ogress had at least the shape and look of a human being.
She darted9 round the end of the cottage to find the front. But, to her surprise, 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 it as 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 the wall with her feet. But the wall was hard as iron, and hurt her sadly through her gay silken slippers10. 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 horde11 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 embroidery12 with the tears dropping upon it, and her father staring into the fire as if he were looking for her in its glowing caverns13. 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 longing14 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 remarkable15 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 utterly16, 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 horrid17 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.
“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 hearth19, the smoke of which smelt20 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 scattered21 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 peal22 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 desperately23 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 lumbering24 sound could ever think to catch up with the swift light!
At length the princess had again grown so angry, frightened, and miserable25, 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 alas26! 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.
点击收听单词发音
1 assailed | |
v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 );困扰;质问;毅然应对 | |
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2 rustling | |
n. 瑟瑟声,沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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3 hissing | |
n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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4 hyenas | |
n.鬣狗( hyena的名词复数 ) | |
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5 covert | |
adj.隐藏的;暗地里的 | |
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6 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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7 wither | |
vt.使凋谢,使衰退,(用眼神气势等)使畏缩;vi.枯萎,衰退,消亡 | |
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8 frightful | |
adj.可怕的;讨厌的 | |
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9 darted | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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10 slippers | |
n. 拖鞋 | |
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11 horde | |
n.群众,一大群 | |
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12 embroidery | |
n.绣花,刺绣;绣制品 | |
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13 caverns | |
大山洞,大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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14 longing | |
n.(for)渴望 | |
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15 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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16 utterly | |
adv.完全地,绝对地 | |
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17 horrid | |
adj.可怕的;令人惊恐的;恐怖的;极讨厌的 | |
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18 knuckles | |
n.(指人)指关节( knuckle的名词复数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝v.(指人)指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝 | |
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19 hearth | |
n.壁炉炉床,壁炉地面 | |
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20 smelt | |
v.熔解,熔炼;n.银白鱼,胡瓜鱼 | |
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21 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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22 peal | |
n.钟声;v.鸣响 | |
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23 desperately | |
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地 | |
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24 lumbering | |
n.采伐林木 | |
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25 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
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26 alas | |
int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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