The Goose Girl and Other Stories (30 page)

‘Why do not all your tales tell of beauty?' asked the Queen sternly.

‘Because till now I never knew what beauty was,' answered Malis in a low voice.

The Queen flushed red.

‘In your story about the lawyer you mocked openly at God's law and man's,' she said.

‘The storyteller has laws of his own,' said Malis with more boldness.

‘But even you must respect divine commands, and also the wise statutes by which Jocynthia is governed and the conduct of its people ordered in decency,' said the Queen.

‘Those statutes were made by rich men, among whom there is worse stupidity than among the poor,' said Malis. ‘For the poor man knows he is stupid, but to the rich it seems impossible that a wealthy man should be a fool. That is why—no, that is not why, but that is an excuse for my telling stories about rich lawyers that will make my poor audience laugh. For so they are comforted in their poverty, and also truth is served.'

‘Perhaps you do not approve of kings and queens either?' asked Perdis.

‘Not of kings,' answered Malis.

‘You are impudent,' said the Queen.

‘Do you know the story of the slave-girl who slept in a king's bed?' asked Malis.

‘No,' said the Queen, ‘and I am not going to listen to it'

‘The King was not there at the time,' Malis explained. ‘He had gone hunting. And the slave-girl was in the royal bedchamber only because it was her duty to dust the furniture and turn down the royal sheets. But on this particular morning she stood for a long time gazing at the King's bed, mindless of the dust on the chairs, thinking only of the exquisite, the unimaginable luxury of lying on that yielding mountain of softness, under silken sheets, and with her head on two stuffed clouds of swansdown. Her own bed was a sack on the floor. And at last she decided that despite the danger of being discovered she must lie for just three minutes on that heavenly couch, since she knew it offered some perfect pleasure, and there was nothing in her experience of life to let her imagine its nature; for she had never even known comfort, and this was great luxury. So, faint with excitement, she climbed the five steps at the bedside, and lay on that celestial softness. And such was the comfort to her senses that she instantly fell asleep.

‘But the King had changed his mind about hunting, and suddenly returned to his palace. And when he found a slave in his bed his anger was terrible, and he ordered the girl to be taken out and given a hundred lashes.

‘Now when she heard this sentence the slave-girl laughed; but while she was being whipped she was silent; and after the whipping, and when cool ointments had been laid to her wounded back—for this was no barbarian court—she wept loudly. And the King was greatly struck by her conduct, and asked why she behaved in so strange a way.

‘“I laughed when you ordered me to be whipped,” said the slave-girl, “because then I realised how foolish it is to seek even a moment's happiness in this world. I was silent when I was being whipped because fortitude is a virtue. And after I had been whipped I wept to think that if I had suffered so for sleeping in your bed a short half-hour, how infinitely greater will be your punishment, who have slept in it for ten years!”'

While Perdis was wondering how to answer this the sensible woman Graine came in and said, ‘It is time that this man went, for he has been here a long while.' So Malis, filling his eyes and his heart with a picture of the Queen, left the inn, and the next day some of Perdis's courtiers arrived and took her back to the royal palace of Jocynthia.

During the days that followed Perdis thought a great deal about Malis the storyteller, and especially about the last tale he had told. For people are always most struck with what relates to their own
condition, and find therein a special virtue and significance. Perdis was not a particularly clever girl. She was quite as clever as she had any need to be—Jocynthia was really ruled by her uncle—and her face and body were so beautiful, her disposition so sweet, that no one ever dreamed of criticising her intellect. But this does not alter the fact that she was not really clever, and so she let her thoughts dwell more and more on Malis, quite forgetting his ugliness and the many undesirable things about him, and at last she commanded some of her servants to bring him to court.

Malis went with eagerness and dismay, for he, despite his wisdom, had night and day thought or dreamed of Perdis and more than anything else in the world he wanted to see her again. Yet he feared her, as a martyr glowing with God and in love with death may yet fear the flame into which he must thrust his hand.

When Malis came to court Perdis took him apart and talked to him, and after a while Malis told her an old story that he had often told in the villages, and Perdis laughed—for it was not about Brother Bonamy—and forgot to scold him as she had intended. The next day Malis returned and told her another story, and so on the day following, and the day after that, and both to Queen and storyteller that time in the day when they were together became dearer than all other hours. Yet neither Malis nor Perdis forgot that Perdis was the Queen till a day came when Malis related the masterpiece of all his stories—which has not survived—and then that fact was in some sort overlooked.

For as Malis had long since been wholly taken by the Queen's beauty, so now was the Queen captured by the magic of the storyteller's words, that lit a lamp in darkness, and opened strange rooms behind familiar doors, and wrapped in a transparent envelope of beauty some new meaning in the lives of men and women.

When Malis had told that story—which has so fortunately perished, for beside it all other stories would seem poor and trivial—and when he had finished, the Queen stayed silent for some little time and then said, ‘Malis, what shall I give you in return for the pleasure you have given me? Shall I make you one of my nobles—and then you may always attend me—or shall I give you jewels, my white horses, or a sword of silver hilted with one emerald? Is there anything, Malis, that I may give you to give pleasure to you and to me also?'

Malis, heart and eyes on the Queen's mouth, said hoarsely, ‘A kiss, Queen Perdis.'

Perdis flushed red, and sat, red as a rose, stilly on her throne till her colour faded and left her white as a lily. Then, saying nothing, she stood up, and Malis rose from his stool, and they met midway
between the stool and the throne. The closer they came to each other the more clearly did Malis perceive the Queen's beauty, but Perdis, because she was a woman and had the wisdom of her kind without any special wisdom of her own, lost sight of the storyteller's ugliness and was not repelled by his nose and his slanting eyebrows and his foolish expression; for she had perceived his strength in the creation of beauty.

Malis took the Queen in his arms and bent to kiss her. He was trembling, but Perdis was calm. Their lips met, lightly at first as snow falling, and the Queen's lips were cool as water and sweet as wild honey, so that Malis nearly swooned with rapture, and yet was tortured by a desire to hold her more nearly and press his mouth to hers, harder and harder, till he felt through its softness the hard bone hidden underneath. So his embrace grew closer, his mouth sought fiercely for its desire, and rapture became an agony more exquisite than rapture. And suddenly the Queen put her arms about his neck, and her lips were no longer patient but passionate as his. Now she also was trembling, and they seemed to grow together like bindweed on a thorn, or like hands clasped desperately in prayer.

Then they broke apart, their hearts heavy with sweetness, and stood still and looked at each other. And as they looked their happiness failed, and their eyes filled with horror. For each was changing in the other's sight.

The Queen's face became red and coarse, her nose grew ungainly and long, and her eyebrows slanted upwards; while Malis took on a girlish beauty, his mouth turned pretty and appealing, and his hair was yellow. In a few minutes Malis recognised in the Queen a likeness of himself, and Perdis saw in the storyteller a reflection of her own beauty. Their knees weakened and their hands clutched at what would support them, lest in their terror they should fall. Then, moved by the same impulse, they ran to a mirror and saw there the transformation in themselves, and realised the calamitous interchange which had occurred.

‘What can we do?' whispered the storyteller.

‘Where can we hide?' cried the Queen, and stood with her back against the door. Malis stared in the mirror at the beauty which had stolen his mind.

For that is what had happened. Loosed from its hold by the surrender of his body and made volatile by the fire of his passion, Malis's soul had flown out and found a new dwelling in the Queen's breast, that in like manner had been emptied by the flight to Malis's heart of her rapt spirit. And each soul in its new habitation had rebuilt
its outer walls, beauty for the Queen's soul and a lively ugliness for the storyteller's.

‘Let us run away,' said Malis, and stammered so that his words became nonsense.

‘We must do something,' said the Queen and tried to quiet her sobbing. But at that moment the door opened and her uncle came in with some courtiers and ladies, among whom the utmost consternation immediately spread. Malis would certainly have been assassinated had they known which Malis really was. But that was not easy to discover, until the Queen spoke in a queenly voice and said very honestly: ‘This metamorphosis is not our fault, but the fault of love which suddenly assailed us. Malis must not be hurt, for I shared equally with him, and neither of us suspected this harm which has fallen. We kissed, and it must be that our minds, each set on the other, flew thither and bred in new flesh these old semblances. That is not the common sequel of kissing, but perchance we kissed too closely—Malis is not to be hurt, I say!—Now let us go to our own apartments and consider what must or may be done. See that Malis takes no hurt.'

No treaties were made, nor new laws passed in Jocynthia for the next few days, and little business was transacted at court beyond vain discussion of the fantastic catastrophe which had befallen Queen Perdis. Malis discovered to his dismay that he could no longer tell stories. He did not see things as he had been used to see them. Their points were blunted, their angels obtuse, and their colours dim. They had strangly lost significance and the shape that would fit them into a narrative. And words no longer behaved for him like balls in a juggler's hands, but fell to the ground, higgledy-piggledy, and would not even bounce when they fell. He was no longer Malis the storyteller, and his new-won beauty only recommended him to gadabout old women.

Perdis, on the contrary, saw the whole world as if some strange sun were lighting it, and what had previously been vague emotion now translated itself in apt and easy words, and she expressed her opinion in sentences both pliant and profuse. She enjoyed some novel sensations of power and comprehension. But whenever she looked in the mirror and saw her dreadful nose, those eyebrows, and that ridiculous expression, she bitterly regretted her lost beauty.

In a man's face that uncouth crimson beak was tolerable and possibly amusing, but seen above her white and lovely bosom it was horrible. ‘Give me back my beauty!' cried Perdis, and lamented her loss in words that owed their cogency and coherence to Malis's wit. Malis could only gaze at the reflection of his lovely face and weakly, ineffectually, bemoan the loss of his creative mind.

All the wisest men in Jocynthia set to work to seek a way of escape from this trying situation, but as nothing of the sort had ever happened before they were hampered in their efforts by lack of experience. No useful suggestion was made until Geroin, the oldest of Jocynthia's counsellors, awoke one morning with a brilliant solution. He could scarcely wait till he had dressed, so eager was he to convey it to the Queen and so sure he felt of its efficacy.

‘The beauty of my remedy,' he said, ‘and almost a guarantee of its ability to cure this strange disorder of your Majesty's countenance, lies in its extreme simplicity. All the previous endeavours to rectify your Majesty's unfortunate malaise have erred on the side of undue complication, as though abundance of formulae and a gross variety of ingredients should command success by the mere weight of numbers. But that is not so. I have frequently observed . . .'

‘Come to the point,' said the Queen, ‘and tell us what you propose.'

Geroin mournfully shook his head to have his fine long speech thus rudely cut off, and then said: ‘That you and Malis kiss each other again.'

A gasp of admiration arose from the crowded court. Geroin's remedy was indeed simple. So simple that everyone kicked himself for not having thought of it before; and the underlying theory, that what could happen once might happen again, was surely sound enough.

‘Let Malis the storyteller be summoned,' said the Queen thoughtfully.

All the greedy dowagers and unsatisfied old women grinned and languished at Malis as he came in, but the men stared at him sourly.

He listened to what Geroin told him, and turned to the Queen.

‘It is better for both of us that we should return to our proper selves,' she said. ‘I shall always remember these weeks of knowledge when your wit has opened my eyes and taught my tongue the use of words; but I am a woman, and cleverness is not everything. Once I was beautiful, and I would be beautiful again. My looking-glass tells me a truth stronger than all your shining sentences can frame. For a woman beauty is best; strength of arm and intellect is man's good. Kiss me once again, Malis, so our minds and our countenances may be called our own.'

During the past few weeks Malis had been as unhappy as the Queen, for having lost his wits he felt, as many other young men of the time felt, that life was worthless and his own existence without meaning. So he was willing enough to re-exchange his beauty, which had brought him nothing but a few presents from the gadabout old women, for the
mind that had given such happy birth to a thousand lovely or merry tales. And he went forward to kiss the Queen.