There was once a beautiful woman, and she lived in a small town, though
people said that she belonged rather in a great city, where her gifts
would bring her glory, riches, and a brilliant marriage. In repose, she
was superb; in motion, quite perfectly beautiful of form and carriage,
with all the suave rhythms of a beautiful being.
Her beauty was her sole opulence; the boast of her friends; the
confession of her enemies; the magnet of many lovers; the village's one
statue. She had an ordinary heart, quite commonplace brains, but beauty
that lined the pathway where she walked with eyes of admiration and
delight.
In her town, among her suitors, was one that was a Fool--not a
remarkable fool; a simple, commonplace fool of the sort that abounds
even in villages. He was foolish enough to love the Beauty so completely
that when he made sure that she would not love him he could not endure
to remain in the village, but went far away in the West to get the
torment of her beauty out of his sight. The other suitors, who were
wiser than he, when they found that she was not for them, gave her up
with mild regret as one gives up a fabulous dream, saying: "There was
no hope for us, anyway. If the Fool had stayed at home he would have
been saved from the sight of her, for she is going East, where there are
great fortunes for the very beautiful."
And this she made ready to do, since the praise she had received had
bred ambition in her--a reasonable and right ambition, for why should a
light be hidden under a bushel when it might be set up on high to
illumine a wide garden? Besides, she had not learned to love any of the
unimportant men who loved her important beauty, yet promised it nothing
more than a bushel to hide itself in.
So she made ready to take her beauty to the larger market-place. But the
night before she was to leave the village her father's house took fire
mysteriously. The servant, rushing to her door to waken her, died,
suffocated there before she could cry out. The Beauty woke to find her
bed in flames. She rose with hair and gown ablaze, and, agonizing to a
window, leaped blindly out upon the pavement. There the neighbors
quenched the fire and saved her life--but nothing more.
Thereafter she was a cripple, and her vaunted beauty was dead; it had
gone into the flames, and she had only the ashes of it on her seared
face. Now she had only pity where she had had envy and adulation. Now
there was a turning away of eyes when she hurried abroad on necessary
errands. Now her enemies were tenderly disposed toward her, and
everybody forbore to mention what she had been. Everybody spared her
feelings and talked of other things and looked at the floor or at the
sky when she must be spoken to.
One day the Fool, having heard only that the Beauty was to leave the
village, and having heard nothing of the fire, and not having prospered
where he was, returned to his old home. The first person he saw he asked
of the Beauty, and that one told him of the holocaust of her graces, and
warned him, remembering that the Fool had always spoken his thoughts
without tact or discretion--warned the Fool to disguise when he saw her
the shock he must feel and make no sign that he found her other than he
left her. And the Fool promised.
When he saw her he made a pretense indeed of greeting her as before, but
he was like a man trying to look upon a fog as upon a sunrise; for the
old beauty of her face did not strike his eyes full of its own radiance.
She saw the struggle of his smile and the wincing of his soul. But she
did not wince, for she was by now bitterly accustomed to this reticence
and self-control.
He walked along the street with her, and looked always aside or ahead
and talked of other things. He walked with her to her own gate, and to
her porch, trying to find some light thing to say to leave her. But the
cruelty of the world was like a rusty nail in his heart, and when he put
out his hand and she set in his hand what her once so exquisite fingers
were now, his heart broke in his breast; and when he lifted his eyes to
what her once so triumphant face was now, they refused to withhold their
tears, and his lips could not hold back his thoughts, and he groaned
aloud:
"Oh, you were so beautiful! No one was ever so beautiful as you were
then. But now--I can't stand it! I can't stand it! I wish that I might
have died for you. You were so beautiful! I can see you now as you were
when I told you good-by."
Then he was afraid for what he had said, and ashamed, and he dreaded to
look at her again. He would have dashed away, but she seized him by the
sleeve, and whispered:
"How good it is to hear your words! You are the only one that has told
me that I ever was beautiful since I became what I am. Tell me, tell me
how I looked when you bade me good-by!"
And he told her. Looking aside or at the sky, he told her of her face
like a rose in the moonlight, of her hair like some mist spun and woven
in shadows and glamours of its own, of her long creamy arms and her
hands that a god had fashioned lovingly. He told her of her eyes and
their deeps, and their lashes and the brows above them. He told her of
the strange rhythm of her musical form when she walked or danced or
leaned upon the arm of her chair.
He dared not look at her lest he lose his remembrance of them; but he
heard her laughing, softly at first, then with pride and wild triumph.
And she crushed his hand in hers and kissed it, murmuring: "God bless
you! God bless you!"
For even in poverty it is sweet to know that once we were rich.