The pain I felt in hearing Mrs. Worden coarsely and disrespectfully spoken of opened my eyes to the extent of the veneration and affection I had grown to feel for her. That creature in whom the world saw a desolate woman, whose haughty, old head was held high, and whose piercing, hawk’s eye spied out its weakness, but in whom I saw the wearily faithful, old watcher, by the restless lake, waiting through the long years, always “waiting for the sign.” To me, her sorrows had made her sacred.
I had never seen any creature who seemed so absolutely bloodless as did old Mrs. Worden, and no matter how often I might meet her, the moment my eye took in the waxen pallor of her face, I experienced an uncanny feeling of familiarity. I would ask myself, “Of whom does she remind me?” knowing all the time that I had never seen anyone who resembled her in the slightest degree.
But one day as she sat, as ever, facing the lake, with her eyes cast down upon her cup, the cold, dull light falling upon the clear-cut features of her wax-white face, turning it into a veritable mask of death, I looked steadily at the hollow of her temples--not the faintest pulsation there. I gazed steadily at her throat--not a pulse-beat could I see, though I knew my own full throat would throb and swell at times as though it had an independent existence. As I looked, I thought, if she should run a needle deep into her finger I believe nothing would follow its withdrawal, and so, like a flash, it leaped into my mind who she was like. The very counterpart of old King Duncan! He of the mighty tragedy--the victim of that woman who raved in her crime-haunted sleep; not of pity at his “taking off,” not of remorse, but only of that stupendous surprise: “Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him!”
The good, old man with the wool-white locks, and the saintly soul housed in the parchment-like body--yes! like this he looked. Yet her dagger thrust had been followed by a rush of royal blood that not only “laced” all his followers and “pooled” about his body, but stained her hand with a stain too deep for an ocean’s waves to wash away.
Never since have I read or thought of Duncan without seeing Mrs. Worden’s features beneath the golden round of sovereignty. All the life, the strength, the spirit she had left, was gathered up into the fire of her eyes, and when the ashes of her lids covered their glow, her face was as the face of Duncan, dead. Were Mrs. Worden living now, she would probably be called a “mind reader.” Then many people declared her to be clairvoyant. Be that as it may, she had, beyond doubt, a wonderful power of reading or guessing other people’s thoughts, a power which added greatly to the terror with which she inspired some of her townsmen whose thoughts were not always of a quality or nature to invite close feminine inspection. As for myself, she had divined my thoughts, time and again, with a calm exactitude that filled me with awe; and that day, while I still gazed at her mask-like face, she raised her eyes, looked steadily into mine a moment, and in an even voice asked: “Well? Whom am I like? The Witch of Endor?” and, without a moment’s pause, obediently as a little child, I made answer: “No, ma’am, you are like King Duncan!”