WHICH IMPROVES OUR ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE GRASSHOPPER MAN.
'I am going to Nullepart on Sunday,' cried little Peter.
'_Pfui!_ what a traveller,' answered the charcoal-burner. 'And how do
you go? In a coach and four, on the back of a fiery dragon, in the
giant's seven-league boots, or flying through the air with the wild
ducks, there, crying "Quack, quack, quack, we are all going south
because the snow is coming? "'
'I shall walk, of course, like a big boy,' said little Peter. 'But the
snow isn't coming just yet, is it?'
'They all say it will be here in a day or two.'
John Paqualin shook his head, and looked up at the sky. He was sitting
on the rough, wooden bench set against the southern wall of his hut,
with his back bent, and his elbows resting on his thin knees. Little
Peter climbed up on to the bench beside him. It was rather difficult,
you see, because the bench was a very high one, to suit the length of
the charcoal-burner's long legs.
'Who are they?' asked the boy, as soon as he had settled himself
comfortably. He tried to lean forward with his elbows on his knees like
his companion; but his short legs were dangling, and his feet were far
off the ground, and he did not find it altogether easy to keep his
balance.
'Who are they?' he asked.
'Oh, the earth spirits, who live underground, and the air spirits,
who wander up and down the sky. Look at the great arc of white light
they are setting up in the north-east as a signal. And the wild ducks,
flying overhead. And the moaning in the pine-trees. And Madelon, the
old sow there; see how she runs about with her mouth full of grass,
wanting to make herself a lair, because she sees the storm-wind coming.
They are all telling what will happen. They are wiser than men. They
know beforehand. Men only know afterwards.'
Paqualin paused a moment, and sat staring at Madelon, the old black
sow, with her floppety ears, as she ran to and fro, and grouted
about in the heaps of charcoal refuse and in the tumble-down garden
fence--half smothered in tall withered grass and weeds--grunting and
barking the while like one distracted.
'Everything in the world talks to me,' he continued, speaking slowly.
'All day long, all night long, the air is full of voices.'
Peter wriggled himself a little further back on the bench, for, in the
excitement of conversation, he had slipped very near the edge of it and
was in great danger of falling head first on to the ground.
'I don't hear them,' he said presently.
Paqualin laughed. His laugh was cracked and shrill, like his voice; and
Peter was always a trifle startled by it somehow.
'Never hear them, little Peter,' he cried, 'never hear them. A few men
will call you a poet, but most men will only call you mad, if you do.'
'What is mad?' asked Peter. He felt very much interested. 'Is it a good
or a bad thing?'
The charcoal-burner looked round at the boy sharply, with his mouth a
little open. His strange eyes were glowing dull red. He waited a minute
before replying.
'Eh,' he said, 'what an innocent! Why, it is a good thing, of course.
An excellent, splendid, glorious thing. Look at me, little Peter. I'll
tell you a secret. Can you keep it? Here--quite close--I'll whisper--I
am mad--yes, that's the secret. A grand one. See all the blessings it
brings me. I live alone in the wood and burn charcoal.'
'Yes,' said Peter, 'I should like that.'
'I have no wife or child to bother me. On feast-days, when I was a lad,
the pretty girls never plagued me to dance with them, or asked me to
steal kisses.' The charcoal-burner laughed again--'I am saved from
all sins of pride and vanity. Think what a gain!--for as I go down
the street, the very children tell me my faults, crying, "Look at the
grasshopper legs, look at the crook-back;" and the women shut their
eyes and turn their heads away, saying, "Heaven avert the bad omen!
What a frightful fellow!" Such observations, little Peter, are sharp
discipline; and teach humility more thoroughly than any penance the
priest can lay on you. Oh, yes! no doubt it is a capital thing to be
mad. It saves you a deal of trouble--nobody cares for you, nurses you
when you're sick, feeds you when you're hungry, mourns for you when you
die.'
Paqualin laughed again, and getting up stretched his long, ungainly
limbs, and shook himself till his hair hung like a red cloud about his
stooping shoulders.
'Ah! ha, it's splendid,' he cried, 'all alone with the spirits
and voices, with the beasts, and the trees, and the rain, and the
starlight. No one to love you but the fire when you feed it with
branches, or the swine when you drive them back to their stye in the
twilight.'
Now, to tell the truth, poor little Peter was becoming rather confused
and nervous, with all this wild, incomprehensible talk of the
charcoal-burner's. He had never seen his friend in this strange humour
before. And he felt as much alarmed and embarrassed as he would have
done if that well-conducted animal Cincinnatus had suddenly turned upon
him, with bristling hair and a great tail, spitting and swearing, in
the middle of their innocent games of play. He sat very still, staring
anxiously at his companion.
But when Paqualin threw himself down on the bench again, and putting
his lean, brown face very close to little Peter's, said to him with a
sort of cry:--
'Think of it, think of it, child, nobody, day nor night, all through
the long years of life, nobody ever to love you!'--the boy's
embarrassment changed into absolute fear, and he scrambled down off the
bench in a great hurry, hardly able to keep from sobbing.
'If you please, John Paqualin, I should like to go home to my mother,'
he said; and then he trotted away as fast as he could along the black
cinder-path across the little garden.
'Mother, mother,' echoed the charcoal-burner. 'Sweet, fair wife, and
sweet mother! Have pity, dear Lord, on those who may have neither.'
Then he got up, and walked after the child, in his awkward way, calling
gently to him:--
'Here, little mouse, come here. Don't run away so fast. There is
nothing to hurt you.'
Peter had nearly reached the garden gate; but there in the opening
stood Madelon, the sow, grunting and snorting, her great jaws working,
and her wicked, little eyes twinkling.
'Come, come,' called Paqualin again, coaxingly. 'There are no more
disquieting secrets to tell you. Never fear. See now, I have a box of
nuts indoors, under my bed--beauties--beauties; will you try them?
Cr-r-rack go the shells, out pop the nice kernels--crunch, crunch,
crunch, between sharp, white, little teeth eating them all up. Eh! nuts
are appetising, are they? You will not run away just yet, then, will
you, dear little mouse.'
Now Peter would have felt a great deal safer at home it is true; but
in the first place, there stood the hideous Madelon blocking the way,
and he was very much afraid of her. And then in the second place, he
did not wish to be uncivil to his old friend the charcoal-burner. So,
finally, he went back, and climbed up the high bench again.
'I will not have any of those nuts, though, please,' he said decidedly.
For he wished Paqualin to understand that it was not greediness but
friendship that made him return.
'No nuts!' cried the charcoal-burner, smiling kindly at him. 'Eh, what
a proud, little soul.'
And then John Paqualin really became delightful. And as he and the
little boy sat together in the shelter of the high pine-trees, and
of the brown, wooden wall of the tumble-down dwelling-house behind
them, he told many most interesting stories. For, you see, the
charcoal-burner, perhaps from living so much alone, perhaps from
being what some persons call 'mad,' knew a number of things which
you could not find in the pages of the very largest Encyclopædia of
Universal Information--though they really are every bit as true as
half the information you would find there. He knew all about the
elves who live in the fox-glove bells; and the water-nixies who haunt
the stream side; and about the gnomes who work with tiny spades and
pickaxes, searching for the precious metals underground. And he could
tell where the will-of-the-wisp gets the light for his lantern, with
which he dances over bogs and marshy places, trying to lead weak-minded
and unscientific travellers astray; and he knew all about the pot of
fairy gold that stands just where the base of the rainbow touches the
earth, and which moves away and away as you run to find it, shifting
its ground forever, so that those who will seek it in the end come home
hot, and breathless, and angry, and empty handed, for all their pains.
And he could also tell of the old black dwarf who lives in a cave in
the heart of the forest, which no one can ever find, though they may
search for it for a year and a day; and who, being a mischievous and
ill-conditioned dwarf, bewitches the cows so that they go dry; and the
hens so that they steal their nests and lay their eggs in all manner
of holes and corners, instead of in the hen-roosts like right-minded,
well-conducted fowls; and who rides the horses all night long in the
stable, so that when the carter goes in, in the dewy morning, to give
them their fodder, he finds them trembling and starting and bathed in
sweat; and who turns the cream sour in summer, or sits on the handle of
the churn--though you can't see him--so that though the good housewife
turns and turns, till her arms and back ache, and the heat stands in
drops on her forehead, the butter will not come and the day's work is
well-nigh wasted.
And Paqualin could tell the story, moreover, of the dirty little boy,
Eli, who insisted on eating raw turnips and cabbages, and distressing
his friends and relatives by picking bits out of the pig pail, instead
of sitting up to table like a little gentleman, and who utterly
refused to have his hair combed or his face washed:--
'And, at last, one night,' said the charcoal-burner, 'as a punishment
for all his nasty ways, the fairies came and turned him into a great
black crow, which flew out of the bedroom window in the chilly dawn.
You may often hear him now, little Peter, croaking in the tree-tops, or
see him skulking about the farmyard and gardens looking out for scraps
and refuse.'
'How long ago was he turned into a crow?' asked Peter.
'Eh, many and many a year ago,' answered the charcoal-burner. 'I saw
him only yesterday, and he has grown quite old and grey. But the time
of his probation will not be over yet awhile, for bad habits are slow
to die, though quick enough to breed in us, little Peter. I throw him
a crust of bread now and again, the poor old villain. I've a sort of
fellow feeling for him, you see, for I am an ugly, old vagabond too.'
'Bless the child, there he is at last! Ah, my poor heart, how it beats
with all this running.'
The speaker was Eliza. She stood on the other side of the tumble-down
garden fence, with her hand pressed to her side, and a shawl over her
head. She was breathing very hard. Eliza was one of those persons who
like to make the most of an injury.
'Come home, Peter, come at once,' she went on. 'Don't you know it's
half an hour past dinner-time? Here have I been trapesing half over
the country to find you--a pretty occupation for a respectable, young,
servant woman like me, too. All the men were out, and nothing would do
but that I must go racing about like a wild creature, wasting good shoe
leather in looking for you. Ah! my poor heart.'
Eliza leant up against the fence and panted a little.
As Peter got down off the bench, Paqualin bent forward and patted the
boy's curly head.
'Run away, little mouse,' he said, 'but come again some day and see me.'
'Am I to wait here all night,' cried Eliza, 'for you, Peter? Have you
not had enough yet of the society of his highness the charcoal-burner?
No, no, don't speak to me,' she added, addressing Paqualin. 'I have no
desire to hold any communication with you. Why, merely seeing you as
you pass makes me squint for an hour afterwards. Come along, child.'
[Illustration]
And seizing Peter's fat, pudgy hand in her large, red one, Eliza
marched him off at a sharp pace down the forest path.
'Hey ho, hey ho, life is a bit long for some of us,' said the
charcoal-burner.