PICTURES IN THE FOG.
LOVE stretched her fair hand, and Kitty could not tell if the fog grew
transparent, allowing her to see what it had hitherto hidden, or if a
picture painted itself thereupon.
Her eyes, fixed upon the dim mist, seemed to open wider and wider.
She saw a dreadful thing. An immense cobweb, and in it a child was
caught. A big black spider was weaving its threads around the captive.
Hand and foot the little one was bound. Kitty saw the child’s figure
distinctly; its pretty hair shone through the web. How cunningly the
spider had entangled it; weaving and knotting its gluey thread about the
round throat, the bright eyes, across the rosy lips, the tiny ears,
hands, and feet. The child did not stir; it remained quiet in its gray,
filmy prison. But there were other children in the fog, some entangled
in webs almost as large and strong, while others had but a silver thread
or two gleaming about their necks and brows. These played merrily about,
not seeing the black wary spider watching above their head, and every
now and then shooting out, spinning and knotting a thread about them.
[Illustration]
“What is that dreadful cobweb?” asked Kitty in a whisper, drawing nearer
to Love.
“Speak to the children; they will tell you,” replied her guide.
But Kitty only crept closer to her, and drew the fair robes around her,
peeping fearfully out from her hiding-place.
“I will explain,” said Love. “These are the children who tell
falsehoods. Every falsehood a child tells its spirit gets more and more
entangled in a web. The spider shoots a thread around it. One falsehood
leads to another, so the web grows and grows, and the little captive
spirit finds it harder to escape from its wretchedness and misery.”
“Can they never break away?” asked Kitty, drawing a breath of relief as
the fog-picture slowly faded and the mist closed over it like a curtain.
Love’s face was sad and its meaning difficult to guess. Before she could
answer there came a sound of little feet through the fog, a faint tramp,
tramp. Not a merry run or dance; but as if restless, invisible little
feet were going round and round, backward and forward. Then Kitty saw
the image of something forming itself on the fog. Round and round,
zigzag, to the right, to the left, rose a structure with walls made of
thorns.
“What is that?” she whispered.
“Do you know what a labyrinth is, or a maze?” asked Love.
“It is a place very difficult to get out of,” answered Kitty; and she
grew quite giddy looking at this rolling, crooked, curving,
spinning-about, straightening place.
Presently she saw that it was crowded with children. It was the tramp of
their little feet she had heard, for they were running, running.
“Why, that is not punishment, that is play,” said Kitty, astonished.
“Speak to them,” answered Love.
Some of the children were running with quite a spirited air, as if they
were enjoying the race; their heads were uplifted, their chins poked
out; others plodded on wearily with a dogged expression, while some
looked angry and miserable; and others again seemed dazed and wandered
foolishly up and down, going backward and forward about the same spot.
Tramp, tramp, went those impetuous, tired, foolish feet. Kitty advanced
a step or two, then some of the children trooped up toward the spot
nearest to her. “We want to get out! We want to get out!” they said in
fretful voices that sounded a long way off yet were quite distinct. “We
want to get out! We want to get back to Obedience Path,” they repeated,
looking anxiously at Kitty, as if they thought she might show them the
way out of this labyrinth.
[Illustration]
Kitty looked eagerly about to see if she could help them to find the
right path; but every pathway was so turning and twisting, so crooked
and intricate, that it made her giddy to try and follow its curves and
caprices. She shook her head sadly, and the children then left her, and
tramp, tramp went those restless little feet.
One child alone remained behind, going backward and forward like a
little bird flitting about the door of its cage.
“I want to get out! I want to get out!” he said plaintively.
“What is this place?” asked Kitty.
“It is Disobedience Maze,” said the child in a thin, clear voice. “We
are the disobedient children, and because we would follow our own way
instead of the one that we were told to go we have lost the Path of
Obedience. I would go to the right when I was told to go to the left. I
would go back when I was told to go on. I would do what I was told not
to do, and one day I found I had got into this miserable place, which is
so full of dreadful troubles, and thorns, and twistings. I am so tired!
I am so tired! I want to find my way to Obedience Path.”
Even as he spoke the vision began to fade and disappear, and the sound
of the little feet grew fainter and fainter. Only the childish voices
asking to “get back into Obedience Path” seemed still to float out from
the fog curtain that had stolen over the scene.
Kitty felt very sorry for those poor children tramping in Disobedience
Maze, and restlessly seeking the way out.
“Won’t they ever get out?” she asked with tears in her eyes.
“Every child has a chance,” answered Love. “But, hush!—wait—you will
know by and by.”
Kitty saw that another vision was forming on the fog. She saw a cold,
gray, flat plain strewn with what looked like lumps of ice very queerly
shaped. Over the plain moaned a shivering sound like that of the wind.
“I—I—I!” It turned to a shrill whistle. “Me—e—e—me—me!”
As the vision grew clearer Kitty perceived that what looked like lumps
of ice were really frozen children. Some of them were just turning into
ice. They were motionless, as if frozen to the ground; but the eyes of
all were living, peering, hungry eyes, turning here and there with alert
watchfulness. Their hands were also alive; they were black and blue with
cold, but stretched out, opening and shutting, clutching at everything
they could lay hold of, such as the bits of sticks or rags that strewed
the ground.
There was something terrible and grotesque in the sight of those
ice-children, motionless but for their keen eyes watching, and hands
grabbing, clutching. Kitty now perceived that their lips moved also, and
that they and not the wind uttered that shivering “I—I—I! Me—me—me!”
“Who are they?” she whispered.
Once more Love motioned to her to speak to them; but Kitty drew back.
She was as much afraid of talking to them as she had been to the child
in the cobweb. It was like talking to dead children. As she shrank away
the shrill, airy voices began a song her nurse used to sing as a
reproach to her when she was selfish:
“I said to myself as I walked by myself,
And myself said again to me:
‘Take heed of thyself, look after thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.’”
They sang it together, but all in a different key and in a different
measure, so that the effect produced was a shrill discord, as if rasping
rattles, and wheezy whistles, and cracked stringed instruments were
playing in concert, but each on its own account.
[Illustration]
“Well, I must say,” cried Kitty, forgetting her fright, “if I sang those
ugly words, at any rate I would sing them in time and all together.”
“We never do anything together,” said the child nearest to her, who
happened not to be quite turned into an icicle. “We always cry when
others laugh, and laugh when others cry. We always take all we can and
do all we can to prevent others from getting anything. That is the way
to turn to ice. Every time you do this your heart gets a little colder,
a little harder, a little lonelier. It’s quite easy to turn to ice; you
have only to think always of yourself.”
“But I don’t want to turn to ice on any account. I don’t want to be cold
and hard and lonely. It is the very last thing I want. Nobody would love
me,” cried Kitty indignantly.
“But I love myself,” said the ice-child, with a shiver. “I wish I could
like what I grab,” it went on, turning beady eyes on the rags and
sticks, gathered in a heap by its side; “but I cannot; I only don’t want
any one else to have them. Oh, I wish I could thaw!” it said quite
suddenly and unexpectedly.
“We wish we could thaw! We wish we could thaw!” sighed all the children
together; and the vision faded, slowly faded away.
“Won’t they ever grow warm again?” asked Kitty, blinking away some
tears.
Love looked almost as sad as when Kitty had questioned her about the
cobweb, and her face was as difficult to read.
Now there came from behind the fog curtain a sharp sound of smackings.
“Whippings!” said Kitty with a gleam of fun in her eyes that dried up
the lingering tears.
But it was not whippings that the fog vision showed. Again she saw a
crowd of children, and each child was boxing its own ears, pulling its
own hair, pinching, biting, scratching its own hands or face; making
grimaces the trace of which remained. Kitty recognized some of the
children she had seen in Daddy Coax’s schoolroom. There was the child
who had slapped his kind old face: she was slapping her own with vigor.
Slap, slap on each cheek sounded the smack of the little furious hands.
There was the boy who had tried to kick Daddy Coax’s shins, kicking
away—kick, kick—at his own.
[Illustration]
“That is a splendid punishment,” said Kitty, nodding approvingly and
smiling broadly.
It was an extraordinary sight to behold, clinched small fists raised as
if to hurt some one else suddenly turning round and administering a
sound cuff, bang, bang on their owner’s ears; to behold those spread-out
tiny fingers pulling away viciously at their owner’s hair. It was a
sight ludicrous and yet sad. Such swollen noses, blackened eyes; such
battered, bruised, wounded children, inflicting great misery upon
themselves, making themselves so ugly by grimaces that left their mark
behind.
“Who are you?” cried Kitty, much excited.
“We are the passionate, willful, ungrateful children,” said a boy whom
Kitty recognized to be the one who had broken Daddy Coax’s flute. He
looked dismally at her and then gave himself two big thumps, one on his
nose and one on his ear. “Never you hurt others, especially those who
are kind to you. It’s yourself you hurt all the while,” he went on.
“It’s dreadful pain when you come to feel it! dreadful! and you can’t
leave off, you must keep on hurting yourself, not till you get the kiss
of forgiveness. I should like to see dear old Daddy Coax again. I should
like to give him a kiss and to tell him I am sorry.”
“We are sorry,” cried all the children, and their cry still sounded as
the picture faded away.
“Who gives the kiss of forgiveness? Will they ever get the kiss?” asked
Kitty anxiously, for she had changed her mind about the punishment.
“There is one day in the year when every child can get it,” said the
pale lady.
Before Kitty could ask another question she saw that another picture was
appearing in the fog. The ground was strewn with pretty feathers of
birds, with smashed speckled eggs, with cozy nests all spoiled. Hosts of
lovely butterflies flapped about with crushed wings that thoughtless
little hands had broken. Dream pussies, looking starved and in pain,
haunted the place, curving their backs as if coming to be stroked and to
rub themselves against friendly legs. Faithful-eyed dogs limped about.
The mist seemed full of pipings of sorrowing birds, of reproachful mews,
of pitiful whines, and all the children seemed grieved. Kitty recognized
some of those who had dragged her along and would have robbed the bird’s
nest.
“I know those are the cruel children. I hope they will be well
punished,” said Kitty.
“They are punished. Look at their tears,” said the pale lady. “They did
not know the pain they gave, because they did not think. Now they know
when they have killed one of God’s dear innocent creatures they cannot
mend it again, as a toy can be mended. They cannot mend the butterflies’
wings. They cannot give back the poor little yellow-beaked young to the
grieving parent birds.”
Kitty saw that some of the children were shutting their ears not to hear
the pipings and other cries of pain; others closing their eyes not to
see the dead birds, the wounded cats and dogs. She presently perceived
that a little girl was speaking to her. She recognized the child who
could not speak distinctly, who had killed the butterfly.
“I am always seeing it. It flaps about me,” moaned the baby voice. “It
keeps saying to me here, ‘I was so merry that day. The sun was shining
and I was going to see how my friends the daisies were getting on, and
if the buttercups were golden as yesterday. I was playing, as you love
to play, and just as I was merriest, with the sunshine on my wings, you
came and struck me like a big hammer. I had never done you any harm, and
I was so merry.’ Oh, I wish I could make it live again! I wish I could
make it live again!” moaned the baby voice.”
“The birds are worse, whose nests you have robbed, and whose little ones
you have killed,” cried a boy. “They keep flying about you. They won’t
leave you alone. They scream in your ear, ‘Good, good world! happy,
beautiful world, but for the cruel children in it.’”
“It is I who am the most miserable,” sobbed another boy.
He was running as if trying to escape something pursuing him, closing
his eyes and shutting his ears, while an ugly dog, with big flabby paws
and a nose like a black quivering mushroom, one ear with a slit in it,
and a tail something like a curled-up sausage, followed him, always
jumping, always trying to lick his face.
“Was that your dog?” asked Kitty.
The boy stopped. “Yes, his name was ‘Trot.’ He loved me, he trusted me,
he followed me wherever I went; but I grew ashamed of him, for every one
called him a cur. The other boys laughed at me and nicknamed me ‘Master
Mongrel,’ so I made up my mind to get rid of him. Twice I managed to
lose him, but he found his way home, and when he saw me he licked my
hand and nearly wagged off his tail with gladness. One winter day I took
him off for a long walk; he trotted trustfully by my side as if it were
a holiday. I took him to a wood a long way off, and I tied him to a tree
with a cord and left him there. I did not mind his whines and his howls;
I left him there. That night it came on to snow; I tried to be glad; I
was pleased to have got rid of him. Next day it still snowed. I thought
I would go and fetch him home. I went to the place where I had left him.
I could not find him, it was like a graveyard of snow. I dug and dug in
the snow with my hands, I dug till I found him. He lay quite stiff. I
whistled and called ‘Trot.’ He just opened one eye, gave his tail a
little wag, put out his old tongue and tried to lick my hand, and died.
Oh, I wish he was alive again! I wish he was alive again!”
[Illustration]
The mist closed over the picture as the boy repeated his unavailing
wish.
“When will they have the kiss of forgiveness?” asked Kitty with a little
sob, for now she knew that the punishment of those children was hard.
They were to feel the innocence and trustfulness of the creatures they
hurt, and to realize all the happiness they had destroyed.
“There is one day in the year—Christmas Day!” said Love.
“Christmas Day!” repeated Kitty.
She tried to remember when Christmas Day would be: was it to-morrow, or
next year, or next week? Was it in spring, summer, autumn, or winter?
What season was it now? She had forgotten everything. Everything had
slipped from her mind but the thought of the children in Punishment
Land.
Was it because she thought of Christmas Day that a delicious smell of
hot jam and cakes stole through the fog, as the picture began to form?
“That cannot be part of Punishment Land!” exclaimed Kitty, watching the
vision growing there.
She saw a place where tarts grew on bushes and candies strewed the
ground, where the flowers sparkled with sugar, where there was a river
of syrup on which a boat of chocolate lay at anchor, and sugar swans
curved their long necks. A bird flew out of the fog; it fell down ready
roasted on the ground. A little rabbit scampered along, then suddenly it
stood rigid, turned to candy. A cowslip ball was tossed out of the mist;
as it fell, it became a plum-pudding stuck all over with almonds.
[Illustration]
A number of children were in that pleasant place, but they did not seem
to be enjoying it. Their faces were the color of boiled cauliflowers,
and they rubbed their little stomachs with a very dismal expression,
sighing: “Oh, that nasty sweetmeat! Oh, that dreadful pie! Oh, that
tart! that jam! Oh, to be hungry again and relish a mug of milk!”
A faint and querulous voice addressed Kitty.
“Take my advice and never eat a tart. I shall never eat one again when I
leave this place, never.”
She saw that the speaker was the little lad she had met in the lane and
whose conversation always turned upon plum-cakes and sweets. He shook
his head warningly and woefully as he spoke.
“I should have thought this is just the place you would have liked,” she
said.
“It is a dreadful place. You have always a lump here;” and he rubbed
himself round and round. “I begin to hate sugar. I can’t touch anything
but it turns to sugar. I can’t play because I feel so ill, and I can’t
think because my head feels like a pudding, and when I go to sleep I
have dreadful dreams. Listen, there are the dreams coming! Oh! oh! oh!
and I am going to sleep, to sleep.”
Kitty heard a rustling. She thought the dreams would come through the
fog. Not a bit of it. Out of tarts that hung on the bushes, out of the
pebbles, the sugar flowers, the syrup river, the chocolate boat, they
came, growling, squealing, squeaking, jumping, trotting, whirling,
hopping. Old men with very hooked noses, and legs like asparagus, waving
about dreadful bottles of medicines. Old women with gray wisps of hair
and green-eyed black cats on their shoulders. Red imps making
somersaults and waving their arms like windmills, children with
whiskers, frogs as big as shoulders of mutton, with eyes on fire, pigs
with bristles like porcupines. All these phantoms filled the picture on
the fog. They jumped upon the children’s chests, and presently there was
a sound of long, dreary snores. The fat pig with the bristles jumped
upon the boy who had been speaking to Kitty. “Grunt, grunt,” went the
pig. “Snore, snore,” went the boy, and to these sounds the vision slowly
faded away.
“Well, I don’t wonder he does not care for tarts any more,” said Kitty,
who felt rather inclined to laugh, although she flicked away a tear.
Even Greedyland picture was sad.
And now she perceived that another picture was beginning to appear. It
was that of a lovely landscape. There were trees, and running water, and
blooming flowers. Children filled this pleasant spot. But they did not
seem at all happy. Some glanced about them in a frightened fashion. The
greater number presented a most dejected, even a disconsolate
appearance, while a few sat apart, keeping their eyes tightly screwed
up; their faces were all puckered to keep those eyes tightly closed. As
she looked at the children she recognized some of those she had seen
looking into the pool and singing to their own reflections.
“Why, what is it they do not want to see?” asked Kitty, glancing about
to discover if anything terrible lurked among the trees and flowers.
She looked up to Love, but once again Love motioned to her to speak to
the children.
Kitty advanced nearer. “Why do you keep your eyes shut?” she asked a
little girl who was sitting with her eyes tightly closed.
“Don’t speak to me. I won’t look at you,” answered the child with a
resolute shake of her head, but without a quiver of her eyelids.
[Illustration: FACES! FACES!—A WORLD OF FACES!—Page 145.]
Another child came running up. She waved her hands and pointed up and
down and all around, saying, in that thin piping voice Kitty was getting
accustomed to hear:
“Don’t you see! don’t you see!”
Kitty looked, rubbed her eyes, and looked again. Yes—no, there was no
mistake. Faces everywhere. Faces! faces! faces!—a world of faces! All
those children’s faces smiling, blinking, nodding; up in the sky, down
on the ground. On every flower, on every blade of grass, on every leaf
of the trees were faces.
Kitty began to laugh, the effect was so comical; for as the leaves of
the trees tossed, the flowers nodded, the water flowed, there were the
most extraordinary effects. The faces now melted into each other, now
were topsy-turvy; noses came where eyes should be; the hair seemed to
grow on chins; the mouths climbed up to the forehead; sometimes it was
like a world of faces seen reflected in a vast teapot, nothing was seen
but noses and slits of eyes.
“Don’t laugh,” said the child plaintively. “I can’t see your face. It’s
myself I see when I look at you.”
“Really,” exclaimed Kitty, “that is most extraordinary!”
“I never see anything but my face, never. We all see our own faces
everywhere, wherever we look.”
She glanced, as she spoke, toward a sunflower, and, sure enough, Kitty
saw the child’s little face peeping out of the big brown heart; upside
down on a dock leaf; grinning from a thistle—there it was again.
“I wish I could see something else than my face,” sobbed the child. “I
wish I could see something else.”
Then there rose a chorus of airy, unhappy voices repeating the same
words: “Something else than my face; something else than my face.”
And the vision faded away, while in the air a crooning sound was heard,
and the words of a lament:
“Oh, no! we would no longer see
The faces once we thought so fair;
For beautiful as they might be
To gaze upon them here and there,
And stare and glare
With eyes so hazy,
Will drive us crazy.
Because it is ourselves that we
Are sick of seeing everywhere.”
Kitty turned to Love.
“Won’t it be soon Christmas Day?” she asked, for her little heart was
full of pity, and she longed for all those children to receive the kiss
of forgiveness.
Love smiled, and her smile seemed to hold out a promise that it was
near; but she did not speak the words, and when Kitty looked again
toward the mist wall there was another picture forming itself there. If
ever there was represented a vision of an untidy, jumbled-about place,
there it certainly was plainly seen on the mist. Such a litter of rags,
crumbs, broken toys, writing implements, and books! What was most
remarkable were the lessons that were coming out of the books, and
taking walks on their own account about the place, and mingling among
themselves in the queerest manner. A bit of the map of China had settled
itself down in Yorkshire, and there was Denmark planting itself in the
Desert of Sahara; Ireland was on the top of Mount Vesuvius, which was
beginning to rumble frightfully and emit huge puffs of smoke. As for
history, Kitty found it quite impossible to follow its freaks; but she
saw distinctly Julius Cæsar was signing Magna Charta, and the Crusaders
were fighting the battle of Waterloo. Grammar and sums were trying
experiments of such a complicated character there was no finding out
what they were driving at. In the midst of this place sat a number of
children; they had a muddled-up air, as if the walking-about lessons
were too much for them. Their mouths dropped open, their eyes
half-closed; they were all in tatters. They looked ashamed. If they
pulled their sleeves down to hide their dirty hands, crack came a great
rent at the elbows; if they pulled down their stockings into their boots
to hide the holes at their heels, out peeped their knees.
“You are the untidy children,” said Kitty, nodding. “Well, you are in a
muddle.”
“It was all our laziness,” said the child nearest to where she stood. He
sighed so pitifully that Kitty wished to cheer him up a bit.
“Why cannot you set to and put things straight?” she asked briskly.
“Can’t,” said the boy.
“Can’t,” sighed all the children.
“Look,” said the boy. He stretched out his leg; all the children
stretched out their legs. Kitty saw they had turned to stumps.
“That is because we would not run,” he muttered mournfully. “Look,” he
said again. He put out his hands; all the children put out their hands.
All the fingers were joined; they were like hands in boxing-gloves.
“That is because we would not use them,” explained the boy in the same
dismal voice.
“As for our ideas, they are gone to sleep, and are walking about in
their sleep and won’t wake up,” said the boy.
“And won’t wake up,” floated the sad, slow voices out of the fog,
closing over the scene.
“I wish Christmas Day would come,” cried Kitty. “Don’t you think they
have been punished enough?”
She looked toward Love, and Love’s face was illumined with a smile like
a sunbeam.
“I am so sorry for the naughty children,” said Kitty with a sob. “I wish
the time had come for them to receive the kiss of forgiveness.”
Love laid her hand on Kitty’s head, then gently touched her ears.
Lo! faintly Kitty heard the sound of joy-bells tinkling. Sweet bells!
happy bells! ringing clearer and clearer, nearer and nearer, till all
the air seemed full of their pealing and clanging.
“Christmas bells!” exclaimed Kitty breathlessly.
Love lifted her finger. “Hush!” she said.
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