It was a little after ten, I think, when I left the professor's house,
where I had been spending the evening, and started on my homeward way.
As I walked along the road the thought of Mabel haunted me. I
wondered whether I ever should be a professor, like her father, and
ended with concluding that the next best thing to being one's self a
professor would be to be a professor's son-in-law. But, somehow, I
wasn't at all sure that Mabel cared anything about me.
"Things are not what they seem," I murmured to myself, "and the real
Mabel may be a very different creature from the Mabel whom I know."
There was not much comfort in that thought, but nevertheless I could
not get rid of it. I glanced up to the big round face of the moon,
which had a large ring of mist about its neck; and looking more
closely I thought I saw a huge floundering body, of which the moon was
the head, crawling heavily across the sky, and stretching a long misty
arm after me. I hurried on, not caring to look right or left; and I
suppose I must have taken the wrong turn, for as I lifted my eyes, I
found myself standing under the willow-tree at the creek where Mabel
and I had been sitting in the afternoon. The locusts, with their
shrill metallic voices, kept whirring away in the grass, and I heard
their strange hissing sh-h-h-h-h, now growing stronger, then weakening
again, and at last stopping abruptly, as if to say: "Didn't I do
well?" But the blue-eyed violets shook their heads, and that means in
their language: "No, I don't think so at all." The water, which
descended in three successive falls into the wide, dome-shaped gorge,
seemed to me, as I stood gazing at it, to be going the wrong way,
crawling, with eager, foamy hands, up the ledges of the rock to where
I was standing.
"I must certainly be mad," thought I, "or I am getting to be a poet."
In order to rid myself of the painful illusion, which was every moment
getting more vivid, I turned my eyes away and hurried up along the
bank, while the beseeching murmur of the waters rang in my ears.
As I had ascended the clumsy wooden stairs which lead up to the second
fall, I suddenly saw two little blue lights hovering over the ground
directly in front of me.
"Will-o'-the-wisps," said I to myself. "The ground is probably
marshy."
I pounded with my cane on the ground, but, as I might have known, it
was solid rock. It was certainly very strange. I flung myself down
behind the trunk of a large hemlock. The two blue lights came hovering
directly toward me. I lifted my cane,--with a swift blow it cut the
air, and,--who can imagine my astonishment? Right in front of me I saw
a tiny man, not much bigger than a good-sized kitten, and at his side
lay a small red cap; the cap, of course, I immediately snatched up and
put it in a separate apartment in my pocket-book to make sure that I
should not lose it. One of the lights hastened away to the rocks and
vanished before I could overtake it.
There was something so very funny in the idea of finding a gnome in
the State of New York, that the strange fear which had possessed me
departed and I felt very much inclined to laugh. My blow had quite
stunned the poor little creature; he was still lying half on his back,
as if trying to raise himself on his elbows, and his large black eyes
had a terrified stare in them, and seemed to be ready to spring out of
their sockets.
"Give--give me back my cap," he gasped at last, in a strange metallic
voice, which sounded to me like the clinking of silver coins.
"Not so fast, my dear," said I. "What will you give me for it?"
"Anything," he cried, as he arose and held out his small hand.
"Then listen to me," continued I. "Can you help me to see things as
they are? In that case I shall give you back your cap, but on no other
condition."
"See things as they are?" repeated the gnome, wonderingly.
"Yes, and not only as they seem," rejoined I, with emphasis.
"Return here at midnight," began he, after a long silence. "Upon the
stone where you are sitting you shall find what you want. If you take
it, leave my cap on the same spot."
"That is a fair bargain," said I. "I shall be here promptly at
twelve. Good-night."
I had extended my palm to shake hands with my new friend, but he
seemed to resent my politeness; with a sort of snarl, he turned a
somersault and rolled down the hill-side to where the rocks rise from
the water.
I need not say that I kept my promise about returning. And what did I
find? A pair of spectacles of the most exquisite workmanship; the
glasses so clear as almost to deceive the sight, and the bows of gold
spun into fine elastic threads.
"We shall soon see what they are good for," thought I, as I put them
into the silver case, the wonderful finish of which I could hardly
distinguish by the misty light of the moon.
The little tarn-cap I, of course, left on the stone. As I wandered
homeward through the woods, I thought, with a certain fierce triumph,
that now the beauty of Mabel's face should no more deceive me.
"Now, Mabel," I murmured, "now I shall see you as you are."