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[Illustration: _The Man who could talk with the Birds_]
DROLLS
FROM SHADOWLAND
BY
J. H. PEARCE
_Author of "Esther Pentreath," "Inconsequent Lives," "Jaco Treloar,"
&c._
NEW YORK
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1893.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE MAN WHO COINED HIS BLOOD INTO GOLD 1
AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY 15
THE MAN WHO COULD TALK WITH THE BIRDS 27
THE PURSUIT 39
A PLEASANT ENTERTAINMENT 49
THE MAN WHO DESIRED TO BE A TREE 61
THE MAN WHO HAD SEEN 73
THE UNCHRISTENED CHILD 85
THE MAN WHO MET HATE 95
THE HAUNTED HOUSE 109
GIFTS AND AWARDS 119
FRIEND OR FOE? 133
THE FIELDS OF AMARANTH 145
THE COMEDY OF A SOUL 155
THE MAN WHO COINED HIS BLOOD INTO GOLD.
THE yoke of Poverty galled him exceedingly, and he hated his
taskmistress with a most rancorous hatred.
As he climbed up or down the dripping ladders, descending from sollar to
sollar towards the level where he worked, he would set his teeth grimly
that he might not curse aloud--an oath underground being an invitation
to the Evil One--but in his heart the muffled curses were audible
enough. And when he was at work in the dreary level, with the darkness
lying on his shoulder like a hand, and the candles shining unsteadily
through the gloom, like little evil winking eyes, he brooded so moodily
over his bondage to Poverty, that he desired to break from it at any
cost.
"I'd risk a lem for its weight in gowld: darned ef I wedn'!" he muttered
savagely, as he dug at the stubborn rock with his pick.
He could hear the sounds of blasting in other levels--the explosions
travelling to him in a muffled boom--and above him, for he was working
beneath the bed of the ocean, he could faintly distinguish the grinding
of the sea as the huge waves wallowed and roared across the beach.
"I'm sick to death o' this here life," he grumbled; "I'd give a haand or
a' eye for a pot o' suvrins. Iss, I'd risk more than that," he added
darkly: letting the words ooze out as if under his breath.
At that moment his pick detached a piece of rock which came crashing
down on the floor of the level, splintering into great jagged fragments
as it fell.
He started back with an exclamation of uncontrollable surprise. The
falling rock had disclosed the interior of a cavern whose outlines were
lost in impenetrable gloom, but which here and there in a vague fashion,
as it caught the light of the candle flickering in his hat, seemed to
sparkle as if its walls were crusted with silver.
"Lor' Jimmeny, this es bra' an' queer!" he gasped.
As he leaned on his pick, peering into the cavern with covetous eyes,
but with a wildly-leaping heart, he was aware of an odd movement among
the shadows which were elusively outlined by the light of his dip.
It was almost as though some of them had an independent individuality,
and could have detached themselves from their roots if they wished.
It was certain a squat, hump-backed blotch, that was sprawling blackly
beside a misshapen block, was either wriggling on the floor as if trying
to stand upright . . . or else there was something wrong with his eyes.
He stared at the wavering gloom in the cavern, with its quaint, angular
splashes of glister, where heads of quartz and patches of mundic caught
the light from the unsteady flame of the candle, and presently he was
_certain_ that the shadows were alive.
Most of all he was sure that the little hump-backed oddity had risen to
its feet and was a veritable creature: an actual uncouth, shambling
grotesque, instead of a mere flat blotch of shadow.
Up waddled the little hump-back to the hole in the wall where Joel stood
staring, leaning on his pick.
"What can I do for'ee, friend?" he asked huskily: his voice sounding
faint, hoarse, and muffled, as if it were coming from an immense
distance, or as if the squat little frame had merely borrowed it for the
nonce.
Joel stared at the speaker, with his lower jaw dropping.
"What can I do for'ee, friend?" asked the hump-back; peering at the
grimy, half-naked miner, with his little ferrety eyes glowing
luminously.
Joel moistened his lips with his tongue before he answered. "Nawthin',
plaise, sir," he gasped out, quakingly.
"Nonsense, my man!" said the hump-back pleasantly, rubbing his hands
cheerfully together as he spoke. And Joel noticed that the fingers,
though long and skinny--almost wrinkled and lean enough, in fact, to
pass for claws--were adorned with several sparkling rings. "Nonsense, my
man! I'm your friend--if you'll let me be. O never mind my hump, if it's
that that's frightening you, I got that through a fall a long while
ago," and the lean brown face puckered into a smile. "Come! In what way
can I oblige'ee, friend? I can grant you any wish you like. Say the
word--and it's done! Just think what you could do if you had heaps of
money, now--piles of suvrins in that owld chest in your bedroom,
instead o' they paltry two-an'-twenty suvrins which you now got heeded
away in the skibbet."
Joel stared at the speaker with distended eyes: the great beads of
perspiration gathering on his forehead.
"How ded'ee come to knaw they was there?" he asked.
"I knaw more than that," said the hump-back, laughing. "I could tell'ee
a thing or two, b'leeve, if I wanted to. I knaw tin,[A] cumraade, as
well as the next." And with that he began to chuckle to himself.
"Wedn'ee like they two-an'-twenty suvrins in the skibbet made a
hunderd-an'-twenty?" asked the hump-back insinuatingly.
"Iss, by Gosh, I should!" said Joel.
"Then gi'me your haand on it, cumraade; an' you shall have 'em!"
"Here goes, then!" said Joel, thrusting out his hand.
The hump-back seized the proffered hand in an instant, covering the
grimy fingers with his own lean claws.
"Oh, le'go! _le'go!_" shouted Joel.
The hump-back grinned; his black eyes glittering.
"I waan't be niggardly to'ee, cumraade," said he. "Every drop o' blood
you choose to shed for the purpose shall turn into a golden suvrin
for'ee--there!"
"Darn'ee! thee ben an' run thy nails in me--see!"
And Joel shewed a drop of blood oozing from his wrist.
"Try the charm, man! Wish! Hold un out, an' say, _Wan_!"
Joel held out his punctured wrist mechanically.
"Wan!"
There was a sudden gleam--and down dropped a sovereign: a bright gold
coin that rang sharply as it fell.
"Try agen!" said the hump-back, grinning delightedly.
Joel stooped first to pick up the coin, and bit it eagerly.
"Ay, good Gosh! 'tes gowld, sure 'nuff!"
"Try agen!" said the hump-back "Make up a pile!"
Joel held out his wrist and repeated the formula.
"Wan!"
And another coin clinked at his feet.
"I needn' wait no longer, s'pose?" said the hump-back.
"Wan!" cried Joel. And a third coin dropped.
He leaned on his pick and kept coining his blood eagerly, till presently
there was quite a little pile at his feet.
The hump-back watched him intently for a time: but Joel appeared to be
oblivious of his presence; and the squat little figure stealthily
disappeared.
The falling coins kept chiming melodiously, till presently the great
stalwart miner had to lean against the wall of the level to support
himself. So tired as he was, he had never felt before. But give over his
task he either could not, or would not. The chink of the gold-pieces he
must hear if he died for it. He looked down at them greedily. "Wan! . . .
Wan! . . . Wan! . . ."
Presently he tottered, and fell over on his heap.
At that same moment the halting little hump-back stole out from the
shadows immediately behind him, and leaned over Joel, rubbing his hands
gleefully.
"I must catch his soul," said the little black man.
And with that he turned Joel's head round sharply, and held his hand to
the dying man's mouth.
Just then there fluttered up to Joel's lips a tiny yellow flame, which,
for some reason or other, seemed as agitated as if it had a human
consciousness. One might almost have imagined it perceived the little
hump-back, and knew full well who and what he was.
But there on Joel's lips the flame hung quivering. And now a deeper
shadow fell upon his face.
Surely the tiny thing shuddered with horror as the hump-back's black
paws closed upon it!
But, in any case, it now was safely prisoned. And the little black man
laughed long and loudly.
"Not so bad a bargain after all!" chuckled he.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] To "_knaw tin_" is among the miners of Cornwall a sign of, and a
colloquial euphemism for, _cleverness_.
AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY.
THE performance was over: the curtain had descended and the spectators
had dispersed.
There had been a slight crush at the doors of the theatre, and what with
the abrupt change from the pleasant warmth and light of the interior to
the sharp chill of the night outside, Preston shivered, and a sudden
weakness smote him at the joints.
The crowd on the pavement in front of the theatre melted away with
unexampled rapidity, in fact, seemed almost to waver and disappear as
if the _mise en scene_ had changed in some inexplicable way.
A hansom drove up, and Preston stepped into it heavily, glancing
drowsily askance at the driver as he did so.
Seated up there, barely visible in the gloom, the driver had an almost
grisly aspect, humped with waterproof capes, and with such a lean, white
face. Preston, as he glanced at him, shivered again.
The trap-door above him opened softly, and the colourless face peered
down at him curiously.
"Where to, sir?" asked the hollow voice.
Preston leaned back wearily. "Home," he replied.
It did not strike him as anything strange or unusual, that the driver
asked no questions but drove off without a word. He was very weary, and
he wanted to rest.
The sleepless hum of the city was abidingly in his ears, and the lamps
that dotted the misty pavements stared at him blinkingly all along the
route. The tall black buildings rose up grimly into the night; the faces
that flitted to and fro along the pavements, kept ever sliding past him,
melting into the darkness; and the cabs and 'buses, still astir in the
streets, had a ghostly air as they vanished in the gloom.
Preston lay back, weary in every joint, a drowsy numbness settling on
his pulse. He had faith in his driver: he would bring him safely home.
Presently they were at one of the wharves beside the river: Preston
could hear the gurgle of the water around the piles.
Not this way had he ever before gone homeward. He looked out musingly on
the swift, black stream.
"Just in time: we can go down with the tide," said a voice.
Preston would have uttered some protest, but this sluggishness
overpowered him: it was as if he could neither lift hand nor foot. The
inertia of indifference had penetrated into his bones.
Presently he was aware that he had entered a barge that lay close
against the wharf, heaving on the tide. And, as if it were all a piece
of the play, the lean old driver, with his dead-white face, had the oars
in his hands and stood quietly facing him, guiding the dark craft down
the stream.
The panorama of the river-bank kept changing and shifting in the most
inexplicable manner, and Preston was aware of a crowd of pictures ever
coming and going before his eyes: as if some subtle magician, standing
behind his shoulder, were projecting for him, on the huge black screen
of night, the most marvellous display of memories he had ever
contemplated. For they were all memories, or blends of memories, that
now rose here on the horizon of his consciousness. There was nothing new
in essentials presented to him: but the grouping was occasionally novel
to a fault.
The dear old home--the dear old folks! Green hills, with the little
white-washed cottage in a dimple of them, and in the foreground the
wind-fretted plain of the sea. The boyish games--marbles and
hoop-trundling--and the coming home at dusk to the red-lighted kitchen,
where the mother had the tea ready on the table and the sisters sat at
their knitting by the fire.
The dear, dear mother! how his pulse yearned towards her! there were
tears in his eyes as he thought of her now. Yet, all the same, the quiet
of his pulse was profound.
And there was the familiar scenery of his daily life: the ink-stained
desks, the brass rails for the books, the ledgers and bank-books, and
the files against the walls; and the faces of his fellow-clerks (even
the office boy) depicted here before him to the very life.
The wind across the waters blew chilly in his face: he shivered, a
numbness settling in his limbs.
His sweet young wife, so loving and gentle--how shamefully he had
neglected her, seeking his own pleasure selfishly--there she sat in the
familiar chair by the fireside with dear little Daisy dancing on her
knee. What a quiet, restful interior it was! He wondered: would they
miss him much if he were dead? . . . Above all, would little Daisy
understand what it meant when some one whispered to her "_favee is
dead_"?
The wavering shadows seemed to thicken around the boat. And the figure
at the oars--how lean and white it was: and yet it seemed a good kind of
fellow, too, he thought. Preston watched it musingly as the stream bore
them onward: the rushing of the water almost lulling him to sleep.
Were they sweeping outward, then, to the unknown sea?
It was an unexpected journey. . . . And he had asked to be taken _home_!
Presently the air grew full of shapes: shadowy shapes with mournful
faces; shapes that hinted secrets, with threatenings in their eyes.
If a man's sins, now, should take to themselves bodies, would it not be
in some such guise as this they would front and affright him at dead of
night?
Preston shivered, sitting there like a mere numb lump.
How much of his wrong-doing is forgiven to a man--and how much
remembered against him in the reckoning?
How awful this gruesome isolation was becoming!
Was it thus a man went drifting up to God?
The figure at the oars was crooning softly. It was like the lullaby his
mother used to sing to him when he was a child.
There was a breath of freer air--humanity lay behind them--they were
alone with Nature on the vast, dim sea.
The numbness crept to the roots of his being. He had no hands to lift;
he had no feet to move. His heart grew sluggish: there was a numbness in
his brain.
Death stood upright now in the bow before him: and in the east he was
aware of a widening breadth of grey.
Would the blackness freshen into perfect day for him . . . or would the
night lie hopelessly on him for ever? . . .
The figure drew near--and laid its hand across his eyes. . . .
* * * * *
"Thrown out of the hansom, and the wheels went over him, sir. He was
dead in less than five minutes, I should think."
"Cover his face . . . and break it gently to his wife."
THE MAN WHO COULD TALK WITH THE BIRDS.
A TALE TOLD BY THE FIRESIDE.
WANCE upon a time there was a youngster in Zennor who was all'ys
geekin'[B] into matters that warn't no use in the world. Some do say 'a
was cliver, too, weth it all, an' cut out that there mermaid in the
church[C] what the folks do come from miles round to see. Anyway, 'a
warn't like 'es brawthers an' sesters, an' 'es folks dedn' knaw what to
maake of un, like.
Well, wan day when 'a was wand'rin' about, down to Nancledrea or some
such plaace, 'a got 'mong lots o' trees an' bushes an' heerd the cuckoos
callin' to ayche awther, an' awther kinds o' birds what was singin' or
talkin,' an' all as knawin' as humans, like. So no rest now cud 'a git,
poor chuckle-head! for wantin' to larn to spayke weth they.
Well, it warn't long arter that 'a was geekin' as usual round some owld
ruined crellas[D] up to Choon, when 'a seed a man weth a long white
beard settin' on wan o' the burrows[E] on the hill that are 'longside
that owld Quoit[F] up there.
'A was a bowldish piece o' goods, was the youngster, simmin'ly, for 'a
dedn' mind the stranyer a dinyun,[G] though 'a _was_ like an owld black
witch,[H] they do say. Anyhow, the two beginned jawin' together, soon
got thick as Todgy an' Tom. An' by-an'-by the stranyer wormed out of un
how 'a was all'ys troubled in 'es mind 'cause 'a cudn' onderstaand what
the birds was sayin'.
"I'd give anything in the world," says the bucca-davy,[I] "ef I cud
onnly larn to spayke weth they."
"Aw, es it so, me dear," said the stranyer: "well, I'll tayche'ee to
talk to they, sure 'nuff, ef thee'll come up to that owld Quoit weth
me."
"What must I pay'ee?" axed the youngster, bowld-like. For he'd heerd o'
cureyus bargains o' this kind, an' 'a dedn' want to risk 'es sawl.
"Nawthin'! Nawthin', me dear!" said the stranyer. "I shall git paid
for't in a way o' me awn."
Well, the end of it was, accordin' to the story, that the youngster
'greed to go 'long weth un: so up the two of 'em went to the Quoit.
When they come up to un the stones seemed to oppen, an' they went inside
an' found un like a house. But that was hunderds o' years ago. The owld
Quoit now es more like a crellas, though 'a still got a bra' gayte rock
for a roof.
Anyhow, they went in, 'cordin' to the story; an' there they lived for a
number o' years.
But, somehow, when they was wance got in, the youngster cudn' git out
agen nohow. 'A cud geek through the cracks, an' see the country an' the
people, but the stones wedn' oppen, an' 'a cudn' git out.
But the owld black witch keeped 'es promise to un, an' tayched un all
that 'a wanted to knaw.
The craws that croaked on the Quoit in the sunshine, an' the sparrers
an' wagtails an' awther kinds o' birds that come flittin' round an'
cheepin' to ayche awther, the owld witch tayched un ('cordin' to the
story) to onderstaand everything any of 'em said.
Well, at laast 'a got so cliver, ded the youngster, that there warn't no
bird but what 'a cud talk to; from the owld black raven, wha's all'ys
cryin' "_corpse!_" to the putty li'l robins what wedn' hurt a worm.
But aw! lor' Jimmeny! warn't 'a disappointed when 'a found what 'a'd ben
so hankerin' arter warn't wuth givin' a snail's shill to knaw.
He'd ben thinkin', 'fore 'a cud onderstaand them, that what they'd be
talkin' about to ayche awther wed be somethin' cureyus an' mighty
cliver, all sorts o' strange owld saycrets, s'pose. But 'a found, when
'a come to spayke their language, that instead o' tellin' 'bout haypes
o' treasures, an' hunted housen, an' owld queer ways, they was all the
time talkin' 'bout their mait or their nestes, an' awther silly jabber
like that.
So 'a was mighty disappointed, an' got very law-sperrited, though 'a
dedn' like to confess it to the witch.
An' now, thinks the youngster, he'd like to go home agen: an' shaw off
'fore the nayburs, s'pose.
"Well, thee cust go," says the owld witch, grinnin'.
"An' what must I pay'ee for taychin' me?" says the youngster.
"Nawthin', sonny! Nawthin' at all!" says the witch. "I shall git me
reward in a way o' me awn."
An' weth that 'a bust out laughin' agen.
Well, anyway, the lad, accordin' to the story, wished un "_good-bye_,"
an' trudged off home.
But aw! poor dear! when 'a got to Zennor 'a nigh 'pon brok 'es heart
weth grief.
He'd ben livin' all alone weth the owld black witch, an' 'a hadn' took
no note of what was passin', an' 'a thought 'a was still a youngster,
simmin'ly: 'stead o' which 'a was graw'd to an owld, owld man, weth no
more pith in 'es bones than a piskey; an' 'a cud hardly manage to crawl
to Zennor, 'a was so owld an' palchy[J], an' nigh 'pon blind.
An', wust of all, when 'a got to Zennor everywan who knaw'd un was dead
an' gone! 'Es faather an' mawther was up in the churchyard, an' 'a
hadn' got a single friend in the world!
So because 'a was so owld an' terrible palchy, an' hadn' got nowan to
taake no int'rest in un, through never havin' took no int'rest in nowan,
they was obliged to put un up to Maddern Union; an' there 'a lingered,
owld an' toatlish,[K] 'tell 'a died at laast a lone owld man.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] Prying.
[C] The mermaid, with glass and comb and with the tail of a fish, which
is carved on a bench-end in Zennor church.
[D] Ancient hut-dwellings.
[E] Barrows.
[F] Cromlech. The term is derived from the legendary belief that these
rude megalithic monuments were used by the giants when playing quoits.
[G] A little bit, in the least.
[H] In Cornwall _witch_ is both masculine and feminine. The _black_
witch exercises the most potent magic; the _white_ witch being vastly
inferior in power.
[I] Fool.
[J] Weak.
[K] Silly.
THE PURSUIT.
IT began when I was a lad at the country day-school, struggling to hold
my own among the scholars in my class.
If I could only always be perfect in my lessons, and among the foremost
(if not the first) in the examinations; then, at least, I thought, I
should see Her face to face.
But these good things befell me--possibly undeservedly--and though I
swelled beneath my coat with inward satisfaction, _She_ was still far
off: a phantom on the hills.
Then it struck me that if I went to dear Mother Nature she would tell me
of this daughter of hers--so enchanting, yet so shy--and I might even
one day surprise Her on the hill-slopes, or meet Her as She wandered
among the green, winding lanes.
So I presently became a haunter of the tree-clad valleys, of the
prattling brooks with the meadowsweet drooping over them, and of the
lone, bleak hills where the great wind growled.
Many mornings did I steal out long before the sunrise in order to watch
the stars die out in the dawning and the red bars glow in the
palpitating east. And when, standing among the firs in the windy
plantation, I saw the huge sun rear its head and flood the world with
splendour, and heard the birds sing jubilantly, almost breathless with
delight, I have fancied I felt the breath of the Beloved One on my
cheek and Her heart beating wildly and tremulously against my own. But
it was only fancy. Presently the singing dwindled and became fainter:
the air grew hot beneath the aromatic fir-boughs: and when, in the
distance, the flood of dazzling sunlight dashed redly on the
window-panes of the village cottages, I knew I must descend from the
haunted hill-top and return to the more prosaic details of life. If She
had flown past me, brushing me with Her garments in passing, I had not
yet discovered Her as a possession that I could grasp.
Then I said to myself, I shall find Her among my girl-friends: among
their rustling garments I shall hear _Her_ garments rustle; and from
among the laughing eyes with which they bewilder me, I shall no doubt
be able to single out _Hers_.
I chose the pleasantest of the maidens who fluttered through my world;
and I knew her beautiful, and I believed her to be true. But that old
clown Circumstance was piping in the market-place, shewing his
cheap-jack wares to catch the fancies of the maidens, and my sweetheart,
caught in the excitement of the moment, presently paid down for one of
his flashy baubles no less a price than her own young heart.
Then I said, I will look abroad in the market-place myself. Through the
clatter of feet and the babble of many voices, I may perhaps catch a
whisper, a hint of Her presence. Possibly She may love the eager haunts
of men even more than She loves the silent haunt of the wood-dove and
the great wide moors where the kite circles slowly. I will move among my
fellows and will search for Her there.
But the market-place with its thud, thud, thud of many feet, and its
clatter of vehicles, and its buzz of many voices, was a busy spot, and
the pleasures were very cheap ones: and not here could I manage to get a
glimpse of Her face.
I looked in the shops, and I stood beside the hawkers, and I listened to
the sellers and gossiped with those who bought; but the noise, and the
heat, and the dust that rose so thickly, were more than I had bargained
for, and I felt lonely and disillusioned: so I very lamely turned my
back on it all, and went away feeling that I should never find Her
there.
Then I built for myself a study into which I gathered covetously the
most perfect vintage of the human intellect--the ripest fruit our wise
race has garnered during all the years it has been harvesting from time.
And here I sat me down waiting for my Beloved. She will surely show Her
face to me here, said I.
The wind rattled the casement; the lamp-flame shook tremulously; and the
fire burned cheerfully in the grotesque-tiled grate. I could hear the
rain viciously swishing against the window-panes and gurgling
unmelodiously through the gutters and from the pipes, but She whom I
desired came not to keep me company.
For all the feast I have gathered for us, and for all the comfort I have
secured for Her, She holds aloof, and I have never seen Her yet.
And sometimes now I fancy that possibly I may never see Her: but that
one day, when I am lying in my coffin, She will press Her lips to
mine--and I shall never know.
A PLEASANT ENTERTAINMENT.
"I HAVE here," said the Showman, "the most interesting entertainment to
be witnessed on earth! Walk up! walk up, and judge for yourselves!" And
with that he beat the drum and blew shrilly on the pipes.
The music travelled to the ears of his audience with a difference: or so
it seemed to them, as they stood before the booth. Some heard in it,
through the discordant hubbub of the fair, the rattle of vehicles and
the tramp of feet in the busy thoroughfares of a great city; for others,
it was the whistling of birds in the hedgerows; and to some, like the
restless pulsations of the sea. To each, according to his memories and
his mood. But the music of the Showman was a single tune for all.
"Walk up! walk up!" bawled the grey-coated Showman, blowing at the pipes
and pounding on the drum.
"Darned if I wouldn't go in, if I had the brass!" quoth a lean,
unshaven, shabby-looking man, who stood in front of the booth with his
hands in his pockets.
"I'll stand treat, if you like!" cried a sunken-eyed young woman, whose
cheap and much-bedraggled finery matched aptly enough with her wan and
haggard countenance. It was the impulse of a moment, but she was the
puppet of impulse and danced on the wires at the slightest touch of
chance.
"Right you are!" cried the man.
And they mounted the steps together.
"It's like going up to the altar, isn't it?" giggled the woman to her
companion.
"More like going up to the gallows," growled the man.
The Showman rattled the coins as he pocketed them, and flinging aside
the canvas admitted them to the booth.
The interior was enveloped in a dim obscurity; hardly deep enough to be
counted as darkness, but oppressive enough to slow the pulses of both.
There was, however, at one end of the booth a large disc projected on
the obscurity: a pale, empty, weirdly-lighted circle, which they stared
at dumbly, with wonder in their eyes.
"Is this some darned fool's joke?" growled the man.
"Hush!" said the woman, "the entertainment has commenced."
And, true enough, the disc at which they had been staring had already a
stirring, as of life, across its surface.
They were aware of a couple of enthralling faces fronting them side by
side on the disc.
One was a woman's face, exquisitely beautiful, with soft blue eyes, full
of the most charming gaiety, and with lips as sweetly winsome as a
child's: the other was a man's face, proud and handsome, the mouth set
firmly, the eyes full of thought.
"Such a face I had dreamed of as my own," sighed the woman.
"So I had imagined I might have been," mused the man.
And then the scenes on the disc began to wax and dwindle rapidly; like
the momentary clinging, and as rapid vanishing, of breath across a
mirror of polished steel.
There was a vague fluttering and interchange of images; an elusive,
intangible influx of suggestions, and an equally dreamy efflux of the
same.
A young girl growing into beautiful womanhood, well-dressed, shapely,
sought eagerly in marriage, admired by the opposite sex, and envied by
her own. Then a woman in the prime of her powers of enjoyment--with her
charms undiminished and her wishes ripened--wedded, and successfully
shaping her life: a woman blessed greatly, and very happy.
And side by side with these dream-fancies, or imaginings, went those of
a young man facing the world gallantly; surmounting every obstacle
easily, and conquering hearts as if by a spell. There was success for
him in every scene on which he entered: he was proud and admired, and
very haughty, and very rich.
Presently, as if through some dexterous sleight of hand, the pictures of
his wooing blended waveringly and dimly with the pictures which emerged
for the bedraggled woman who stood beside the loafer in front of the
disc.
In the church, when the wedding-march was being played, and in the
vignettes of domestic happiness that ensued, the faces and scenes
mysteriously coalesced.
For the two spectators, who watched the shifting pictures breathlessly,
there were no longer four figures in the scene, but only two.
"Some such future I had imagined for myself," the man muttered.
And the woman mused amazedly: "These were day-dreams of my own."
The disc became obscured, as if their eyes were blurred mistily.
The woman gulped down something: and the man clenched his teeth.
There was a sudden exquisite clarity in the pictures. They were looking
at a cluster of white-washed cottages, with tall thatched roofs and with
great stone chimneys: a lonely little hamlet drowsing in the sun.
White-winged ducks were quacking in the roadway, a grey-coated donkey
was grazing beside a hedge, and the threadlets of smoke, that mounted
lazily above the roofs, rose up into a sky of the most exquisite purity,
spacious, high, and cloudlessly blue. And again there was only one scene
for them both.
"My God, that is where I was born!" groaned the man.
"That's my mother's cottage!" sobbed the woman, and wept aloud.
Then came rural scenes of almost every character, with a lad and a girl
moving flittingly through them--laughing and kissing in the lanes among
the brambles, drifting together everywhere, sweethearting through it
all.
"Are you Nelly King, then?" asked the man, hoarsely.
"And you . . . you are Stephen Laity, are you not?"
"If we could both die here and now!" cried the man.
Then the pictures for a while grew blurred and confused, till presently
they shewed the gas-lighted streets of London. . . .
"My God, I will see no more!" cried the girl. And she shudderingly held
her hand before her eyes.
"Nor I, either!" cried the man, with an oath.
"However much you close your eyes," said the Showman, "you will cancel
nothing of the pictures on the screen."
But they had turned and fled even while he was speaking.
"Even in the fair the pictures will pursue you!" said the stern-visaged
Showman, following them with his eyes.
THE MAN WHO DESIRED TO BE A TREE.
THE sunshine streamed across the lush-grassed meadows, and beat fiercely
down on the huge-limbed elms whose myriad leaves kept fluttering
ceaselessly. In the dense green covert, formed by the multitude of
interlacing branches, several wee brown songsters had built their nests,
and they kept flitting to and fro and trilling joyously as the light
breeze stirred the innumerable leaves.
The air was warm, and soft, and pleasant. The deep green arcades were
cool and moist, full of the drowsy flutter that rippled through the
branches, and full also of the deliciously delicate fragrance from the
budding sprays and fresh green foliage. May was in the woodlands, shy
and winsome; she had not yet shaken herself free from her day-dreams,
and the wonder of her young hopes lingered about her still.
At the foot of a tree, reclining against its roots, lay a lean-visaged
student, very shabbily dressed and with patches of thin grey hair around
his temples. A volume of the _Faery Queen_ lay open beside him, but he
had for some time ceased to pore over its pages, being engaged instead
in chasing Fancy as she flitted hither and thither through the vast
green woodland, dallying with the shadows and gossiping with the wind.
His mind's eye revelled in the picturesque suggestions that seemed to
him, as he lay here with half-closed lids, to be fleetingly visible, as
if in a dream. He was aware of beautiful damsels in gauzy draperies
pantingly hurrying through the dusky avenues with steel-clad knights in
hot pursuit; of grey old monks, cowled and sandalled, moving hither and
thither in a world of utter peace; and of dryads and fairies, fauns and
satyrs, filling the woodland with dreamy poetry, as the wind filled its
giant rafters with music, and the brooks purled babblingly through the
crevices of its floor.
How delightful it would be to be a denizen of the forest--to be this elm
in whose shadow he was lying! he thought.
The huge tent-like shadow of the elm-tree deepened and widened with the
dropping sun, and the shadows of other trees in the vicinity--dainty
saplings and gnarled old foresters--fell across the nearer margin of the
grass-land in fantastic, almost semi-human outlines: at least, so it
seemed to the dreamy student, as he lay here watching the breeze ripple
across the grass-blades and listened to the murmur of the forest at his
back.
"I should like to be a tree," he sighed lazily and half aloud.
"Would you?" asked a voice from somewhere close to him.
It was a low, caressing, insinuating voice, with a strange seductiveness
in its silvery intonation. And instead of feeling startled he felt a
sudden wave of happiness, as if a beautiful female had breathed upon his
cheek.
"Would you?" asked the voice, deliciously flattering him, "_would_ you
like to be one of us indeed?"
A tree has a life void of trouble, he ruminated. The birds sing to it,
and the wind caresses it, and it feels the sunshine, and greatens where
it grows. Yes, I should like to be a tree indeed!
"Shall I grant your wish?" asked the voice whisperingly--how exquisitely
sweet and soothing it was!--"shall I grant it here, and now?" it asked.
The student closed his eyes to leisurely consider; and then, half
dreamily, answered, "Yes!"
To be a tree is to be in touch with Nature nakedly; to be stripped of
the disguises that have gathered about the man, and to be thrown back
blankly into the narrowest groove of life. The student felt the wind and
the sun on his branches, and the birds sang joyously, nestling among
his leaves; his feet were rooted in the fresh and wholesome earth, and
the sap moved sluggishly in his rough-barked trunk.
It was a calm and deeply drowsy existence; but the restlessness of
humanity was not yet eliminated from him, and he investigated his novel
tenement wonderingly, and not without a touch of squeamish disgust.
But when the quiet night descended on him, and the cooling dews slid
into his pores, the exquisite soothe of the darkness enveloped him, and
to the rustling of his leaves he fell healthily asleep.
He was awakened presently by the gracious dawn, by the sweet and
wholesome breath of morning, and the flash of the sunrise and the
singing of birds. And had it not been for the dew-crumpled volume that
now lay blotched and smirched at his feet, he would have forgotten his
manhood and the unquiet life of cities and would have looked for his
brothers only among the trees.
But so long as the volume lay there forlornly, so long he remembered,
and had something to regret.
But the days passed--he could now keep no count of them--and human
speech and human passions dropped away from his memory as quietly and
painlessly as his own ripe leaves began presently to drop. And the
tree's life narrowed to its narrow round of needs.
It sheltered the birds, and it took the wind's kisses gladly, and it
caught the snows in the wrinkles and twists of its boughs; and the
squirrel nested in it, and the wood-mouse nibbled at it; and its life
sufficed it, answering its desires.
* * * * *
One day there swept a mighty storm across the forest: the thunder
crashed and the lightning flashed continuously; and the whole land held
its breath, listening to the uproar.
The Lord of the Forest was moving among his children: and some of them
he passed without injuring or despoiling them; but others he smote
wrathfully, so that he rent them and they died.
And when he came to the tree that had one-time been the student, he
remembered, and desired to bestow on it a boon.
And he said to the elm, now gnarled and wrinkled, "You shall be a man
again, if you earnestly desire it--a man again until you die."
The tree heard the great wind roaring among its brethren, and it was
aware of the wee birds cowering among its boughs; and it remembered, as
in a flash, the weary life of humanity, with hopes to befool it and
despair for its reward: and it rustled its myriad leaves whispering
mournfully, "Let me, O Master, remain as I am!"
And the Lord of the Forest was content, and passed on.
THE MAN WHO HAD SEEN.
ON the third day he recovered from the "trance" and regained
consciousness, and took up the burden of his life as before.
But the revelation which had been vouchsafed to him had influenced him
profoundly. He had now a new estimate of values and results. The centre
of his mental life was permanently shifted, and a new bias had been
given to his thoughts.
He went to the King, where he sat sunning himself in his palace.
"You are very rich," said the man to the King.
"God has so willed it, and I am grateful," said the King.
"You hope one day to see God face to face?"
"I _do_ hope so, fervently!" said the King, with unction.
"And if He questions you of your wealth you will express your gratitude
and bow to Him, and God will accept the compliment and be content?"
The King was silent.
"You think He will ask no questions?" said the man. "He will not trouble
to refer to His starving children, with whom you might reasonably have
shared your superfluities; to the sick whom you might have succoured; or
to the sorrowing whom you might have cheered? You had wealth, and were
grateful for it: and you used it on yourself. And presently, when you
are dead?" asked the man, more quietly. "If you sit beside the beggar
who perished at your gates, what will you say to him if he should refer
to matters such as these?"
"Sit beside a beggar!" cried the King, in high disdain.
"You forget it will be in heaven," said the man, gently.
"In heaven, of course, I shall be a king as I am here!"
"Oh, will you?" said the man: "I was not aware of that. I saw kings
there performing the lowliest of services. And I saw many in hell: the
majority of them were there." And therewith the man sighed heavily, as
he mused.
The King turned his back on him: and they thrust him out at the gates.
* * * * *
The Archbishop was reading a novel by the fire.
"Your work, then, is ended, is it?" asked the man.
"Oh no! not by any means ended, I hope. I attended a drawing-room
meeting at Lady Clack's yesterday," said the Archbishop, smiling
benignantly on his questioner, "and this morning I have sanctioned
proceedings against a vicar who for some time has been wavering
heretically in his opinions. I think we can effectually silence him at
last. Oh yes, I am extremely busy, I can assure you."
"There are no souls, then, to be saved?" said the man. "No lives to be
reformed: and no mourners to be comforted? This side of your duties you
have completed and closed?"
The Archbishop looked at him with extreme hauteur. "My dear sir, I leave
these matters to my subordinates. I am here as an administrator, not as
a minister."
"And you always choose the men best fitted to be ministers?"
"Of course. At any rate, I hope so," quoth the Archbishop.
"That young curate who has so successfully played the evangelist in
Gorseshire--he will have one of your earliest nominations, then, no
doubt?"
"Indeed, he will not! He has offended me deeply. Would you believe it?
he wrote an article on me in one of the reviews, and he actually had the
audacity, sir, to criticize me unfavourably! I will see that the man
remains exactly where he is!"
"And when you by-and-by make your report to your Master, will you
explain to Him your methods and your aims in this way? If so, do you
think He will be satisfied with you? Your methods and His are at
variance, surely? In heaven there are neither archbishops nor bishops,
as such. If they pass the gates at all, it is merely as men who have
done their duty. Do you think you will pass the gates on that score,
your Grace?"
The Archbishop rang the bell sharply and abruptly.
"Please show this gentleman out!" said His Grace.
* * * * *
"So you persist in disowning your daughter?" asked the man, looking hard
at the portly, pleasant-faced matron who was dandling her thirteenth
infant on her knees. "You will show her no mercy, now she asks it at
your hands?"
"She has disgraced me--I will never forgive her!" said the woman. "Let
her starve with her brat. It will be well when they are dead."
"She has disgraced you, you say? But has she disgraced Nature? I thought
it was Nature who was responsible for her sex and its instincts. She has
obeyed the one and fulfilled the other. And they have been paramount
considerations with you also, I perceive."
"Did she owe no duty, then, to her parents? Was I to count in her life
merely as the soil to the plant?"
"In the scales of justice, as I saw them adjusted in heaven, the claim
against the parents weighed the heaviest," said the man. "You suckled
her at your breasts; but you brought her there to suckle. In your
bringing her there, lies the onus of her claim."
"I tell you, she has disgraced me, and I will never forgive her!"
"_'Never'_ is a long day for a mortal. You will be judged yourself
before you reach the end of it," said the man.
* * * * *
"Three months' imprisonment with hard labour," said the magistrate.
"For taking a loaf of bread when he was starving!" cried the man.
"Even so," said the magistrate, with his hands on his paunch.
"But surely this is a monstrous perversion of justice. Or, rather, let
me call it a monstrous _in_justice!"
"The laws of the community must be respected," said the magistrate.
"Here is a man--alive by no fault of his own, and poor, even to
starvation, through absolute want of work: and yet you begrudge him the
necessaries of life! If he tries to commit suicide, you pillory and
chastise him, and if he tries to keep life in him out of the
superfluities of others, you pass on him this monstrous sentence!" cried
the man. "Surely here is some fault in the structure of your society."
"It is the law of the community!" said the magistrate, pompously.
"And in what way is the law of the community so very sacred, that it
should be counted of higher price than the life and welfare of a man?
The law of the community may be a very pretty idol to play before, but
in heaven it counts for nothing," said the quiet old man.
"This man is a pestilent fellow," said the community. "He troubles us
overmuch with this vision that he has knowledge of. Come, let us kill
him!"
And they smote him, and he died.
THE UNCHRISTENED CHILD.
"_Thee_ shaan't christen un, ef he's never christened!" said the father.
"I've no faith in'ee: not a dinyun.[L] Go to Halifax to shoot gaanders:
tha's all thee'rt fit for!"
"He'll suffer for it, both here and hereafter," said the parson.
"Doan't believe it!" said the man.
"Wherever he dies, whether on land or on water, he will become a
creature of that element instead of going to his rest," said the
parson, with an angry light in his eyes.
"Doan't believe it!" said the man: "an' thee doan't nayther."
The parson marched off, disdaining to reply.
The infant grew into a bright little lad, but there was always a certain
oddity about him, and he saw and understood more than he ought.
One day he was out fishing with a companion, in a tiny punt they had
borrowed for the purpose, when he leaned overboard too far and fell into
the sea.
His little companion was so paralysed with terror that he could do
nothing but set up a shrill screaming, clinging to the boat with both
his hands.
Silas rose once--and twice--with wildly-pleading eyes: his mouth full of
water: his hair plastered against his head: then sank; and a third time
emerged just above the surface; so close to the boat that his companion,
leaning over, could see him sinking down slowly into the crystalline
depths, with his hands stretched up and the hair on his head tapering to
a point like the flame of a candle.
"Silas! Silas!" the little lad shrieked.
But Silas sank down; and ever down: lower and lower beneath the
translucent waters, the vast flood deepening its tint above him, till at
last he was hopelessly buried out of sight.
When John Penberthy heard the terrible news he took the blow as a man
might take a sentence of death--in grim silence, and with a sullen
despair which nothing might henceforth banish or relieve. The roof-tree
of his hopes was broken irretrievably, and he gazed down blankly at the
ruin around his feet.
About three days after Silas was drowned, John was one afternoon out
fishing for bait, and happened to be keeping rather close to the
cliff-line, when he perceived a little seal emerge from a zawn[M] and
come swimming, as with a settled purpose, towards the boat.
There was something so melancholy and so pathetically human in the soft,
liquid eyes of the animal, that John felt his heart touched
unaccountably.
Forgetting the line, which he was just about to draw in, he sat staring
at the seal with a fixed intensity, as if he were looking in the
familiar eyes of some one with whom he had a world of memories to
interchange.
And, meanwhile, the seal swam straight up to him, till it was so close
to the boat that he could touch it with his hand.
John leaned over and looked straight at the animal: fixing his eyes
hungrily on the eyes of the seal.
"Why dedn'ee ha' me christened, faather?" asked the little seal,
piteously.
"My God! are'ee Silas?" cried John, trembling violently.
"Iss, I'm Silas," said the little seal.
John stared aghast at the smooth brown head and the innocent eyes that
watched him so pathetically.
"Why, I thought thee wert drownded, Silas!" he ejaculated.
"I caan't go to rest 'tell I'm christened," said the seal.
"How can us do it now?" asked the father, anxiously.
"Ef anywan who's christened wed change sauls weth me," said the seal,
"then I cud go to rest right away."
"Thee shall ha' _my_ saul, Silas," said the father, tenderly.
"Wil'ee put thy mouth to mine an' braythe it into me, faather?"
"Iss, me dear, that I will!" said the father. "Rest thee shust have ef I
can give it to'ee, Silas. Put thy haands or paws around me neck, wil'ee,
soas?"
And John leaned over the side of the boat till his face touched that of
the piteous little seal.
At that moment the boat--which for the last few minutes had been allowed
to drift at the mercy of the tide, owing to John's pre-occupation--was
caught among the irregular currents near a skerry, and John was
suddenly jerked, or tilted, overboard, plunging into the waters with a
sullen splash.
When he rose to the surface, with a deadly chill in him--the chill of
his drear and imminent doom, even more than the grueing chill of the
water--his first thought, even in that perilous moment, was of dear
little Silas and the promise he had given to him, or, at least, the
promise he had given to the seal.
The quaint little creature was, however, nowhere visible; and John, with
a sudden influx of strength--an alarmed awakening and resurgence of his
will--made up his mind to save his life if it were possible, and quietly
leave the settlement of the other affair to God.
But grey old Fate was stronger than he was. And the waves were here her
obedient servants; doing her will blindly, without pity or remorse.
In a little while John was tossing among the seaweed--into a bed of
which his body had descended--and what further dreams (if any) he
dreamed there beneath the waters, must remain untold till the Judgment
Day.
FOOTNOTES:
[L] Little bit.
[M] A cave.
THE MAN WHO MET HATE.
IT was drawing on towards midnight, and the world seemed very lonely.
There was a huge, round harvest moon in the sky, and the hills were
bathed in a kind of spectral splendour--a faint and filmy shimmer of
silver that left the outlines of objects blurred and elusive, though the
scene as a whole emerged clearly for the eye. The wind was sighing
drowsily across the moors, while high on the rugged cairns on the
hill-tops it was wuthering mournfully beneath the wan grey sky.
And 'Lijah, staring sleeplessly through his blindless bedroom-window,
felt a growing unrest in the very marrow of his bones.
He could see down below, in the little lonesome cove, the cottage where
Dorcas had now made her nest with that "darned gayte long-legged 'Miah"
for her husband, and in the sudden heat and bitterness of his wrath his
heart became like a live coal within him. "I'll have my revenge on un,
ef I haang for it!" growled he.