He was sitting upon the skull of a dead horse, thinking of nothing in
particular, when out of the great nocturnal silence there came the
sound of a human footstep. Whereupon he leapt upright and waved his
lantern frantically. This he did because the wanderer was evidently
night-foundered and lost upon the moorland, and it seemed probable
that, observing the light, he or she would approach it. Now that
strange blue flicker of flame rose and fell and danced above a
quaking-bog--a hideous place where emerald mosses hid the black slime
beneath, and where, at the margins of the danger, tussocks and little
peat tumuli gave foothold for heather, for cotton grass, and for
rushes. “I’m coming!” cried a voice. “I am so glad somebody’s found me
at last.”
[Illustration:
“You’re nothing but a puff
of phosphuretted hydrogen”
“GORMED IF I DIDN’T THINK I’D GOT ’E!”]
Another moment and a small girl felt the sudden uprising of deadly
coldness about her feet and heard the devilish hiss and chatter of
the quaking-bog as it sucked and shivered and opened its black mouth
to swallow her. But she was light as a feather, active as a bird. She
struggled back, fell, clutched a stout mound of heather, then another,
and so dragged herself out of danger.
“Gormed if I didn’t think I’d got ’e!” squeaked a voice at her elbow,
and looking round the child saw a tiny monster, four inches high, black
as coal, hairy as a spider, more horrible than any nightmare. He peered
into her face with eyes like hot coals, and waved his lantern over his
head.
“You horrid little cruel wretch!” cried the child. “Don’t think I’m
a bit frightened of you, because I’m not.” Which was perfectly true,
for the speaker had a father who knew everything by its name, and the
reason for everything, and the cause of everything, and what everything
was made of, and why. Therefore the advantage in the present instance
lay wholly with her, after she had escaped; because there cannot be any
real comparison between a highly-educated little lady of nine years old
and an ignorant country bumpkin of a Jacky-Toad, born and bred in a
Devon quagmire. And if you never heard of a Jacky-Toad, know that he is
one with your Will-o’-the-Wisp, or your Jack-a-Lantern, or your Marsh
Galloper, or the _Ignis Fatuus_ of the scholar.
“Ban’t you afeared?” asked the imp.
“No--not now. You’re only a naughty, ugly Will-o’-the-Wisp.”
“I be a Jacky-Twoad, I be.”
“You may call yourself what you like; you’re nothing but a puff of
phosphuretted hydrogen, because I’ve heard my father say so.”
“Aw! I ban’t very well eddicated myself.”
“I should think not! Else you’d know it was a cruel, wicked, heartless
thing to play practical jokes on small girls lost in the dark. One more
step and I should have been sucked down I don’t know where.”
“Ess fay! You’d a bin drownded in another minute.”
“Well, what did you want to do such a horrid thing for?”
“Blamed if I can tell ’e ’zactly; ’tis my business.”
“Then it is a very disgraceful business, and you ought to know better.”
“I doan’t know nothin’ ’tall. I be a li’l’ Jacky-Twoad. I awnly comes
out the bog of a warm evenin’, like this here.”
“I never hurt you, did I?”
“Caan’t say as you did.”
“I never even said an unkind word about you?”
“Not as I’ve heard tell on.”
“Then why were you so wicked?”
The Jacky-Toad had nothing to answer, so changed the subject.
“What might your name be, if I may ax?”
“I’m called Mabel, and I’m spending my holidays on Dartmoor; and,
playing hide-and-seek after tea, I got lost. But I live in London, and
I’m going back there to-morrow.”
“Wheer be that to?”
“Far, far away. There are no greedy shaking-bogs there, and no darkness
like this, and no dead bones scattered about, and no wicked Jacky-Toads
either.”
Mabel, though a clever child, didn’t know everything.
“You’m a purty li’l’ maid seemin’ly, an’ mighty wise tu by the looks of
it.”
This in itself was flattering, because it is given to but few small
girls to be complimented by a genuine Devon Jacky-Toad.
“The thing is to be pretty inside,” answered Mabel. “My mamma tells me
it doesn’t matter--not much--what we look like outside.”
“That’s a gude job then, for ’tis allowed among Jacky-Twoads in general
that I be ugly enough for a show.”
“You’re wicked inside too; you must be, or you wouldn’t have tried to
drown a little harmless girl.”
“I be sorry,” said the Jacky-Toad frankly. “I never looked at the
question from your p’int o’ view. Conversation do widen the mind
amazin’.”
“If you’re _really_ sorry, I’ll forgive you; and I should like to help
you to be better, if I knew how it could be done.”
“Sure I’d be very much obliged to ’e if you’d larn me a thing or two,”
said the Jacky-Toad humbly.
“You see, I’m going back to London to-morrow, so there won’t be much
time.”
“Damned if I won’t come with ’e! Then you can larn me proper,”
exclaimed the Jacky-Toad.
“You _mustn’t_ say things like that--it’s _wicked_. Where _did_ you
pick up such words?”
“From the moor-men, when they comed to cut peat in the bog. But ’tis
awnly a figger o’ speech.”
Mabel thought a moment.
“Well, in your case I suppose it is,” she said; “because--I don’t
want to hurt your feelings, but I don’t suppose you go _anywhere_ in
particular when you die, do you?”
“Caan’t say, never havin’ heard tell,” he answered.
So the small girl fixed her mind on a noble resolve, and finally
undertook to let the ignorant Jacky-Toad accompany her to town the
following day.
Then he showed her a safe road out of that lonesome waste and brought
her back to the abodes of men, where everybody was naturally very
thankful to see Mabel once more in safety. Of the Jacky-Toad she
said nothing, but he wafted himself in at her bedroom window when
the house was asleep. He explained that he could travel very easily
in a ginger-beer bottle or jam-pot, so Mabel packed him up in a
marmalade-jar with a glass stopper. This she placed in a cardboard box
full of heather, so the Jacky-Toad travelled to London next day in
considerable comfort, though with little style.
* * * * *
Mabel kept her scholar in his jar. At night the Jacky-Toad was allowed
to come out for instruction, and he sat beside Mabel’s bed while
she taught him as much as he was capable of learning. He tried hard
at first to collect information, but his memory was weak, and he had
little or no common-sense. He was, however, sufficiently humble, which
is a rare virtue in a fool. He confessed himself to be scarcely better
than an idiot, though sometimes he grew more hopeful.
“I do make way,” he declared on one occasion, “though I allow ’tis
blamed slow.”
“Your grammar’s too frightful for anything,” said Mabel, “but we must
be content with one subject at a time, I suppose. You chose geography,
so we’ll struggle on with that until you’ve got a smattering. D’you
remember what I taught you last night about the Duchy of Baden?”
“Lemme see if I can call it home. Ess! ’Tis like this: ‘The Duchy of
Baden lies a’most entirely between the Kingdom o’ Wurtemberg and the
River Rhine. The climate be healthy, but the winters are mighty cold in
the Black Forest.’ How be that?”
“Fairly right--only you’ve left out such a lot.”
“Shall ’e larn me much more geography?”
“Ever so much--tons more.”
“That’s ill news, ’cause I doubt if I can hold much more.”
“You don’t seem very happy at it, certainly,” confessed Mabel.
“No nat’ral genius for it like,” suggested the Jacky-Toad.
“We must think of a new subject then. Needlework’s no good to you, nor
yet drawing, that I can see.”
“Could ’e teach me a few gude tales ’bout men-folks, or maybe a riddle
or two?”
“Certainly not! I’ve brought you to London to improve you.”
“Then why not open the winder an’ let me have a bit of a run round
Lunnon to larn what sort o’ plaace ’tis?”
“No. I’m never allowed out myself after dark, and therefore it can’t be
a proper thing for a Jacky-Toad. How would you like to learn a little
natural science? I don’t know much, but my father knows more than any
other man in the world. Natural science explains how it is you’re only
a whiff of phosphuretted hydrogen.”
“I guess that’s ’bout enough for me to knaw.”
“Shall I teach you to dance? But I forgot; you can do that.”
“Dance! Aw jimmery! I was born dancin’; I shall die dancin’. No,
but I’ll teach you if you mind to try. I’ll larn ’e the ‘Wildfire
Gallop’--a butivul thing ’tis sure ’nough as us dances in summer-time
under a full mune.”
So the Jacky-Toad hung up his lamp and Mabel got out of bed and very
soon mastered the “Wildfire Gallop”--the great classical dance of
Jacky-Toads all the world over.
“Gormed if I ever seed a pixie do it better!” said her tutor.
“There are no such things as pixies,” replied Mabel promptly.
“No pixies! You ban’t so clever as I thought ’e, ’pears to me. No
pixies! You’ll say theer ban’t no spriggans, nor elves, nor brownies,
nor goblins, nor tankeraboguses, nor efts, nor Jacky-Twoads next!”
“My father has told me there are no pixies--therefore there are none,”
answered Mabel. “You can hardly suppose that I should take your word
before his?”
“Dammy! I’ve _seed_ ’em scores an’ scores o’ times,” began the
Jacky-Toad; but Mabel never argued with him, and always punished
a bad word instantly. Whenever he swore she put him back into his
marmalade-jar. This she now did, so he learned no more that night.
On the following evening he apologised as soon as he was let out, and
his mistress accepted the expression of regret without comment.
“I’ve been thinking that a little English poetry might enlarge your
mind,” she said. “Much of it is very simple and beautiful, and I know a
great deal by heart.”
“I’ll do my best, I promise ’e, but I ban’t hopeful.”
“Well, Shakespeare would be too difficult, of course; but I happen to
know a very lovely poem called ‘Excelsior,’ by Longfellow. That you
might understand; and if you only learned a verse or two it would be
something.”
She recited the poem to him, and the Jacky-Toad said it was fine talk,
and managed to commit one verse to memory, though not without much
difficulty. Then Mabel repeated several of the “Ancient and Modern
Hymns,” and a rhymed alphabet, and some of Lear’s Nonsense Verses. The
last pleased her pupil much, but she refused to permit him to learn
any of them, explaining that knowledge of this description, though an
elegant accomplishment, as in her case, would not add lasting lustre to
the Jacky-Toad’s reputation.
Then some chance utterance reminded him of home, and he sighed and
trimmed his lamp, and murmured a vague wish about moonlight and
quaking-bogs.
“I believe sometimes you almost want to go back,” said Mabel coldly.
“Well, you do keep such a darnation tight hand ’pon me. Home’s home,
when all’s said, if ’tis awnly a li’l’ cranny in a bog. Theer ban’t no
comfort here, nor yet comp’ny, savin’ your presence.”
“You want to go back to those other wretched Jacky-Toads?”
“Ess fay, an’ show ’em all I’ve larned.”
“You’ve learnt absolutely nothing yet; and I’m not going to let you go
back till you know at least the Kings of Israel and the multiplication
table up to twelve times twelve, so you needn’t think it.”
But it is to be regretted that Mabel’s noble ambitions were never
gratified. Of course, faults existed on both sides. She was exacting
and impatient; the Jacky-Toad was obstinate. It is better to rule by
love than fear if you are dealing with a Devon Jacky-Toad, but Mabel
was too severe. She expected too much; she said hard things, none the
pleasanter for being true; and the Jacky-Toad finally grew sullen,
and refused to employ even that morsel of brain power which it had
pleased Providence to bestow upon him. His health was partly to blame
for this. Change of scene, night air, and the humid atmosphere of a
quag are essential to the well-being of all Jacky-Toads; and this one
languished under imprisonment, lost his temper all too often, and
frequently swore in broad Devonshire, merely from the wicked desire to
make Mabel angry. Once, when he said pointedly that she evidently had
not the gift of teaching, she slapped him and dropped him head-first
into his marmalade-jar. Then he turned round, said a thing not to
be repeated here, and tried to bite her. Relations were strained
henceforward, but though Mabel shed bitter tears over her failure to
reach that nobler part of his nature which must not be denied even to a
Jacky-Toad, she still had hope, and determined with praiseworthy pluck
to conquer in the end.
Chance, however, defeated her resolves, and it happened that the
Jacky-Toad’s longed-for opportunity to escape came at last. Needless
to say he seized it. During a spring cleaning, a maid found the
marmalade-jar while Mabel was at school, and, believing it empty,
she threw it into the dustbin. From thence it was removed to a
rubbish-heap, and a boy, seeing it lying there, immediately broke it
with his catapult. Thus the prisoner found himself a free Jacky-Toad,
and being happily gifted with that marvellous “homing” instinct so
much admired in the carrier pigeon and humble-bee, he immediately rose
to a considerable height in the air, dodged the smoke from a factory
chimney, and proceeded as the crow flies, or is given credit for
flying, to the West of England.
* * * * *
Under a spring moon the nocturnal moor was all alive and awake. The
pixies were busy measuring new fairy rings for the coming season;
the elves--those “whose little eyes glow, like sparks of fire”--were
entertaining the brownies; the Jacky-Toads, having danced the “Wildfire
Gallop,” sat and rested, and talked politics. Then it happened that
their missing colleague formed matter for discussion, and an aged
Jacky-Toad, by tacit understanding father of the company, gave it as
his opinion that the wanderer had lost himself in fresh running water,
which is, of course, death to _Ignes Fatui_ all the world over.
“He was a born fule, if you remember,” he concluded.
At the same moment a blue light flickered like a shooting-star above
their heads, and, with the sound of a small bird alighting, the missing
member of that community returned to his friends. Their welcome
was, of course, hearty as need be, and from an attitude of absolute
indifference one and all assumed the manner of affection, friendship
and regard. Now the new-come Jacky-Toad, though his knowledge had
appeared but scanty in the presence of his fair mistress, found,
after leaving her and upon escaping the radius of her exceeding great
erudition, that his own acquirements assumed a more important shape.
A little knowledge may go far thus brought into a region where, until
its arrival, there is none. The Jacky-Toad returned therefore with a
sufficiently high estimate of his intellectual stores.
“Well, dear souls,” he said, “here I be again, an’ what I’ve seed
and larned you’ll never credit, not if I talks to ’e for a month o’
Sundays.”
The father of the flock, fearing for a position which he merely held
by courtesy and through his own natural force of character, now set
himself to discount the adventurer’s information.
“You be the monkey as have seen the world--you be,” he said; “and what
do ’e make o’t?”
“A terrible coorious world, and as for Lunnon--well, ’tis somethin’
amazin’ to be sure. An’ what wi’ geography, an’ nat’ral sciences, an’
poetry, an’ sich-like wonnerful branches o’ larnin’, my head’s full.”
They buzzed admiration, except the venerable Jacky-Toad.
“Let’s hear what you do know,” he suggested.
“Well, fust you must be told as we’m all made o’ gas--the whole boilin’
of us. We’m no more’n just a whiff of phosphuretted hydrogen!”
“You’m jokin’!” they cried.
“No fay, solemn truth.”
“An’ what if ’tis?” asked the old Jacky-Toad abruptly. “Granted--then
what? Ban’t no gert odds as I can see. Who’s better for knawin’ it?
We’ve got to be made o’ somethin’.”
At this reflection the travelled Jacky-Toad was uneasy, and the more
so because such an unreasonable manner of regarding the fact gained
ground. Nobody--not even a Jacky-Toad--likes much to be confronted with
superior knowledge outpoured in a superior manner.
“Ban’t no mighty matter when you come to think of it,” said somebody;
and then the ancient one spoke again.
“Besides, how be we to knaw _’tis_ so? Us have awnly got your word
for’t. That ban’t proof. For my paart I’m blamed if I _do_ b’lieve it!”
In about half a minute they all agreed with their venerable leader that
this information must not be accepted. Then an old friend asked the
wanderer concerning his geography, and from a condition of some dismay
he plucked up courage.
“Well, I can tell ’e a ’mazing thing in that branch o’ larnin’. ‘The
Duchy o’ Baden lies a’most entirely between the Kingdom o’ Wurtemberg
an’ the River Rhine. The climate be healthy, but the winters is cruel
sharp in the Black Forest.’ What do ’e think o’ that?”
They all hummed their admiration, and several shook the geographer by
the hand.
“’Tis a noble piece of information, sure enough,” said one.
“Ban’t that gude-fashioned larnin’?” asked the scholar in triumph. And
the ancient cynic answered him:
“Be gormed if _I_ sees the use of it! Knawledge ain’t nothin’ ’less
you can put it to a purpose.”
There was an awkward pause, then another spoke:
“Come to think o’t, theer ban’t ’zactly any _use_ to it, be theer?”
“All the same, souls, ’tis a purty thing,” argued the Jacky-Toad’s
personal friend.
“But I’ve got purtier,” said the traveller, though in a crestfallen
voice. “I’m thinkin’ I shan’t please ’e, but I’ll give ’e a bit o’
poetry whether or no.”
Then he recited to them the first verse of Longfellow’s “Excelsior,” to
which they listened with patient attention.
“The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore ’mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!”
“Be that all?” said the old Jacky-Toad.
“Ess, ’tis,” answered the reciter, immorally concealing the fact that
there were eight other verses which he had not been able to learn.
“Well, then, ’tis as silly a bit o’ man’s twaddle as ever I heard.
Doan’t ’mount to nothin’ so far as I can see.”
“’Tis poetry,” said the Jacky-Toad feebly.
“What’s rhyme wi’out reason? No better’n water wi’out mud. You’ve bin
wastin’ your time somethin’ shockin’--that’s what you’ve bin doin’.
I could ’a taught ’e more in this ’ere bog than what you’ve got in
Lunnon, seemin’ly.”
“Is that all you knaw?” asked a very young Jacky-Toad, who had no
ambitions of his own, and could therefore afford to be sympathetic.
“Yes--that’s all,” said the wanderer. Then he turned away his face, and
his little eyes blinked and he wept.
“Poor fule,” commented the ancient Jacky-Toad; “you never ought to a
left the quag. What’s the gude o’ the like o’ you gwaine to foreign
paarts? Wheer theer’s no brains by nature, theer ban’t nothin’ for
larnin’ to catch hold upon.”
“’Pears to me I did teach more’n I larned, come to think of it,” said
the crushed Jacky-Toad. “Her what took me to Lunnon got to dance the
‘Wildfire Gallop’ somethin’ butivul ’fore I left her.”
“Why, theer it is, then! That’s very comfortin’ for ’e, for ’tis
somethin’ to knaw us have done more for our betters than our betters
have done for us.”
There was consolation in this--of a sort; and I am glad to leave the
Jacky-Toad with a smile on his extremely plain face, because this is
the end of the story.
The narrative will be seen to bristle with morals, even as a porcupine
with quills. Of these I have removed as many as possible; yet one seems
vital to the plot, and must be unwillingly permitted to remain. This
indicates, of course, that all knowledge is not useful--if you are a
Jacky-Toad.