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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Drolls From Shadowland, by J. H. Pearce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Drolls From Shadowland
+
+Author: J. H. Pearce
+
+Release Date: May 2, 2008 [EBook #25307]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DROLLS FROM SHADOWLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Emmy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[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.
+
+And then he remembered that up on yonder moors--whose ferns and granite
+boulders he could see plainly in the moonlight--there was a "gashly owld
+fogou,"[N] where, if a man went at midnight prepared to boldly summon
+Hate and to "turn a stone"[O] in her honour, his hatred would be
+accomplished for him "as sure as death."
+
+"An' I'll go there, ef I die for it!" said he grimly to himself.
+
+The village was asleep, and all its cottages were smokeless. There was
+no one stirring anywhere in the cove. But far out in the moonlit bay he
+could see the fishing-boats dotting the vast grey plain, and he knew
+that in one of them 'Miah Laity was fishing, and was no doubt thinking
+of Dorcas as he fished.
+
+"I'll spoil 'es thinkin' for un 'fore long," said 'Lijah, "ayven ef I
+have to sill me saul to do the job!"
+
+And with that he slipped on his coat and boots--for he had been
+standing at the window half undressed--and clapping on his cap as he
+passed through the kitchen, strode heavily and gloomily out of the
+house.
+
+On the moor he had only the breeze for company, and its long, vague
+wail, as it rustled across the ferns, merely deepened the moody
+irritation in his mind. He felt as sour as a fanatic and as gloomy as a
+thief.
+
+To find the fogou, among the bewildering growth of ferns, was by no
+means the easiest task in the world: for the rude cave-dwelling was
+literally buried in the hill-side; its entrance being hidden by the rank
+vegetation that here reached almost to Elijah's arm-pits.
+
+As he ploughed his way through the trackless tangle, giving vent the
+while to a superfluity of oaths, he presently stumbled on the entrance
+to the fogou, almost precipitating himself into its darkness, so
+suddenly had he stumbled on it, wading through the ferns.
+
+The low and narrow tunnel in the hill-side, with its walls and roof
+lined with slabs of rock, was as uncanny a spot as a man could set foot
+in, and Elijah shook like one with the ague, as he thrust aside the
+ferns and peered into the blackness.
+
+He turned round, half inclined to retreat; but, as he turned, his eyes
+chanced to travel to the sea, where he could still discern the
+fishing-boats riding at their nets; and the idea of 'Miah out there
+thinking of Dorcas made him clench his teeth grimly, as if he had
+received a blow.
+
+He swung round on his heels sharply and determinedly, savagely trampling
+the ferns beneath his feet, and strode forward into the pitch-black
+mirk.
+
+Groping his way in, with hands extended, he presently found the block of
+granite called the altar, and "turning the stone" in the hollow on its
+surface, he shaped the while in his heart his rancorous prayer to Hate.
+
+Suddenly he was aware of a face staring at him: a mere face vaguely
+limned on the darkness, as if a bodiless head were held before him by
+the hair.
+
+And in that same instant, without a word being uttered, he felt that he
+had looked in the face of Hate.
+
+He reeled out of the fogou like a drunken man.
+
+The vision was one it would be impossible to forget. He must bear with
+him this memory, as a man who has committed a murder must bear with him
+the memory of his victim's ghastly face.
+
+"I'll wait an' see what comes of it," said 'Lijah to himself, as he ran
+and stumbled down the hill-side in the moonlight, the thick hair
+stiffening under his cap.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The months slipped by, and the years dragged on sluggishly, and 'Miah
+and Dorcas were as happy as ever. They had a couple of bairns to toddle
+about their cottage, and 'Miah had been fairly fortunate on the fishery,
+so that their lives were generally sunny and enviable to an extent that
+made Elijah's blood turn to gall.
+
+"Thee'st forgotten me, thou darned owld liar that thou art!" said he,
+shaking his fist savagely at the fern-clad hill-side, where Hate
+presumably was watching from her lair.
+
+On which he heard a chilling whisper at his elbow: "You shall have your
+wish, as sure as death!"
+
+Elijah heard the loud thump, thump of his heart. But an instant after,
+his pulse danced buoyantly, and he went about his work chuckling grimly
+to himself.
+
+But while 'Miah's life was harvesting happiness, as his nets gathered
+abundantly the harvest of the sea, Elijah's life on his farm on the
+hill-side appeared to be stifling among the stones and thistles, and a
+sour and acid leanness seemed eating up his heart.
+
+It was as if Hate had shot her arrows blindly, and they had struck and
+rankled in the wrong breast.
+
+With Elijah Trevorrow nothing seemed to prosper. He might rise early
+and go to bed late, he might pinch and pare as relentlessly as he
+pleased, every year of his life he grew leaner and poorer, till the
+scowl on his features deepened permanently among its lines, and in the
+end transformed his features as completely as a mask.
+
+He was no more like the clear-eyed, whistling young farmer who had gone
+a-wooing Dorcas among the rustling wheat-fields, than the wrinkled tree,
+with its heart rotted out of it, is like the green young sapling in the
+bravery of its spring.
+
+Ever watching hungrily to see Misfortune seize his rival and set her
+teeth thirstily in the very pulse of his life, Elijah held aloof from
+commerce with his neighbours, sour and discontented, and wishing each
+day to end, in the hope that on the morrow he might see the evil he
+desired.
+
+Presently there went a whisper through the tiny hamlet that Elijah
+Trevorrow was a bit touched _here_--the villagers tapping their brows
+significantly as they spoke.
+
+"He do talk as ef Hate es a woman, an' he've seed her. Up in that owld
+fogou he've mit her, he do say. An' he's all'ys sayin' she ha'nt keeped
+her word to un. Whatever do 'a mayne, weth 'es gashly owld tales?"
+
+'Miah, whose name had got mixed up in the tale, one day called at the
+lonely farmhouse, in order to see Elijah and reason with him if he
+could.
+
+But Elijah, as 'Miah approached, set the dogs on him savagely, and the
+fisherman was obliged precipitately to beat a retreat.
+
+At last, one day in the depth of winter, when the hills were white with
+whirling snowdrifts, Elijah Trevorrow disappeared.
+
+They searched everywhere for him, but could find no trace of him, and
+the search was finally abandoned in despair.
+
+Elijah had made his way to the fogou, determined to front Hate and to
+compel her to keep faith with him, even if he squeezed her life out
+through her throat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some eight months after--in the time of blackberries--some youngsters,
+questing among the ferns on the hillside, stumbled across the fogou and
+crept in to explore it.
+
+They rushed down the hillside screaming with terror; and, when safe
+among the cottages, began to babble incoherently that there was a ghost
+up yonder in the "owld hunted fogou," they had seen its face--and it
+was white--so white!
+
+The villagers began to have an inkling of the truth, and went toiling up
+through the ferns in a body.
+
+"As like as not 'tes _he_, poor saul," they whispered awesomely as they
+clambered up the windy ridges of the hill.
+
+True enough, it was Elijah, dead in the fogou. But whether or not he had
+again met Hate there, is one of the questions the gossips have still to
+solve.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] A subterranean storehouse or place of shelter.
+
+[O] A portion of the rites practised in connection with "cursing
+stones."
+
+
+
+
+THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
+
+
+IT was only an old deserted house, perched half-way up the hillside and
+overlooking the village. But it was none the less the village theatre:
+the peep-hole through which the villagers obtained a glimpse of many
+mysteries, and the stage and drop-scene of half the legends of the
+thorp.
+
+It was an old stone building which evidently had once been a dwelling of
+importance, but for quite a century it had been tenantless and almost
+entirely dismantled: the home of the owl and the lizard, of the spectre
+and the bat.
+
+When the sunrise splashed across the fragmentary panes of glass that
+here and there remained in their frames, the farmer would stand still at
+his ploughing on the hill-slope and glance up at the great Argus-eyed
+building--that had now, however, more sockets than eyes--and a world of
+memories, of legends and superstitions, would buzz, with strange
+bewilderment, through his brain.
+
+The old house reminded him of his mother and of his grandfather, and of
+those who had been the village historians for his childhood, and a
+musing gravity seemed to deepen in his mind. He was aware of the brevity
+of life, and of the lapse of the personality; of the tragedies of
+passion, with their gravity and poignancy, and of the mystery that
+broods at the back of all our thoughts. But most of all he was aware
+that the building standing fronting him was the very kernel of his
+individuality projected into visibility: the one knot into which all his
+memories were tied.
+
+He would hold his children spell-bound by the hour as he told them the
+ordinary folk-tales of the hamlet, with that ruin on the hillside as the
+stage for the majority of them; till his daughter Ruth, who was young
+and sentimental, though with a streak of passion running through her
+nature, learned to contemplate the ruin with an awe akin to his, and
+stared up wonderingly at it, so long and so often, that at last it had
+become for her a necessary part of life.
+
+While Ruth was still a child, the haunted ruin chiefly attracted her
+thoughts as the scene and locality of uncanny occurrences that were
+fanciful and unusual rather than sombre or suggestive. It was the great
+haunted cheese in which the piskies burrowed, and out of which they
+hopped with amusing unexpectedness: it was the building to pass which
+you must always turn your stocking, if you wished to escape being
+_pisky-ledden_, or misguided: it was the place to which the "Little
+Folks"[P] conveyed stolen children: above all, it was the place of dark
+and cobwebbed corners, where naughty children were put to live with
+snails and spiders and with great big goggle-eyed buccaboos!
+
+As she stood on her doorstep with her bit of knitting in her hand--a
+tiny doll's stocking, or a garter for herself--little Ruth would stare
+up at the great black building, with the scarlet splendour of the sunset
+at its back, until she almost fancied she could see the little winking
+piskies grinning through the window-holes and clambering across the
+roofs.
+
+And by-and-by, when the rich yellow sky began to darken and the flocks
+of rooks flew cawing overhead, Ruth would shiver with a delicious sense
+of security as she stood beneath the porch in the gathering twilight and
+heard the wind begin to moan and sigh mysteriously, as if it trembled at
+the thought of spending the night on the hillside with no other company
+than that "whisht[Q] owld house."
+
+As she grew older and became aware of the drift of her wishes, feeling
+stirrings and promptings at the roots of her life, her imagination
+seized now on the passionate human tragedies which, according to the
+legends, had been enacted in the building. She had a sweetheart of her
+own, and she could understand lovers; and something of the glamour and
+mystery of a great heady passion she believed she could interpret out of
+her own ripened life.
+
+But Rastus Dabb, her sweetheart, was as cloddish and unimaginative as
+the heavy-uddered cows, with their great fleshy dewlaps, of which he was
+prouder than he was of anything else in his world. It was quite
+impossible to get his feet off the solid earth: and apparently his mind
+was anchored firmly to his feet. But Ruth had the attractiveness of all
+young things--she was fresh and cheerful, with a heart as light as a
+feather--and, by the law of contrast, she suited him to a nicety, more
+especially as she was an excellent little housewife to boot. So the
+courting prospered sunnily; and he let her "romance" as she pleased.
+
+When she was a wife and mother, Ruth presently became acquainted with
+that grim Shadow who knows the secret of our tears--their source and the
+bitter in them--and knows, too, the secret of everlasting peace. And
+thereafter, when at intervals his wings darkened the world for her, her
+thoughts went out, with a strange yearning, towards the dead who had
+once inhabited the ruin and could now roam through it only as ghosts.
+
+"Shall I one day have only such a foothold as theirs in this dear green
+world of ours?" she would ask herself, shiveringly. And the
+Sunday-evening's sermon could soothe her not a whit.
+
+At last, in the waning afternoon of life, when her smooth brown hair
+was as yet unstreaked with grey and her cheeks had still a splash of
+colour in them, she fell ill of some mysterious malady--mysterious, at
+least, to the sympathetic villagers--and one dreary day in the
+blustering autumn she was aware in her heart that the Shadow was in the
+room.
+
+"Draw back the curtains as far as you can," said she to Rastus, who
+stood helpless by the bedside.
+
+And when they were drawn, and she could see the great gaunt ruin
+frowning blackly above the slopes of the shadow-checkered hillside, she
+cried out suddenly, "I'm going there among them, Rastus! Oh, dear, hold
+me!" And with that she passed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[P] Fairies.
+
+[Q] Melancholy, forlorn.
+
+
+
+
+GIFTS AND AWARDS.
+
+
+"TWO bonnier babes," said the grey old midwife, bending thoughtfully
+over them, "I never before assisted into the world."
+
+The mother, lying wan in her bed, smiled happily.
+
+"So bonny are they," said the wrinkled beldame, "that I will give to
+each of them one of my choicest gifts: something they will still keep
+hugged to their hearts when they are as close to the gates as you or I."
+
+"And how close is that?" asked the mother, growing whiter.
+
+The wise old midwife turned from the bedside and bent above the
+infants, mumbling to herself.
+
+Presently the mother started up from a doze. There was no one in the
+room but her married sister. "I dreamed Death was in the room with me
+just now," said she. "And he had an old woman with him whom he called
+his Sister. She seemed to me to be giving my babies something: but what
+it was I don't know. At first I thought it was a plaything; but now I
+think it was a sorrow. At least. . . ."
+
+"_Dear!_ DEAR!" cried her sister, in alarm, as if she saw the spirit
+drifting beyond her ken.
+
+"My babies!" whispered the mother.
+
+And presently she was "at rest."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rick and Dick grew up somehow. Though motherless and fatherless they
+were not quite friendless, and in the struggle for existence they held
+their own and kept alive.
+
+A more agreeable and cheerful fellow than Dick it would have been
+impossible to find, according to his companions. He seemed dowered with
+a disposition so equable and contented that it was a pleasure to be with
+him: and he radiated cheerfulness like a fire. Moreover, he was in
+thorough harmony with his surroundings. He found fault with nothing in
+the structure of society, and desired no change either in laws or
+institutions: everything was ordered wisely, and was ordered for the
+best. In fact, he was the spirit of Content personified: and much
+patting on the back did he get for his reward.
+
+"We must give him a helping hand, must push him forward, you know," said
+the Community, beaming on its cheerful young champion.
+
+And Dick took the "pushing forward" with admirable self-composure, and
+certainly seemed to deserve all he got.
+
+As for Rick, the Community would have nothing to do with him. He was not
+quite an out-and-out pessimist, it was true; but he seemed to look on
+the Community as a most clumsily-articulated creature--a thing of shreds
+and patches, and the Cheap Jack of shams. He was always putting his
+finger on this spot or that; hinting that here there was a weakness, and
+there . . . something worse. Every advanced thinker, and the majority of
+theorists, could count on finding a sympathetic listener in him: and not
+infrequently they found in him an advocate also; such an arrant
+anti-optimist was the pestilent fellow. As if Civilization, after
+thousands of years of travail, had produced nothing better than a clumsy
+abortion with the claws of an animal and the tastes of Jack-an-ape! Why,
+the man must be mad, to have such irregular fancies! It was a pity laws
+against opinions were not oftener put in force: then--a click of the
+guillotine, and the world would have peace!
+
+Rick listened grimly, and made a note of the imagery. "You will remember
+it better in black and white," said he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the course of years Dick became a churchwarden and a philanthropist
+(he took the infection very mildly and in its most agreeable form), and
+a highly respected gambler on, or rather member of, the Stock Exchange.
+He was also joined "in the bands of holy matrimony" to a buxom young
+widow who was left-handedly connected with The Aristocracy Itself! The
+lady brought him a most desirable fortune to start with, and after some
+years made him a present of twins: so that Dick was now a notable man
+among his acquaintances, and had the ambition to become a bigger man
+still, by-and-by: a Common Councilman certainly, and an Alderman
+_perhaps_!
+
+Meanwhile Rick had developed into a musty _savant_: a fellow whose
+tastes, if you might call them such, were of the most _outre_ order--in
+advance of everything that was sober, respectable, and conventional; and
+in aggressive alliance with everything that was disturbing, and that
+was maliciously and wickedly critical (said the saints).
+
+"The kernel of his life is unhealthy," said his brother: "it has a
+deadly fungus growing in it, I am afraid."
+
+"The fungus of discontent, dear friend," said the clergyman.
+
+"I am afraid so," said Dick, with a prodigious great sigh. "Still, we
+must none the less pray for him unceasingly: for prayer availeth much,
+as we know."
+
+The clergyman dramatically clasped his white hands together, looking up
+as one who speechlessly admires.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rick sat musing in his gloomy study: thinking of the ladder he had
+climbed, and of the scenery of his life that now stretched out like a
+map before him.
+
+Presently the study door opened softly, and a Figure came in and took a
+chair at his side.
+
+"You have come, then!" said Rick. "I thought your coming must be near."
+
+"Shall we start?" asked the Figure.
+
+"I am ready," answered Rick.
+
+And they passed out together into the deep black night.
+
+"Come, take my arm: we will call together for your brother."
+
+"He has so much to make him happy! There are the little ones and his
+wife! Could you not delay a little?"
+
+"He must come with us to-night."
+
+Dick was attending a banquet which was being given in his honour to
+celebrate his recent election as a Common Councilman, and the lust of
+life was in his every vein. But in the act of responding to the toast of
+the evening he was suddenly attacked by a fit of apoplexy. He
+staggered, and fell back--and they perceived that he was dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a bleak and a very depressing journey to pass nakedly and alone
+from the warm, well-lighted, and flattering banquet, and, most of all,
+from the comfortable and familiar earth, up to the Doom's-man and the
+Bar beside the Gates. If he could only have had a friend or two at his
+side!
+
+On the way up, just as he was nearing the gates, Dick overtook Rick, who
+was a little way ahead of him.
+
+"Come, let us go up together," said Rick.
+
+At the gates, however, Dick began to grow uneasy. His brother's
+reputation on earth among "the godly" was a curiously unwelcome memory
+to Dick now the Bar was so near and the Doom's-man was in sight.
+
+"You go first," said Dick to his brother; falling behind as if to
+dissociate himself from him.
+
+Rick passed the gate and stood silently at the Bar.
+
+"Place the brothers side by side," said the Doom's-man sternly.
+
+"If you please," began Dick, stumbling in his speech, so afraid was he
+of being confounded in the judgment of his brother; "If you please. . . ."
+
+Said the Doom's-man: "Let the Advocates state the case."
+
+The Black-robed Advocate claimed Rick boldly. The verdict of Rick's
+fellow-citizens, he asserted, was emphatic on the point that Rick was
+legitimately his. And he went with the majority, and claimed a verdict
+accordingly.
+
+The White-robed Advocate advanced, more hesitatingly, that Dick
+presumably should go with _him_. The Community, he averred, had long ago
+decided that only in this way would justice have its due.
+
+The Doom's-man's verdict was simplicity itself.
+
+A nature so contented, and so little given to fault-finding, would be
+the typical one for the Black Advocate's household, said the Doom's-man,
+humorously contemplating Dick. "Take him away with you," said he to the
+Black Advocate: "the man will give you no trouble, _as you know_.
+
+"But that restless, fault-finding fellow there," and he indicated Rick
+with a movement of his forefinger, "it would need a faultless abode
+like _yours_ to satisfy him," and he signed to the silent White Advocate
+at his side. "Take him, he is yours," said the Doom's-man solemnly.
+
+And with that the Advocates departed with their awards.
+
+
+
+
+FRIEND OR FOE?
+
+
+I.
+
+SIR EDWARD lay back lazily in his chair, with a letter in a woman's
+handwriting crumpled at his feet.
+
+"She must make the best of it now," said he, gazing at the fire. "She is
+not worse off than others, come to that." And he lolled among the
+cushions, gazing into the fire, with a hard and cruel look on his
+countenance, on which the stamp of sensuality was unmistakably
+impressed.
+
+It was a large and luxuriously-furnished apartment, with everything so
+arranged as to minister to the senses and afford them the fullest
+gratification which suggestions could impart.
+
+But Sir Edward, lolling by the fire this evening, experienced little
+satisfaction in his luxurious surroundings: the eroding tooth of thought
+they could no way quiet; and it was the irritation of this that he most
+desired to have allayed.
+
+He lighted a cigar, and began to smoke vigorously, leaning back the
+while and contemplating the smoke-clouds that drifted round in swirling
+folds and spirals, an occasional ring mounting airily over all.
+
+Smoking away steadily, cigar after cigar--for he was an insatiable
+smoker as he was insatiable in everything--Sir Edward seemed presently
+to be almost hidden among the smoke-wreaths, which had now thickened in
+the room with unexampled rapidity.
+
+At first he felt inclined to ring for a servant and have the windows
+opened to let in a breath of air, but there was a certain amount of
+interest in watching the floating veils of smoke; and, besides, in the
+mere act of idly watching these he could let certain vivid tableaux,
+with which Memory was amusing him, drift beyond the range of his
+attention, he hoped. So he lay back, letting the smoke thicken in the
+atmosphere, while he followed the fantastic wreaths lazily with his
+eyes.
+
+It was almost as if he were dozing as he lay there; for he could have
+sworn that in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace he
+perceived a grey old fogey reclining among the cushions, yet with
+deep-sunken eyes fixed watchfully on his face.
+
+It was really absurd to have an utter stranger intrude his company on
+him in this unceremonious manner, and Sir Edward felt inclined to
+question him sharply, and, if need be, have him turned out neck and
+crop.
+
+But instead of taking up the intended _role_ of inquisitor, he found
+himself reduced ignominiously to the _role_ of the questioned one.
+
+"Where were you thinking of going to-night?" asked the Visitor. "To the
+theatre, or the opera, or to that 'private club' we know of?" And the
+Visitor looked at him with a glance of quiet intelligence which Sir
+Edward somehow felt powerless to resent.
+
+"I was thinking. . . ."
+
+"Of going with me? Quite right!" replied the Visitor. "With me you
+shall go: unless we can come to terms together. In which case,
+possibly, I may leave you behind _for a time_."
+
+Sir Edward ceased to smoke: and his hands trembled on his knees.
+
+But he made no movement, and uttered no protest. Before the glance of
+his visitor he quailed and was dumb.
+
+"Ruth Medwin, I presume, must bear her disgrace as best she can? You
+will neither recognize her, nor make her an allowance, I understand."
+
+"I think I have changed my mind. . . ."
+
+"Too late," said the Visitor. "After having seen _me_ you can change
+your mind no more."
+
+Sir Edward lay motionless among the cushions of his chair.
+
+"I should like . . . if you will allow me . . ." he began feebly.
+
+"I can allow you only one choice: and that a peremptory one. Will you go
+with me instantly--I think you know me--or shall I call for you again
+_on any terms I care to fix_?"
+
+"Will your terms be as pitiless. . . ."
+
+"You shall hear them, if you please."
+
+Sir Edward sank deeper among the soft cushions: his whole life
+concentrated in the watchful stare with which he fixed his eyes on his
+visitor's face.
+
+"Shall I take you with me now to undergo your punishment--and, I need
+scarcely tell you, it will not be a light one--or would you prefer a
+delay before you accompany me: a period of expiation, in some form I may
+decide on, with a hope of a reduction in your punishment at the end?"
+
+"A delay--a period of expiation, for God's sake!"
+
+"You are certain you prefer it?"
+
+"I implore it! I entreat it! For God's sake, grant me a respite!"
+
+"Be it so."
+
+
+II.
+
+The soul that had been Sir Edward's sickened with disgust.
+
+It was located in the body of a miserable cab-horse; one of the sorriest
+hacks in the East End of London, and practically fit only for the
+knacker, one would have said.
+
+It was a life the human soul found inexpressibly hateful. If this were
+expiation, it was in a purgatory indeed. But in a purgatory of filth and
+of disgusting sensations, instead of in a torturing purgatory of fire.
+
+To be lashed with the whip, and galled excruciatingly with the harness;
+to have the bit between the teeth, or tugging at the jaws unmercifully;
+and to have the blinkers ever blotting out the vision of the world: to
+strain every sinew, and have the service accepted thanklessly; to be
+tortured with discomfort, and to work absolutely without reward--it was
+a life devoid of even the meanest compensations: loathsome, and in every
+way abhorrent to thought.
+
+The horses, and other animals he met in the streets, he might have
+communicated with in some way or other, but his driver--a drunken,
+quarrelsome fellow--was always tugging at the bit or brandishing the
+whip; and if the poor animal even tried to turn his head, he was
+belaboured as brutally as if he had swerved or fallen asleep.
+
+There was no chance even of rubbing noses at the drinking-troughs, or of
+laying his head on the neck of a companion at the stand. And whatever
+might be taking place in the streets through which he was passing, he
+was debarred from bestowing on it even the most casual attention.
+
+His mental activity was ignored, or trampled on, with an indifference
+that was never once relaxed or relieved.
+
+His life was a horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debasement
+and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of
+the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have
+preferred suffering among his equals in hell.
+
+A year of this life was as much as he could endure. One day he stumbled
+across a tram-line, and, falling, broke his leg--hopelessly snapping
+the tendon, and otherwise injuring himself--and he was carted off to the
+knackers to receive his _coup de grace_.
+
+A moment or two before he was killed, the eyes of the animal lighted up
+with a strangely human expression--which was succeeded by a look of the
+most unappeasable despair.
+
+Evidently he had again seen the grey old man.
+
+But the Visitor's communication to him remained unrevealed, and it was
+probably torturing him still when he . . . died?
+
+
+
+
+THE FIELDS OF AMARANTH.
+
+
+"I SHALL seek the fields of amaranth," said the young man defiantly.
+"And I shall find them," added he, turning tenderly to his mother. "And
+when I have found them I will comeback for _you_, dear mother, and I
+will take you with me that we may dwell there in peace."
+
+"What do you know of peace, and why should you desire it?" asked the
+father, with a certain cold contempt in his tone. "You have not yet
+lived; and you have certainly not laboured. Rest is for those who have
+laboured and grown weary. In that rest that you desire you would have
+an empty mind for showman, and of its meagre entertainment you would
+tire as speedily as a child. Live first, and watch the puppets of memory
+play afterwards. The fields of amaranth will wait for you however long
+you live."
+
+But the young man insisted: "I want to find them _now_. And when I have
+found them I will come for _you_, mother, dear; and we will return to
+them together and be happy and at peace."
+
+But the mother's eyes were troubled with an inexplicable expression. "It
+were better that you should wait till I come to _you_," she answered
+gently. "As come to you I surely shall--one day. But come not to fetch
+me . . . if once you find the fields."
+
+"I surely _shall_ come for you," cried the youth.
+
+"No, no!" implored the mother.
+
+But he smiled on her, and was gone.
+
+It was a long journey, and a toilsome one, and the end of it the youth
+could neither learn of nor anticipate.
+
+The fields of amaranth? Yes: all had heard of them. But no one knew any
+one who had ever found them. And, for themselves, they were content to
+know these waited for them somewhere. They had ties--they had
+businesses--they were content to live and wait.
+
+"When I return from them, shall I give you tidings of them?" asked the
+young man, earnestly.
+
+"No, no!" They were vehement in their dissuasions that he should not:
+finally even fleeing from him in terror at the thought.
+
+And the young man mused perplexedly as he walked on. "Are there
+_really_ fields of amaranth for those who can find them?" he asked of a
+wrinkled, white-haired wayfarer. "Or is it merely a bait, a delusion,
+and a lie?"
+
+"Yes, surely, my son, these fields await us all: else life, at best,
+were a sorry game for most of us. It is there we shall rest and reap our
+reward."
+
+"But no one seems eager to set out for them and discover them."
+
+"No one?" quoth the old man, looking at him strangely: "there are many
+ways of getting there: you have chosen only one. There are other roads,
+and crowded ones: though you know nothing of them yet."
+
+The young man brushed past him hot with disdain. He was merely an old
+dotard: empty-minded like the rest.
+
+The lures of the highway were many and formidable; but the young man
+turned aside from them impatiently. "I am bound for the fields of
+amaranth," cried he haughtily: "when I return I will taste these good
+things you offer."
+
+"Will he ever return?" whispered a girl to her mother.
+
+She had looked with eyes of love on the daring young wayfarer; and a
+vague regret shivered through her as he passed on.
+
+"God only knows. But I doubt it," said the mother.
+
+The girl hid her face in her apron and wept.
+
+But the young man had not overheard the whisper, and with head held high
+he pushed on along the road.
+
+And here were the fields of amaranth at last! He could see them smiling
+faintly on the other side of the valley. But they had a strangely vague
+and unsubstantial look. One might almost have fancied he were looking at
+a mirage.
+
+And between the young wayfarer and the fields of amaranth the rugged
+hillside sloped abruptly: its foot being shrouded in a dense white mist.
+He could hear a river murmuring sullenly somewhere in the depths, but
+the mist hid the waters and he could only hear their moan.
+
+How far he had left the busy highway behind him! He would like to take
+just one farewell glance at it. The fields beyond him seemed to waver
+deceptively in his eyes. One glance at the highway, with its booths and
+its faces, and his vigour, strangely waning, would surely be renewed.
+
+But as he turned and saw the dear familiar highway, along which he had
+trudged so many weary miles, his heart went out in a yearning towards
+it, and he stretched out his arms to it, hungering for its life.
+
+So mighty was the fascination it now exercised over him, that he began
+to rush headlong down the hill towards it, eager to be once more
+mingling in its throng, and to once more feel its hum in his ears.
+
+At the foot of the hill he met the fair young girl whose eyes had
+erstwhile followed him so wistfully, and he flung himself into her arms
+sobbing violently.
+
+"The life here--you--I cannot part with them!" he cried passionately.
+And he shuddered: "If the wish had come too late!"
+
+
+
+
+THE COMEDY OF A SOUL.
+
+
+"YOU are quite sure you will never change? will never desert me, or be
+untrue to me?"
+
+"I am absolutely sure of it, my darling!" he answered resolutely. "Any
+pledge my sweet one desires I will give her freely," added he, as he
+again kissed her passionately on the mouth.
+
+"Would you leave me your soul in pawn?" asked the maiden, smiling at him
+bewitchingly with her deliciously red lips; her cheeks dimpling and her
+brown eyes sparkling, and her heaving breasts but thinly hidden from his
+gaze.
+
+"Willingly! And be glad to leave it in my darling's custody!" And his
+lips hovered caressingly around her just-disclosed shoulder.
+
+"Very well, I will accept the pledge," said she.
+
+He was beginning again to kiss her fondlingly.
+
+"You are a man of honour, are you not?" asked she; showing her even
+white teeth, and dimpling her rose-leaf cheeks temptingly.
+
+"Certainly. I hope so."
+
+"Then let me have your soul."
+
+"But that would mean death for me! Do you desire me to die, my love?"
+And a look of questioning wonder crept into his eyes.
+
+"By no means! I have not been reared by a philosopher for nothing. This
+crystal ball"--and she held out to him a tiny globe of crystal--"put
+your lips to it and pawn your soul to its keeping. I will warrant you,
+it will hold it as safely as I could."
+
+He glanced at the tiny globe distrustfully.
+
+"Are you afraid? Do you wish to withdraw from your word?"
+
+"By no means."
+
+"Then breathe against it, my love." And she held the crystal ball
+temptingly towards him. "You can imagine it is my lips you are
+touching," added she, with a light, coquettish laugh, leaning
+provocatively close to him.
+
+He took the crystal reluctantly, and breathed against it as she wished.
+
+"Oh!" cried he suddenly, drawing back his lips.
+
+She took the crystal globe from him and peered into it anxiously. Then
+cried, in a tone of triumph, "Look! there it is."
+
+He was aware of something cloudy--vague and light as smoke--floating, as
+it were, in the core of the crystal. And suddenly he felt a sense of
+want within himself.
+
+She put the crystal in her bosom, and let it lie between her breasts.
+
+"It is warm and pleasant there: you will never let it grow cold, will
+you?"
+
+"Never!" And she laughed; dimpling rosily in her mirth. "Now you can set
+off on your journey," said the maiden.
+
+"I have no wish now to leave your side," he whispered meekly.
+
+"This rose, that I have been wearing, you were wishing for just now.
+See! I toss it yonder! Fetch and keep it!" cried the maiden.
+
+He ran after it; groping for it where it had fallen in the grass.
+
+"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" sounded all around him. It was as if the wood had
+suddenly grown vocal with cuckoos.
+
+He turned his head quickly. The maiden had disappeared.
+
+"Why did I trust my soul to her keeping?" he wailed drearily. "If she
+should lose it; or mislay it; or should even let it grow cold! My love!
+my love! my love!" he began calling.
+
+"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" kept sounding across the grass.
+
+He ran hither and hither: he followed the woodland paths feverishly.
+
+At times he fancied he caught a glimpse of her vanishing garments; of
+the sunlight glinting on her long gold tresses. Now he imagined he could
+hear her laughter echoing among the tree-trunks: and anon he even
+fancied he could hear her singing. But he pursued her down the long
+green vistas in vain.
+
+He sat down beneath a tree and clasped his hands drearily. "What a fool
+I was to trust my soul to her!" he wailed.
+
+And at that moment he was aware of a ragged pedlar coming along the
+forest glades, and whistling as he came.
+
+"Ho! young man! you look melancholy," quoth the pedlar. "What d'ye lack?
+A philtre to make your sweetheart love you? Ribbons for a lady? A collar
+for your hound?"
+
+"I want a soul," said the young man, glancing at him hungrily.
+
+"A common want!" quoth the pedlar, grinning broadly. "But here in my
+pack I have souls in plenty. Dip in your hand and take one boldly!"
+
+"I should like to choose. . . ."
+
+"It is take it, or leave it. I allow no choice. I am offering you a
+gift."
+
+The pedlar laid his half-open pack on the grass.
+
+"Dip in your hand and take one, if you will."
+
+The young man dipped in his hand at a venture, and drew out one--the
+soul of an ape.
+
+"Not that! I will not have that!" cried he.
+
+"Then you will have none," said the pedlar, dropping the soul in his
+pack again. "If the great Soul Maker, who manufactures them by the
+million, allows neither picking nor choosing, beyond the casual dip of
+chance, do you think that a mere pedlar in souls, like myself, can do
+business on a basis which _he_ has found unprofitable? Pooh, man, get
+back your soul _if you can_, or else you may do without one, as far as I
+am concerned." And off strolled the pedlar, whistling as he went.
+
+The young man leaned his head dejectedly on his hand.
+
+"How can I get back my soul?" he moaned.
+
+"Why not live without one?" croaked a voice above his shoulder.
+
+He looked up, and saw a sooty old raven peering down at him.
+
+"Live without a soul! You'll never miss it," croaked the raven.
+
+"Can I?" cried the young man: amazed, yet hopeful.
+
+"_Can I?_" croaked the raven, mockingly echoing him. "_Can I?_ Of course
+you can, young fool!"
+
+"Then I will!" exclaimed the young man, starting to his feet.
+
+"That's right," croaked the raven. "You're the right sort--_you_ are!"
+
+"A capital idea that!" quoth the young man, cheerfully.
+
+He looked up, but the raven had hopped away among the branches.
+
+"Well, at any rate, his hint was well meant, and I'll follow it!" quoth
+the young man, striding out boldly towards the houses which he could
+just see glimmering beyond the edge of the wood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Ugh! How ugly and dirty it has become!" quoth the maiden, gazing in the
+crystal at the soul which she had coveted and stolen. "I will throw it
+away, it no longer amuses me!"
+
+And she threw it from her into the mire of the city: and the wheels and
+the feet rapidly buried it in the mud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The grey-haired Bishop looked "so beautiful" in his coffin, that the
+deaconesses and the dear good sisters longed to kiss him.
+
+"None of 'em ever found out that you wanted a soul," croaked the raven,
+who sat perched on the window-sill, blinking in the sunshine.
+
+But there was no response to this: for how can a dead man talk?
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+_Henderson & Spalding, Ltd., Marylebone Lane, London, W._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 46, "her" changed to "Her" to fit context (secured for Her)
+
+Both hillside and hill-side were used in this book and were retained.
+
+In the original text, each story began with the title on a page alone,
+then a blank page, then the title was repeated at the start of the story
+itself. These repeated titles were removed to avoid redundancy.
+
+Text uses both Beloved and Beloved once.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Drolls From Shadowland, by J. H. Pearce
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DROLLS FROM SHADOWLAND ***
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