Thesunshine 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 werecool 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 theFaery Queenlay 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 thedropping 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, "wouldyou 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 birdssang 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-crumpledvolume 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.
Onthe 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?"
"Idohope 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, whenyou 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 herknees. "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 monstrousinjustice!"
"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.
"Theeshaan'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 brokenirretrievably, 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'mysaul, 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, andJohn 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 herobedient 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.
[L]Little bit.
[L]Little bit.
[M]A cave.
[M]A cave.
Itwas 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 throughhis 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 astone"[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 coatand 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 asuperfluity 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 theferns 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 hascommitted 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 seemedto 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 onthe morrow he might see the evil he desired.
Presently there went a whisper through the tiny hamlet that Elijah Trevorrow was a bit touchedhere—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 'teshe, 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."
[N]A subterranean storehouse or place of shelter.
[N]A subterranean storehouse or place of shelter.
[O]A portion of the rites practised in connection with "cursing stones."
[O]A portion of the rites practised in connection with "cursing stones."
Itwas 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 wasaware 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 thansombre 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 beingpisky-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 atits 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 passionatehuman 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 littlehousewife 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.
[P]Fairies.
[P]Fairies.
[Q]Melancholy, forlorn.
[Q]Melancholy, forlorn.
"Twobonnier 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 thebedside 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 infrequentlythey 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 highlyrespected 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 Aldermanperhaps!
Meanwhile Rick had developed into a mustysavant:a fellow whose tastes, if you might call them such, were of the mostoutréorder—in advance of everything that was sober, respectable, and conventional; and in aggressive alliance with everything that was disturbing, and that wasmaliciously 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 suddenlyattacked 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 curiouslyunwelcome 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 withhim. 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 wouldneed a faultless abode likeyoursto 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.