THE JACKY-TOAD

THE JACKY-TOAD

HE was sitting upon the skull of a dead horse, thinking of nothing in particular, when out of the great nocturnal silence there came the sound of a human footstep. Whereupon he leapt upright and waved his lantern frantically. This he did because the wanderer was evidently night-foundered and lost upon the moorland, and it seemed probable that, observing the light, he or she would approach it. Now that strange blue flicker of flame rose and fell and danced above a quaking-bog—a hideous place where emerald mosses hid the black slime beneath, and where, at the margins of the danger, tussocks and little peat tumuli gave foothold for heather, for cotton grass, and for rushes. “I’m coming!” cried a voice. “I am so glad somebody’s found me at last.”

GORMED IF I DIDN’T THINK I’D GOT ’E!“You’re nothing but a puffof phosphuretted hydrogen”“GORMED IF I DIDN’T THINK I’D GOT ’E!”

“You’re nothing but a puffof phosphuretted hydrogen”“GORMED IF I DIDN’T THINK I’D GOT ’E!”

“You’re nothing but a puffof phosphuretted hydrogen”“GORMED IF I DIDN’T THINK I’D GOT ’E!”

Another moment and a small girl felt the sudden uprising of deadly coldness about her feet and heard the devilish hiss and chatter of the quaking-bog as it sucked and shivered and opened its black mouth to swallow her. But she was light as a feather, active as a bird. She struggled back, fell, clutched a stout mound of heather, then another, and so dragged herself out of danger.

“Gormed if I didn’t think I’d got ’e!” squeaked a voice at her elbow, and looking round the child saw a tiny monster, four inches high, black as coal, hairy as a spider, more horrible than any nightmare. He peered into her face with eyes like hot coals, and waved his lantern over his head.

“You horrid little cruel wretch!” cried the child. “Don’t think I’m a bit frightened of you, because I’m not.” Which was perfectly true, for the speaker had a father who knew everything by its name, and the reason for everything, and the cause of everything, and what everything was made of, and why. Therefore the advantage in the present instance lay wholly with her, after she had escaped; because there cannot be any real comparison between a highly-educated little lady of nine years old and an ignorant country bumpkin of a Jacky-Toad, born and bred in a Devon quagmire. And if you never heard of a Jacky-Toad, know that he is one withyour Will-o’-the-Wisp, or your Jack-a-Lantern, or your Marsh Galloper, or theIgnis Fatuusof the scholar.

“Ban’t you afeared?” asked the imp.

“No—not now. You’re only a naughty, ugly Will-o’-the-Wisp.”

“I be a Jacky-Twoad, I be.”

“You may call yourself what you like; you’re nothing but a puff of phosphuretted hydrogen, because I’ve heard my father say so.”

“Aw! I ban’t very well eddicated myself.”

“I should think not! Else you’d know it was a cruel, wicked, heartless thing to play practical jokes on small girls lost in the dark. One more step and I should have been sucked down I don’t know where.”

“Ess fay! You’d a bin drownded in another minute.”

“Well, what did you want to do such a horrid thing for?”

“Blamed if I can tell ’e ’zactly; ’tis my business.”

“Then it is a very disgraceful business, and you ought to know better.”

“I doan’t know nothin’ ’tall. I be a li’l’ Jacky-Twoad. I awnly comes out the bog of a warm evenin’, like this here.”

“I never hurt you, did I?”

“Caan’t say as you did.”

“I never even said an unkind word about you?”

“Not as I’ve heard tell on.”

“Then why were you so wicked?”

The Jacky-Toad had nothing to answer, so changed the subject.

“What might your name be, if I may ax?”

“I’m called Mabel, and I’m spending my holidays on Dartmoor; and, playing hide-and-seek after tea, I got lost. But I live in London, and I’m going back there to-morrow.”

“Wheer be that to?”

“Far, far away. There are no greedy shaking-bogs there, and no darkness like this, and no dead bones scattered about, and no wicked Jacky-Toads either.”

Mabel, though a clever child, didn’t know everything.

“You’m a purty li’l’ maid seemin’ly, an’ mighty wise tu by the looks of it.”

This in itself was flattering, because it is given to but few small girls to be complimented by a genuine Devon Jacky-Toad.

“The thing is to be pretty inside,” answered Mabel. “My mamma tells me it doesn’t matter—not much—what we look like outside.”

“That’s a gude job then, for ’tis allowed among Jacky-Twoads in general that I be ugly enough for a show.”

“You’re wicked inside too; you must be, or you wouldn’t have tried to drown a little harmless girl.”

“I be sorry,” said the Jacky-Toad frankly. “I never looked at the question from your p’int o’ view. Conversation do widen the mind amazin’.”

“If you’rereallysorry, I’ll forgive you; and I should like to help you to be better, if I knew how it could be done.”

“Sure I’d be very much obliged to ’e if you’d larn me a thing or two,” said the Jacky-Toad humbly.

“You see, I’m going back to London to-morrow, so there won’t be much time.”

“Damned if I won’t come with ’e! Then you can larn me proper,” exclaimed the Jacky-Toad.

“Youmustn’tsay things like that—it’swicked. Wheredidyou pick up such words?”

“From the moor-men, when they comed to cut peat in the bog. But ’tis awnly a figger o’ speech.”

Mabel thought a moment.

“Well, in your case I suppose it is,” shesaid; “because—I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I don’t suppose you goanywherein particular when you die, do you?”

“Caan’t say, never havin’ heard tell,” he answered.

So the small girl fixed her mind on a noble resolve, and finally undertook to let the ignorant Jacky-Toad accompany her to town the following day.

Then he showed her a safe road out of that lonesome waste and brought her back to the abodes of men, where everybody was naturally very thankful to see Mabel once more in safety. Of the Jacky-Toad she said nothing, but he wafted himself in at her bedroom window when the house was asleep. He explained that he could travel very easily in a ginger-beer bottle or jam-pot, so Mabel packed him up in a marmalade-jar with a glass stopper. This she placed in a cardboard box full of heather, so the Jacky-Toad travelled to London next day in considerable comfort, though with little style.

Mabel kept her scholar in his jar. At night the Jacky-Toad was allowed to come out forinstruction, and he sat beside Mabel’s bed while she taught him as much as he was capable of learning. He tried hard at first to collect information, but his memory was weak, and he had little or no common-sense. He was, however, sufficiently humble, which is a rare virtue in a fool. He confessed himself to be scarcely better than an idiot, though sometimes he grew more hopeful.

“I do make way,” he declared on one occasion, “though I allow ’tis blamed slow.”

“Your grammar’s too frightful for anything,” said Mabel, “but we must be content with one subject at a time, I suppose. You chose geography, so we’ll struggle on with that until you’ve got a smattering. D’you remember what I taught you last night about the Duchy of Baden?”

“Lemme see if I can call it home. Ess! ’Tis like this: ‘The Duchy of Baden lies a’most entirely between the Kingdom o’ Wurtemberg and the River Rhine. The climate be healthy, but the winters are mighty cold in the Black Forest.’ How be that?”

“Fairly right—only you’ve left out such a lot.”

“Shall ’e larn me much more geography?”

“Ever so much—tons more.”

“That’s ill news, ’cause I doubt if I can hold much more.”

“You don’t seem very happy at it, certainly,” confessed Mabel.

“No nat’ral genius for it like,” suggested the Jacky-Toad.

“We must think of a new subject then. Needlework’s no good to you, nor yet drawing, that I can see.”

“Could ’e teach me a few gude tales ’bout men-folks, or maybe a riddle or two?”

“Certainly not! I’ve brought you to London to improve you.”

“Then why not open the winder an’ let me have a bit of a run round Lunnon to larn what sort o’ plaace ’tis?”

“No. I’m never allowed out myself after dark, and therefore it can’t be a proper thing for a Jacky-Toad. How would you like to learn a little natural science? I don’t know much, but my father knows more than any other man in the world. Natural science explains how it is you’re only a whiff of phosphuretted hydrogen.”

“I guess that’s ’bout enough for me to knaw.”

“Shall I teach you to dance? But I forgot; you can do that.”

“Dance! Aw jimmery! I was born dancin’; I shall die dancin’. No, but I’ll teach you if you mind to try. I’ll larn ’e the ‘Wildfire Gallop’—a butivul thing ’tis sure ’nough as us dances in summer-time under a full mune.”

So the Jacky-Toad hung up his lamp and Mabel got out of bed and very soon mastered the “Wildfire Gallop”—the great classical dance of Jacky-Toads all the world over.

“Gormed if I ever seed a pixie do it better!” said her tutor.

“There are no such things as pixies,” replied Mabel promptly.

“No pixies! You ban’t so clever as I thought ’e, ’pears to me. No pixies! You’ll say theer ban’t no spriggans, nor elves, nor brownies, nor goblins, nor tankeraboguses, nor efts, nor Jacky-Twoads next!”

“My father has told me there are no pixies—therefore there are none,” answered Mabel. “You can hardly suppose that I should take your word before his?”

“Dammy! I’veseed’em scores an’ scores o’ times,” began the Jacky-Toad; but Mabel never argued with him, and always punished a bad word instantly. Whenever he swore she put him back into his marmalade-jar. This she now did, so he learned no more that night.

On the following evening he apologised as soon as he was let out, and his mistress accepted the expression of regret without comment.

“I’ve been thinking that a little English poetry might enlarge your mind,” she said. “Much of it is very simple and beautiful, and I know a great deal by heart.”

“I’ll do my best, I promise ’e, but I ban’t hopeful.”

“Well, Shakespeare would be too difficult, of course; but I happen to know a very lovely poem called ‘Excelsior,’ by Longfellow. That you might understand; and if you only learned a verse or two it would be something.”

She recited the poem to him, and the Jacky-Toad said it was fine talk, and managed to commit one verse to memory, though not without much difficulty. Then Mabel repeated several of the “Ancient and Modern Hymns,” and a rhymed alphabet, and some of Lear’s Nonsense Verses. The last pleased her pupil much, but she refused to permit him to learn any of them, explaining that knowledge of this description, though an elegant accomplishment, as in her case, would not add lasting lustre to the Jacky-Toad’s reputation.

Then some chance utterance reminded him of home, and he sighed and trimmed his lamp,and murmured a vague wish about moonlight and quaking-bogs.

“I believe sometimes you almost want to go back,” said Mabel coldly.

“Well, you do keep such a darnation tight hand ’pon me. Home’s home, when all’s said, if ’tis awnly a li’l’ cranny in a bog. Theer ban’t no comfort here, nor yet comp’ny, savin’ your presence.”

“You want to go back to those other wretched Jacky-Toads?”

“Ess fay, an’ show ’em all I’ve larned.”

“You’ve learnt absolutely nothing yet; and I’m not going to let you go back till you know at least the Kings of Israel and the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve, so you needn’t think it.”

But it is to be regretted that Mabel’s noble ambitions were never gratified. Of course, faults existed on both sides. She was exacting and impatient; the Jacky-Toad was obstinate. It is better to rule by love than fear if you are dealing with a Devon Jacky-Toad, but Mabel was too severe. She expected too much; she said hard things, none the pleasanter for being true; and the Jacky-Toad finally grew sullen, and refused to employ even that morsel of brain power which it had pleased Providence tobestow upon him. His health was partly to blame for this. Change of scene, night air, and the humid atmosphere of a quag are essential to the well-being of all Jacky-Toads; and this one languished under imprisonment, lost his temper all too often, and frequently swore in broad Devonshire, merely from the wicked desire to make Mabel angry. Once, when he said pointedly that she evidently had not the gift of teaching, she slapped him and dropped him head-first into his marmalade-jar. Then he turned round, said a thing not to be repeated here, and tried to bite her. Relations were strained henceforward, but though Mabel shed bitter tears over her failure to reach that nobler part of his nature which must not be denied even to a Jacky-Toad, she still had hope, and determined with praiseworthy pluck to conquer in the end.

Chance, however, defeated her resolves, and it happened that the Jacky-Toad’s longed-for opportunity to escape came at last. Needless to say he seized it. During a spring cleaning, a maid found the marmalade-jar while Mabel was at school, and, believing it empty, she threw it into the dustbin. From thence it was removed to a rubbish-heap, and a boy, seeing it lying there, immediately broke it with hiscatapult. Thus the prisoner found himself a free Jacky-Toad, and being happily gifted with that marvellous “homing” instinct so much admired in the carrier pigeon and humble-bee, he immediately rose to a considerable height in the air, dodged the smoke from a factory chimney, and proceeded as the crow flies, or is given credit for flying, to the West of England.

Under a spring moon the nocturnal moor was all alive and awake. The pixies were busy measuring new fairy rings for the coming season; the elves—those “whose little eyes glow, like sparks of fire”—were entertaining the brownies; the Jacky-Toads, having danced the “Wildfire Gallop,” sat and rested, and talked politics. Then it happened that their missing colleague formed matter for discussion, and an aged Jacky-Toad, by tacit understanding father of the company, gave it as his opinion that the wanderer had lost himself in fresh running water, which is, of course, death toIgnes Fatuiall the world over.

“He was a born fule, if you remember,” he concluded.

At the same moment a blue light flickeredlike a shooting-star above their heads, and, with the sound of a small bird alighting, the missing member of that community returned to his friends. Their welcome was, of course, hearty as need be, and from an attitude of absolute indifference one and all assumed the manner of affection, friendship and regard. Now the new-come Jacky-Toad, though his knowledge had appeared but scanty in the presence of his fair mistress, found, after leaving her and upon escaping the radius of her exceeding great erudition, that his own acquirements assumed a more important shape. A little knowledge may go far thus brought into a region where, until its arrival, there is none. The Jacky-Toad returned therefore with a sufficiently high estimate of his intellectual stores.

“Well, dear souls,” he said, “here I be again, an’ what I’ve seed and larned you’ll never credit, not if I talks to ’e for a month o’ Sundays.”

The father of the flock, fearing for a position which he merely held by courtesy and through his own natural force of character, now set himself to discount the adventurer’s information.

“You be the monkey as have seen theworld—you be,” he said; “and what do ’e make o’t?”

“A terrible coorious world, and as for Lunnon—well, ’tis somethin’ amazin’ to be sure. An’ what wi’ geography, an’ nat’ral sciences, an’ poetry, an’ sich-like wonnerful branches o’ larnin’, my head’s full.”

They buzzed admiration, except the venerable Jacky-Toad.

“Let’s hear what you do know,” he suggested.

“Well, fust you must be told as we’m all made o’ gas—the whole boilin’ of us. We’m no more’n just a whiff of phosphuretted hydrogen!”

“You’m jokin’!” they cried.

“No fay, solemn truth.”

“An’ what if ’tis?” asked the old Jacky-Toad abruptly. “Granted—then what? Ban’t no gert odds as I can see. Who’s better for knawin’ it? We’ve got to be made o’ somethin’.”

At this reflection the travelled Jacky-Toad was uneasy, and the more so because such an unreasonable manner of regarding the fact gained ground. Nobody—not even a Jacky-Toad—likes much to be confronted with superior knowledge outpoured in a superior manner.

“Ban’t no mighty matter when you come to think of it,” said somebody; and then the ancient one spoke again.

“Besides, how be we to knaw’tisso? Us have awnly got your word for’t. That ban’t proof. For my paart I’m blamed if Idob’lieve it!”

In about half a minute they all agreed with their venerable leader that this information must not be accepted. Then an old friend asked the wanderer concerning his geography, and from a condition of some dismay he plucked up courage.

“Well, I can tell ’e a ’mazing thing in that branch o’ larnin’. ‘The Duchy o’ Baden lies a’most entirely between the Kingdom o’ Wurtemberg an’ the River Rhine. The climate be healthy, but the winters is cruel sharp in the Black Forest.’ What do ’e think o’ that?”

They all hummed their admiration, and several shook the geographer by the hand.

“’Tis a noble piece of information, sure enough,” said one.

“Ban’t that gude-fashioned larnin’?” asked the scholar in triumph. And the ancient cynic answered him:

“Be gormed ifIsees the use of it! Knawledgeain’t nothin’ ’less you can put it to a purpose.”

There was an awkward pause, then another spoke:

“Come to think o’t, theer ban’t ’zactly anyuseto it, be theer?”

“All the same, souls, ’tis a purty thing,” argued the Jacky-Toad’s personal friend.

“But I’ve got purtier,” said the traveller, though in a crestfallen voice. “I’m thinkin’ I shan’t please ’e, but I’ll give ’e a bit o’ poetry whether or no.”

Then he recited to them the first verse of Longfellow’s “Excelsior,” to which they listened with patient attention.

“The shades of night were falling fast,As through an Alpine village passedA youth, who bore ’mid snow and ice,A banner with the strange device,Excelsior!”

“The shades of night were falling fast,As through an Alpine village passedA youth, who bore ’mid snow and ice,A banner with the strange device,Excelsior!”

“The shades of night were falling fast,

As through an Alpine village passed

A youth, who bore ’mid snow and ice,

A banner with the strange device,

Excelsior!”

“Be that all?” said the old Jacky-Toad.

“Ess, ’tis,” answered the reciter, immorally concealing the fact that there were eight other verses which he had not been able to learn.

“Well, then, ’tis as silly a bit o’ man’s twaddle as ever I heard. Doan’t ’mount to nothin’ so far as I can see.”

“’Tis poetry,” said the Jacky-Toad feebly.

“What’s rhyme wi’out reason? No better’n water wi’out mud. You’ve bin wastin’ your time somethin’ shockin’—that’s what you’ve bin doin’. I could ’a taught ’e more in this ’ere bog than what you’ve got in Lunnon, seemin’ly.”

“Is that all you knaw?” asked a very young Jacky-Toad, who had no ambitions of his own, and could therefore afford to be sympathetic.

“Yes—that’s all,” said the wanderer. Then he turned away his face, and his little eyes blinked and he wept.

“Poor fule,” commented the ancient Jacky-Toad; “you never ought to a left the quag. What’s the gude o’ the like o’ you gwaine to foreign paarts? Wheer theer’s no brains by nature, theer ban’t nothin’ for larnin’ to catch hold upon.”

“’Pears to me I did teach more’n I larned, come to think of it,” said the crushed Jacky-Toad. “Her what took me to Lunnon got to dance the ‘Wildfire Gallop’ somethin’ butivul ’fore I left her.”

“Why, theer it is, then! That’s very comfortin’ for ’e, for ’tis somethin’ to knaw us have done more for our betters than our betters have done for us.”

There was consolation in this—of a sort;and I am glad to leave the Jacky-Toad with a smile on his extremely plain face, because this is the end of the story.

The narrative will be seen to bristle with morals, even as a porcupine with quills. Of these I have removed as many as possible; yet one seems vital to the plot, and must be unwillingly permitted to remain. This indicates, of course, that all knowledge is not useful—if you are a Jacky-Toad.

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