Sitting on a wall
All that day the Prince saw nothing of the Green Bird, nor heard a note of its singing. "Strange," thought he to himself, "I have never heard its song; yet I know quite well somehow that it sings most beautifully." At dusk, when the lilies began toclose their globes around the gold fish and the yellow stamens, he went back to the palace, and before long to bed, and slept.
Once more he heard in dreams someone come tapping at his heart, and this time his heart said, "Who is there?" Then a voice answered back, "The Green Bird"; but his heart said, "Go away, for if I let you in there will be sorrow!"
Now it had been foretold of the Prince at his birth that if he ever knew sorrow, his wealth, and his estate, and his power would all go from him. Therefore from his childhood he had been shut up in a beautiful palace with miles and miles of enchanted gardens, so that sorrow might not get near him; and it was said that if ever sorrow came to him the palace and the enchanted gardens would suddenly fall into ruin and disappear, and he would be left standing alone to beg his way through the world. Therefore it was for this that his heart said in his dream, "Go away, for if I let you in there will be sorrow!"
In the morning a green feather lay on the window-sill; but as he opened the window the wind took it up and carried it away.
So the next night, as soon as his attendants were gone, the Prince got up softly and opening the window called "Green Bird!"
Then all at once he felt something warm against his heart, and suddenly his heart began to ache: and there was the green bird with its wings spread gently about him, keeping time ever so softly to the beating of his heart.
Then the Prince said, "Beautiful Green Bird, what have you brought me?" and the Green Birdanswered, "I have brought you dreams out of a far-off country of things you never saw; if you will come and sleep in my nest you shall dream them."
So the Prince went out by the window and along the balcony, and so away into the garden and up into the heart of the great tree where the Green Bird had its nest. There he lay down, and the Green Bird spread its wings over him, and he fell fast asleep.
Now as he slept he dreamed that the Green Bird put in his hand three grains of seed saying, "Take these and keep them till you come to the right place to sow them in. And so soon as one is sown, go on till you come to the place where the next must be sown, following the signs which I shall tell you of. Now the first you must not sow till you find yourself in a white country, where the trees and the grass are white." (And the Prince said in his heart, "Where can I find that?") "And the second one you must not sow till you see a thing like a tortoise put out a small white hand." ("And where," said the Prince, "can I meet with that wonder?") "And when you have seen the second sprout up through the ground, go on till you come again to a land you had lost and the place where you first knew sorrow." ("And what is sorrow?" said the Prince to his heart.) "Then when you have sown the third seed and watched it sprout you will know perfect happiness, and will be able to hear the song which I sing."
Then the Green Bird lifted its wings and flew away through the night; and out of the darknesscame three notes that filled the Prince with wonderful delight.
But afterwards, when they ceased, came sorrow.
Now, when the Prince woke he was in his own bed; and he rose much puzzled by the dream which had seemed so true. Then there came to him one of his pages who said, "There was a strange bird flying over the palace about dawn, and a watchman on the high tower shot it; so I have brought it for you to see." And as he spoke, the page showed him the Green Bird lying dead between his hands.
The Prince took it without a word, and kissed it before them all, afterwards burying it where the white lilies full of gold fishes grew, wherein he had first seen the image of its green breast fly. And as he stood sorrowing, the garden faded before his eyes, and a cold wind blew; and the palace which had its foundations on happiness crumbled away into ruin; and heaven came down kissing the earth and making it white.
He opened his hand and found in it three grains of seed, and then he knew that some of his dream was really coming to pass. For he saw the whole world was turning white before his eyes, all the trees and the grass; therefore he sowed the first grain of seed over the little grave that he had made, and set out over hill and dale to fulfil the dream that the Green Bird had given him. "But the Green Bird I shall see no more!" he said, and wept.
For a year he went on through a waste and desolate country, meeting no man, nor discovering any sign. Till one day as he was coming down a mountainhe saw at the bottom a hut with a round roof like a great tortoise; and when he got quite near, out of the door came a small white hand, palm upward, feeling to know if it rained. All at once he remembered the word of the Green Bird, and as he dropped the second seed into the ground it seemed to him that he heard again the three notes of its song.
A young girl looked out of the hut; "What do you want?" she said when she saw the Prince. He saw her eyes, how blue and smiling they were, and it seemed as if he had dreamed of them once. "Let me stay here for a little," he said, "and rest." "If you will rest one day and work the next, you may," she answered. So he rested that day, and the next he worked at her bidding in a small patch of ground that was before the hut.
When the day was over and he had returned to the hut for the night, he looked again at the young girl, and seeing how beautiful she was, said, "Why are you here all alone, with no one to protect you?" And she answered, "I have come from my own country, which is very far away, in search of a beautiful Green Bird which while it was mine I loved greatly, and which one day flew away promising to return. When you came, something made me think the bird was with you, but perhaps to-morrow it will return." At that the Prince sighed in his heart, for he knew that the bird was dead. Then also she told him how in her own country she had been a Princess; so now she from whom the Green Bird had flown, and he to whom it had come, were living there together like beggars in a hut.
For a whole year he toiled and waited, hoping for the second seed to sprout; and at last one day, just where he had planted it, he saw a little spring rising out of the ground. When the Princess saw it, she clapped her hands, "Oh," she cried, "it is the sign I have waited for! If we follow it, it will take us to the Green Bird." But the Prince sighed, for in his heart he knew that the Green Bird was dead.
Yet he let her take his hand, and they two went on following the course of the spring till they came to a wild desolate place full of ruins; and as soon as they came to it the spring disappeared into the ground.
Then the Prince began to look about him, and saw that he was standing once more in the land that he had lost, above the very spot in the enchanted garden where he had buried the Green Bird and sorrowed over it. Then he stooped down, and set the last grain of seed into the ground; and as he did so, surely from below the soil came the three sweet notes of a song! Then all at once the earth opened and out of it grew a tree, tall and green and waving, and out of the midst of the tree flew the Green Bird with its nest in its beak.
The sun was setting; in the east rose a full red moon: grey mists climbed out of the grass. The Bird sang and sang and sang; every note had the splendour of palace-walls and towers, and gardens, and falling fountains. The Princess ran fast and let herself be caught in the Prince's arms while she listened.
Many times they hung together and kissed, and all the time the Bird sang on.
"I see the palace walls grow," said the Princess. "They are high as the hills, and the garden covers the valleys: and the sun and the moon lighten it." And, in truth, round them a new palace had grown, and the Green Bird was building his nest in the roof.
ONCE upon a time there was a man who lived in a small house with a large garden. He made his living by gardening, while his wife looked after the house. They were better off than most of their neighbours, but they were an envious couple who looked sourly over the hedge at all who passed by, and took no man's advice about anything.
At the end of the garden stood a large pear-tree: and one day the man was working in the shade beneath it, when a cuckoo came and perched itself on the topmost branch, crying "Cuckoo, cuckoo!"
The man looked up with a frown on his face, and cried, "Get out of my tree, you noisy thing!" But the cuckoo only sat and stared at the landscape, going up and down on its two notes like a musical see-saw.
The man stooped down, and took up a clod of earth and cast it at the cuckoo, which immediately flew away.
A neighbour who was passing at the time saw him, and said, "It's ill-luck to drive away cuckoos: you would be better not to do it again." "Do it again?" cried the man. "If it comes into my tree again I'll kill it!" "Nobody dares kill a cuckoo;" replied the neighbour, "it's against Providence." "I'll not only kill it, if it returns," exclaimed the man in a fury, "but I'll eat it too!" "No, no,"cried his neighbour, "you will think better of it. Even the parson daren't kill a cuckoo." "Wait and see if I don't better the parson, then!" growled the man, as he turned to go on with his work; "just wait and see!"
All the day he heard the cuckoo crying about in the field, now here, now there, but always somewhere close at hand. It seemed to be making a mock of him, for it always kept within sound, but never returned to the tree. When he left off work for the day, he went into the house and grumbled to his wife about that everlasting cuckoo. "Did you see what a big one it was?" said his wife. "I saw it as it sat in our tree this morning." "It will make all the bigger pie then," said the man, "if it comes again."
The next morning he had hardly begun to work, when the bird came and settled on the pear-tree over his head, and shouted "Cuckoo!"
Then the man took up a great stone, which he had by him ready, and aimed with all his might; his aim was so true, that the stone hit the bird on the side of the head, so that it fell down out of the tree into the grass in front of his feet.
"Wife," he shouted, "I've killed the cuckoo! Come and carry it in, and cook it for my dinner." "Oh, what a great fat one!" cried his wife, as she ran and picked it up by the neck; "and heavy! It feels as heavy as a turkey!"
She laid it in her apron, and went and sat in the doorway, and began plucking it, while her husband went on with his work. Presently she called to him, "Just look here at all these feathers! I never sawanything like it; there are enough to stuff a feather-bed!" He looked round, and saw the ground all covered with a great heap of feathers that had been plucked from the bird: enough, as she said, for a feather-bed.
"This is a new discovery," cried he, "that a cuckoo holds so many feathers. We can make our fortunes in this way, wife—I going about killing cuckoos, and you plucking them into feather-beds."
Then his wife carried the cuckoo indoors, and set it down to roast. But directly the spit began to turn, the cat jumped up from before the front of the fire, and ran away screaming.
The smell of the roast came out to the man as he worked in his garden. "How good it smells!" said he. "Don'tyoutouch it, wife! You mustn't have a bit!" "I don't care if I don't," she replied: for she had watched it as it went turning on the spit; and up and down, up and down, it kept moving its wings!
When dinner-time came the man sat down, and his wife dished up the bird, and set it upon the table before him. He ate it so greedily that he ate it all—the bones, and the back, and the head, and the wings, and the legs down to the last claw.
Then he pushed back his plate, and cried, "So there's an end of him!" But just as he was about saying that, a voice from inside of him called, "Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"
"Oh my heart and liver!" cried the man. "What's that!"
Then his wife began laughing and jiggering athim. "It's because you were so greedy. If you had given me half of that cuckoo this wouldn't have happened. Now you see you are paid."
"Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" cried the voice again from within.
"What have I done to myself?" cried the man, in an agony of terror. "What a poisonous noise to come from a man's belly! I shall die of it, I know I shall!"
His wife only said, "See, then, what comes of being greedy."
He got up on to his feet, and looked down at his empty plate: there was not a scrap left on it. Then he put his hands to his sides, and shrieked, "I feel as if a windmill were turning round inside me! And I'm so light! Wife, hold me down—I'm going off my feet!" And as he spoke, he swung sideway, and began rising with a wobbling motion into the air. His wife caught him by the head, while his feet swung like the pendulum of a clock, and all the time a voice inside him kept calling, "Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"
Presently it seemed to the unfortunate man as if the windmill had stopped, and he was able to strike the ground with his feet once more. "Oh, blessed Mother Earth!" he cried, and began rubbing it up and down with his feet, and caressing it as if it had been a pet animal. But his face had grown very white.
"Put me to bed," he said to his wife; and she put him to bed on the top of the great feather-mattress which she had made only that morning from the cuckoo-pluckings.
The cuckoo kept him awake far into the night, and his wife herself could get no sleep; but towards morning he dozed off into a disturbed sort of slumber, and began to dream.
He felt his eyes turning inwards, so that he could see into the middle of his body. And there sat the cuckoo, like an unpleasant nestling, with great red eyes staring at him, and the wound on its head burning a blue flame. It seemed to grow and grow and grow, dislocating his bones, and thrusting aside his heart to make room for itself. Its wings seemed to be sawing out his ribs, and its head was pushed far up into his throat, where with its angry beak it seemed reaching to peck out his eyes. "I will torment you for ever," said the bird. "You shall have no peace until you let me go. I am the King of the Cuckoos; I will give you no rest. You will be surprised at what I can do to you; even in your despair you will be surprised." Then it drew down its head and pecked his heart, so that he woke in great pain. And as his eyes turned outwards he saw that it was morning.
"Wife," he said, before going out, "I feel as though, if I went out, I might be carried away, like a worm in a bird's beak. Fasten a chain round me, and drive it with a stake into the ground, and let me see if so I be able to work safely in my garden."
So his wife did as he told her; but whenever he caught hold of a spade the bird lifted him off his feet, so that he could not drive it into the ground. He wrung his hands and wailed, "Alas, alas! now my occupation is gone, and my wife and I shall become beggars!"
The villagers came and looked over the hedge, wagging their heads. "Ah, you are the man who killed the cuckoo yesterday! and already you are come to this!"
Every day things got worse and worse. His wife used to have to hold him down and feed him with a spoon, for if he took up a knife to eat with, the bird hurled him upon it so violently as to put him in danger of his life. Also it kept him ceaselessly awake with its cry, so that he was worn to a shadow.
One day in the end of the month of June he heard a change come in its horrible singing; instead of crying "Cuckoo" as before, it now broke its note as is the cuckoo's habit to do before it goes abroad for the winter, and cried "Cuck-cuck-Cuckoo, cuck-cuck-Cuckoo!" Some sort of a hope came into the man's heart at that. "Presently it will be winter," he thought to himself, "and the cuckoo must die then, even if I have to eat ice and snow to make him! if only I do not die first," he added, and groaned, for he was now indeed but a shadow.
Soon after this the cuckoo left off its crying altogether. "Is he dead already?" thought the man. All the other cuckoos had gone out of the country: he grew quite happy with this new idea and began to put on flesh.
On the wall
But one night, at the dead of night, the cuckoo felt a longing to be in lands oversea come into its wings. The man woke with a loud cry, and found himself sailing along through the air with only the stars overhead, and the feeling of a great windmill inside him. And the cuckoo was crying with a new note into the darkness: the cry it makes in far landsoversea which is never heard in this country at all: a cry so strange and terrible and wonderful that we have no word that will give the sound of it. This man heard it, and at the sound his hair went quite white with fright.
When his wife woke up in the morning, her husband was nowhere to be seen. "So!" she said to herself, "the cuckoo has picked him up and thrown him away somewhere; and I suppose he is dead. Well, he was an uncomfortable husband to have; and it all came of being greedy."
She drew down the front blinds, and dressed herself in widow's mourning all through the winter; and the next spring told another man he might marry her if he liked. The other man happened to like the idea well enough, for there was a house and a nice garden for anyone who would have her. So the first fine day they went off to the Parson and got married.
It was a very fine day, and well on in spring: and just as they were coming back from the church they heard the note of a cuckoo.
The widow-bride felt a cold shiver go down her marrow. "It does make one feel queer," she said; "that sound gave me quite a turn." "Hullo! look at him up there!" cried the man. She stared up, and there was her husband sailing through the air, looking more of a shadow than ever, and very miserable with the voice of the cuckoo calling across the land from the inside of him.
The cuckoo deposited him at his own doorstep in front of the bridal couple.
"O you miserable scare-crow!" said his wife,"whatever brought you back?" The unhappy man pointed below the surface, and the shut-up cuckoo spoke for him.
"And here I find you marrying yourself to another!" cried her returned spouse: but the other man had shrunk away in disgust and disappeared, so there was no more trouble with him.
But the old trouble was as bad as ever, the cuckoo was just as industrious in his cuckooings, and just as untimely: and the man went on wearing himself to a shadow with vexation and grief.
So all the summer went by, till again the cuckoo was heard to break its note into a double sound. But this time, no glimmer of hope came to the man's mind. "Tie me fast to the bed," he said sorrowfully to his wife, "and keep me there, lest this demon of a bird carry me away again as he did last year; a thing which I could never survive a second time. Nay, give me a sheath-knife to keep always with me, for if he carry me away again I am resolved that he or I shall die."
So his wife gave him the sheath-knife, and by-and-by the bird became very quiet, so that they almost hoped he was dead from old age.
But one night, at the dead of night, into the birds wings came the longing to be once more in lands oversea. He stretched out his wings, and the man woke with a loud cry. And behold, there were he and his wife, sailing along under the stars tied into the feather-bed together, all complete and compact; and inside him was the feeling of a great windmill going round and round and round.
Then in despair he drew out his sheath-knife andcut himself open like a haggis. And on a sudden out flew the cuckoo, all plucked and bald and ready to roast. At the very same moment the bed-ticking burst, and away went the cuckoo with his feathers trailing after him, uttering through the darkness that strange terrible cry of the lands oversea.
But the man and his wife and the empty bed-ticking, they fell and they fell and they fell right down, till they got to the bottom of the deep blue sea; and there was an end of them.
TIKI-PU was a small grub of a thing; but he had a true love of Art deep down in his soul. There it hung mewing and complaining, struggling to work its way out through the raw exterior that bound it.
Tiki-pu's master professed to be an artist: he had apprentices and students, who came daily to work under him, and a large studio littered about with the performances of himself and his pupils. On the walls hung also a few real works by the older men, all long since dead.
This studio Tiki-pu swept; for those who worked in it he ground colours, washed brushes, and ran errands, bringing them their dog chops and bird's nest soup from the nearest eating-house whenever they were too busy to go out to it themselves. He himself had to feed mainly on the breadcrumbs which the students screwed into pellets for their drawings and then threw about upon the floor. It was on the floor, also, that he had to sleep at night.
Tiki-pu looked after the blinds, and mended the paper window-panes, which were often broken when the apprentices threw their brushes and mahl-sticks at him. Also he strained rice-paper over the linen-stretchers, ready for the painters to work on; and for a treat, now and then, a lazy one would allow him to mix a colour for him. Then it was that Tiki-pu's soul came down into his finger-tips, and his heart beat so that he gasped for joy. Oh, the yellows andthe greens, and the lakes and the cobalts, and the purples which sprang from the blending of them! Sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from crying out.
Tiki-pu, while he squatted and ground at the colour-powders, would listen to his master lecturing to the students. He knew by heart the names of all the painters and their schools, and the name of the great leader of them all who had lived and passed from their midst more than three hundred years ago; he knew that too, a name like the sound of the wind, Wio-wani: the big picture at the end of the studio was by him.
That picture! To Tiki-pu it seemed worth all the rest of the world put together. He knew, too, the story which was told of it, making it as holy to his eyes as the tombs of his own ancestors. The apprentices joked over it, calling it "Wio-wani's back-door," "Wio-wani's night-cap," and many other nicknames; but Tiki-pu was quite sure, since the picture was so beautiful, that the story must be true.
Wio-wani, at the end of a long life, had painted it; a garden full of trees and sunlight, with high-standing flowers and green paths, and in their midst a palace. "The place where I would like to rest," said Wio-wani, when it was finished.
So beautiful was it then, that the Emperor himself had come to see it; and gazing enviously at those peaceful walks, and the palace nestling among the trees, had sighed and owned that he too would be glad of such a resting-place. Then Wio-wani stepped into the picture, and walked away along a path tillhe came, looking quite small and far-off, to a low door in the palace wall. Opening it, he turned and beckoned to the Emperor; but the Emperor did not follow; so Wio-wani went in by himself, and shut the door between himself and the world for ever.
That happened three hundred years ago; but for Tiki-pu the story was as fresh and true as if it had happened yesterday. When he was left to himself in the studio, all alone and locked up for the night, Tiki-pu used to go and stare at the picture till it was too dark to see, and at the little palace with the door in its wall by which Wio-wani had disappeared out of life. Then his soul would go down into his finger-tips, and he would knock softly and fearfully at the beautifully painted door, saying, "Wio-wani, are you there?"
Little by little in the long-thinking nights, and the slow early mornings when light began to creep back through the papered windows of the studio, Tiki-pu's soul became too much for him. He who could strain paper, and grind colours, and wash brushes, had everything within reach for becoming an artist, if it was the will of Fate that he should be one.
He began timidly at first, but in a little while he grew bold. With the first wash of light he was up from his couch on the hard floor and was daubing his soul out on scraps, and odds-and-ends, and stolen pieces of rice-paper.
Before long the short spell of daylight which lay between dawn and the arrival of the apprentices to their work did not suffice him. It took him so long to hide all traces of his doings, to wash out thebrushes, and rinse clean the paint-pots he had used, and on the top of that to get the studio swept and dusted, that there was hardly time left him in which to indulge the itching of his fingers.
Driven by necessity, he became a pilferer of candle-ends, picking them from their sockets in the lanterns which the students carried on dark nights. Now and then one of these would remember that, when last used, his lantern had had a candle in it, and would accuse Tiki-pu of having stolen it. "It is true," he would confess; "I was hungry—I have eaten it." The lie was so probable, he was believed easily, and was well beaten accordingly. Down in the ragged linings of his coat Tiki-pu could hear the candle-ends rattling as the buffeting and chastisement fell upon him, and often he trembled lest his hoard should be discovered. But the truth of the matter never leaked out; and at night, as soon as he guessed that all the world outside was in bed, Tiki-pu would mount one of his candles on a wooden stand and paint by the light of it, blinding himself over his task, till the dawn came and gave him a better and cheaper light to work by.
Tiki-pu quite hugged himself over the results; he believed he was doing very well. "If only Wio-wani were here to teach me," thought he, "I would be in the way to becoming a great painter!"
The resolution came to him one night that Wio-wanishouldteach him. So he took a large piece of rice-paper and strained it, and sitting down opposite "Wio-wani's back-door," began painting. He had never set himself so big a task as this; by the dim stumbling light of his candle he strained his eyesnearly blind over the difficulties of it; and at last was almost driven to despair. How the trees stood row behind row, with air and sunlight between, and how the path went in and out, winding its way up to the little door in the palace-wall were mysteries he could not fathom. He peered and peered and dropped tears into his paint-pots; but the secret of the mystery of such painting was far beyond him.
The door in the palace-wall opened; out came a little old man and began walking down the pathway towards him.
The soul of Tiki-pu gave a sharp leap in his grubby little body. "That must be Wio-wani himself and no other!" cried his soul.
Tiki-pu pulled off his cap and threw himself down on the floor with reverent grovellings. When he dared to look up again Wio-wani stood over him big and fine; just within the edge of his canvas he stood and reached out a hand.
"Come along with me, Tiki-pu!" said the great one. "If you want to know how to paint I will teach you."
"Oh, Wio-wani, were you there all the while?" cried Tiki-pu ecstatically, leaping up and clutching with his smeary little puds the hand which the old man extended to him.
"I was there," said Wio-wani, "looking at you out of my little window. Come along in!"
Tiki-pu took a heave and swung himself into the picture, and fairly capered when he found his feet among the flowers of Wio-wani's beautiful garden. Wio-wani had turned, and was ambling gently back to the door of his palace, beckoning to the smallone to follow him; and there stood Tiki-pu, opening his mouth like a fish to all the wonders that surrounded him. "Celestiality, may I speak?" he said suddenly.
"Speak," replied Wio-wani; "what is it?"
"The Emperor, was he not the very flower of fools not to follow when you told him?"
"I cannot say," answered Wio-wani, "but he certainly was no artist."
Then he opened the door, that door which he had so beautifully painted, and led Tiki-pu in. And outside the little candle-end sat and guttered by itself, till the wick fell overboard, and the flame kicked itself out, leaving the studio in darkness and solitude to wait for the growings of another dawn.
It was full day before Tiki-pu reappeared; he came running down the green path in great haste, jumped out of the frame on to the studio floor, and began tidying up his own messes of the night, and the apprentices' of the previous day. Only just in time did he have things ready by the hour when his master and the others returned to their work.
All that day they kept scratching their left ears, and could not think why; but Tiki-pu knew, for he was saying over to himself all the things that Wio-wani, the great painter, had been saying about them and their precious productions. And as he ground their colours for them and washed their brushes, and filled his famished little body with the breadcrumbs they threw away, little they guessed from what an immeasurable distance he looked down upon them all, and had Wio-wani's word for it tickling his right ear all the day long.
Now before long Tiki-pu's master noticed a change in him; and though he bullied him, and thrashed him, and did all that a careful master should do, he could not get the change out of him. So in a short while he grew suspicious. "What is the boy up to?" he wondered. "I have my eye on him all day: it must be at night that he gets into mischief."
It did not take Tiki-pu's master a night's watching to find that something surreptitious was certainly going on. When it was dark he took up his post outside the studio, to see whether by any chance Tiki-pu had some way of getting out; and before long he saw a faint light showing through the window. So he came and thrust his finger softly through one of the panes, and put his eye to the hole.
There inside was a candle burning on a stand, and Tiki-pu squatting with paint-pots and brush in front of Wio-wani's last masterpiece.
"What fine piece of burglary is this?" thought he; "what serpent have I been harbouring in my bosom? Is this beast of a grub of a boy thinking to make himself a painter and cut me out of my reputation and prosperity?" For even at that distance he could perceive plainly that the work of this boy went head and shoulders beyond his, or that of any painter then living.
Presently Wio-wani opened his door and came down the path, as was his habit now each night, to call Tiki-pu to his lesson. He advanced to the front of his picture and beckoned for Tiki-pu to come in with him; and Tiki-pu's master grew clammy at the knees as he beheld Tiki-pu catch hold of Wio-wani's hand and jump into the picture, and skip up thegreen path by Wio-wani's side, and in through the little door that Wio-wani had painted so beautifully in the end wall of his palace!
For a time Tiki-pu's master stood glued to the spot with grief and horror. "Oh, you deadly little underling! Oh, you poisonous little caretaker, you parasite, you vampire, you fly in amber!" cried he, "is that where you get your training? Is it there that you dare to go trespassing; into a picture that I purchased for my own pleasure and profit, and not at all for yours? Very soon we will see whom it really belongs to!"
He ripped out the paper of the largest window-pane and pushed his way through into the studio. Then in great haste he took up paint-pot and brush, and sacrilegiously set himself to work upon Wio-wani's last masterpiece. In the place of the doorway by which Tiki-pu had entered he painted a solid brick wall; twice over he painted it, making it two bricks thick; brick by brick he painted it, and mortared every brick to its place. And when he had quite finished he laughed, and called "Good-night, Tiki-pu!" and went home to be quite happy.
The next day all the apprentices were wondering what had become of Tiki-pu; but as the master himself said nothing, and as another boy came to act as colour-grinder and brush-washer to the establishment, they very soon forgot all about him.
In the studio the master used to sit at work with his students all about him, and a mind full of ease and contentment. Now and then he would throw a glance across to the bricked-up doorway ofWio-wani's palace, and laugh to himself, thinking how well he had served out Tiki-pu for his treachery and presumption.
One day—it was five years after the disappearance of Tiki-pu—he was giving his apprentices a lecture on the glories and the beauties and the wonders of Wio-wani's painting—how nothing for colour could excel, or for mystery could equal it. To add point to his eloquence, he stood waving his hands before Wio-wani's last masterpiece, and all his students and apprentices sat round him and looked.
Suddenly he stopped at mid-word, and broke off in the full flight of his eloquence, as he saw something like a hand come and take down the top brick from the face of paint which he had laid over the little door in the palace-wall which Wio-wani had so beautifully painted. In another moment there was no doubt about it; brick by brick the wall was being pulled down, in spite of its double thickness.
The lecturer was altogether too dumbfounded and terrified to utter a word. He and all his apprentices stood round and stared while the demolition of the wall proceeded. Before long he recognised Wio-wani with his flowing white beard; it was his handiwork, this pulling down of the wall! He still had a brick in his hand when he stepped through the opening that he had made, and close after him stepped Tiki-pu!
Three men
Tiki-pu was grown tall and strong—he was even handsome; but for all that his old master recognised him, and saw with an envious foreboding that under his arms he carried many rolls and stretchers and portfolios, and other belongings of his craft.Clearly Tiki-pu was coming back into the world, and was going to be a great painter.
Down the garden path came Wio-wani, and Tiki-pu walked after him; Tiki-pu was so tall that his head stood well over Wio-wani's shoulders—old man and young man together made a handsome pair.
How big Wio-wani grew as he walked down the avenues of his garden and into the foreground of his picture! and how big the brick in his hand! and ah, how angry he seemed!
Wio-wani came right down to the edge of the picture-frame and held up the brick. "What did you do that for?" he asked.
"I ... didn't!" Tiki-pu's old master was beginning to reply; and the lie was still rolling on his tongue when the weight of the brick-bat, hurled by the stout arm of Wio-wani, felled him. After that he never spoke again. That brick-bat, which he himself had reared, became his own tombstone.
Just inside the picture-frame stood Tiki-pu, kissing the wonderful hands of Wio-wani, which had taught him all their skill. "Good-bye, Tiki-pu!" said Wio-wani, embracing him tenderly. "Now I am sending my second self into the world. When you are tired and want rest come back to me: old Wio-wani will take you in."
Tiki-pu was sobbing and the tears were running down his cheeks as he stepped out of Wio-wani's wonderfully painted garden and stood once more upon earth. Turning, he saw the old man walking away along the path towards the little door under the palace-wall. At the door Wio-wani turned back and waved his hand for the last time. Tiki-pustill stood watching him. Then the door opened and shut, and Wio-wani was gone. Softly as a flower the picture seemed to have folded its leaves over him.
Tiki-pu leaned a wet face against the picture and kissed the door in the palace-wall which Wio-wani had painted so beautifully. "O Wio-wani, dear master," he cried, "are you there?"
He waited, and called again, but no voice answered him.
BY the side of a great river, whose stream formed the boundary to two countries, lived an old ferryman and his wife. All the day, while she minded the house, he sat in his boat by the ferry, waiting to carry travellers across; or, when no travellers came, and he had his boat free, he would cast drag-nets along the bed of the river for fish. But for the food which he was able thus to procure at times, he and his wife might well have starved, for travellers were often few and far between, and often they grudged him the few pence he asked for ferrying them; and now he had grown so old and feeble that when the river was in flood he could scarcely ferry the boat across; and continually he feared lest a younger and stronger man should come and take his place, and the bread from his mouth.
But he had trust in Providence. "Will not God," he said, "who has given us no happiness in this life, save in each other's help and companionship, allow us to end our days in peace?"
And his wife answered, "Yes, surely, if we trust Him enough He will."
One morning, it being the first day of the year, the ferryman going down to his boat, found that during the night it had been loosed from its moorings and taken across the river, where it now lay fastened to the further bank.
"Wife," said he "I can remember this same thing happening a year ago, and the year before also. Who is this traveller who comes once a year, like a thief in the night, and crosses without asking me to ferry him over?"
"Perhaps it is the good folk," said his wife. "Go over and see if they have left no coin behind them in the boat."
The old man got on to a log and poled himself across, and found, down in the keel of the boat, the mark of a man's bare foot driven deep into the wood; but there was no coin or other trace to show who it might be.
Time went on; the old ferryman was all bowed down with age, and his body was racked with pains. So slow was he now in making the passage of the stream, that all travellers who knew those parts took a road higher up the bank, where a stronger ferryman plied.
Winter came; and hunger and want pressed hard at the old man's door. One day while he drew his net along the stream, he felt the shock of a great fish striking against the meshes down below, and presently, as the net came in, he saw a shape like living silver, leaping and darting to and fro to find some way of escape. Up to the bank he landed it, a great gasping fish.
When he was about to kill it, he saw, to his astonishment, tears running out of its eyes, that gazed at him and seemed to reproach him for his cruelty. As he drew back, the Fish said: "Why should you kill me, who wish to live?"
The old man, altogether bewildered at hearing himself thus addressed, answered: "Since I and my wife are hungry, and God gave you to be eaten, I have good reason for killing you."
"I could give you something worth far more than a meal," said the Fish, "if you would spare my life."
"We are old," said the ferryman, "and want only to end our days in peace. To-day we are hungry; what can be more good for us than a meal which will give us strength for the morrow, which is the new year?"
The Fish said: "To-night someone will come and unfasten your boat, and ferry himself over, and you know nothing of it till the morning, when you see the craft moored out yonder by the further bank."
The old man remembered how the thing had happened in previous years, directly the Fish spoke. "Ah, you know that then! How is it?" he asked.
"When you go back to your hut at night to sleep, I am here in the water," said the Fish. "I see what goes on."
"What goes on, then?" asked the old man, very curious to know who the strange traveller might be.
"Ah," said the Fish, "if you could only catch him in your boat, he could give you something you might wish for! I tell you this: do you and your wife keep watch in the boat all night, and when he comes, and you have ferried him into mid-stream, where he cannot escape, then throw your net over him and hold him till he pays you for all your ferryings."
"How shall he pay me? All my ferryings of a lifetime!"
"Make him take you to the land of ReturningTime. There, at least, you can end your days in peace."
The old man said: "You have told me a strange thing; and since I mean to act on it, I suppose I must let you go. If you have deceived me, I trust you may yet die a cruel death."
The Fish answered: "Do as I tell you, and you shall die a happy one." And, saying this he slipped down into the water and disappeared.
The ferryman went back to his wife supperless, and said to her: "Wife, bring a net, and come down into the boat!" And he told her the story of the Fish and of the yearly traveller.
They sat long together under the dark bank, looking out over the quiet and cold moonlit waters, till the midnight hour. The air was chill, and to keep themselves warm they covered themselves over with the net and lay down in the bottom of the boat. It was the very hour when the old year dies and the new year is born.
Before they well knew that they had been asleep, they started to feel the rocking of the boat, and found themselves out upon the broad waters of the river. And there in the fore-part of the boat, clear and sparkling in the moonlight, stood a naked man of shining silver. He was bending upon the pole of the boat, and his long hair fell over it right down into the water.
The old couple rose up quietly, and unwinding themselves from the net, threw it over the Silver Man, over his head and hands and feet, and dragged him down into the bottom of the boat.