One morning, while Oscar was looking into the vase, and admiring the bright silver beads that were forming all over the leaves of seaweed, and on the lichen-covered surface of the rocks; and while Theeda was busy feeding the fishes, who seemed to get hungrier the more they ate; and just when Oscar was about to remark that the hermit-crab was not in his usual hole, nor anywhere else that he could see—at that moment a dark shadow suddenly fell across the vase, shutting it off from the sunlight, scaring away the fishes, and making Theeda look up with a start, and then quickly take refuge in her shell, as from something she feared.
Oscar also looked up, and saw somebody standing before the window.
It was a boy; but a very odd boy, Oscar thought. He was not any bigger than Oscar,but he seemed to be a good deal older. He had a broad flat face, with a sharp little nose in the middle of it, a wide thin mouth, and pale eyes which stuck out very far, and over which he wore spectacles. He had pale reddish hair growing upright on his head. His legs were so thin that it seemed a wonder he could stand upon them, and indeed they were bowed out sideways, as if the boy's weight were too much for them. His arms also were thin, but his hands were immensely large and red, with stiff, thick fingers, and huge thumbs. He was not quite facing the window, but stood sideways towards it, and looked at Oscar askance. The skin of this boy's face was coarse and rough, and seemed as thick as orange-peel.
'What is your name?' asked the strange boy, after a while.
Oscar told him what it was.
'What an absurdly old-fashioned name!' said the boy, contemptuously. 'I have a better name than that—my name is Kanker!'
'Do you want anything?' said Oscar.
'Yes,' said Kanker. 'I want to ask questions. I am in search of truth. I never believe lies; so you needn't tell me any.'
'I never tell lies,' said Oscar, gravely.
'That is a lie to begin with. Everybody tells lies—except me! Everything lies—the things that can't talk, as well as the things that can. The world is a lie.'
'The world is not a lie,' said Oscar, indignantly. 'And if you think it is, why do you search for truth?'
'I have at all events found the only truth there is to be found—and that is, that everything is a lie,' replied Kanker. 'I have proved it a thousand times already, and every new question I ask proves it again.'
'What makes your hands so big?' Oscar could not help asking.
'They are no bigger than they ought to be,' Kanker answered, holding them up and looking at them admiringly. 'I use them to touch things with. I never believe in anything that I haven't touched. Nothing exists unless I can touch it. Come out of that room, so that I may touch you, and see whether you exist.'
'I will come out,' said Oscar; for he thought it would be better to go to Kanker than to have Kanker come in to him. 'But you need not touch me; I can touch myself if I want to.'
Nevertheless, no sooner had he come out than Kanker took hold of him by the arm, and gripped it so hard with his big red hand that Oscar said, 'Let go, you hurt me!'
'Your touching yourself would prove nothing to me, you know,' said Kanker. 'Well, you seem to exist. Where are your father and mother?'
'They are not here,' answered Oscar. 'They are gone—long ago.'
'I don't believe it. Where did they go to?'
'Over there,' said Oscar, pointing across the sea.
'Nonsense! Do you mean they are drowned?'
'No. They are gone to a country over there.'
'How do you know there is a country over there? Did you ever touch it?'
Oscar shook his head.
'I thought so. Then there is no such place. Therefore your father and mother have gone nowhere. Therefore they do not exist. And what business have you to exist if you never had a father and mother?'
'I don't know what you mean,' said Oscar,'and I don't care whether I exist or not, so long as I do what is right, and am happy.'
At this Kanker laughed, a spluttering laugh, as if he had his mouth full of water. 'Sit down here beside me,' he said, 'I want to ask you some more questions.'
Oscar sat down beside him. He did not at all like Kanker, whose voice was as harsh as his manners were impolite. And he was certainly ugly. When Oscar did not look full at him he had something the appearance of a gigantic crab, which was increased by his sidelong shuffle in walking, and by the two great red hands that he carried hanging before him, very much as a crab carries his claws. He held a sun-umbrella over his head, a small book in one pocket, and a roll of measuring tape in the other. Nevertheless, Kanker seemed to know so much, and to be so positive about what he knew, that Oscar could not help thinking he must be an important person; not the sort of person to be contradicted, especially by a person who knew so little as Oscar did. 'For, after all,' Oscar thought, 'a great deal of what I supposed I knew has only been told me. I do not knowit as he knows things—by touching them. It may be, as he says, that some things that seem to be true are not true. I wonder whether he believes in the sun and the stars? He can hardly have touched them! And I wonder why he wears spectacles?'
'Why do I wear spectacles?' repeated Kanker; for Oscar had spoken the last sentence aloud. 'To see with, of course! Nobody can see without spectacles; and not only that, but nobody can see with any other spectacles than these I have on.'
'Oh, you are mistaken there,' exclaimed Oscar; 'for I have never worn spectacles, and I have always been able to see.'
'You never saw anything in your life,' replied Kanker, very confidently. 'You only think you see. That is your hallucination. An hallucination is when you think a thing is so, and it isn't. You are blind, and probably deaf and dumb as well. What books do you read?'
'I have only one book,' said Oscar; and then he told what a wonderful book it was; how it could only be opened by repeating certain mystic words, and how its pages were full of living pictures, representing things which hadbeen done in the world, and which were being done now. Kanker burst out laughing.
'I don't believe it,' he said. 'It's an hallucination. There is no such book, in the first place, and if there were, it couldn't be what you say it is.'
This made Oscar angry. 'There is such a book,' said he, 'and if you don't believe it I can show it to you.'
Kanker went on laughing and wagging his great hands up and down. 'Oh! show it to me—show it to me!' he spluttered. 'Let me touch it with my fingers, and then perhaps I'll believe.'
'Come into the house, then, and you shall touch it!' exclaimed Oscar. He sprang up and went into the house, and Kanker followed him readily enough. 'Let me put my fingers on it—that's all I ask,' he kept repeating. 'Let me touch it.'
'There!' said Oscar, 'there it is on that shelf. Do you believe now?'
Kanker took the book down from the shelf, and felt it all over. 'I believe that this is something that feels like a book,' he said at last. 'But I don't believe it is a book until I see it opened; and then I shan't believe ithas the pictures you talk about unless I see them, and can put my finger on them; and I don't believe you can open it.'
'I can open it!' cried Oscar.
'If you can do it, then why don't you?' Kanker replied.
Now Oscar knew that the mystic words which undid the clasp were a secret which he had no right to disclose. But he wanted so much to show Kanker the inside of the book, and make him acknowledge that he was wrong, that everything else seemed of little account in comparison. He took the book from Kanker's hands. As he did so, a strange feeling came over him. A voice, that seemed to speak not to his ears, but within him, bid him pause. Did he care so much for this Kanker, with his flat face and his great red hands, as to betray the secret which his mother had confided to him? Oscar hesitated.
'Ha! I knew you were lying!' said Kanker, with his disagreeable laugh.
'You shall see that I am not!' retorted Oscar, becoming angrier than ever. Then he began to repeat the mystic words. But he found it hard to pronounce them, and some of them he could scarcely remember.His teeth chattered as he went on, and his heart beat painfully. But Kanker was watching him askance with his pale spectacled eyes, and Oscar would not stop. At last he had spoken all the words; the clasp flew back; the book opened!
'There!' said Oscar, thrusting it into Kanker's hands. 'It is open: now look for yourself!' Then he turned away, and hid his face in his hands.
All of a sudden he heard again Kanker's hateful spluttering laugh. He looked up in astonishment. Kanker was pointing contemptuously to the page.
'No pictures here!' he was saying. 'Show me your pictures! There's nothing but printing here, and very stupid commonplace printing too!'
Oscar fixed his eyes upon the book; but they were darkened, and at first he could see nothing. At length his sight cleared; but, alas! it was as Kanker had said: there were no pictures in the book, no beauty, no life, and no mystery. It was just like any other book—ordinary pages printed with ordinary print. There had been some terrible loss, but whether the loss were in Oscar or in thebook, Oscar could not tell. He stood there unable to speak, and almost to think.
'It is just as I knew it was,' said Kanker, throwing down the book. 'Another of your absurd hallucinations. You dream about things until you think they are real. You had much better do as I do—wear spectacles, make up your mind that everything is a lie, and trust to your fingers. By doing that you might, in the course of time, come to know something. Look here, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make an exchange with you. It isn't a fair exchange, for what I give you is worth a great deal, and what you give me is worth nothing. You give me your book, and I'll give you mine.'
'What is your book?' Oscar asked.
'An arithmetic, to be sure!' replied Kanker, pulling it out of his pocket. 'See, here is the multiplication table. And here are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. And here are vulgar fractions. And here are examples. And here is the Rule of Three. That's what I call a book worth having.'
'But if you think my book is not worth having, why do you want it?'
'To make a fire to warm myself with,' Kanker replied.
'If you are cold, will not the sun warm you?' asked Oscar.
'No one has been able to prove that there is any warmth in the sun,' said Kanker. 'It only seems to be warm. But I know that a fire is warm, because I can burn my fingers in it.'
'But if the sun feels warm, is not that as good as if it were really warm?'
'For you it may be,' answered Kanker, 'but not for me. I care only for truth, and I don't choose to be warmed by anything I don't believe in. That is the reason I carry a sun-umbrella. Well, will you let me have your book?'
'It is no more use to me,' said Oscar, gloomily. 'I do not care whether you take it or not, or what becomes of it.'
'You will find my arithmetic much more useful,' returned Kanker. 'Come outside and see me make my fire.'
But Oscar turned sullenly away.
Kanker went outside the cottage, with the book in his arms. After a moment, Oscar could not help going to the window to see what was being done.
Kanker had laid the book across two stones, and had gathered some bits of driftwood from the shore for kindlings to put underneath. Now he struck a match, and held it to the kindlings. But at that there was a sudden and mighty sound, like thunder, and also like a great voice speaking some solemn and awful word. And the book seemed to dissolve, and in its place arose a tall pillar of light, more dazzling than the lightning, which hung for a moment near the earth, and, to Oscar's amazed eyes, took on the likeness of a glorious and majestic figure, which bent upon him a look that made his heart tremble. Then the figure moved away through the air seaward, casting a radiance across the waters, and making the sun look red and dim. It drifted slowly away over the sea, and at last became as a bright star, further and further off, until it vanished in the depths of the sky. Then a great coldness fell upon Oscar, and the daylight became dusky to him, as if it were already evening; and he knew that the dazzling face which he had seen was the face of his father. Now he understood what the book had been; but it was too late.
It seemed to Oscar that many hours passed away while he remained crouched down on his knees in a dark corner, shivering and miserable. At last he looked up. It was evening, and a bitter wind was blowing outside; heavy clouds were driving across the sky, and rain was beating on the roof. Kanker was sitting in the middle of the room, with his chin upon his hands, staring at him.
'You had better go,' Oscar said. 'What other harm do you want to do me?'
'It is you who have done harm to me,' replied Kanker, 'by giving me a box of gunpowder to make a fire with. The explosion has cracked my spectacles. However, I bear no malice. What do you keep that jar of sea-water for?'
'Ah! that is where Theeda lives,' exclaimedOscar, rising, with some cheerfulness in his face. 'I had forgotten her.'
'Theeda? what is Theeda?' demanded Kanker.
'She is my playmate and companion,' Oscar said. 'She is dearer to me than anything else in the world, and nothing in the world is so lovely as she.'
'And do you mean to say she lives in the water? Pray, how big is she?'
'She is not so tall as your hand is long.'
'No such creature ever existed,' said Kanker, positively. 'In the first place, no one ever was made of that size, and in the second place, it is impossible for anyone to live under water. It is another of your hallucinations. There is no use in your denying it. I shall believe in her when I see her, and not before.'
'I will not let you see her,' replied Oscar.
'Just what I expected! When did you see her last yourself?'
'Just before your shadow fell across the vase.'
'What language does she talk?'
'She does not talk at all, but I know all she thinks.'
'This is really too absurd! Have you ever touched her?'
'No. It is enough for me to look at her.'
'I will tell you what it is,' said Kanker, lifting up one of his ugly fingers and holding it at the side of his little sharp nose. 'You are crazy—quite crazy! You have lived here by yourself until you don't know what is real from what isn't. Now, I will make this bargain with you. If you will let me put my finger on this Theeda of yours, and I thereby prove to my own satisfaction that she exists, I will let you use me for your servant the rest of my life. Do you agree?'
Oscar waited a little while before answering. He hated Kanker, and he thought that if Kanker became his servant, he should be able to make him as miserable as Kanker had made him. He did not stop to think whether Theeda would like to be touched or not; it seemed to him an easy way of being revenged on his enemy, and that was all. 'Yes, I agree!' he said.
'Very well!' returned Kanker. 'And, of course, if I prove that Theeda does not exist, you are to become my servant for the rest of your life?'
'There is no danger in my promising that,' said Oscar. 'Let it be so if you wish.'
'Very well!' said Kanker again; and then they both went to the vase.
'Where is she?' asked Ranker. 'I don't see her.'
'Oh, she has gone into her shell; it is late—she must be asleep by this time,' answered Oscar. 'You must wait until to-morrow.'
'That won't do!' said Kanker. 'The agreement was for this evening. If you back out, you become my servant.'
'It shall be this evening, then,' replied Oscar; 'but you will regret it more than I!' And stooping over the vase, he called, 'Theeda! Theeda! wake up! come out!'
They waited a moment. There was no movement in the great pearl shell, and Theeda did not appear.
'Come! there's enough of this nonsense!' Kanker exclaimed. 'You may as well make up your mind at once to being my servant.'
'Not yet!' said Oscar, scornfully, and he called in a louder voice, 'Come out, Theeda! Come out—I want you!'
The shell stirred slightly, but still Theeda did not appear. Kanker laughed.
Then Oscar grew angry, and in a harsh tone he cried, 'Theeda, come out! or I shall not love you or believe in you any more!'
The sun had set long ago, and the sky was almost dark; but now, through a break in the clouds, the moon shone down, white and clear, into the crystal vase. It gleamed upon the pearly shell; and in its cold lustre Oscar saw the tiny water-maiden, whom he had loved better than anything else in the world, and who was the most precious thing that the world contained, come slowly out of her shell, and stand downcast and drooping before him. Then he felt that, in his anger, and in his desire to be revenged on his enemy, he had done a wicked thing, which could not be forgiven. He had shown what was most sacred and dear to his own soul to one who could neither believe in her nor reverence her. His heart was filled with bitter sorrow and repentance; but again it was too late.
For, as Theeda stood there in the moonlight, drooping amidst her shadowy mist of hair, Kanker put out his hideous red hand,that was less like a hand than like a crab's claw, and plunging it into the water, he tried to grasp Theeda round the waist. But his fingers met together, and behold! no Theeda was there. She had faded into nothingness where she stood; or else the shadow of a cloud which at that moment passed across the room, and made the vase and the room dark again, had caused her to become invisible. Before she disappeared, however, she bent one sad reproachful look upon Oscar, and he knew that he had seen his mother's spirit in her eyes. He understood all then; but it was too late indeed!
'I told you how it would be!' said the harsh voice of Ranker, with his spluttering laugh, 'and now you are my servant!'
'Yes, for I have lost my Theeda!' answered Oscar, with a heavy sigh.
But even as he spoke, he chanced to turn his eyes towards the sea. Beyond the moon he saw a pure white cloud drifting down the sky. To Oscar's fancy it took on the likeness of a female form—the form of someone whom he knew and loved. She seemed to beckon him to a far-off country, whither Kanker could not come, and where he would be free.
'Yes, I will follow her!' Oscar thought; and, in some way, he slipped from where he was, and left the cottage and Kanker behind him, and went down towards the ocean.
Kanker did not at first know that Oscar had escaped, for he had left something behind which resembled him, but was not really he. The next morning, when the sun peeped as usual into the crystal vase, neither Oscar nor Kanker were to be seen. But, in the pearl shell, where formerly Theeda had lived, sat a great ugly crab, twiddling its huge red claws, and peering this way and that with its malicious little eyes, which stuck far out of its head. Oscar was not in the cottage, nor on the shore, nor has he, from that day to this, ever reappeared there. But, if you should ever happen to visit the place, you will hear the waves murmur mysteriously to one another, as they gambol along the beach; and since they come from that far-off line where the world meets the sky, they may possibly know more about Oscar and Theeda than people like Kanker would be apt to believe.