Drolls From Shadowland Read online

  When they come up to un the stones seemed to oppen, an' they went insidean' found un like a house. But that was hunderds o' years ago. The owldQuoit now es more like a crellas, though 'a still got a bra' gayte rockfor a roof.

  Anyhow, they went in, 'cordin' to the story; an' there they lived for anumber o' years.

  But, somehow, when they was wance got in, the youngster cudn' git outagen nohow. 'A cud geek through the cracks, an' see the country an' thepeople, but the stones wedn' oppen, an' 'a cudn' git out.

  But the owld black witch keeped 'es promise to un, an' tayched un allthat 'a wanted to knaw.

  The craws that croaked on the Quoit in the sunshine, an' the sparrersan' wagtails an' awther kinds o' birds that come flittin' round an'cheepin' to ayche awther, the owld witch tayched un ('cordin' to thestory) to onderstaand everything any of 'em said.

  Well, at laast 'a got so cliver, ded the youngster, that there warn't nobird but what 'a cud talk to; from the owld black raven, wha's all'yscryin' "_corpse!_" to the putty li'l robins what wedn' hurt a worm.

  But aw! lor' Jimmeny! warn't 'a disappointed when 'a found what 'a'd benso hankerin' arter warn't wuth givin' a snail's shill to knaw.

  He'd ben thinkin', 'fore 'a cud onderstaand them, that what they'd betalkin' about to ayche awther wed be somethin' cureyus an' mightycliver, all sorts o' strange owld saycrets, s'pose. But 'a found, when'a come to spayke their language, that instead o' tellin' 'bout haypeso' treasures, an' hunted housen, an' owld queer ways, they was all thetime talkin' 'bout their mait or their nestes, an' awther silly jabberlike that.

  So 'a was mighty disappointed, an' got very law-sperrited, though 'adedn' like to confess it to the witch.

  An' now, thinks the youngster, he'd like to go home agen: an' shaw off'fore the nayburs, s'pose.

  "Well, thee cust go," says the owld witch, grinnin'.

  "An' what must I pay'ee for taychin' me?" says the youngster.

  "Nawthin', sonny! Nawthin' at all!" says the witch. "I shall git mereward in a way o' me awn."

  An' weth that 'a bust out laughin' agen.

  Well, anyway, the lad, accordin' to the story, wished un "_good-bye_,"an' trudged off home.

  But aw! poor dear! when 'a got to Zennor 'a nigh 'pon brok 'es heartweth grief.

  He'd ben livin' all alone weth the owld black witch, an' 'a hadn' tookno note of what was passin', an' 'a thought 'a was still a youngster,simmin'ly: 'stead o' which 'a was graw'd to an owld, owld man, weth nomore pith in 'es bones than a piskey; an' 'a cud hardly manage to crawlto Zennor, 'a was so owld an' palchy[J], an' nigh 'pon blind.

  An', wust of all, when 'a got to Zennor everywan who knaw'd un was deadan' gone! 'Es faather an' mawther was up in the churchyard, an' 'ahadn' got a single friend in the world!

  So because 'a was so owld an' terrible palchy, an' hadn' got nowan totaake no int'rest in un, through never havin' took no int'rest in nowan,they was obliged to put un up to Maddern Union; an' there 'a lingered,owld an' toatlish,[K] 'tell 'a died at laast a lone owld man.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [B] Prying.

  [C] The mermaid, with glass and comb and with the tail of a fish, whichis carved on a bench-end in Zennor church.

  [D] Ancient hut-dwellings.

  [E] Barrows.

  [F] Cromlech. The term is derived from the legendary belief that theserude megalithic monuments were used by the giants when playing quoits.

  [G] A little bit, in the least.

  [H] In Cornwall _witch_ is both masculine and feminine. The _black_witch exercises the most potent magic; the _white_ witch being vastlyinferior in power.

  [I] Fool.

  [J] Weak.

  [K] Silly.

  THE PURSUIT.

  IT began when I was a lad at the country day-school, struggling to holdmy own among the scholars in my class.

  If I could only always be perfect in my lessons, and among the foremost(if not the first) in the examinations; then, at least, I thought, Ishould see Her face to face.

  But these good things befell me--possibly undeservedly--and though Iswelled beneath my coat with inward satisfaction, _She_ was still faroff: a phantom on the hills.

  Then it struck me that if I went to dear Mother Nature she would tell meof this daughter of hers--so enchanting, yet so shy--and I might evenone day surprise Her on the hill-slopes, or meet Her as She wanderedamong the green, winding lanes.

  So I presently became a haunter of the tree-clad valleys, of theprattling brooks with the meadowsweet drooping over them, and of thelone, bleak hills where the great wind growled.

  Many mornings did I steal out long before the sunrise in order to watchthe stars die out in the dawning and the red bars glow in thepalpitating east. And when, standing among the firs in the windyplantation, I saw the huge sun rear its head and flood the world withsplendour, and heard the birds sing jubilantly, almost breathless withdelight, I have fancied I felt the breath of the Beloved One on mycheek and Her heart beating wildly and tremulously against my own. Butit was only fancy. Presently the singing dwindled and became fainter:the air grew hot beneath the aromatic fir-boughs: and when, in thedistance, the flood of dazzling sunlight dashed redly on thewindow-panes of the village cottages, I knew I must descend from thehaunted hill-top and return to the more prosaic details of life. If Shehad flown past me, brushing me with Her garments in passing, I had notyet discovered Her as a possession that I could grasp.

  Then I said to myself, I shall find Her among my girl-friends: amongtheir rustling garments I shall hear _Her_ garments rustle; and fromamong the laughing eyes with which they bewilder me, I shall no doubtbe able to single out _Hers_.

  I chose the pleasantest of the maidens who fluttered through my world;and I knew her beautiful, and I believed her to be true. But that oldclown Circumstance was piping in the market-place, shewing hischeap-jack wares to catch the fancies of the maidens, and my sweetheart,caught in the excitement of the moment, presently paid down for one ofhis flashy baubles no less a price than her own young heart.

  Then I said, I will look abroad in the market-place myself. Through theclatter of feet and the babble of many voices, I may perhaps catch awhisper, a hint of Her presence. Possibly She may love the eager hauntsof men even more than She loves the silent haunt of the wood-dove andthe great wide moors where the kite circles slowly. I will move among myfellows and will search for Her there.

  But the market-place with its thud, thud, thud of many feet, and itsclatter of vehicles, and its buzz of many voices, was a busy spot, andthe pleasures were very cheap ones: and not here could I manage to get aglimpse of Her face.

  I looked in the shops, and I stood beside the hawkers, and I listened tothe sellers and gossiped with those who bought; but the noise, and theheat, and the dust that rose so thickly, were more than I had bargainedfor, and I felt lonely and disillusioned: so I very lamely turned myback on it all, and went away feeling that I should never find Herthere.

  Then I built for myself a study into which I gathered covetously themost perfect vintage of the human intellect--the ripest fruit our wiserace has garnered during all the years it has been harvesting from time.And here I sat me down waiting for my Beloved. She will surely show Herface to me here, said I.

  The wind rattled the casement; the lamp-flame shook tremulously; and thefire burned cheerfully in the grotesque-tiled grate. I could hear therain viciously swishing against the window-panes and gurglingunmelodiously through the gutters and from the pipes, but She whom Idesired came not to keep me company.

  For all the feast I have gathered for us, and for all the comfort I havesecured for Her, She holds aloof, and I have never seen Her yet.

  And sometimes now I fancy that possibly I may never see Her: but thatone day, when I am lying in my coffin, She will press Her lips tomine--and I shall never know.

  A PLEASANT ENTERTAINMENT.

  "I HAVE here," said the Showman, "the most interesting entertainment tobe witnessed on earth! Walk up! walk up, and judge for yourselves!" And
with that he beat the drum and blew shrilly on the pipes.

  The music travelled to the ears of his audience with a difference: or soit seemed to them, as they stood before the booth. Some heard in it,through the discordant hubbub of the fair, the rattle of vehicles andthe tramp of feet in the busy thoroughfares of a great city; for others,it was the whistling of birds in the hedgerows; and to some, like therestless pulsations of the sea. To each, according to his memories andhis mood. But the music of the Showman was a single tune for all.

  "Walk up! walk up!" bawled the grey-coated Showman, blowing at the pipesand pounding on the drum.

  "Darned if I wouldn't go in, if I had the brass!" quoth a lean,unshaven, shabby-looking man, who stood in front of the booth with hishands in his pockets.

  "I'll stand treat, if you like!" cried a sunken-eyed young woman, whosecheap and much-bedraggled finery matched aptly enough with her wan andhaggard countenance. It was the impulse of a moment, but she was thepuppet of impulse and danced on the wires at the slightest touch ofchance.

  "Right you are!" cried the man.

  And they mounted the steps together.

  "It's like going up to the altar, isn't it?" giggled the woman to hercompanion.

  "More like going up to the gallows," growled the man.

  The Showman rattled the coins as he pocketed them, and flinging asidethe canvas admitted them to the booth.

  The interior was enveloped in a dim obscurity; hardly deep enough to becounted as darkness, but oppressive enough to slow the pulses of both.There was, however, at one end of the booth a large disc projected onthe obscurity: a pale, empty, weirdly-lighted circle, which they staredat dumbly, with wonder in their eyes.

  "Is this some darned fool's joke?" growled the man.

  "Hush!" said the woman, "the entertainment has commenced."

  And, true enough, the disc at which they had been staring had already astirring, as of life, across its surface.

  They were aware of a couple of enthralling faces fronting them side byside on the disc.

  One was a woman's face, exquisitely beautiful, with soft blue eyes, fullof the most charming gaiety, and with lips as sweetly winsome as achild's: the other was a man's face, proud and handsome, the mouth setfirmly, the eyes full of thought.

  "Such a face I had dreamed of as my own," sighed the woman.

  "So I had imagined I might have been," mused the man.

  And then the scenes on the disc began to wax and dwindle rapidly; likethe momentary clinging, and as rapid vanishing, of breath across amirror of polished steel.

  There was a vague fluttering and interchange of images; an elusive,intangible influx of suggestions, and an equally dreamy efflux of thesame.

  A young girl growing into beautiful womanhood, well-dressed, shapely,sought eagerly in marriage, admired by the opposite sex, and envied byher own. Then a woman in the prime of her powers of enjoyment--with hercharms undiminished and her wishes ripened--wedded, and successfullyshaping her life: a woman blessed greatly, and very happy.

  And side by side with these dream-fancies, or imaginings, went those ofa young man facing the world gallantly; surmounting every obstacleeasily, and conquering hearts as if by a spell. There was success forhim in every scene on which he entered: he was proud and admired, andvery haughty, and very rich.

  Presently, as if through some dexterous sleight of hand, the pictures ofhis wooing blended waveringly and dimly with the pictures which emergedfor the bedraggled woman who stood beside the loafer in front of thedisc.

  In the church, when the wedding-march was being played, and in thevignettes of domestic happiness that ensued, the faces and scenesmysteriously coalesced.

  For the two spectators, who watched the shifting pictures breathlessly,there were no longer four figures in the scene, but only two.

  "Some such future I had imagined for myself," the man muttered.

  And the woman mused amazedly: "These were day-dreams of my own."

  The disc became obscured, as if their eyes were blurred mistily.

  The woman gulped down something: and the man clenched his teeth.

  There was a sudden exquisite clarity in the pictures. They were lookingat a cluster of white-washed cottages, with tall thatched roofs and withgreat stone chimneys: a lonely little hamlet drowsing in the sun.White-winged ducks were quacking in the roadway, a grey-coated donkeywas grazing beside a hedge, and the threadlets of smoke, that mountedlazily above the roofs, rose up into a sky of the most exquisite purity,spacious, high, and cloudlessly blue. And again there was only one scenefor them both.

  "My God, that is where I was born!" groaned the man.

  "That's my mother's cottage!" sobbed the woman, and wept aloud.

  Then came rural scenes of almost every character, with a lad and a girlmoving flittingly through them--laughing and kissing in the lanes amongthe brambles, drifting together everywhere, sweethearting through itall.

  "Are you Nelly King, then?" asked the man, hoarsely.

  "And you . . . you are Stephen Laity, are you not?"

  "If we could both die here and now!" cried the man.

  Then the pictures for a while grew blurred and confused, till presentlythey shewed the gas-lighted streets of London. . . .

  "My God, I will see no more!" cried the girl. And she shudderingly heldher hand before her eyes.

  "Nor I, either!" cried the man, with an oath.

  "However much you close your eyes," said the Showman, "you will cancelnothing of the pictures on the screen."

  But they had turned and fled even while he was speaking.

  "Even in the fair the pictures will pursue you!" said the stern-visagedShowman, following them with his eyes.

  THE MAN WHO DESIRED TO BE A TREE.

  THE sunshine streamed across the lush-grassed meadows, and beat fiercelydown on the huge-limbed elms whose myriad leaves kept flutteringceaselessly. In the dense green covert, formed by the multitude ofinterlacing branches, several wee brown songsters had built their nests,and they kept flitting to and fro and trilling joyously as the lightbreeze 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 thebranches, and full also of the deliciously delicate fragrance from thebudding sprays and fresh green foliage. May was in the woodlands, shyand 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-visagedstudent, very shabbily dressed and with patches of thin grey hair aroundhis temples. A volume of the _Faery Queen_ lay open beside him, but hehad for some time ceased to pore over its pages, being engaged insteadin chasing Fancy as she flitted hither and thither through the vastgreen woodland, dallying with the shadows and gossiping with the wind.

  His mind's eye revelled in the picturesque suggestions that seemed tohim, as he lay here with half-closed lids, to be fleetingly visible, asif in a dream. He was aware of beautiful damsels in gauzy draperiespantingly hurrying through the dusky avenues with steel-clad knights inhot pursuit; of grey old monks, cowled and sandalled, moving hither andthither in a world of utter peace; and of dryads and fairies, fauns andsatyrs, filling the woodland with dreamy poetry, as the wind filled itsgiant rafters with music, and the brooks purled babblingly through thecrevices of its floor.

  How delightful it would be to be a denizen of the forest--to be this elmin 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--daintysaplings and gnarled old foresters--fell across the nearer margin of thegrass-land in fantastic, almost semi-human outlines: at least, so itseemed to the dreamy student, as he lay here watching the breeze rippleacross the grass-blades and listened to the murmur of the forest at hisback.

  "I should like to be a tree," he sighed lazily and half aloud.

&nbs
p; "Would you?" asked a voice from somewhere close to him.

  It was a low, caressing, insinuating voice, with a strange seductivenessin its silvery intonation. And instead of feeling startled he felt asudden wave of happiness, as if a beautiful female had breathed upon hischeek.

  "Would you?" asked the voice, deliciously flattering him, "_would_ youlike 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 whereit grows. Yes, I should like to be a tree indeed!

  "Shall I grant your wish?" asked the voice whisperingly--how exquisitelysweet and soothing it was!--"shall I grant it here, and now?" it asked.

  The student closed his eyes to leisurely consider; and then, halfdreamily, answered, "Yes!"

  To be a tree is to be in touch with Nature nakedly; to be stripped ofthe disguises that have gathered about the man, and to be thrown backblankly into the narrowest groove of life. The student felt the wind andthe sun on his branches, and the birds sang joyously, nestling amonghis leaves; his feet were rooted in the fresh and wholesome earth, andthe sap moved sluggishly in his rough-barked trunk.

  It was a calm and deeply drowsy existence; but the restlessness ofhumanity was not yet eliminated from him, and he investigated his noveltenement wonderingly, and not without a touch of squeamish disgust.

  But when the quiet night descended on him, and the cooling dews slidinto his pores, the exquisite soothe of the darkness enveloped him, andto the rustling of his leaves he fell healthily asleep.