Drolls From Shadowland

by J. H. Pearce

  "Thee'st forgotten me, thou darned owld liar that thou art!" said he,shaking his fist savagely at the fern-clad hill-side, where Hatepresumably was watching from her lair.

  On which he heard a chilling whisper at his elbow: "You shall have yourwish, as sure as death!"

  Elijah heard the loud thump, thump of his heart. But an instant after,his pulse danced buoyantly, and he went about his work chuckling grimlyto himself.

  But while 'Miah's life was harvesting happiness, as his nets gatheredabundantly the harvest of the sea, Elijah's life on his farm on thehill-side appeared to be stifling among the stones and thistles, and asour and acid leanness seemed eating up his heart.

  It was as if Hate had shot her arrows blindly, and they had struck andrankled in the wrong breast.

  With Elijah Trevorrow nothing seemed to prosper. He might rise earlyand go to bed late, he might pinch and pare as relentlessly as hepleased, every year of his life he grew leaner and poorer, till thescowl on his features deepened permanently among its lines, and in theend transformed his features as completely as a mask.

  He was no more like the clear-eyed, whistling young farmer who had gonea-wooing Dorcas among the rustling wheat-fields, than the wrinkled tree,with its heart rotted out of it, is like the green young sapling in thebravery of its spring.

  Ever watching hungrily to see Misfortune seize his rival and set herteeth thirstily in the very pulse of his life, Elijah held aloof fromcommerce with his neighbours, sour and discontented, and wishing eachday to end, in the hope that on the morrow he might see the evil hedesired.

  Presently there went a whisper through the tiny hamlet that ElijahTrevorrow was a bit touched _here_--the villagers tapping their browssignificantly as they spoke.

  "He do talk as ef Hate es a woman, an' he've seed her. Up in that owldfogou he've mit her, he do say. An' he's all'ys sayin' she ha'nt keepedher word to un. Whatever do 'a mayne, weth 'es gashly owld tales?"

  'Miah, whose name had got mixed up in the tale, one day called at thelonely farmhouse, in order to see Elijah and reason with him if hecould.

  But Elijah, as 'Miah approached, set the dogs on him savagely, and thefisherman was obliged precipitately to beat a retreat.

  At last, one day in the depth of winter, when the hills were white withwhirling snowdrifts, Elijah Trevorrow disappeared.

  They searched everywhere for him, but could find no trace of him, andthe search was finally abandoned in despair.

  Elijah had made his way to the fogou, determined to front Hate and tocompel her to keep faith with him, even if he squeezed her life outthrough her throat.

  * * * * *

  Some eight months after--in the time of blackberries--some youngsters,questing among the ferns on the hillside, stumbled across the fogou andcrept in to explore it.

  They rushed down the hillside screaming with terror; and, when safeamong the cottages, began to babble incoherently that there was a ghostup yonder in the "owld hunted fogou," they had seen its face--and itwas white--so white!

  The villagers began to have an inkling of the truth, and went toiling upthrough the ferns in a body.

  "As like as not 'tes _he_, poor saul," they whispered awesomely as theyclambered up the windy ridges of the hill.

  True enough, it was Elijah, dead in the fogou. But whether or not he hadagain met Hate there, is one of the questions the gossips have still tosolve.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [N] A subterranean storehouse or place of shelter.

  [O] A portion of the rites practised in connection with "cursingstones."

  THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

  IT was only an old deserted house, perched half-way up the hillside andoverlooking the village. But it was none the less the village theatre:the peep-hole through which the villagers obtained a glimpse of manymysteries, and the stage and drop-scene of half the legends of thethorp.

  It was an old stone building which evidently had once been a dwelling ofimportance, but for quite a century it had been tenantless and almostentirely dismantled: the home of the owl and the lizard, of the spectreand the bat.

  When the sunrise splashed across the fragmentary panes of glass thathere and there remained in their frames, the farmer would stand still athis ploughing on the hill-slope and glance up at the great Argus-eyedbuilding--that had now, however, more sockets than eyes--and a world ofmemories, of legends and superstitions, would buzz, with strangebewilderment, through his brain.

  The old house reminded him of his mother and of his grandfather, and ofthose who had been the village historians for his childhood, and amusing gravity seemed to deepen in his mind. He was aware of the brevityof life, and of the lapse of the personality; of the tragedies ofpassion, with their gravity and poignancy, and of the mystery thatbroods at the back of all our thoughts. But most of all he was awarethat the building standing fronting him was the very kernel of hisindividuality projected into visibility: the one knot into which all hismemories were tied.

  He would hold his children spell-bound by the hour as he told them theordinary folk-tales of the hamlet, with that ruin on the hillside as thestage for the majority of them; till his daughter Ruth, who was youngand sentimental, though with a streak of passion running through hernature, learned to contemplate the ruin with an awe akin to his, andstared up wonderingly at it, so long and so often, that at last it hadbecome for her a necessary part of life.

  While Ruth was still a child, the haunted ruin chiefly attracted herthoughts as the scene and locality of uncanny occurrences that werefanciful and unusual rather than sombre or suggestive. It was the greathaunted cheese in which the piskies burrowed, and out of which theyhopped with amusing unexpectedness: it was the building to pass whichyou must always turn your stocking, if you wished to escape being_pisky-ledden_, or misguided: it was the place to which the "LittleFolks"[P] conveyed stolen children: above all, it was the place of darkand cobwebbed corners, where naughty children were put to live withsnails and spiders and with great big goggle-eyed buccaboos!

  As she stood on her doorstep with her bit of knitting in her hand--atiny doll's stocking, or a garter for herself--little Ruth would stareup at the great black building, with the scarlet splendour of the sunsetat its back, until she almost fancied she could see the little winkingpiskies grinning through the window-holes and clambering across theroofs.

  And by-and-by, when the rich yellow sky began to darken and the flocksof rooks flew cawing overhead, Ruth would shiver with a delicious senseof security as she stood beneath the porch in the gathering twilight andheard the wind begin to moan and sigh mysteriously, as if it trembled atthe thought of spending the night on the hillside with no other companythan that "whisht[Q] owld house."

  As she grew older and became aware of the drift of her wishes, feelingstirrings and promptings at the roots of her life, her imaginationseized now on the passionate human tragedies which, according to thelegends, had been enacted in the building. She had a sweetheart of herown, and she could understand lovers; and something of the glamour andmystery of a great heady passion she believed she could interpret out ofher own ripened life.

  But Rastus Dabb, her sweetheart, was as cloddish and unimaginative asthe heavy-uddered cows, with their great fleshy dewlaps, of which he wasprouder than he was of anything else in his world. It was quiteimpossible to get his feet off the solid earth: and apparently his mindwas anchored firmly to his feet. But Ruth had the attractiveness of allyoung things--she was fresh and cheerful, with a heart as light as afeather--and, by the law of contrast, she suited him to a nicety, moreespecially as she was an excellent little housewife to boot. So thecourting prospered sunnily; and he let her "romance" as she pleased.

  When she was a wife and mother, Ruth presently became acquainted withthat grim Shadow who knows the secret of our tears--their source and thebitter in them--and knows, too, the secret of everlasting peace. Andthereafter, when at intervals his wings darkened the world for her, herthoughts went out, with a strange yearning, towar
ds the dead who hadonce inhabited the ruin and could now roam through it only as ghosts.

  "Shall I one day have only such a foothold as theirs in this dear greenworld of ours?" she would ask herself, shiveringly. And theSunday-evening's sermon could soothe her not a whit.

  At last, in the waning afternoon of life, when her smooth brown hairwas as yet unstreaked with grey and her cheeks had still a splash ofcolour in them, she fell ill of some mysterious malady--mysterious, atleast, to the sympathetic villagers--and one dreary day in theblustering autumn she was aware in her heart that the Shadow was in theroom.

  "Draw back the curtains as far as you can," said she to Rastus, whostood helpless by the bedside.

  And when they were drawn, and she could see the great gaunt ruinfrowning blackly above the slopes of the shadow-checkered hillside, shecried out suddenly, "I'm going there among them, Rastus! Oh, dear, holdme!" And with that she passed.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [P] Fairies.

  [Q] Melancholy, forlorn.

  GIFTS AND AWARDS.

  "TWO bonnier babes," said the grey old midwife, bending thoughtfullyover them, "I never before assisted into the world."

  The mother, lying wan in her bed, smiled happily.

  "So bonny are they," said the wrinkled beldame, "that I will give toeach of them one of my choicest gifts: something they will still keephugged to their hearts when they are as close to the gates as you or I."

  "And how close is that?" asked the mother, growing whiter.

  The wise old midwife turned from the bedside and bent above theinfants, mumbling to herself.

  Presently the mother started up from a doze. There was no one in theroom but her married sister. "I dreamed Death was in the room with mejust now," said she. "And he had an old woman with him whom he calledhis Sister. She seemed to me to be giving my babies something: but whatit was I don't know. At first I thought it was a plaything; but now Ithink it was a sorrow. At least. . . ."

  "_Dear!_ DEAR!" cried her sister, in alarm, as if she saw the spiritdrifting beyond her ken.

  "My babies!" whispered the mother.

  And presently she was "at rest."

  * * * * *

  Rick and Dick grew up somehow. Though motherless and fatherless theywere not quite friendless, and in the struggle for existence they heldtheir own and kept alive.

  A more agreeable and cheerful fellow than Dick it would have beenimpossible to find, according to his companions. He seemed dowered witha disposition so equable and contented that it was a pleasure to be withhim: and he radiated cheerfulness like a fire. Moreover, he was inthorough harmony with his surroundings. He found fault with nothing inthe structure of society, and desired no change either in laws orinstitutions: everything was ordered wisely, and was ordered for thebest. In fact, he was the spirit of Content personified: and muchpatting on the back did he get for his reward.

  "We must give him a helping hand, must push him forward, you know," saidthe Community, beaming on its cheerful young champion.

  And Dick took the "pushing forward" with admirable self-composure, andcertainly seemed to deserve all he got.

  As for Rick, the Community would have nothing to do with him. He was notquite an out-and-out pessimist, it was true; but he seemed to look onthe Community as a most clumsily-articulated creature--a thing of shredsand patches, and the Cheap Jack of shams. He was always putting hisfinger on this spot or that; hinting that here there was a weakness, andthere . . . something worse. Every advanced thinker, and the majority oftheorists, could count on finding a sympathetic listener in him: and notinfrequently they found in him an advocate also; such an arrantanti-optimist was the pestilent fellow. As if Civilization, afterthousands of years of travail, had produced nothing better than a clumsyabortion with the claws of an animal and the tastes of Jack-an-ape! Why,the man must be mad, to have such irregular fancies! It was a pity lawsagainst opinions were not oftener put in force: then--a click of theguillotine, and the world would have peace!

  Rick listened grimly, and made a note of the imagery. "You will rememberit better in black and white," said he.

  * * * * *

  In the course of years Dick became a churchwarden and a philanthropist(he took the infection very mildly and in its most agreeable form), anda highly respected gambler on, or rather member of, the Stock Exchange.He was also joined "in the bands of holy matrimony" to a buxom youngwidow who was left-handedly connected with The Aristocracy Itself! Thelady brought him a most desirable fortune to start with, and after someyears made him a present of twins: so that Dick was now a notable manamong his acquaintances, and had the ambition to become a bigger manstill, by-and-by: a Common Councilman certainly, and an Alderman_perhaps_!

  Meanwhile Rick had developed into a musty _savant_: a fellow whosetastes, if you might call them such, were of the most _outre_ order--inadvance of everything that was sober, respectable, and conventional; andin aggressive alliance with everything that was disturbing, and thatwas maliciously and wickedly critical (said the saints).

  "The kernel of his life is unhealthy," said his brother: "it has adeadly fungus growing in it, I am afraid."

  "The fungus of discontent, dear friend," said the clergyman.

  "I am afraid so," said Dick, with a prodigious great sigh. "Still, wemust none the less pray for him unceasingly: for prayer availeth much,as we know."

  The clergyman dramatically clasped his white hands together, looking upas one who speechlessly admires.

  * * * * *

  Rick sat musing in his gloomy study: thinking of the ladder he hadclimbed, and of the scenery of his life that now stretched out like amap before him.

  Presently the study door opened softly, and a Figure came in and took achair at his side.

  "You have come, then!" said Rick. "I thought your coming must be near."

  "Shall we start?" asked the Figure.

  "I am ready," answered Rick.

  And they passed out together into the deep black night.

  "Come, take my arm: we will call together for your brother."

  "He has so much to make him happy! There are the little ones and hiswife! Could you not delay a little?"

  "He must come with us to-night."

  Dick was attending a banquet which was being given in his honour tocelebrate his recent election as a Common Councilman, and the lust oflife was in his every vein. But in the act of responding to the toast ofthe evening he was suddenly attacked by a fit of apoplexy. Hestaggered, and fell back--and they perceived that he was dead.

  * * * * *

  It was a bleak and a very depressing journey to pass nakedly and alonefrom the warm, well-lighted, and flattering banquet, and, most of all,from the comfortable and familiar earth, up to the Doom's-man and theBar beside the Gates. If he could only have had a friend or two at hisside!

  On the way up, just as he was nearing the gates, Dick overtook Rick, whowas a little way ahead of him.

  "Come, let us go up together," said Rick.

  At the gates, however, Dick began to grow uneasy. His brother'sreputation on earth among "the godly" was a curiously unwelcome memoryto Dick now the Bar was so near and the Doom's-man was in sight.

  "You go first," said Dick to his brother; falling behind as if todissociate himself from him.

  Rick passed the gate and stood silently at the Bar.

  "Place the brothers side by side," said the Doom's-man sternly.

  "If you please," began Dick, stumbling in his speech, so afraid was heof being confounded in the judgment of his brother; "If you please. . . ."

  Said the Doom's-man: "Let the Advocates state the case."

  The Black-robed Advocate claimed Rick boldly. The verdict of Rick'sfellow-citizens, he asserted, was emphatic on the point that Rick waslegitimately his. And he went with the majority, and claimed a verdictaccordingly.

  The White-robed Advocate advanced, more h
esitatingly, that Dickpresumably should go with _him_. The Community, he averred, had long agodecided that only in this way would justice have its due.

  The Doom's-man's verdict was simplicity itself.

  A nature so contented, and so little given to fault-finding, would bethe typical one for the Black Advocate's household, said the Doom's-man,humorously contemplating Dick. "Take him away with you," said he to theBlack Advocate: "the man will give you no trouble, _as you know_.

  "But that restless, fault-finding fellow there," and he indicated Rickwith a movement of his forefinger, "it would need a faultless abodelike _yours_ to satisfy him," and he signed to the silent White Advocateat his side. "Take him, he is yours," said the Doom's-man solemnly.

  And with that the Advocates departed with their awards.

  FRIEND OR FOE?

  I.

  SIR EDWARD lay back lazily in his chair, with a letter in a woman'shandwriting crumpled at his feet.

  "She must make the best of it now," said he, gazing at the fire. "She isnot worse off than others, come to that." And he lolled among thecushions, gazing into the fire, with a hard and cruel look on hiscountenance, on which the stamp of sensuality was unmistakablyimpressed.

  It was a large and luxuriously-furnished apartment, with everything soarranged as to minister to the senses and afford them the fullestgratification which suggestions could impart.