Big Book of Best Short Stories - Specials - Fantasy E-Book

Kenneth Grahame

• Herausgeber: Tacet Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Big Book of Best Short Stories Specials
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 1195

Beschreibung

This book contains 25 short stories from 5 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the critic August Nemo, in a collection that will please the literature lovers.The theme of this edition is: Fantasy For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: Edgar Rice Burroughs: - Tarzan's First Love - A Jungle Joke - Tarzan Rescues the Moon - John Carter and the Giant Of Mars - The Ancient Dead - Beyond Thirty - Skeleton Men of JupiterJohn Kendrick Bangs: - The Water Ghost Of Harrowby Hall - The Spectre Cook Of Bangletop - A Midnight Visitor - The Speck On The Lens - A Quicksilver Cassandra - The Ghost Club - A Psychical PrankOscar Wilde: - Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - The Sphinx without a Secret - A Model Millionaire - The Happy Prince - The Fisherman and his Soul - The Nightingale and the Rose - The Young KingLord Dunsany: - Chu-Bu and Sheemish - The Hoard of the Gibbelins - The Quest of the Queen's Tears - How One Came, As Was Foretold, To The City Of Never - The Wonderful Window - The Bride Of The Man Horse - The House Of The SphinxKenneth Grahame: - The Twenty-First of October - Dies Irae - Mutabile Semper - The Magic Ring - Its Walls Were as of Jasper - A Saga of the Seas - The Reluctant Dragon

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Kenneth Grahame

Lord Dunsanny

Oscar Wilde

John Kendrick Bangs

Edgar Rice Burroughs

About the Publisher

Introduction

Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.

Fantasy is a subgenre of speculative fiction and is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these genres overlap. Historically, most works of fantasy were written, however, since the 1960s, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music and art.

A number of fantasy novels originally written for children, such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Harry Potter series, and The Hobbit also attract an adult audience.

Symbolism often plays a significant role in fantasy literature, often through the use of archetypal figures inspired by earlier texts or folklore. Some argue that fantasy literature and its archetypes fulfill a function for individuals and society and the messages are continually updated for current societies.

Kenneth Grahame

Kenneth Grahame, (born March 8, 1859, Edinburgh, Scotland—died July 6, 1932, Pangbourne, Berkshire, England), British author of The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children’s literature. Its animal characters—principally Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad—combine captivating human traits with authentic animal habits. It is a story that adults have enjoyed as much as children.

Orphaned at an early age, Grahame went to live with his grandmother in England and attended St. Edward’s School, Oxford. Money was lacking for him to go to the university. Hence, his family guided him into a career at the Bank of England, with which he stayed until ill health compelled him to retire in 1908. Meanwhile, he contributed articles to such journals as the St. James Gazette and the Yellow Book and published collections of sketches, stories, and essays—Pagan Papers (1893), The Golden Age (1895), and Dream Days (1898)—all of which reveal his sensitive understanding of childhood.

The Wind in the Willows was dramatized by A.A. Milne as Toad of Toad Hall (1929) and became a frequently performed Christmas play.

The Twenty-First of October

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In the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood on pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us would be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his own preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either sex, and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher than to crack a whip in a circus-ring — in geography, for instance, arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens — each would have scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever our individual gifts, a general dogged determination to shirk and to evade kept us all at much the same dead level, — a level of Ignorance tempered by insubordination.

Fortunately there existed a wide range of subjects, of healthier tone than those already enumerated, in which we were free to choose for ourselves, and which we would have scorned to consider education; and in these we freely followed each his own particular line, often attaining an amount of special knowledge which struck our ignorant elders as simply uncanny. For Edward, the uniforms, accoutrements, colours, and mottoes of the regiments composing the British Army had a special glamour. In the matter of facings he was simply faultless; among chevrons, badges, medals, and stars, he moved familiarly; he even knew the names of most of the colonels in command; and he would squander sunny hours prone on the lawn, heedless of challenge from bird or beast, poring over a tattered Army List. My own accomplishment was of another character — took, as it seemed to me, a wider and a more untrammelled range. Dragoons might have swaggered in Lincoln green, riflemen might have donned sporrans over tartan trews, without exciting notice or comment from me. But did you seek precise information as to the fauna of the American continent, then you had come to the right shop. Where and why the bison “wallowed”; how beaver were to be trapped and wild turkeys stalked; the grizzly and how to handle him, and the pretty pressing ways of the constrictor, — in fine, the haunts and the habits of all that burrowed, strutted, roared, or wriggled between the Atlantic and the Pacific, — all this knowledge I took for my province. By the others my equipment was fully recognized. Supposing a book with a bear-hunt in it made its way into the house, and the atmosphere was electric with excitement; still, it was necessary that I should first decide whether the slot had been properly described and properly followed up, ere the work could be stamped with full approval. A writer might have won fame throughout the civilized globe for his trappers and his realistic backwoods, and all went for nothing. If his pemmican were not properly compounded I damned his achievement, and it was heard no more of.

Harold was hardly old enough to possess a special subject of his own. He had his instincts, indeed, and at bird’s-nesting they almost amounted to prophecy. Where we others only suspected eggs, surmised possible eggs, hinted doubtfully at eggs in the neighbourhood, Harold went straight for the right bush, bough, or hole as if he carried a divining-rod. But this faculty belonged to the class of mere gifts, and was not to be ranked with Edward’s lore regarding facings, and mine as to the habits of prairie-dogs, both gained by painful study and extensive travel in those “realms of gold,” the Army List and Ballantyne.

Selina’s subject, quite unaccountably, happened to be naval history. There is no laying down rules as to subjects; you just possess them — or rather, they possess you — and their genesis or protoplasm is rarely to be tracked down. Selina had never so much as seen the sea; but for that matter neither had I ever set foot on the American continent, the by-ways of which I knew so intimately. And just as I, if set down without warning in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, would have been perfectly at home, so Selina, if a genie had dropped her suddenly on Portsmouth Hard, could have given points to most of its frequenters. From the days of Blake down to the death of Nelson (she never condescended further) Selina had taken spiritual part in every notable engagement of the British Navy; and even in the dark days when she had to pick up skirts and flee, chased by an ungallant De Ruyter or Van Tromp, she was yet cheerful in the consciousness that ere long she would be gleefully hammering the fleets of the world, in the glorious times to follow. When that golden period arrived, Selina was busy indeed; and, while loving best to stand where the splinters were flying the thickest, she was also a careful and critical student of seamanship and of maneuver. She knew the order in which the great line-of-battle ships moved into action, the vessels they respectively engaged, the moment when each let go its anchor, and which of them had a spring on its cable (while not understanding the phrase, she carefully noted the fact); and she habitually went into an engagement on the quarter-deck of the gallant ship that reserved its fire the longest.

At the time of Selina’s weird seizure I was unfortunately away from home, on a loathsome visit to an aunt; and my account is therefore feebly compounded from hearsay. It was an absence I never ceased to regret — scoring it up, with a sense of injury, against the aunt. There was a splendid uselessness about the whole performance that specially appealed to my artistic sense. That it should have been Selina, too, who should break out this way — Selina, who had just become a regular subscriber to the “Young Ladies’ Journal,” and who allowed herself to be taken out to strange teas with an air of resignation palpably assumed — this was a special joy, and served to remind me that much of this dreaded convention that was creeping over us might be, after all, only veneer. Edward also was absent, getting licked into shape at school; but to him the loss was nothing. With his stern practical bent he wouldn’t have seen any sense in it — to recall one of his favourite expressions. To Harold, however, for whom the gods had always cherished a special tenderness, it was granted, not only to witness, but also, priestlike, to feed the sacred fire itself. And if at the time he paid the penalty exacted by the sordid unimaginative ones who temporarily rule the roast, he must ever after, one feels sure, have carried inside him some of the white gladness of the acolyte who, greatly privileged, has been permitted to swing a censer at the sacring of the very Mass.

October was mellowing fast, and with it the year itself; full of tender hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh completed. From all sides that still afternoon you caught the quick breathing and sob of the runner nearing the goal. Preoccupied and possessed, Selina had strayed down the garden and out into the pasture beyond, where, on a bit of rising ground that dominated the garden on one side and the downs with the old coach-road on the other, she had cast herself down to chew the cud of fancy. There she was presently joined by Harold, breathless and very full of his latest grievance.

“I asked him not to,” he burst out. “I said if he’d only please wait a bit and Edward would be back soon, and it couldn’t matter to him, and the pig wouldn’t mind, and Edward’d be pleased and everybody’d be happy. But he just said he was very sorry, but bacon didn’t wait for nobody. So I told him he was a regular beast, and then I came away. And — and I b’lieve they’re doing it now!”

“Yes, he’s a beast,” agreed Selina, absently. She had forgotten all about the pig-killing. Harold kicked away a freshly thrown-up mole-hill, and prodded down the hole with a stick. From the direction of Farmer Larkin’s demesne came a long-drawn note of sorrow, a thin cry and appeals telling that the stout soul of a black Berkshire pig was already faring down the stony track to Hades.

“D’ you know what day it is?” said Selina presently, in a low voice, looking far away before her.

Harold did not appear to know, nor yet to care. He had laid open his mole-run for a yard or so, and was still grubbing at it absorbedly.

“It’s Trafalgar Day,” went on Selina, trancedly; “Trafalgar Day — and nobody cares!”

Something in her tone told Harold that he was not behaving quite becomingly. He didn’t exactly know in what manner; still, he abandoned his mole-hunt for a more courteous attitude of attention.

“Over there,” resumed Selina — she was gazing out in the direction of the old highroad — “over there the coaches used to go by. Uncle Thomas was telling me about it the other day. And the people used to watch for ’em coming, to tell the time by, and p’r’aps to get their parcels. And one morning — they wouldn’t be expecting anything different — one morning, first there would be a cloud of dust, as usual, and then the coach would come racing by, and then they would know! For the coach would be dressed in laurel, all laurel from stem to stern! And the coachman would be wearing laurel, and the guard would be wearing laurel; and then they would know, then they would know!”

Harold listened in respectful silence. He would much rather have been hunting the mole, who must have been a mile away by this time if he had his wits about him. But he had all the natural instincts of a gentleman; of whom it is one of the principal marks, if not the complete definition, never to show signs of being bored.

Selina rose to her feet, and paced the turf restlessly with a short quarter-deck walk.

“Why can’t we do something?” she burst out presently. “He — he did everything — why can’t we do anything for him?”

“Who did everything?” inquired Harold, meekly. It was useless wasting further longings on that mole. Like the dead, he travelled fast.

“Why, Nelson, of course,” said Selina, shortly, still looking restlessly around for help or suggestion.

“But he’s — he’s dead, isn’t he?” asked Harold, slightly puzzled.

“What’s that got to do with it?” retorted his sister, resuming her caged-lion promenade.

Harold was somewhat taken aback. In the case of the pig, for instance, whose last outcry had now passed into stillness, he had considered the chapter as finally closed. Whatever innocent mirth the holidays might hold in store for Edward, that particular pig, at least, would not be a contributor. And now he was given to understand that the situation had not materially changed! He would have to revise his ideas, it seemed. Sitting up on end, he looked towards the garden for assistance in the task. Thence, even as he gazed, a tiny column of smoke rose straight up into the still air. The gardener had been sweeping that afternoon, and now, an unconscious priest, was offering his sacrifice of autumn leaves to the calm-eyed goddess of changing hues and chill forebodings who was moving slowly about the land that golden afternoon. Harold was up and off in a moment, forgetting Nelson, forgetting the pig, the mole, the Larkin betrayal, and Selina’s strange fever of conscience. Here was fire, real fire, to play with, and that was even better than messing with water, or remodelling the plastic surface of the earth. Of all the toys the world provides for right-minded persons, the original elements rank easily the first.

But Selina sat on where she was, her chin on her fists; and her fancies whirled and drifted, here and there, in curls and eddies, along with the smoke she was watching. As the quick-footed dusk of the short October day stepped lightly over the garden, little red tongues of fire might be seen to leap and vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering under armfuls of leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible only at fitful intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of Selina was looking upon, — a smoke that hung in sullen banks round the masts and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from beneath which came thunder and the crash and the splinter-rip, the shout of the boarding-party, the choking sob of the gunner stretched by his gun; a smoke from out of which at last she saw, as through a riven pall, the radiant spirit of the Victor, crowned with the coronal of a perfect death, leap in full assurance up into the ether that Immortals breathe. The dusk was glooming towards darkness when she rose and moved slowly down towards the beckoning fire; something of the priestess in her stride, something of the devotee in the set purpose of her eye.

The leaves were well alight by this time, and Harold had just added an old furze bush, which flamed and crackled stirringly.

“Go ‘n’ get some more sticks,” ordered Selina, “and shavings, ‘n’ chunks of wood, ‘n’ anything you can find. Look here — in the kitchen-garden there ‘s a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many as you can carry, and then go back and bring some more!”

“But I say, — ” began Harold, amazedly, scarce knowing his sister, and with a vision of a frenzied gardener, pea-stickless and threatening retribution.

“Go and fetch ’em quick!” shouted Selina, stamping with impatience.

Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline in which he had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O’s, and as he ran he talked fast to himself, in evident disorder of mind.

The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer smouldering sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance of a genuine bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began to jump round it with shouts of triumph. Selina looked on grimly, with knitted brow; she was not yet fully satisfied. “Can’t you get any more sticks?” she said presently. “Go and hunt about. Get some old hampers and matting and things out of the tool-house. Smash up that old cucumber frame Edward shoved you into, the day we were playing scouts and Mohicans. Stop a bit! Hooray! I know. You come along with me.”

Hard by there was a hot-house, Aunt Eliza’s special pride and joy, and even grimly approved of by the gardener. At one end, in an out-house adjoining, the necessary firing was stored; and to this sacred fuel, of which we were strictly forbidden to touch a stick, Selina went straight. Harold followed obediently, prepared for any crime after that of the pea-sticks, but pinching himself to see if he were really awake.

“You bring some coals,” said Selina briefly, without any palaver or pro-and-con discussion. “Here’s a basket. I’ll manage the faggots!”

In a very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now, hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young lady purged out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or prodded it with a pea-stick. And as she prodded she murmured at intervals, “I knew there was something we could do! It isn’t much — but still it ‘s something!”

The gardener had gone home to his tea. Aunt Eliza had driven out for hers a long way off, and was not expected back till quite late; and this far end of the garden was not overlooked by any windows. So the Tribute blazed on merrily unchecked. Villagers far away, catching sight of the flare, muttered something about “them young devils at their tricks again,” and trudged on beerwards. Never a thought of what day it was, never a thought for Nelson, who preserved their honest pint-pots, to be paid for in honest pence, and saved them from litres and decimal coinage. Nearer at hand, frightened rabbits popped up and vanished with a flick of white tails; scared birds fluttered among the branches, or sped across the glade to quieter sleeping-quarters; but never a bird nor a beast gave a thought to the hero to whom they owed it that each year their little homes of horsehair, wool, or moss, were safe stablished ‘neath the flap of the British flag; and that Game Laws, quietly permanent, made la chasse a terror only to their betters. No one seemed to know, nor to care, nor to sympathise. In all the ecstasy of her burnt-offering and sacrifice, Selina stood alone.

And yet — not quite alone! For, as the fire was roaring at its best, certain stars stepped delicately forth on the surface of the immensity above, and peered down doubtfully — with wonder at first, then with interest, then with recognition, with a start of glad surprise. They at least knew all about it, they understood. Among them the Name was a daily familiar word; his story was a part of the music to which they swung, himself was their fellow and their mate and comrade. So they peeped, and winked, and peeped again, and called to their laggard brothers to come quick and see.

The best of life is but intoxication, and Selina, who during her brief inebriation had lived in an ecstasy as golden as our drab existence affords, had to experience the inevitable bitterness of awakening sobriety, when the dying down of the flames into sullen embers coincided with the frenzied entrance of Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so much that she was at once and forever disrated, broke, sent before the mast, and branded as one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with Edward safe at school, and myself under the distant vigilance of an aunt; that her pocket money was stopped indefinitely, and her new Church Service, the pride of her last birthday, removed from her own custody and placed under the control of a Trust. She sorrowed rather because she had dragged poor Harold, against his better judgment, into a most horrible scrape, and moreover because, when the reaction had fairly set in, when the exaltation had fizzled away and the young-lady portion of her had crept timorously back to its wonted lodging, she could only see herself as a plain fool, unjustified, undeniable, without a shadow of an excuse or explanation.

As for Harold, youth and a short memory made his case less pitiful than it seemed to his more sensitive sister. True, he started upstairs to his lonely cot bellowing dismally, before him a dreary future of pains and penalties, sufficient to last to the crack of doom. Outside his door, however, he tumbled over Augustus the cat, and made capture of him; and at once his mourning was changed into a song of triumph, as he conveyed his prize into port. For Augustus, who detested above all things going to bed with little boys, was ever more knave than fool, and the trapper who was wily enough to ensnare him had achieved something notable. Augustus, when he realized that his fate was sealed, and his night’s lodging settled, wisely made the best of things, and listened, with a languorous air of complete comprehension, to the incoherent babble concerning pigs and heroes, moles and bonfires, which served Harold for a self-sung lullaby. Yet it may be doubted whether Augustus was one of those rare fellows who thoroughly understood.

But Selina knew no more of this source of consolation than of the sympathy with which the stars were winking above her; and it was only after some sad interval of time, and on a very moist pillow, that she drifted into that quaint inconsequent country where you may meet your own pet hero strolling down the road, and commit what hair-brained oddities you like, and everybody understands and appreciates.

Dies Irae

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Those memorable days that move in procession, their heads just out of the mist of years long dead — the most of them are full-eyed as the dandelion that from dawn to shade has steeped itself in sunlight. Here and there in their ranks, however, moves a forlorn one who is blind — blind in the sense of the dulled window-pane on which the pelting raindrops have mingled and run down, obscuring sunshine and the circling birds, happy fields, and storied garden; blind with the spatter of a misery uncomprehended, unanalysed, only felt as something corporeal in its buffeting effects.

Martha began it; and yet Martha was not really to blame. Indeed, that was half the trouble of it — no solid person stood full in view, to be blamed and to make atonement. There was only a wretched, impalpable condition to deal with. Breakfast was just over; the sun was summoning us, imperious as a herald with clamour of trumpet; I ran upstairs to her with a broken bootlace in my hand, and there she was, crying in a corner, her head in her apron. Nothing could be got from her but the same dismal succession of sobs that would not have done, that struck and hurt like a physical beating; and meanwhile the sun was getting impatient, and I wanted my bootlace.

Inquiry below stairs revealed the cause. Martha’s brother was dead, it seemed — her sailor brother Billy; drowned in one of those strange far-off seas it was our dream to navigate one day. We had known Billy well, and appreciated him. When an approaching visit of Billy to his sister had been announced, we had counted the days to it. When his cheery voice was at last heard in the kitchen and we had descended with shouts, first of all he had to exhibit his tattooed arms, always a subject for fresh delight and envy and awe; then he was called upon for tricks, jugglings, and strange, fearful gymnastics; and lastly came yarns, and more yarns, and yarns till bedtime. There had never been any one like Billy in his own particular sphere; and now he was drowned, they said, and Martha was miserable, and — and I couldn’t get a new bootlace. They told me that Billy would never come back any more, and I stared out of the window at the sun which came back, right enough, every day, and their news conveyed nothing whatever to me. Martha’s sorrow hit home a little, but only because the actual sight and sound of it gave me a dull, bad sort of pain low down inside — a pain not to be actually located. Moreover, I was still wanting my bootlace.

This was a poor sort of a beginning to a day that, so far as outside conditions went, had promised so well. I rigged up a sort of jurymast of a bootlace with a bit of old string, and wandered off to look up the girls, conscious of a jar and a discordance in the scheme of things. The moment I entered the schoolroom something in the air seemed to tell me that here, too, matters were strained and awry. Selina was staring listlessly out of the window, one foot curled round her leg. When I spoke to her she jerked a shoulder testily, but did not condescend to the civility of a reply. Charlotte, absolutely unoccupied, sprawled in a chair, and there were signs of sniffles about her, even at that early hour. It was but a trifling matter that had caused all this electricity in the atmosphere, and the girls’ manner of taking it seemed to me most unreasonable. Within the last few days the time had come round for the despatch of a hamper to Edward at school. Only one hamper a term was permitted him, so its preparation was a sort of blend of revelry and religious ceremony. After the main corpus of the thing had been carefully selected and safely bestowed — the pots of jam, the cake, the sausages, and the apples that filled up corners so nicely — after the last package had been wedged in, the girls had deposited their own private and personal offerings on the top. I forget their precise nature; anyhow, they were nothing of any particular practical use to a boy. But they had involved some contrivance and labour, some skimping of pocket money, and much delightful cloud-building as to the effect on their enraptured recipient. Well, yesterday there had come a terse acknowledgment from Edward, heartily commending the cakes and the jam, stamping the sausages with the seal of Smith major’s approval, and finally hinting that, fortified as he now was, nothing more was necessary but a remittance of five shillings in postage stamps to enable him to face the world armed against every buffet of fate. That was all. Never a word or a hint of the personal tributes or of his appreciation of them. To us — to Harold and me, that is — the letter seemed natural and sensible enough. After all, provender was the main thing, and five shillings stood for a complete equipment against the most unexpected turns of luck. The presents were very well in their way — very nice, and so on — but life was a serious matter, and the contest called for cakes and half-crowns to carry it on, not gew-gaws and knitted mittens and the like. The girls, however, in their obstinate way, persisted in taking their own view of the slight. Hence it was that I received my second rebuff of the morning.

Somewhat disheartened, I made my way downstairs and out into the sunlight, where I found Harold playing conspirators by himself on the gravel. He had dug a small hole in the walk and had laid an imaginary train of powder thereto; and, as he sought refuge in the laurels from the inevitable explosion, I heard him murmur: “‘My God!’ said the Czar, ‘my plans are frustrated!’” It seemed an excellent occasion for being a black puma. Harold liked black pumas, on the whole, as well as any animal we were familiar with. So I launched myself on him, with the appropriate howl, rolling him over on the gravel.

Life may be said to be composed of things that come off and things that don’t come off. This thing, unfortunately, was one of the things that didn’t come off. From beneath me I heard a shrill cry of, “Oh, it’s my sore knee!” And Harold wriggled himself free from the puma’s clutches, bellowing dismally. Now, I honestly didn’t know he had a sore knee, and, what’s more, he knew I didn’t know he had a sore knee. According to boy-ethics, therefore, his attitude was wrong, sore knee or not, and no apology was due from me. I made half-way advances, however, suggesting we should lie in ambush by the edge of the pond and cut off the ducks as they waddled down in simple, unsuspecting single file; then hunt them as bisons flying scattered over the vast prairie. A fascinating pursuit this, and strictly illicit. But Harold would none of my overtures, and retreated to the house wailing with full lungs.

Things were getting simply infernal. I struck out blindly for the open country; and even as I made for the gate a shrill voice from a window bade me keep off the flower-beds. When the gate had swung to behind me with a vicious click I felt better, and after ten minutes along the road it began to grow on me that some radical change was needed, that I was in a blind alley, and that this intolerable state of things must somehow cease. All that I could do I had already done. As well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped was pounding along the road that day, with an exceeding sore heart; one who only wished to live and let live, in touch with his fellows, and appreciating what joys life had to offer. What was wanted now was a complete change of environment. Somewhere in the world, I felt sure, justice and sympathy still resided. There were places called pampas, for instance, that sounded well. League upon league of grass, with just an occasional wild horse, and not a relation within the horizon! To a bruised spirit this seemed a sane and a healing sort of existence. There were other pleasant corners, again, where you dived for pearls and stabbed sharks in the stomach with your big knife. No relations would be likely to come interfering with you when thus blissfully occupied. And yet I did not wish — just yet — to have done with relations entirely. They should be made to feel their position first, to see themselves as they really were, and to wish — when it was too late — that they had behaved more properly.

Of all professions, the army seemed to lend itself the most thoroughly to the scheme. You enlisted, you followed the drum, you marched, fought, and ported arms, under strange skies, through unrecorded years. At last, at long last, your opportunity would come, when the horrors of war were flickering through the quiet country-side where you were cradled and bred, but where the memory of you had long been dim. Folk would run together, clamorous, palsied with fear; and among the terror-stricken groups would figure certain aunts. “What hope is left us?” they would ask themselves, “save in the clemency of the General, the mysterious, invincible General, of whom men tell such romantic tales?” And the army would march in, and the guns would rattle and leap along the village street, and, last of all, you — you, the General, the fabled hero — you would enter, on your coal-black charger, your pale set face seamed by an interesting sabre-cut. And then — but every boy has rehearsed this familiar piece a score of times. You are magnanimous, in fine — that goes without saying; you have a coal-black horse, and a sabre-cut, and you can afford to be very magnanimous. But all the same you give them a good talking-to.

This pleasant conceit simply ravished my soul for some twenty minutes, and then the old sense of injury began to well up afresh, and to call for new plasters and soothing syrups. This time I took refuge in happy thoughts of the sea. The sea was my real sphere, after all. On the sea, in especial, you could combine distinction with lawlessness, whereas the army seemed to be always weighted by a certain plodding submission to discipline. To be sure, by all accounts, the life was at first a rough one. But just then I wanted to suffer keenly; I wanted to be a poor devil of a cabin boy, kicked, beaten, and sworn at — for a time. Perhaps some hint, some inkling of my sufferings might reach their ears. In due course the sloop or felucca would turn up — it always did — the rakish-looking craft, black of hull, low in the water, and bristling with guns; the jolly Roger flapping overhead, and myself for sole commander. By and by, as usually happened, an East Indiaman would come sailing along full of relations — not a necessary relation would be missing. And the crew should walk the plank, and the captain should dance from his own yardarm, and then I would take the passengers in hand — that miserable group of well-known figures cowering on the quarterdeck! — and then — and then the same old performance: the air thick with magnanimity. In all the repertory of heroes, none is more truly magnanimous than your pirate chief.

When at last I brought myself back from the future to the actual present, I found that these delectable visions had helped me over a longer stretch of road than I had imagined; and I looked around and took my bearings. To the right of me was a long low building of grey stone, new, and yet not smugly so; new, and yet possessing distinction, marked with a character that did not depend on lichen or on crumbling semi-effacement of moulding and mullion. Strangers might have been puzzled to classify it; to me, an explorer from earliest years, the place was familiar enough. Most folk called it “The Settlement”; others, with quite sufficient conciseness for our neighbourhood, spoke of “them there fellows up by Halliday’s”; others again, with a hint of derision, named them the “monks.” This last title I supposed to be intended for satire, and knew to be fatuously wrong. I was thoroughly acquainted with monks — in books — and well knew the cut of their long frocks, their shaven polls, and their fascinating big dogs, with brandy-bottles round their necks, incessantly hauling happy travellers out of the snow. The only dog at the settlement was an Irish terrier, and the good fellows who owned him, and were owned by him, in common, wore clothes of the most nondescript order, and mostly cultivated side-whiskers. I had wandered up there one day, searching (as usual) for something I never found, and had been taken in by them and treated as friend and comrade. They had made me free of their ideal little rooms, full of books and pictures, and clean of the antimacassar taint; they had shown me their chapel, high, hushed, and faintly scented, beautiful with a strange new beauty born both of what it had and what it had not — that too familiar dowdiness of common places of worship. They had also fed me in their dining-hall, where a long table stood on trestles plain to view, and all the woodwork was natural, unpainted, healthily scrubbed, and redolent of the forest it came from. I brought away from that visit, and kept by me for many days, a sense of cleanness, of the freshness that pricks the senses — the freshness of cool spring water; and the large swept spaces of the rooms, the red tiles, and the oaken settles, suggested a comfort that had no connection with padded upholstery.

On this particular morning I was in much too unsociable a mind for paying friendly calls. Still, something in the aspect of the place harmonized with my humour, and I worked my way round to the back, where the ground, after affording level enough for a kitchen-garden, broke steeply away. Both the word Gothic and the thing itself were still unknown to me, yet doubtless the architecture of the place, consistent throughout, accounted for its sense of comradeship in my hour of disheartenment. As I mused there, with the low, grey, Purposeful-looking building before me, and thought of my pleasant friends within, and what good times they always seemed to be having, and how they larked with the Irish terrier, whose footing was one of a perfect equality, I thought of a certain look in their faces, as if they had a common purpose and a business, and were acting under orders thoroughly recognized and understood. I remembered, too, something that Martha had told me, about these same fellows doing “a power o’ good,” and other hints I had collected vaguely, of renouncements, rules, self-denials, and the like. Thereupon, out of the depths of my morbid soul swam up a new and fascinating idea; and at once the career of arms seemed over-acted and stale, and piracy, as a profession, flat and unprofitable. This, then, or something like it, should be my vocation and my revenge. A severer line of business, perhaps, such as I had read of; something that included black bread and a hair-shirt. There should be vows, too — irrevocable, blood-curdling vows; and an iron grating. This iron grating was the most necessary feature of all, for I intended that on the other side of it my relations should range themselves — I mentally ran over the catalogue, and saw that the whole gang was present, all in their proper places — a sad-eyed row, combined in tristful appeal. “We see our error now,” they would say; “we were always dull dogs, slow to catch — especially in those akin to us — the finer qualities of soul! We misunderstood you, misappreciated you, and we own up to it. And now — ” “Alas, my dear friends,” I would strike in here, waving towards them an ascetic hand — one of the emaciated sort, that lets the light shine through at the fingertips — “Alas, you come too late! This conduct is fitting and meritorious on your part, and indeed I always expected it of you, sooner or later; but the die is cast, and you may go home again and bewail at your leisure this too tardy repentance of yours. For me, I am vowed and dedicated, and my relations henceforth are austerity and holy works. Once a month, should you wish it, it shall be your privilege to come and gaze at me through this very solid grating; but — ” Whack! A well-aimed clod of garden soil, whizzing just past my ear, starred on a tree-trunk behind, spattering me with dirt, The present came back to me in a flash, and I nimbly took cover behind the trees, realizing that the enemy was up and abroad, with ambuscades, alarms, and thrilling sallies. It was the gardener’s boy, I knew well enough; a red proletariat, who hated me just because I was a gentleman. Hastily picking up a nice sticky clod in one hand, with the other I delicately projected my hat beyond the shelter of the tree-trunk. I had not fought with Red-skins all these years for nothing. As I had expected, another clod, of the first class for size and stickiness, took my poor hat full in the centre. Then, Ajax-like, shouting terribly, I issued from shelter and discharged my ammunition. Woe then for the gardener’s boy, who, unprepared, skipping in premature triumph, took the clod full in his stomach! He, the foolish one, witless on whose side the gods were fighting that day, discharged yet other missiles, wavering and wide of the mark; for his wind had been taken with the first clod, and he shot wildly, as one already desperate and in flight. I got another clod in at short range; we clinched on the brow of the hill, and rolled down to the bottom together. When he had shaken himself free and regained his legs, he trotted smartly off in the direction of his mother’s cottage; but over his shoulder he discharged at me both imprecation and deprecation, menace mixed up with an under-current of tears.

But as for me, I made off smartly for the road, my frame tingling, my head high, with never a backward look at the Settlement of suggestive aspect, or at my well-planned future which lay in fragments around it. Life had its jollities, then; life was action, contest, victory! The present was rosy once more, surprises lurked on every side, and I was beginning to feel villainously hungry.

Just as I gained the road a cart came rattling by, and I rushed for it, caught the chain that hung below, and swung thrillingly between the dizzy wheels, choked and blinded with delicious-smelling dust, the world slipping by me like a streaky ribbon below, till the driver licked at me with his whip, and I had to descend to earth again. Abandoning the beaten track, I then struck homewards through the fields; not that the way was very much shorter, but rather because on that route one avoided the bridge, and had to splash through the stream and get refreshingly wet. Bridges were made for narrow folk, for people with aims and vocations which compelled abandonment of many of life’s highest pleasures. Truly wise men called on each element alike to minister to their joy, and while the touch of sun-bathed air, the fragrance of garden soil, the ductible qualities of mud, and the spark-whirling rapture of playing with fire, had each their special charm, they did not overlook the bliss of getting their feet wet. As I came forth on the common Harold broke out of an adjoining copse and ran to meet me, the morning rain-clouds all blown away from his face. He had made a new squirrel-stick, it seemed. Made it all himself; melted the lead and everything! I examined the instrument critically, and pronounced it absolutely magnificent. As we passed in at our gate the girls were distantly visible, gardening with a zeal in cheerful contrast to their heartsick lassitude of the morning.

“There’s bin another letter come today,” Harold explained, “and the hamper got joggled about on the journey, and the presents worked down into the straw and all over the place. One of ’em turned up inside the cold duck. And that’s why they weren’t found at first. And Edward said, Thanks awfully!”

I did not see Martha again until we were all re-assembled at tea-time, when she seemed red-eyed and strangely silent, neither scolding nor finding fault with anything. Instead, she was very kind and thoughtful with jams and things, feverishly pressing unwonted delicacies on us, who wanted little pressing enough. Then suddenly, when I was busiest, she disappeared; and Charlotte whispered me presently that she had heard her go to her room and lock herself in. This struck me as a funny sort of proceeding.

Mutabile Semper

––––––––

She stood on the other side of the garden fence, and regarded me gravely as I came down the road. Then she said, “Hi — o!” and I responded, “Hullo!” and pulled up somewhat nervously.

To tell the truth, the encounter was not entirely unexpected on my part. The previous Sunday I had seen her in church, and after service it had transpired who she was, this new-comer, and what aunt she was staying with. That morning a volunteer had been called for, to take a note to the Parsonage, and rather to my own surprise I had found myself stepping forward with alacrity, while the others had become suddenly absorbed in various pursuits, or had sneaked unobtrusively out of view. Certainly I had not yet formed any deliberate plan of action; yet I suppose I recollected that the road to the Parsonage led past her aunt’s garden.

She began the conversation, while I hopped backwards and forwards over the ditch, feigning a careless ease.

“Saw you in church on Sunday,” she said; “only you looked different then. All dressed up, and your hair quite smooth, and brushed up at the sides, and oh, so shiny! What do they put on it to make it shine like that? Don’t you hate having your hair brushed?” she ran on, without waiting for an answer. “How your boots squeaked when you came down the aisle! When mine squeak, I walk in all the puddles till they stop. Think I’ll get over the fence.”

This she proceeded to do in a businesslike way, while, with my hands deep In my pockets, I regarded her movements with silent interest, as those of some strange new animal.

“I’ve been gardening,” she explained, when she had joined me, “but I didn’t like it. There’s so many worms about to-day. I hate worms. Wish they’d keep out of the way when I’m digging.”

“Oh, I like worms when I’m digging,” I replied heartily, “seem to make things more lively, don’t they?”

She reflected. “Shouldn’t mind ’em so much if they were warm and dry,” she said, “but — ” here she shivered, and somehow I liked her for it, though if it had been my own flesh and blood hoots of derision would have instantly assailed her.

From worms we passed, naturally enough, to frogs, and thence to pigs, aunts, gardeners, rocking-horses, and other fellow-citizens of our common kingdom. In five minutes we had each other’s confidences, and I seemed to have known her for a lifetime. Somehow, on the subject of one’s self it was easier to be frank and communicative with her than with one’s female kin. It must be, I supposed, because she was less familiar with one’s faulty, tattered past.

“I was watching you as you came along the road,” she said presently, “and you had your head down and your hands in your pockets, and you weren’t throwing stones at anything, or whistling, or jumping over things; and I thought perhaps you’d bin scolded, or got a stomachache.”

“No,” I answered shyly, “it wasn’t that. Fact is, I was — I often — but it’s a secret.”

There I made an error in tactics. That enkindling word set her dancing round me, half beseeching, half imperious. “Oh, do tell it me!” she cried. “You must! I’ll never tell anyone else at all, I vow and declare I won’t!”

Her small frame wriggled with emotion, and with imploring eyes she jigged impatiently just in front of me. Her hair was tumbled bewitchingly on her shoulders, and even the loss of a front tooth — a loss incidental to her age — seemed but to add a piquancy to her face.

“You won’t care to hear about it,” I said, wavering. “Besides, I can’t explain exactly. I think I won’t tell you.” But all the time I knew I should have to.

“But I do care,” she wailed plaintively. “I didn’t think you’d be so unkind!”

This would never do. That little downward tug at either corner of the mouth — I knew the symptom only too well!

“It ‘s like this,” I began stammeringly. “This bit of road here — up as far as that corner — you know it ‘s a horrid dull bit of road. I’m always having to go up and down it, and I know it so well, and I’m so sick of it. So whenever I get to that corner, I just — well, I go right off to another place!”

“What sort of a place?” she asked, looking round her gravely.

“Of course it’s just a place I imagine,” I went on hurriedly and rather shamefacedly: “but it’s an awfully nice place — the nicest place you ever saw. And I always go off there in church, or during joggraphy lessons.”

“I’m sure it’s not nicer than my home,” she cried patriotically. “Oh, you ought to see my home — it ‘s lovely! We’ve got — ”

“Yes it is, ever so much nicer,” I interrupted. “I mean” — I went on apologetically — “of course I know your home’s beautiful and all that. But this must be nicer, ‘cos if you want anything at all, you’ve only got to want it, and you can have it!”

“That sounds jolly,” she murmured. “Tell me more about it, please. Tell me how you get there, first.”

“I— don’t — quite — know — exactly,” replied. “I just go. But generally it begins by — well, you’re going up a broad, clear river in a sort of a boat. You’re not rowing or anything — you’re just moving along. And there’s beautiful grass meadows on both sides, and the river’s very full, quite up to the level of the grass. And you glide along by the edge. And the people are haymaking there, and playing games, and walking about; and they shout to you, and you shout back to them, and they bring you things to eat out of their baskets, and let you drink out of their bottles; and some of ’em are the nice people you read about in books. And so at last you come to the Palace steps — great broad marble steps, reaching right down to the water. And there at the steps you find every sort of boat you can imagine — schooners, and punts, and row-boats, and little men-of-war. And you have any sort of boating you want to — rowing, or sailing, or shoving about in a punt!”

“I’d go sailing,” she said decidedly: “and I ‘d steer. No, you’d have to steer, and I’d sit about on the deck. No, I wouldn’t though; I’d row — at least I’d make you row, and I’d steer. And then we’d — Oh, no! I’ll tell you what we do! We’d just sit in a punt and dabble!”

“Of course we’ll do just what you like,” I said hospitably; but already I was beginning to feel my liberty of action somewhat curtailed by this exigent visitor I had so rashly admitted into my sanctum.

“I don’t think we’d boat at all,” she finally decided. “It’s always so wobbly. Where do you come to next?”

“You go up the steps,” I continued, “and in at the door, and the very first place you come to is the Chocolate-room!”

She brightened up at this, and I heard her murmur with gusto, “Chocolate-room!”

“It’s got every sort of chocolate you can think of,” I went on: “soft chocolate, with sticky stuff inside, white and pink, what girls like; and hard shiny chocolate, that cracks when you bite it, and takes such a nice long time to suck!”

“I like the soft stuff best,” she said: “‘cos you can eat such a lot more of it!” This was to me a new aspect of the chocolate question, and I regarded her with interest and some respect. With us, chocolate was none too common a thing, and, whenever we happened to come by any, we resorted to the quaintest devices in order to make it last out. Still, legends had reached us of children who actually had, from time to time, as much chocolate as they could possibly eat; and here, apparently, was one of them.

“You can have all the creams,” I said magnanimously, “and I’ll eat the hard sticks, ‘cos I like ’em best.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t!” she cried impetuously. “You must eat the same as I do! It isn’t nice to want to eat different. I’ll tell you what — you must give me all the chocolate, and then I’ll give you — I’ll give you what you ought to have!”

“Oh, all right,” I said, in a subdued sort of way. It seemed a little hard to be put under a sentimental restriction like this in one s own Chocolate-room.

“In the next room you come to,” I proceeded, “there’s fizzy drinks! There’s a marble-slab business all round the room, and little silver taps; and you just turn the right tap, and have any kind of fizzy drink you want.”

“What fizzy drinks are there?” she inquired.

“Oh, all sorts,” I answered hastily, hurrying on. (She might restrict my eatables, but I’d be hanged if I was going to have her meddle with my drinks.) “Then you go down the corridor, and at the back of the palace there’s a great big park — the finest park you ever saw. And there’s ponies to ride on, and carriages and carts; and a little railway, all complete, engine and guard’s van and all; and you work it yourself, and you can go first-class, or in the van, or on the engine, just whichever you choose.”

“I’d go on the engine,” she murmured dreamily. “No, I wouldn’t, I’d — ”

“Then there ‘s all the soldiers,” I struck in. Really the line had to be drawn somewhere, and I could not have my railway system disorganized and turned upside down by a mere girl. “There’s any quantity of ’em, fine big soldiers, and they all belong to me. And a row of brass cannons all along the terrace! And every now and then I give the order, and they fire off all the guns!”

“No, they don’t,” she interrupted hastily. “I won’t have ’em fire off any guns You must tell ’em not to. I hate guns, and as soon as they begin firing I shall run right away!”

“But — but that ‘s what they’re there for,” I protested, aghast

“I don’t care,” she insisted. “They mustn’t do it. They can walk about behind me if they like, and talk to me, and carry things. But they mustn’t fire off any guns.”

I was sadly conscious by this time that in this brave palace of mine, wherein I was wont to swagger daily, irresponsible and unquestioned, I was rapidly becoming — so to speak — a mere lodger. The idea of my fine big soldiers being told off to “carry things”! I was not inclined to tell her any more, though there still remained plenty more to tell.

“Any other boys there?” she asked presently, in a casual sort of way. “Oh yes,” I unguardedly replied. “Nice chaps, too. We’ll have great — ” Then I recollected myself. “We’ll play with them, of course,” I went on. “But you are going to be my friend, aren’t you? And you’ll come in my boat, and we’ll travel in the guard’s van together, and I’ll stop the soldiers firing off their guns!” But she looked mischievously away, and — do what I would — I could not get her to promise.

Just then the striking of the village clock awoke within me another clamorous timepiece, reminding me of mid-day mutton a good half-mile away, and of penalties and curtailments attaching to a late appearance. We took a hurried farewell of each other, and before we parted I got from her an admission that she might be gardening again that afternoon, if only the worms would be less aggressive and give her a chance.

“Remember,” I said as I turned to go, “you mustn’t tell anybody about what I’ve been telling you!”

She appeared to hesitate, swinging one leg to and fro while she regarded me sideways with half-shut eyes.

“It’s a dead secret,” I said artfully. “A secret between us two, and nobody knows it except ourselves!”

Then she promised, nodding violently, big-eyed, her mouth pursed up small. The delight of revelation, and the bliss of possessing a secret, run each other very close. But the latter generally wins — for a time.

I had passed the mutton stage and was weltering in warm rice pudding, before I found leisure to pause and take in things generally; and then a glance in the direction of the window told me, to my dismay, that it was raining hard. This was annoying in every way, for, even if it cleared up later, the worms — I knew well from experience — would be offensively numerous and frisky. Sulkily I said grace and accompanied the others upstairs to the schoolroom; where I got out my paint-box and resolved to devote myself seriously to Art, which of late I had much neglected. Harold got hold of a sheet of paper and a pencil, retired to a table in the corner, squared his elbows, and protruded his tongue. Literature had always been his form of artistic expression.

Selina had a fit of the fidgets, bred of the unpromising weather, and, instead of settling down to something on her own account, must needs walk round and annoy us artists, intent on embodying our conceptions of the ideal. She had been looking over my shoulder some minutes before I knew of it; or I would have had a word or two to say upon the subject.

“I suppose you call that thing a ship,” she remarked contemptuously. “Who ever heard of a pink ship? Hoo-hoo!”

I stifled my wrath, knowing that in order to score properly it was necessary to keep a cool head.

“There is a pink ship,” I observed with forced calmness, “lying in the toyshop window now. You can go and look at it if you like. D’ you suppose you know more about ships than the fellows who make ’em?”

Selina, baffled for the moment, returned to the charge presently.

“Those are funny things, too,” she observed. “S’pose they ‘re meant to be trees. But they’re blue.”

“They are trees,” I replied with severity; “and they are blue. They’ve got to be blue, ‘cos you stole my gamboge last week, so I can’t mix up any green.”

“Didn’t steal your gamboge,” declared Selina, haughtily, edging away, however, in the direction of Harold. “And I wouldn’t tell lies, either, if I was you, about a dirty little bit of gainboge.”

I preserved a discreet silence. After all, I knew she knew she stole my gainboge.

The moment Harold became conscious of Selina’s stealthy approach, he dropped his pencil and flung himself flat upon the table, protecting thus his literary efforts from chilling criticism by the interposed thickness of his person. From some-where in his interior proceeded a heart-rending compound of squeal and whistle, as of escaping steam, — long-drawn, ear-piercing, unvarying in note.

“I only just wanted to see,” protested Selina, struggling to uproot his small body from the scrawl it guarded. But Harold clung limpet-like to the table edge, and his shrill protest continued to deafen humanity and to threaten even the serenities of Olympus. The time seemed come for a demonstration in force. Personally I cared little what soul-outpourings of Harold were priated by Selina — she was pretty sure to get hold of them sooner or later — and indeed I rather welcomed the diversion as favourable to the undisturbed pursuit of Art. But the clannishness of sex has its unwritten laws. Boys, as such, are sufficiently put upon, maltreated, trodden under, as it is. Should they fail to hang together in perilous times, what disasters, what ignominies may not be looked for? Possibly even an extinction of the tribe. I dropped my paint brush and sailed shouting into the fray.

The result for a short space hung dubious. There is a period of life when the difference of a year or two in age far outweighs the minor advantage of sex. Then the gathers of Selina’s frock came away with a sound like the rattle of distant musketry; and this calamity it was, rather than mere brute compulsion, that quelled her indomitable spirit.

The female tongue is mightier than the sword, as I soon had good reason to know, when Selina, her riven garment held out at length, avenged her discomfiture with the Greek-fire of personalities and abuse. Every black incident in my short, but not stainless, career — every error, every folly, every penalty ignobly suffered — were paraded before me as in a magic-lantern show. The information, however, was not particularly new to me, and the effect was staled by previous rehearsals. Besides, a victory remains a victory, whatever the moral character of the triumphant general.

Harold chuckled and crowed as he dropped from the table, revealing the document over which so many gathers had sighed their short lives out. “You can read it if you like,” he said to me gratefully. “It’s only a Death-letter.”

It had never been possible to say what Harold’s particular amusement of the hour might turn out to be. One thing only was certain, that it would be something improbable, unguessable, not to be foretold. Who, for instance, in search of relaxation, would ever dream of choosing the drawing-up of a testamentary disposition of property? Yet this was the form taken by Harold’s latest craze; and in justice this much had to be said for him, that in the christening of his amusement he had gone right to the heart of the matter. The words “will” and “testament” have various meanings and uses; but about the signification of “death-letter” there can be no manner of doubt. I smoothed out the crumpled paper and read. In actual form it deviated considerably from that usually adopted by family solicitors of standing, the only resemblance, indeed, lying in the absence of punctuation.