Chapter IV (1)

Another round string of million years and we reach the Latest Thing.

The Latest Thing reclined in its dwelling-house of glass, and by sheer mental effort communicated with other things afar off and exchanged ideas with them--as we to-day by wireless telegraphy. The Latest Thing was pliable and pink, with a head like an overgrown vegetable-marrow. His brain towered up into a cranial cavity lifted three feet above his face. His eyes twinkled like diamonds. He breathed through gills, and had a mouth merely rudimentary, for he lived by smell. Upon his back were wings of gauze; and when he moved, these became invisible, and he floated gently through the air.

The Latest Thing’s wife wafted herself in from somewhere, and they communicated by their brains and eyes.

“Oh, if Nature would only get on a little,” said the Latest Thing. “I am impatient and she is so slow. Not one of our children appear to give the least sign or evidence of advance and improvement.”

“I should hope not, indeed!” telegraphed back his wife. “The females are exactly like me, and the males are exactly like you--bless the little ducks! ‘Improvement!’ They are the most perfect young things you’ll find, seek where you may.”

“Yet I hoped that they----”

“Your old craze. I tell you we are the high-water mark, the crest of the wave, the ultimate best, the triumph of Creation--Perfection!”

But the Latest Thing shook his huge head. “I doubt it,” he flashed back to her.

THE BIOGRAPHY OF PETER PARKINSON

Within the confines of that hidden state rather humorously called “the other world”--as if the worlds numbered no more than two--we enjoy a measure of knowledge which you mundane folks are but now attaining through processes both painful and slow. Thanks to our perfection in a system, towards which your “wireless telegraphy” has already made some distant approach, it is possible for me to tell an interesting tale and cast some light upon a recent literary mystery.

Now when that great and good man Professor Peter Parkinson passed out of life, his notable earthly labours very properly entitled him to a resting-place amongst our great ones, and I was among those privileged men of light and leading invited to bear his pall.

I remember that I walked next to Thomas Gridd, the little busybody who in life for some obscure reason won Peter Parkinson’s regard, and who was left by the Professor as his literary executor. Even during the solemn moment of sepulchral rites, Gridd found time to speak to me.

“The only official and recognised biography will be mine,” he whispered. “Remember that. Tell everybody. It is going to be a great book; and it will surprise some of us not a little.”

How those words came back to my mind after the event! Perhaps the most sensational biography of the last century was that by Thomas Gridd of Peter Parkinson. In public life Parkinson had passed for a remarkable man, an original thinker, a live force in ethics, a dynamic power exercised for good, and one who, to speak generally, most surely left his corner of earth better, wiser and cleaner than he found it. His privacy had of course been probed also; and it was pretty generally conceded that no better husband or father than the Professor could well be found. His amusements were pathetically innocent and high-minded; the Athenæum was his only club; when he left England upon a vacation during later life, it was in order that his family might visit the Alps, the French Exhibition of 1900 and other improving and unique phenomena of Nature and the times.

Upon a general appreciation of the dead man’s worth and virtue there burst the biography of Thomas Gridd, than which anything more sensational, outrageous and unexpected could not well be imagined. After a great parade of the necessity for Truth, of his own high motives in this matter, and of the abundant grief that his task had brought upon him, the unutterable Gridd set out upon his ruffianly way and exhibited before the amazed and incredulous vision of England the spectacle of a great reputation torn to ribbons.

Indignation raged amongst the friends of the late Professor; violent controversies burst forth in the public prints. The worst passages were denied on the one hand; while Gridd undertook to prove them to the hilt if anybody dared to have the law of him. In fact that famous romance of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” appeared to have been repeated in real life, and arising out of the Parkinson of public enterprise and honourable renown--the scientist, the philanthropist, the great sociologist--there dawned hideously within the pages of Thomas Gridd a nocturnal, subterranean and blackguard Parkinson--a man of deplorable habits and disreputable ideas--a vicious ghoul.

Of course this remarkable book sold prodigiously. Thousands of copies were purchased by the libraries alone, and a work so full of pepper and salt for the time being quite eclipsed the sale of popular fiction, of history, travel, verse, and of more amiable and conventional biography.

For myself I just lived long enough to see the scoundrel Gridd get a large fortune by his abominable book and then, in the midst of a rather promising literary career, it pleased Providence to remove me from the sub-lunar puppet-show. Overwork and a chill--but all that does not matter, as it has nothing to do with this narrative. All I need say is that I have frankly forgiven the man who finished my last novel for the press and shall meet him without prejudice if ever he comes here.

Almost the first person I met in the Elysian Fields of our order (for I am thankful to say that my modest merits entitled me to a place therein) was my old friend Professor Parkinson. He greeted me with good taste and that particular shade of sympathy proper from a happy spectre to the event of my passing in mid-career. Then, after discussing everything and everybody but himself, he said in his humble way:

“I know you will pardon my egotism, but I _should_ like to know how the autobiography went.”

“Whose?” I asked.

“I blush to answer,” he made reply; “but I was thinking of my own.”

“No such thing ever appeared,” I told him. “The man Gridd, in whom you trusted--rather foolishly I am afraid--published a biography of you, written by himself; and it has been an enormous and infamous success. I should not have mentioned this, be sure, had not you invited me to do so.”

“I left my autobiography complete in his hands,” said the Professor, much concerned.

“It was probably a very different work to the one he has published,” I replied. “In fact, not to mince matters, if all or even one half of what the man Gridd has written of you was true, Professor, you wouldn’t be here. He makes you a flagrant scoundrel and worse, for in his pages you appear as the most nauseous, calculating, double-dealing humbug and hypocrite that ever played a public part on earth and deceived mankind.”

“This is very disturbing,” said the Professor. “I never thought such baseness was possible. Why, I rescued Thomas Gridd from the gutter when he was a boy!”

“The usual reward of the great--well doing, ill report. Gridd was not the sort of man to forgive such a Samaritan,” I said. “They’ve torn me to pieces since I left them--not a doubt of it. But you don’t care, do you?”

“I care very much,” he answered. “I care for my Institute; I care for my dear wife; I care for my family. And, what is more, I won’t suffer it if I can bring our sub-committee to see the outrage with my eyes. In the interests of reputation there are certain great ones daily gathered together amongst us for the express purpose of adjudicating between the quick and dead in these affairs; and many a startling, literary Nemesis and unexplained, quick-handed and providential act of justice is the direct result of our personal interest and personal power in such matters. Where our reputations are concerned, we are in fact permitted some supernatural indulgences. This is a case in point, and if ever a literary ghost had a grievance, I take it that I who speak to you am that spirit. Come with me immediately; the sub-committee is sitting at this moment. It consists of Mr. Ben Jonson in the chair, Doctor Johnson and Mr. Carlyle. The last clamoured to be put on it so unceasingly after the little matter of Mr. Froude that we had to meet his wishes, and Virgil resigned in his favour. You see Virgil’s contemporaries have come by their own now, and it was right that the recent generations should have a modern representative.”

In another moment we stood before the three great shades.

“Welcome, Master Parkinson; what would you?” asked immortal Ben.

“Be brief, sir, for we are busy to-day,” added Doctor Johnson. “I beg therefore that you will unfold your purpose with as little flux of words as may be necessary to its elucidation.”

Carlyle did not speak, but thrust out his chin, as he does in the picture by Watts, and listened.

The Professor thereupon introduced me and related my black news.

Jonson shook his head and seemed to find a humorous side to the tragedy; Carlyle thundered his indignation and went from a generalisation upon all biography into personal matters not necessary to set down here; while Doctor Johnson defended biography with some slashing blows.

“You are to remember, sir,” he said to Mr. Carlyle, “that it is most unphilosophic to frame general theories upon the trumpery foundation of a personal experience. You, sir, have permitted us to gather that you are incensed against the literary record of your own career--a very good book in the judgment of many persons. To found general principles upon this solitary example is at once short-sighted, narrow-minded and absurd. No, sir; the thing can be very well done and has been very well done.”

“Nevertheless we cannot all come by a Boswell, Doctor,” said Mr. Jonson.

“We do not all deserve a Boswell, Ben,” answered the great lexicographer. “Many amongst us lack that congeries of flexible characteristics--the mental amalgam of humour and common-sense, weight, scholarship and piety that may be said to afford just material for a biographer. For my part, indeed, I cannot think that in life such a man as Boswell would have been edified or inspired to any great work by a close and personal intercourse with yourself, for instance. I may err, but that is my deliberate opinion, framed upon those endless personal reminiscences of which you deny us no vinous detail. Nor would the table-talk of such an one as Milton have afforded over-much delight. We should rather----”

“When you can make an end, the Professor will speak,” interrupted Carlyle.

Whereupon my distinguished friend put in his plea boldly.

“Nobody, honoured sirs, has power to arrest this outrage but myself,” said Professor Parkinson. “The application I make is unusual but not unprecedented. Briefly, I beg permission to visit the earth and rectify in person this grave wrong. Permit my spectre one week with this ungenerous and unjust steward of my reputation. I ask no more.”

“Only a mind conscious of right would contemplate such a painful design,” declared Doctor Johnson; “and yet it is a question whether the awful demonstration of a professorial apparition to one still in life be not too terrible a punishment for his crime.”

“Not so,” interrupted Mr. Carlyle. “Parkinson is in the right. This vile Gridd has earned the worst that can overtake him. Fury and chaos! let justice be done and an example made. Must dead lions suffer for ever from these live asses? Let Parkinson be despatched upon his errand without more ado. He is a Scotch spectre, and may therefore be trusted to use discretion and employ his powers with decency.”

“I will not allow my antipathy to the Scotch, just and well-grounded though that sentiment may be----” answered the Sage; but here Ben Jonson held up his hand.

“Suffer me to put one question to our learned friend,” he said, then turned to Professor Parkinson.

“Dost think all this pother about a trashy scribbler is worthy of thee? He and his lies will all go down to the pit together presently. And Truth prevails.”

“But it won’t prevail in my wife’s lifetime, Mr. Jonson,” answered the Professor. “Consider her and my family. Picture to yourself how this scandalous libel must be breaking the hearts of those that loved me. And remember my Institute.”

“There struts no vainer figure in literature or rhetoric than that ‘breaking of hearts,’” said Doctor Johnson. “As one not dead to humanity’s tenderer emotions, I may be allowed to declare that hearts do not break. Moreover, worthy Parkinson, we have but the testimony of this new-come shade that things are in so parlous a plight with your reputation. Does he speak what he knows or what he merely believes?”

The massive spectre puffed his cheeks and looked at me.

“It is idle, most honoured Doctor Johnson, to discuss the subject of circulating libraries with you,” I answered firmly but respectfully. “Nor would a circulation of fifty thousand copies convey any particular idea perhaps to your experience. But you will recollect the old trick of putting everything into the newspapers. That trick, worthy sir, has now become a confirmed habit--a part of our national system. There is to-day such machinery for scattering of news as you would marvel at. This wicked book has been read throughout the English-speaking world. If uncontradicted its end must be that Professor Parkinson’s life labours are seriously threatened.”

“If the edifice of his toil be fundamentally assured, this book cannot assail the issue,” declared Doctor Johnson. “Nevertheless,” he added, “it may be that evil has been done and cries for chastisement. I doubt nothing but that we can trust the Professor wisely to conduct his enterprise and order his apparitional manifestations alike with sound judgment and just taste.”

“It will only be necessary for me to appear to the man Thomas Gridd, and that in strict privacy,” declared Peter Parkinson.

“’Tis well,” said Ben Jonson. “There are a sort of spectres who abuse their privileges and play the fool--a thing very vile and improper and against right feeling. Indeed the best spectres shall be found in fiction rather than fact. Take Will’s ghost in _Hamlet_. Never stalked real spirit truer. Will yet stands first exemplar for ghost and man. So be it. Depart in peace, Master Parkinson. We can trust you to remember that the spectral condition has its obligations. Good luck attend ye. Ah! there’s Tennyson!”

Ben Jonson rose and followed a tall black figure that floated past down a cypress walk.

“By Jove!” I said, surprised into an indiscretion; “does he know how Tennyson always declared that he found reading Jonson was like wading through a sea of glue?”

And Carlyle answered--

“Alfred told him so to his beard, with customary frankness, and Ben laughed his great thunder laugh--like roll of an Elizabethan drum--and said, ‘My glue sticks, brother, my glue sticks. We shall see if thine holds on so stoutly to the literature of England after passage of centuries!’”

“Concerning Tennyson,” began Doctor Johnson, “we may take him first as to his _machinery_, so-called from θεὸς απὸ μηχανῆς, or the occasional interposition of supernatural power; next upon his _episodes_; and lastly as to his _sentiments_, as expressive of manners. Now, in so far as I am able to judge, the man, regarded as a moral----”

I felt Professor Parkinson pulling at my sleeve and together we stole away. Carlyle had already turned his back and departed.

“Won’t the Doctor be hurt?” I murmured.

“Not in the least,” replied my friend. “See! There goes Boswell to him.”

A jaunty shade tripped by us with his eyes reverently lifted to the Colossus of Words.

“Still at it, you see,” said the Professor.

* * * * *

Peter Parkinson did not delay his departure and was absent about his affairs for exactly one week. Then he returned weary and cast down, but apparently well satisfied with the results of his expedition.

He was good enough to tell us the sequel of Gridd’s baseness, and I cannot do better than employ the good man’s own words in the narrative. Many great ghosts gave ear to him. Indeed, he enjoyed the attention of the highest.

“I found the audacious villain at Monte Carlo,” he began, “and Providence so willed that our meeting came plump upon the high-water mark of his ill-gotten fortunes. For he retired to bed in high good humour after breaking the bank at the gambling house there. I suffered him to sink into a sound sleep before availing myself of our spectral privileges. Then settling myself upon the bottom rail of his bed (I spare no detail) I awoke him with his favourite word. I breathed the magic syllables firmly and at the sound of ‘Royalties!’ the wretch turned, gradually roused himself, sat up and beheld me with my phantom eyes fixed upon him.

“‘Good Lord! It’s Parkinson!’ he exclaimed, instantly became wide awake and fell into a cold perspiration. Never have I seen guilt and terror at once so horribly manifested as upon that occasion. The terror we inspire, at least upon a sinner, has surely not been exaggerated.

“‘Traitor!’ I cried, ‘unhallowed breaker of vows, base thief and cruel coward! You, who would steal a dead man’s fame and fatten on your perversion of the truth, hear me! Even to the nether shades has this infamous treachery descended; each new-come spirit enters indignant with the horror of it; and so out of high justice I am thus allowed to protect my own honour, to revisit the realms of the quick and right such a wrong as all literature can scarcely match. Well may you quail, ignoble murderer of a reputation, who have requited my kindness thus!’

“Thomas Gridd scarcely comprehended all these utterances of mine, for the very madness of terror was upon him. His hair stood on end, his teeth chattered, his limbs were reflexed, his eyes glared and his hands gripped the sheet about his neck.

“‘Mercy! Mercy!’ he screamed. ‘Mercy, avenging ghost! Be merciful, even as you were always merciful in this world. Have pity, terrible spirit!’

“‘Miscreant!’ I cried. ‘Wretch to profane that divine word with your lips! I want my autobiography. Where is it?’

“‘Burnt!’ he said. ‘As Heaven’s above us both I burnt every line.’

“It was apparent that he told the truth.

“‘In that case,’ I replied, ‘you will send a statement of the fact to the first daily newspaper--a statement signed and witnessed. You will also declare that your own fabrication is devoid of the bare bones of truth--a calculated and cold-blooded lie to gain your own mercenary ends. And, finally, every farthing that has accrued to you from this villainous action must be handed over to the Peter Parkinson Institute at Glasgow.’

“Now, had he defied me,” continued the Professor, “I really know not how I should have proceeded. I lacked all power to enforce my directions, as you will perceive. I could only haunt the man--and that temporarily during my leave of absence--a proceeding perhaps more painful for myself than for the criminal. But the wretch was overborne by the nameless horror of a visit from the grave. His guilty conscience reeled before me, and he was physically and mentally prostrated. He had barely strength to promise faithfully upon his oath that he would do all I bid him; and then he lost consciousness.

“He was suffering from acute nervous excitation upon the following morning. He took his first meal in bed and it consisted solely of ardent spirits. I limned before his eyes while he was shaving and he shrank back and dropped his razor and screamed. Pointing to his writing-desk, I spoke:

“‘Delay not a moment, or the consequences will be beyond my power to describe to you.’

“This I am willing to admit was a prevarication of the truth, but it may perhaps be pardoned.

“He tottered to his writing-desk and anon I dictated a letter to the Editor of the _Morning Post_, which he wrote with trembling fingers.

“‘_Dear Sir_,--

“‘_I desire through the medium of your journal to declare to the
world that my recent biography of the late Professor Peter Parkinson
is a deliberate and calculated tissue of fraud and falsehood. I
have twisted and turned the truth into a malignant fable and, upon
the foundation of much private and secret work, undertaken by my
benefactor in the interests of humanity, I have erected a shameful
structure of mendacity. My sole reason was the desire to create a
sensation and acquire wealth by it. The truth is that Professor
Parkinson left with me his autobiography and directed me to see it
through the press. This work would have explained all that unknown
labour on behalf of mankind which I so shamefully distort into an
attack upon him. I have destroyed this book. I also desire to say
that I have directed my bankers in London (Messrs. Dunster and Boyle,
of Lombard Street, E.C.) to pay to the Peter Parkinson Institute
at Glasgow ten thousand pounds, a sum representing the amount of
my royalties on the biography I concocted and dared to publish.
My publishers did not know the truth and are, to that extent,
blameless._’

“Then,” continued Parkinson, “I bid the knave send for two witnesses and, myself invisible, saw them attest the signature of Thomas Gridd.

“Having observed him post this confession in a public letter-box, I next directed him to visit a house of business. Into this he paid the mass of gold and notes won at his infamous pastime overnight, and then commissioned the banking people to convey the money by cable to the firm of Dunster and Boyle in London.

“That done, Gridd wrote two other letters. One of these contained a cheque for ten thousand pounds, and this he despatched to my Institute in Scotland; the other was directed to his bankers and requested those gentlemen to honour the cheque when it should be presented.

“So I left him to reflect upon his egregious sins, for physically the man was now reduced to mere palpitating flesh and my continued presence must doubtless have rendered him insane. It is quite certain that no spectre could thus oppress a mind fortified by virtue.

“He slunk about Monte Carlo like one pursued by the Furies, and doubtless he expected to see my stern shadow reflected once more within his bloodshot eyes at every step. An analysis of his emotions would be terribly instructive. I could even find it in my heart to have pitied him then. But I thought of my wife, my children, my Institute, and was firm.

“He made no attempt to go back upon my commands or to evade them. Within twenty-four hours the metropolis was ringing with a new sensation, the book was recalled as far as might be, and the Parkinson Institute had grown richer by ten thousand pounds. Indeed that does not represent all the advantage accruing to the institution from my action. Numberless benefactions have sprung from this revelation and the consciences of many tender persons have been touched into practical action. Thus the right-feeling have compounded with their better natures. And what is even more to me: this terrible cloud has been lifted from off the hearts of my dear wife and children.

“My mission was accomplished within three short days. I visited Thomas Gridd once more, begged him be of good cheer, to endeavour yet to justify his existence, and to make his peace with Heaven, even as he had now made it with men and ghosts. Then I vanished from his eyes. Frankly I regret the unfortunate man’s position. It is terrible, indeed hopeless, from a worldly point of view, yet a just and due reward for unparalleled perfidy, if one may say so without being vindictive.”

The Professor sighed and ceased.

* * * * *

A week later, thanks to the arrival of an aged journalist, we learned the end of this incident.

“Thomas Gridd committed suicide after writing a most astounding confession to the _Morning Post_,” he explained.

“Then how comes it that he has not joined us?” I asked, rather foolishly.

There was an awkward silence, upon which Ben Jonson, who chanced to be present with other celebrities already mentioned, broke in with his great laughter.

“It would seem, young man, thou art scarce so heedful of thy company as an honest shade should be,” he said. “Know that we harbour not with such varlets here. They have their proper kennel. Ask Dante about him.”

“The man Gridd now descends upon a locality of purgatorial discomfort, situated beyond the limits of our knowledge, though not of our conjecture,” declared Dr. Johnson.

“In brief, Gridd goes to grid-iron,” flashed a grim shadow in the corner. “Tophet has him, mad-blazing, mad-dancing with flame of unimaginable tints. Basting with pitch and fire. Thunder and bolt above; blackness of Erebus beneath. And so ‘good-night’ to Gridd.”

THE JACKY-TOAD

He was sitting upon the skull of a dead horse, thinking of nothing in particular, when out of the great nocturnal silence there came the sound of a human footstep. Whereupon he leapt upright and waved his lantern frantically. This he did because the wanderer was evidently night-foundered and lost upon the moorland, and it seemed probable that, observing the light, he or she would approach it. Now that strange blue flicker of flame rose and fell and danced above a quaking-bog--a hideous place where emerald mosses hid the black slime beneath, and where, at the margins of the danger, tussocks and little peat tumuli gave foothold for heather, for cotton grass, and for rushes. “I’m coming!” cried a voice. “I am so glad somebody’s found me at last.”

“You’re nothing but a puff
of phosphuretted hydrogen”

“GORMED IF I DIDN’T THINK I’D GOT ’E!”]

Another moment and a small girl felt the sudden uprising of deadly coldness about her feet and heard the devilish hiss and chatter of the quaking-bog as it sucked and shivered and opened its black mouth to swallow her. But she was light as a feather, active as a bird. She struggled back, fell, clutched a stout mound of heather, then another, and so dragged herself out of danger.

“Gormed if I didn’t think I’d got ’e!” squeaked a voice at her elbow, and looking round the child saw a tiny monster, four inches high, black as coal, hairy as a spider, more horrible than any nightmare. He peered into her face with eyes like hot coals, and waved his lantern over his head.

“You horrid little cruel wretch!” cried the child. “Don’t think I’m a bit frightened of you, because I’m not.” Which was perfectly true, for the speaker had a father who knew everything by its name, and the reason for everything, and the cause of everything, and what everything was made of, and why. Therefore the advantage in the present instance lay wholly with her, after she had escaped; because there cannot be any real comparison between a highly-educated little lady of nine years old and an ignorant country bumpkin of a Jacky-Toad, born and bred in a Devon quagmire. And if you never heard of a Jacky-Toad, know that he is one with your Will-o’-the-Wisp, or your Jack-a-Lantern, or your Marsh Galloper, or the _Ignis Fatuus_ of the scholar.

“Ban’t you afeared?” asked the imp.

“No--not now. You’re only a naughty, ugly Will-o’-the-Wisp.”

“I be a Jacky-Twoad, I be.”

“You may call yourself what you like; you’re nothing but a puff of phosphuretted hydrogen, because I’ve heard my father say so.”

“Aw! I ban’t very well eddicated myself.”

“I should think not! Else you’d know it was a cruel, wicked, heartless thing to play practical jokes on small girls lost in the dark. One more step and I should have been sucked down I don’t know where.”

“Ess fay! You’d a bin drownded in another minute.”

“Well, what did you want to do such a horrid thing for?”

“Blamed if I can tell ’e ’zactly; ’tis my business.”

“Then it is a very disgraceful business, and you ought to know better.”

“I doan’t know nothin’ ’tall. I be a li’l’ Jacky-Twoad. I awnly comes out the bog of a warm evenin’, like this here.”

“I never hurt you, did I?”

“Caan’t say as you did.”

“I never even said an unkind word about you?”

“Not as I’ve heard tell on.”

“Then why were you so wicked?”

The Jacky-Toad had nothing to answer, so changed the subject.

“What might your name be, if I may ax?”

“I’m called Mabel, and I’m spending my holidays on Dartmoor; and, playing hide-and-seek after tea, I got lost. But I live in London, and I’m going back there to-morrow.”

“Wheer be that to?”

“Far, far away. There are no greedy shaking-bogs there, and no darkness like this, and no dead bones scattered about, and no wicked Jacky-Toads either.”

Mabel, though a clever child, didn’t know everything.

“You’m a purty li’l’ maid seemin’ly, an’ mighty wise tu by the looks of it.”

This in itself was flattering, because it is given to but few small girls to be complimented by a genuine Devon Jacky-Toad.

“The thing is to be pretty inside,” answered Mabel. “My mamma tells me it doesn’t matter--not much--what we look like outside.”

“That’s a gude job then, for ’tis allowed among Jacky-Twoads in general that I be ugly enough for a show.”

“You’re wicked inside too; you must be, or you wouldn’t have tried to drown a little harmless girl.”

“I be sorry,” said the Jacky-Toad frankly. “I never looked at the question from your p’int o’ view. Conversation do widen the mind amazin’.”

“If you’re _really_ sorry, I’ll forgive you; and I should like to help you to be better, if I knew how it could be done.”

“Sure I’d be very much obliged to ’e if you’d larn me a thing or two,” said the Jacky-Toad humbly.

“You see, I’m going back to London to-morrow, so there won’t be much time.”

“Damned if I won’t come with ’e! Then you can larn me proper,” exclaimed the Jacky-Toad.

“You _mustn’t_ say things like that--it’s _wicked_. Where _did_ you pick up such words?”

“From the moor-men, when they comed to cut peat in the bog. But ’tis awnly a figger o’ speech.”

Mabel thought a moment.

“Well, in your case I suppose it is,” she said; “because--I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I don’t suppose you go _anywhere_ in particular when you die, do you?”

“Caan’t say, never havin’ heard tell,” he answered.

So the small girl fixed her mind on a noble resolve, and finally undertook to let the ignorant Jacky-Toad accompany her to town the following day.

Then he showed her a safe road out of that lonesome waste and brought her back to the abodes of men, where everybody was naturally very thankful to see Mabel once more in safety. Of the Jacky-Toad she said nothing, but he wafted himself in at her bedroom window when the house was asleep. He explained that he could travel very easily in a ginger-beer bottle or jam-pot, so Mabel packed him up in a marmalade-jar with a glass stopper. This she placed in a cardboard box full of heather, so the Jacky-Toad travelled to London next day in considerable comfort, though with little style.

* * * * *

Mabel kept her scholar in his jar. At night the Jacky-Toad was allowed to come out for instruction, and he sat beside Mabel’s bed while she taught him as much as he was capable of learning. He tried hard at first to collect information, but his memory was weak, and he had little or no common-sense. He was, however, sufficiently humble, which is a rare virtue in a fool. He confessed himself to be scarcely better than an idiot, though sometimes he grew more hopeful.

“I do make way,” he declared on one occasion, “though I allow ’tis blamed slow.”

“Your grammar’s too frightful for anything,” said Mabel, “but we must be content with one subject at a time, I suppose. You chose geography, so we’ll struggle on with that until you’ve got a smattering. D’you remember what I taught you last night about the Duchy of Baden?”

“Lemme see if I can call it home. Ess! ’Tis like this: ‘The Duchy of Baden lies a’most entirely between the Kingdom o’ Wurtemberg and the River Rhine. The climate be healthy, but the winters are mighty cold in the Black Forest.’ How be that?”

“Fairly right--only you’ve left out such a lot.”

“Shall ’e larn me much more geography?”

“Ever so much--tons more.”

“That’s ill news, ’cause I doubt if I can hold much more.”

“You don’t seem very happy at it, certainly,” confessed Mabel.

“No nat’ral genius for it like,” suggested the Jacky-Toad.

“We must think of a new subject then. Needlework’s no good to you, nor yet drawing, that I can see.”

“Could ’e teach me a few gude tales ’bout men-folks, or maybe a riddle or two?”

“Certainly not! I’ve brought you to London to improve you.”

“Then why not open the winder an’ let me have a bit of a run round Lunnon to larn what sort o’ plaace ’tis?”

“No. I’m never allowed out myself after dark, and therefore it can’t be a proper thing for a Jacky-Toad. How would you like to learn a little natural science? I don’t know much, but my father knows more than any other man in the world. Natural science explains how it is you’re only a whiff of phosphuretted hydrogen.”

“I guess that’s ’bout enough for me to knaw.”

“Shall I teach you to dance? But I forgot; you can do that.”

“Dance! Aw jimmery! I was born dancin’; I shall die dancin’. No, but I’ll teach you if you mind to try. I’ll larn ’e the ‘Wildfire Gallop’--a butivul thing ’tis sure ’nough as us dances in summer-time under a full mune.”

So the Jacky-Toad hung up his lamp and Mabel got out of bed and very soon mastered the “Wildfire Gallop”--the great classical dance of Jacky-Toads all the world over.

“Gormed if I ever seed a pixie do it better!” said her tutor.

“There are no such things as pixies,” replied Mabel promptly.

“No pixies! You ban’t so clever as I thought ’e, ’pears to me. No pixies! You’ll say theer ban’t no spriggans, nor elves, nor brownies, nor goblins, nor tankeraboguses, nor efts, nor Jacky-Twoads next!”

“My father has told me there are no pixies--therefore there are none,” answered Mabel. “You can hardly suppose that I should take your word before his?”

“Dammy! I’ve _seed_ ’em scores an’ scores o’ times,” began the Jacky-Toad; but Mabel never argued with him, and always punished a bad word instantly. Whenever he swore she put him back into his marmalade-jar. This she now did, so he learned no more that night.

On the following evening he apologised as soon as he was let out, and his mistress accepted the expression of regret without comment.

“I’ve been thinking that a little English poetry might enlarge your mind,” she said. “Much of it is very simple and beautiful, and I know a great deal by heart.”

“I’ll do my best, I promise ’e, but I ban’t hopeful.”

“Well, Shakespeare would be too difficult, of course; but I happen to know a very lovely poem called ‘Excelsior,’ by Longfellow. That you might understand; and if you only learned a verse or two it would be something.”

She recited the poem to him, and the Jacky-Toad said it was fine talk, and managed to commit one verse to memory, though not without much difficulty. Then Mabel repeated several of the “Ancient and Modern Hymns,” and a rhymed alphabet, and some of Lear’s Nonsense Verses. The last pleased her pupil much, but she refused to permit him to learn any of them, explaining that knowledge of this description, though an elegant accomplishment, as in her case, would not add lasting lustre to the Jacky-Toad’s reputation.

Then some chance utterance reminded him of home, and he sighed and trimmed his lamp, and murmured a vague wish about moonlight and quaking-bogs.

“I believe sometimes you almost want to go back,” said Mabel coldly.

“Well, you do keep such a darnation tight hand ’pon me. Home’s home, when all’s said, if ’tis awnly a li’l’ cranny in a bog. Theer ban’t no comfort here, nor yet comp’ny, savin’ your presence.”

“You want to go back to those other wretched Jacky-Toads?”

“Ess fay, an’ show ’em all I’ve larned.”

“You’ve learnt absolutely nothing yet; and I’m not going to let you go back till you know at least the Kings of Israel and the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve, so you needn’t think it.”

But it is to be regretted that Mabel’s noble ambitions were never gratified. Of course, faults existed on both sides. She was exacting and impatient; the Jacky-Toad was obstinate. It is better to rule by love than fear if you are dealing with a Devon Jacky-Toad, but Mabel was too severe. She expected too much; she said hard things, none the pleasanter for being true; and the Jacky-Toad finally grew sullen, and refused to employ even that morsel of brain power which it had pleased Providence to bestow upon him. His health was partly to blame for this. Change of scene, night air, and the humid atmosphere of a quag are essential to the well-being of all Jacky-Toads; and this one languished under imprisonment, lost his temper all too often, and frequently swore in broad Devonshire, merely from the wicked desire to make Mabel angry. Once, when he said pointedly that she evidently had not the gift of teaching, she slapped him and dropped him head-first into his marmalade-jar. Then he turned round, said a thing not to be repeated here, and tried to bite her. Relations were strained henceforward, but though Mabel shed bitter tears over her failure to reach that nobler part of his nature which must not be denied even to a Jacky-Toad, she still had hope, and determined with praiseworthy pluck to conquer in the end.

Chance, however, defeated her resolves, and it happened that the Jacky-Toad’s longed-for opportunity to escape came at last. Needless to say he seized it. During a spring cleaning, a maid found the marmalade-jar while Mabel was at school, and, believing it empty, she threw it into the dustbin. From thence it was removed to a rubbish-heap, and a boy, seeing it lying there, immediately broke it with his catapult. Thus the prisoner found himself a free Jacky-Toad, and being happily gifted with that marvellous “homing” instinct so much admired in the carrier pigeon and humble-bee, he immediately rose to a considerable height in the air, dodged the smoke from a factory chimney, and proceeded as the crow flies, or is given credit for flying, to the West of England.

* * * * *

Under a spring moon the nocturnal moor was all alive and awake. The pixies were busy measuring new fairy rings for the coming season; the elves--those “whose little eyes glow, like sparks of fire”--were entertaining the brownies; the Jacky-Toads, having danced the “Wildfire Gallop,” sat and rested, and talked politics. Then it happened that their missing colleague formed matter for discussion, and an aged Jacky-Toad, by tacit understanding father of the company, gave it as his opinion that the wanderer had lost himself in fresh running water, which is, of course, death to _Ignes Fatui_ all the world over.

“He was a born fule, if you remember,” he concluded.

At the same moment a blue light flickered like a shooting-star above their heads, and, with the sound of a small bird alighting, the missing member of that community returned to his friends. Their welcome was, of course, hearty as need be, and from an attitude of absolute indifference one and all assumed the manner of affection, friendship and regard. Now the new-come Jacky-Toad, though his knowledge had appeared but scanty in the presence of his fair mistress, found, after leaving her and upon escaping the radius of her exceeding great erudition, that his own acquirements assumed a more important shape. A little knowledge may go far thus brought into a region where, until its arrival, there is none. The Jacky-Toad returned therefore with a sufficiently high estimate of his intellectual stores.

“Well, dear souls,” he said, “here I be again, an’ what I’ve seed and larned you’ll never credit, not if I talks to ’e for a month o’ Sundays.”

The father of the flock, fearing for a position which he merely held by courtesy and through his own natural force of character, now set himself to discount the adventurer’s information.

“You be the monkey as have seen the world--you be,” he said; “and what do ’e make o’t?”

“A terrible coorious world, and as for Lunnon--well, ’tis somethin’ amazin’ to be sure. An’ what wi’ geography, an’ nat’ral sciences, an’ poetry, an’ sich-like wonnerful branches o’ larnin’, my head’s full.”

They buzzed admiration, except the venerable Jacky-Toad.

“Let’s hear what you do know,” he suggested.

“Well, fust you must be told as we’m all made o’ gas--the whole boilin’ of us. We’m no more’n just a whiff of phosphuretted hydrogen!”

“You’m jokin’!” they cried.

“No fay, solemn truth.”

“An’ what if ’tis?” asked the old Jacky-Toad abruptly. “Granted--then what? Ban’t no gert odds as I can see. Who’s better for knawin’ it? We’ve got to be made o’ somethin’.”

At this reflection the travelled Jacky-Toad was uneasy, and the more so because such an unreasonable manner of regarding the fact gained ground. Nobody--not even a Jacky-Toad--likes much to be confronted with superior knowledge outpoured in a superior manner.

“Ban’t no mighty matter when you come to think of it,” said somebody; and then the ancient one spoke again.

“Besides, how be we to knaw _’tis_ so? Us have awnly got your word for’t. That ban’t proof. For my paart I’m blamed if I _do_ b’lieve it!”

In about half a minute they all agreed with their venerable leader that this information must not be accepted. Then an old friend asked the wanderer concerning his geography, and from a condition of some dismay he plucked up courage.

“Well, I can tell ’e a ’mazing thing in that branch o’ larnin’. ‘The Duchy o’ Baden lies a’most entirely between the Kingdom o’ Wurtemberg an’ the River Rhine. The climate be healthy, but the winters is cruel sharp in the Black Forest.’ What do ’e think o’ that?”

They all hummed their admiration, and several shook the geographer by the hand.

“’Tis a noble piece of information, sure enough,” said one.

“Ban’t that gude-fashioned larnin’?” asked the scholar in triumph. And the ancient cynic answered him:

“Be gormed if _I_ sees the use of it! Knawledge ain’t nothin’ ’less you can put it to a purpose.”

There was an awkward pause, then another spoke:

“Come to think o’t, theer ban’t ’zactly any _use_ to it, be theer?”

“All the same, souls, ’tis a purty thing,” argued the Jacky-Toad’s personal friend.

“But I’ve got purtier,” said the traveller, though in a crestfallen voice. “I’m thinkin’ I shan’t please ’e, but I’ll give ’e a bit o’ poetry whether or no.”

Then he recited to them the first verse of Longfellow’s “Excelsior,” to which they listened with patient attention.

“The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore ’mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!”

“Be that all?” said the old Jacky-Toad.

“Ess, ’tis,” answered the reciter, immorally concealing the fact that there were eight other verses which he had not been able to learn.

“Well, then, ’tis as silly a bit o’ man’s twaddle as ever I heard. Doan’t ’mount to nothin’ so far as I can see.”

“’Tis poetry,” said the Jacky-Toad feebly.

“What’s rhyme wi’out reason? No better’n water wi’out mud. You’ve bin wastin’ your time somethin’ shockin’--that’s what you’ve bin doin’. I could ’a taught ’e more in this ’ere bog than what you’ve got in Lunnon, seemin’ly.”

“Is that all you knaw?” asked a very young Jacky-Toad, who had no ambitions of his own, and could therefore afford to be sympathetic.

“Yes--that’s all,” said the wanderer. Then he turned away his face, and his little eyes blinked and he wept.

“Poor fule,” commented the ancient Jacky-Toad; “you never ought to a left the quag. What’s the gude o’ the like o’ you gwaine to foreign paarts? Wheer theer’s no brains by nature, theer ban’t nothin’ for larnin’ to catch hold upon.”

“’Pears to me I did teach more’n I larned, come to think of it,” said the crushed Jacky-Toad. “Her what took me to Lunnon got to dance the ‘Wildfire Gallop’ somethin’ butivul ’fore I left her.”

“Why, theer it is, then! That’s very comfortin’ for ’e, for ’tis somethin’ to knaw us have done more for our betters than our betters have done for us.”

There was consolation in this--of a sort; and I am glad to leave the Jacky-Toad with a smile on his extremely plain face, because this is the end of the story.

The narrative will be seen to bristle with morals, even as a porcupine with quills. Of these I have removed as many as possible; yet one seems vital to the plot, and must be unwillingly permitted to remain. This indicates, of course, that all knowledge is not useful--if you are a Jacky-Toad.

A CELESTIAL CHAT

“Well, old man, how goes it?” said the Comet.

“Still jogging along, old chap,” answered the Sun.

“Any news since my last round?”

“Don’t think so.”

“I suppose you know I’ve been away thirty-five millions of years?”

“What’s that, after all? You look as boyish as ever.”

The Comet showed pleasure. He prided himself on his youth, and was wont to dress young, and talk young, and behave young. Many constellations and nebulæ invited to guess at his age, took him for not an hour more than two hundred million years old, whereas, in reality, he was nearly thirty times as much.

“It’s the exercise,” he said; “nothing like it for keeping one agile and youthful. I’ve been eighty-three trillion, seventy-six billion, twenty-nine hundred millions of millions of quadrillions of miles since I saw you last. I attribute my health and--ahem!--good looks entirely to regular exercise.”

“I wish I could have a run round with you,” answered the Sun, “but I can’t leave the System. I stroll my modest four hundred to five hundred million miles through space every year; but, of course, it’s not enough to do any practical good.”

“Lord! what a sedentary life!” said the Comet; “don’t you find it tell on your liver? With your temperature, too, you ought to make yourself take some reasonable exercise. I’m sure you’d get rid of those spots if you did.”

“Ah, it’s jolly easy for you free-lances to talk! You have nothing to think of but your own tail. I’m a busy planet.”

The Comet did not like this somewhat slighting allusion to his tail.

“As to that, my dear fellow, a tail fifty millions of miles long takes some watching, I can assure you. It isn’t all beer and skittles going at the pace I do, and keeping clear of everything and everybody. It wants tact and a cool head, anyway.”

“Why, you wouldn’t hurt anybody if you hit ’em,” said the Sun, rather rudely. “Everybody knows you could pack the whole of your tail into a Gladstone bag, and still leave room for your toothbrush and a change of linen.”

“No,” admitted the other, “I shouldn’t hurt other people, but they might jolly well shatter me. I’m not a robust Comet, for all my apparent physical strength. It’s a trying life, and there are dangers. Why, you yourself, though you mean well, always singe my hair and give me a sharp attack of fever every time I pass you. But never mind me and my tail. How prospers it with you? How’s the System?”

“Going strong; but sometimes I am inclined to chuck the whole lot of ’em up; they’re such little plagues. Yet one can’t help feeling a bit proud of the inhabited ones.”

“Ah! you’ve warmed some of them into life since I was last round?”

“Oh, yes. A few have quite interesting little things living on them. Mars, for instance; they are getting fairly advanced there. Saturn has put on frills since you were here. He found a big swarm of asteroids which had lost their way, and now wears them like a collar. Saturn’s a regular child of Nature.”

“How’s Venus? Lovely as ever?”

“Lovely enough, but more bother than all the rest of ’em put together. She’ll get into trouble some of these days--there are half-a-dozen Comets after her as it is--no self-respect, you see; so different from Jupiter.”

“He was always your favourite.”

“No, no, I have no favourites, unless my own little Mercury may so be called. But Jupiter has such a distinguished way with him. No folly, no giddiness. Always the same. A thousand pities he’s got such a wretched climate. I’m doing what I can, but I haven’t yet been able to get anything to live on Jupiter but frogs, and a few of the lower reptiles.”

“How’s the Earth?”

“Don’t ask me--the black sheep of the System! The ingratitude of that planet! They’ve got a little dead cinder that circles round them, according to the laws of gravitation; and, would you believe it? they think twice as much of that cinder as they do of me! A fact. They call it the Moon and write poetry to it. The Earth people have, in fact, reached a trying stage. They are growing out of childhood, but still lie far removed from the solidity and reasoning powers proper to an adult. They are funny, too. Here’s a bit of New Humour to take away with you. What d’you think they believed till the last few years?”

“Sure I don’t know,” said the Comet.

“That I went round them! They thought that they were the centre of the Universe, and that Creation circled round and round them, just in the same way that their little pet cinder, they call the Moon, goes round and round them!”

“Blessed if that isn’t the funniest thing I’ve heard for ten million years!” said the Comet. “I’ll make my little corner in Space fairly scream with that!” He was genuinely amused, and shook to such an extent that he gave rise to considerable disturbances on a large scale.

“Look out, old man! you’re upsetting my System!” said the Sun.

“Smother your System!” yelled the Comet. “That little pill of mud and water to think itself the centre of all things! Why don’t you smash it or frizzle it up?”

“We must be patient. It knows somewhat better now. If it would only be commonly grateful and realise a little of what it owed me, I would overlook the bumptiousness. That’s natural to all small things.”

“I believe you. For sheer side, not to say impertinence, commend me to shooting-stars. Space is full of them, and they go slogging about in clusters, as if the Universe had been designed for nothing but their especial amusement and convenience. Little cads! They always think it a huge joke to go right through me like a bullet through a piece of paper.”

“But they can’t hurt you.”

“No, not physically; it’s the moral disgrace of the thing. One feels so powerless against the little brutes; and satire’s thrown away on ’em.”

“They get precious small change out of me or my System either,” answered the Sun. “I burn them up in billions myself; I light my cigars with ’em. And the Planets--they’ve all got their own atmospheres; and when a shooting-star gets into an atmosphere, it’s done for. You ought to cultivate an atmosphere.”

“No time,” said the Comet. “In fact, I must be off as it is. Can’t stop! Can’t stop! Can’t stop!”

“Any news in Space?”

“Only that the Milky Way has gone sour. It’s to be called the Milky Whey in future!”

The Sun laughed, but not heartily. He had heard the Comet make this same joke on many previous occasions. Every thirty-five million of years he was expected to smile at this paltry jest, and his good-nature was breaking down under the strain.

“Eclipse me, if I’m not fairly sick of that!” said the Sun. “I really do think he might make a new joke. It wasn’t too funny the first time he said it; now it’s grown simply wearisome and sickening. Next time he comes round I must really make an effort to shame him out of it. There should be lots of other good humour knocking about in a place the size of Space.”

Then the tail of the traveller vanished round the corner of one of the signs of the Zodiac, and the Sun resumed his regular occupation, and beamed upon his System as usual.