Chapter I

"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.

"I don't see how else you can see them," answered Mabel, with a laugh. "You certainly don't see them as they are not."

"Yes, I do," said I. "I see men and things only as they _seem_. It is so exasperating to think that I can never get beyond the surface of anything. My friends may appear very good and beautiful to me, and yet I may all the while have a suspicion that the appearance is deceitful, that they are really neither good nor beautiful."

"In case that was so, I shouldn't want to know it," said Mabel. "It would make me very unhappy."

"That is where you and I differ," said I.

Mabel was silent for a moment, and I believe she was a little hurt, for I had spoken rather sharply.

"But what good would it do you, Jamie?" asked she, looking up at me from under her wide-brimmed straw hat.

"What would do me good?" said I, for I had quite forgotten what we had been talking about.

"To see things as they are. There is my father now; he knows a great deal, and I am sure I shouldn't care to know any more than he does."

"Well, that is where you and I differ," said I again.

"I wish you wouldn't be always saying 'that is where you and I differ.' Somehow I don't like to hear you say it. It doesn't sound like yourself."

And Mabel turned away from me, took up a leaf from the ground and began to pick it to pieces.

We were sitting, at the time when this conversation took place, up in the gorge not half a mile from the house where Mabel's father lived. I was a tutor in the college, about twenty-three years old, and I was very fond of German philosophy. And now, since I have told who I was, I suppose I ought to tell you something about Mabel. Mabel was,--but really it is impossible to say what she was, except that she was very, very charming. As for the rest, she was the daughter of Professor Markham, and I had known her since my college days when she was quite a little girl. And now she wore long dresses; and, what was more, she had her hair done up in a sort of Egyptian pyramid on the top of her head. The dress she had on to-day I was particularly fond of; it was of a fine light texture, and the pattern was an endless repetition of a small, sweet-brier bud, with two delicate green leaves attached to it.

I had spread a shawl out on the ground where Mabel was sitting, for fear she should soil her fine dress. A large weeping-willow spread its branches all around us, and drooped until it almost touched the ground, so that it made a sort of green, sunlit summer-house, for Mabel and me to live in. Between the rocks at our feet a clear brook came rushing down, throwing before it little showers of spray, which fell like crystal pearls on the water, sailed down the swift eddies and then vanished in the next whirlpool. A couple of orioles in brand-new yellow uniforms, with black epaulets on their shoulders, were busy in the tree over our heads, but stopped now and then in their work to refresh themselves with a little impromptu duet.

"Work and play
Make glad the day,"--

that seemed to be their philosophy, and Mabel and I were quite ready to agree with them, although we had been idling since the early dawn. But then it was so long since we had seen each other, that we thought we could afford it.

"Somehow," said Mabel at last (for she never could pout long at a time), "I don't like you so well since you came back from Germany. You are not as nice as you used to be. What did you go there for, anyway?"

"Why," I responded, quite seriously, "I went there to study; and I did learn a good deal there, although naturally I was not as industrious as I might have been."

"I can readily believe that. But, tell me, what did you learn that you mightn't just as well have learned at home?"

I thought it was no use in being serious any longer; so I tossed a pebble into the water, glanced up into Mabel's face and answered gayly:

"Well, I learned something about gnomes and pigmies and elves and fairies and salamanders, and--"

"And what?" interrupted Mabel, impatiently.

"And salamanders," repeated I. "You know the forests and rivers and mountains of Germany are full of all sorts of strange sprites, and you know the people believe in them, and that is one of the things which make life in the Old World so fascinating. But here we are too prosy and practical and business-like, and we don't believe in anything except what we can touch with our hands, and see with our eyes, and sell for money."

"Now, Jamie, that is not true," responded Mabel, energetically; for she was a strong American at heart, and it didn't take much to rouse her. "I believe, for instance, that you know a great deal although not as much as my father; but I can't see your learning with my eyes, neither can I touch it with my hands--"

"But I hope I can sell it for money," interrupted I, laughing.

"No, joking aside. I don't think we are quite as bad as you would like to make us out."

"And then you think, perhaps, that the gnomes and river-sprites would be as apt to thrive here as in the Old World?"

"Who knows?" said Mabel, with an expression that seemed to me half serious and half playful. "But I wish you would tell me something about your German sprites. I am so very ignorant in such things, you know."

I stretched myself comfortably on the edge of the shawl at Mabel's feet, and began to tell her the story about the German peasant who caught the gnome that had robbed his wheat-field.

"The gnomes wear tiny red caps," I went on, "which make them invisible. They are called tarn-caps, or caps of darkness. The peasant that I am telling about had a suspicion that it was the gnomes who had been stealing his wheat. One evening, he went out after sunset (for the gnomes never venture out from their holes until the sun is down) and began to fight in the air with his cane about the borders of the field. Then suddenly he saw a very tiny man with knee-breeches and large frightened eyes, turning a somersault in the grass right at his feet. He had struck off his cap, and then, of course, the gnome was no longer invisible. The peasant immediately seized the cap and put it into his pocket; the gnome begged and implored to get it back, but instead of that, the peasant caught him up in his arms and carried him to his house, where he kept him as a captive until the other gnomes sent a herald to him and offered him a large ransom. Then the gnome was again set free and the peasant made his fortune by the transaction."

"Wouldn't it be delightful if such things could ever happen here?" exclaimed Mabel, while her beautiful eyes shone with pleasure at the very thought.

"I should think so," said I. "It is said, too, that if there are gnomes and elves in the neighborhood, they always gather around you when you talk about them."

"Really?" And Mabel sent a timid glance in among the large mossy trunks of the beeches and pines.

"Tell me something more, Jamie," she demanded, eagerly.

Mabel had such a charming way of saying "Jamie," that I could never have opposed a wish of hers, whatever it might be. The professor called me James, and among my friends I was Jim; but it was only Mabel who called me Jamie. So I told her all I knew about the nixies, who sang their strange songs at midnight in the water; about the elves, who lived in the roses and lilies, and danced in a ring around the tall flowers until the grass never grew there again; and about the elf-maiden who led the knight astray when he was riding to his bride on his wedding-day. And all the while Mabel's eyes seemed to be growing larger; the blood burned in her cheeks, and sometimes she shuddered, although the afternoon was very warm. When I had finished my tale, I rose and seated myself at her side. The silence suddenly seemed quite oppressive; it was almost as if we could hear it. For some reason neither Mabel nor I dared to speak; but we both strained our ears listening to something, we did not know what. Then there came a strange soft whisper which filled the air all about us, and I thought I heard somebody calling my name.

"They are calling you, Jamie," whispered Mabel.

"Calling me? Who?" said I.

"Up there in the tree. No, not there. It is down in the brook. Everywhere."

"Oh," cried I, with a forced laugh. "We are two great children, Mabel. It is nothing."

Suddenly all was silent once more; but the wood-stars and violets at my feet gazed at me with such strange, wistful eyes, that I was almost frightened.

"You shouldn't have done that, Jamie," said Mabel. "You killed them."

"Killed what?"

"The voices, the strange, small voices."

"My dear girl," said I, as I took Mabel's hands and helped her to rise. "I am afraid we are both losing our senses. Come, let us go. The sun is already down. It must be after tea-time."

"But you know we were talking about them," whispered she, still with the same fascinated gaze in her eyes. "Ah, there, take care! Don't step on that violet. Don't you see how its mute eyes implore you to spare its life?"

"Yes, dear, I see," answered I; and I drew Mabel's arm through mine, and we hurried down the wood-path, not daring to look back, for we had both a feeling as if some one was walking close behind us, in our steps.