Adela Cathcart Volume Ii Part 8

"'Guess again.'

"'No, no. Tell us.'

"'In the looking gla.s.s. Ha! ha! ha!'

"'He was fair game; fair shadow-game.'

"'I thought so. And I made such fun of him one night on the wall! He had sense enough to see that it was himself, and very like an ape. So he got ashamed, turned the mirror with its face to the wall, and thought a little more about his people, and a little less about himself. I was very glad; for, please you majesty,'--and here the speaker turned towards the king--'we don't like the creatures that live in the mirrors.

You call them ghosts, don't you?'

"Before the king could reply, another had commenced. But the mention of the clergyman made the king wish to hear one of the shadow-sermons. So he turned him towards a long Shadow, who was preaching to a very quiet and listening crowd. He was just concluding his sermon.

"Therefore, dear Shadows, it is the more needful that we love one another as much as we can, because that is not much. We have no excuse for not loving as mortals have, for we do not die like them. I suppose it is the thought of that death that makes them hate so much. Then again, we go to sleep all day, most of us, and not in the night, as men do. And you know that we forget every thing that happened the night before; therefore, we ought to love well, for the love is short. Ah!

dear Shadow, whom I love now with all my shadowy soul, I shall not love thee to-morrow eve, I shall not know thee; I shall pa.s.s thee in the crowd and never dream that the Shadow whom I now love is near me then.

Happy Shades! for we only remember our tales until we have told them here, and then they vanish in the shadow-churchyard, where we bury only our dead selves. Ah! brethren, who would be a man and remember? Who would be a man and weep? We ought indeed to love one another, for we alone inherit oblivion; we alone are renewed with eternal birth; we alone have no gathered weight of years. I will tell you the awful fate of one Shadow who rebelled against his nature, and sought to remember the past. He said, 'I _will_ remember this eve.' He fought with the genial influences of kindly sleep when the sun rose on the awful dead day of light; and although he could not keep quite awake, he dreamed of the foregone eve, and he never forgot his dream. Then he tried again the next night, and the next and the next; and he tempted another Shadow to try it with him. At last their awful fate overtook them; and, instead of being Shadows any longer, they began to have shadows sticking to them; and they thickened and thickened till they vanished out of our world; and they are now condemned to walk the earth, a man and a woman, with death behind them, and memories within them. Ah, brother Shades! let us love one another, for we shall soon forget. We are not men, but Shadows.'

"The king turned away, and pitied the poor Shadows far more than they pitied men.

"'Oh! how we played with a musician one night!' exclaimed one of another group, to which the king had directed a pa.s.sing thought. He stopped to listen.--'Up and down we went, like the hammers and dampers on his piano. But he took his revenge on us. For after he had watched us for half an hour in the twilight, he rose and went to his instrument, and played a shadow-dance that fixed us all in sound for ever. Each could tell the very notes meant for him; and as long as he played, we could not stop, but went on dancing and dancing after the music, just as the magician--I mean the musician--pleased. And he punished us well; for he nearly danced us all off our legs and out of shape, into tired heaps of collapsed and palpitating darkness. We wont go near him for some time again, if we can only remember it. He had been very miserable all day, he was so poor; and we could not think of any way of comforting him except making him laugh. We did not succeed, with our best efforts; but it turned out better than we had expected after all; for his shadow-dance got him into notice, and he is quite popular now, and making money fast.--If he does not take care, we shall have other work to do with him by and by, poor fellow!'

"'I and some others did the same for a poor play-wright once. He had a Christmas piece to write, and not being an original genius, he could think of nothing that had not been done already twenty times. I saw the trouble he was in, and collecting a few stray Shadows, we acted, in dumb show of course, the funniest bit of nonsense we could think of; and it was quite successful. The poor fellow watched every motion, roaring with laughter at us, and delight at the ideas we put into his head. He turned it all into words and scenes and actions; and the piece came off "with a success unprecedented in the annals of the stage;"--at least so said the reporter of the _Punny Palpitator_.'

"Now don't you try, uncle, there's a dear, to make any fun; for you know you can't. It's always a failure," said Adela, looking as mischievous as she could. "You can only make people cry: you can't make them laugh.

So don't try it. It hurts my feelings dreadfully when you fail; and gives me a pain in the back of my neck besides."

I heard her with delight, but went on, saying:

"I must read what I have written, you monkey!"

"'But how long we have to look for a chance of doing anything worth doing!' said a long, thin, especially lugubrious Shadow. 'I have only done one deed worth telling, ever since we met last. But I am proud of that.'

"'What was it? What was it?' rose from twenty voices.

"'I crept into a dining-room, one twilight, soon after last Christmas-day. I had been drawn thither by the glow of a bright fire through red window-curtains. At first I thought there was no one there, and was on the point of leaving the room, and going out again into the snowy street, when I suddenly caught the sparkle of eyes, and saw that they belonged to a little boy who lay very still on a sofa. I crept into a dark corner by the sideboard, and watched him. He seemed very sad, and did nothing but stare into the fire. At last he sighed out: 'I wish mamma would come home.' 'Poor boy!' thought I, 'there is no help for that but mamma.' Yet I would try to while away the time for him. So out of my corner I stretched a long shadow arm, reaching all across the ceiling, and pretended to make a grab at him. He was rather frightened at first; but he was a brave boy, and soon saw that it was all a joke.

So when I did it again, he made a clutch at me; and then we had such fun! For though he often sighed, and wished mamma would come home, he always began again with me; and on we went with the wildest game. At last his mother's knock came to the door, and, starting up in delight, he rushed into the hall to meet her, and forgot all about poor black me.

But I did not mind that in the least; for when I glided out after him into the hall, I was well repaid for my trouble, by hearing his mother say to him: 'Why, Charlie, my dear, you look ever so much better since I left you!' At that moment I slipped through the closing door, and as I ran across the snow, I heard the mother say: 'What shadow can that be, pa.s.sing so quickly?' And Charlie answered with a merry laugh: 'Oh!

mamma, I suppose it must be the funny shadow that has been playing such games with me, all the time you were out.' As soon as the door was shut, I crept along the wall, and looked in at the dining-room window. And I heard his mamma say, as she led him into the room: 'What an imagination the boy has!' Ha! ha! ha! Then she looked at him very earnestly for a minute, and the tears came in her eyes; and as she stooped down over him, I heard the sounds of a mingling kiss and sob.'"

"Ah, I thought so!" cried Adela, who espied, peeping, that I had this last tale on a separate slip of paper--"I thought so! That is yours, Mr. Armstrong, and not uncle's at all. He stole it out of your sermon."

"You are excessively troublesome to-night, Adela," I rejoined. "But I confess the theft."

"He had quite a right to take what I had done with, Miss Cathcart," said the curate; and once more I resumed.

"'I always look for nurseries full of children,' said another; 'and this winter I have been very fortunate. I am sure we belong especially to children. One evening, looking about in a great city, I saw through the window into a large nursery, where the odious gas had not yet been lighted. Round the fire sat a company of the most delightful children I had ever seen. They were waiting patiently for their tea. It was too good an opportunity to be lost. I hurried away, and gathering together twenty of the best Shadows I could find, returned in a few moments to the nursery. There we began on the walls one of our best dances. To be sure it was mostly extemporized; but I managed to keep it in harmony by singing this song, which I made as we went on. Of course the children could not hear it; they only saw the motions that answered to it. But with them they seemed to be very much delighted indeed, as I shall presently show you. This was the song:

'Swing, sw.a.n.g, swingle, swuff, Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff!

Thus we go, To and fro; Here and there, Everywhere, Born and bred; Never dead, Only gone.

On! Come on.

Looming, glooming, Spreading, fuming, Shattering, scattering, Parting, darting, Settling, starting, All our life, Is a strife, And a wearying for rest On the darkness' friendly breast.

Joining, splitting, Rising, sitting, Laughing, shaking, Sides all aching, Grumbling, grim and gruff.

Swingle, sw.a.n.gle, swuff!

Now a knot of darkness; Now dissolved gloom; Now a pall of blackness Hiding all the room.

Flicker, flacker, fluff!

Black and black enough!

Dancing now like demons; Lying like the dead; Gladly would we stop it, And go down to bed!

But our work we still must do, Shadow men, as well as you.

Rooting, rising, shooting, Heaving, sinking, creeping; Hid in corners crooning; Splitting, poking, leaping, Gathering, towering, swooning.

When we're lurking, Yet we're working, For our labour we must do, Shadow men, as well as you.

Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff!

Swing, sw.a.n.g, swingle, swuff!'

"'How thick the Shadows are!' said one of the children--a thoughtful little girl.

"'I wonder where they come from?' said a dreamy little boy.

"'I think they grow out of the wall,' answered the little girl; 'for I have been watching them come; first one and then another, and then a whole lot of them. I am sure they grow out of the walls.'

"'Perhaps they have papas and mammas,' said an older boy, with a smile.

"'Yes, yes; the doctor brings them in his pocket,' said another consequential little maiden.

"'No; I'll tell you,' said the older boy. 'They're ghosts.'

"'But ghosts are white.'

"'Oh! these have got black coming down the chimney.'

"'No,' said a curious-looking, white-faced boy of fourteen, who had been reading by the firelight, and had stopped to hear the little ones talk; 'they're body-ghosts; they're not soul-ghosts.'

"A silence followed, broken by the first, the dreamy-eyed boy, who said:

"'I hope they didn't make me;' at which they all burst out laughing, just as the nurse brought in their tea. When she proceeded to light the gas, we vanished.