Drolls From Shadowland Part 10

To be lashed with the whip, and galled excruciatingly with the harness; to have the bit between the teeth, or tugging at the jaws unmercifully; and to have the blinkers ever blotting out the vision of the world: to strain every sinew, and have the service accepted thanklessly; to be tortured with discomfort, and to work absolutely without reward--it was a life devoid of even the meanest compensations: loathsome, and in every way abhorrent to thought.

The horses, and other animals he met in the streets, he might have communicated with in some way or other, but his driver--a drunken, quarrelsome fellow--was always tugging at the bit or brandishing the whip; and if the poor animal even tried to turn his head, he was belaboured as brutally as if he had swerved or fallen asleep.

There was no chance even of rubbing noses at the drinking-troughs, or of laying his head on the neck of a companion at the stand. And whatever might be taking place in the streets through which he was pa.s.sing, he was debarred from bestowing on it even the most casual attention.

His mental activity was ignored, or trampled on, with an indifference that was never once relaxed or relieved.

His life was a horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debas.e.m.e.nt and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have preferred suffering among his equals in h.e.l.l.

A year of this life was as much as he could endure. One day he stumbled across a tram-line, and, falling, broke his leg--hopelessly snapping the tendon, and otherwise injuring himself--and he was carted off to the knackers to receive his _coup de grace_.

A moment or two before he was killed, the eyes of the animal lighted up with a strangely human expression--which was succeeded by a look of the most unappeasable despair.

Evidently he had again seen the grey old man.

But the Visitor's communication to him remained unrevealed, and it was probably torturing him still when he . . . died?

THE FIELDS OF AMARANTH.

"I SHALL seek the fields of amaranth," said the young man defiantly.

"And I shall find them," added he, turning tenderly to his mother. "And when I have found them I will comeback for _you_, dear mother, and I will take you with me that we may dwell there in peace."

"What do you know of peace, and why should you desire it?" asked the father, with a certain cold contempt in his tone. "You have not yet lived; and you have certainly not laboured. Rest is for those who have laboured and grown weary. In that rest that you desire you would have an empty mind for showman, and of its meagre entertainment you would tire as speedily as a child. Live first, and watch the puppets of memory play afterwards. The fields of amaranth will wait for you however long you live."

But the young man insisted: "I want to find them _now_. And when I have found them I will come for _you_, mother, dear; and we will return to them together and be happy and at peace."

But the mother's eyes were troubled with an inexplicable expression. "It were better that you should wait till I come to _you_," she answered gently. "As come to you I surely shall--one day. But come not to fetch me . . . if once you find the fields."

"I surely _shall_ come for you," cried the youth.

"No, no!" implored the mother.

But he smiled on her, and was gone.

It was a long journey, and a toilsome one, and the end of it the youth could neither learn of nor antic.i.p.ate.

The fields of amaranth? Yes: all had heard of them. But no one knew any one who had ever found them. And, for themselves, they were content to know these waited for them somewhere. They had ties--they had businesses--they were content to live and wait.

"When I return from them, shall I give you tidings of them?" asked the young man, earnestly.

"No, no!" They were vehement in their dissuasions that he should not: finally even fleeing from him in terror at the thought.

And the young man mused perplexedly as he walked on. "Are there _really_ fields of amaranth for those who can find them?" he asked of a wrinkled, white-haired wayfarer. "Or is it merely a bait, a delusion, and a lie?"

"Yes, surely, my son, these fields await us all: else life, at best, were a sorry game for most of us. It is there we shall rest and reap our reward."

"But no one seems eager to set out for them and discover them."

"No one?" quoth the old man, looking at him strangely: "there are many ways of getting there: you have chosen only one. There are other roads, and crowded ones: though you know nothing of them yet."

The young man brushed past him hot with disdain. He was merely an old dotard: empty-minded like the rest.

The lures of the highway were many and formidable; but the young man turned aside from them impatiently. "I am bound for the fields of amaranth," cried he haughtily: "when I return I will taste these good things you offer."

"Will he ever return?" whispered a girl to her mother.

She had looked with eyes of love on the daring young wayfarer; and a vague regret shivered through her as he pa.s.sed on.

"G.o.d only knows. But I doubt it," said the mother.

The girl hid her face in her ap.r.o.n and wept.

But the young man had not overheard the whisper, and with head held high he pushed on along the road.

And here were the fields of amaranth at last! He could see them smiling faintly on the other side of the valley. But they had a strangely vague and unsubstantial look. One might almost have fancied he were looking at a mirage.

And between the young wayfarer and the fields of amaranth the rugged hillside sloped abruptly: its foot being shrouded in a dense white mist.

He could hear a river murmuring sullenly somewhere in the depths, but the mist hid the waters and he could only hear their moan.

How far he had left the busy highway behind him! He would like to take just one farewell glance at it. The fields beyond him seemed to waver deceptively in his eyes. One glance at the highway, with its booths and its faces, and his vigour, strangely waning, would surely be renewed.

But as he turned and saw the dear familiar highway, along which he had trudged so many weary miles, his heart went out in a yearning towards it, and he stretched out his arms to it, hungering for its life.

So mighty was the fascination it now exercised over him, that he began to rush headlong down the hill towards it, eager to be once more mingling in its throng, and to once more feel its hum in his ears.

At the foot of the hill he met the fair young girl whose eyes had erstwhile followed him so wistfully, and he flung himself into her arms sobbing violently.

"The life here--you--I cannot part with them!" he cried pa.s.sionately.

And he shuddered: "If the wish had come too late!"

THE COMEDY OF A SOUL.

"YOU are quite sure you will never change? will never desert me, or be untrue to me?"

"I am absolutely sure of it, my darling!" he answered resolutely. "Any pledge my sweet one desires I will give her freely," added he, as he again kissed her pa.s.sionately on the mouth.

"Would you leave me your soul in p.a.w.n?" asked the maiden, smiling at him bewitchingly with her deliciously red lips; her cheeks dimpling and her brown eyes sparkling, and her heaving b.r.e.a.s.t.s but thinly hidden from his gaze.

"Willingly! And be glad to leave it in my darling's custody!" And his lips hovered caressingly around her just-disclosed shoulder.