In Midsummer Days, and Other Tales Part 9

It was for the first time after many years that he was allowed to leave his cliff. He was in the boat, swimming on the water, and saw much in his native town that was new to him; he saw the railway and the locomotive. And they began dredging just below the railway station.

And gradually they brought up all the corruption which lay buried at the bottom of the sea. Drowned cats, old shoes, decomposed fat from the candle factory, the refuse from the dye works called "The Blue Hand,"

tanners' bark from the tannery, and all the human misery which the laundresses had batted off the clothes for the last hundred years.

And there was such a terrible smell of sulphur and ammonia that only a prisoner could be expected to bear it.

When the boat was full, the prisoners wondered what was going to be done with their cargo of dirt? The riddle was solved when the overseer steered for their own cliff.

All the mud was unloaded there and thrown on the mountain, and soon the air was filled with the foulest of smells. They waded ankle-deep in filth, and their clothes, hands, and faces were covered with it.

"This is like the infernal regions!" said the prisoners.

They dredged and unloaded on the cliff for several years, and ultimately the cliff disappeared altogether.

And the white snow fell winter after winter on all the corruption and threw a pure white cover over it.

And when the spring came once again and all the snow had melted, the evil smell had disappeared, and the mud looked like mould. There was no more dredging after this spring, and our stone man was sent to work at the forge and never came near the cliff. Only once, in the autumn, he went there secretly, and then he saw something wonderful.

The ground was covered with green plants. Ugly sappy plants, it was true, mostly bur-marigolds, that look like a nettle with brown flowers, which is ugly because flowers should be white, yellow, blue or red. And there were true nettles with green blossoms, and burs, sorrel, thistles, and notch-weed; all the ugliest, burning, stinging, evil-smelling plants, which n.o.body likes, and which grow on dust-heaps, waste land, and mud.

"We cleaned the bottom of the sea, and now we have all the dirt here; this is all the thanks we get!" said the prisoner.

Then he was transferred to another cliff, where a fort was to be built, and again he worked in stone; stone, stone, stone!

Then he lost one of his eyes, and sometimes he was flogged. And he remained a very long time there, so long that the new king died and was followed by his successor. On coronation day one of the prisoners was to be released. And it was to be the one who had behaved best during all the time and had arrived at a clear understanding that he had sinned.

And that was he! But the other prisoners considered that it would be a wrong towards them, for in their circles a man who repents is considered a fool, "because he has done what he couldn't help doing."

And so the years pa.s.sed. Our stone man had grown very old, and because he was now unable to do hard work, he was sent back to his cliff and set to sew sacks.

One day the chaplain on his round paused before the stone man, who sat and sewed.

"Well," said the clergyman, "and are you never to leave this cliff?"

"How would that be possible?" replied the stone man.

"You will go as soon as you come to see that you did wrong."

"If ever I find a human being who does not only do right, but more than is right, I will believe that I did wrong! But I don't believe that there is such a being."

"To do more than that which is right is to have compa.s.sion. May it please G.o.d that you will soon come to know it!"

One day the stone man was sent to repair the road on the cliff, which he had not seen for, perhaps, twenty years.

It was again a warm summer's day, and from the pa.s.sing steamers, bright and beautiful as b.u.t.terflies, came the sounds of music and gay laughter.

When he arrived at the headland he found that the cliff had disappeared under a lovely green wood, whose millions of leaves glittered and sparkled in the breeze like small waves. There were tall, white birch trees and trembling aspens, and ash trees grew on the sh.o.r.e.

Everything was just as it had been in his dream. At the foot of the trees tall gra.s.ses nodded, b.u.t.terflies played in the sunshine, and humble-bees buzzed from flower to flower. The birds were singing, but he could not understand what they said, and therefore he knew that it was not a dream.

The cursed mountain had been transformed into a mountain of bliss, and he could not help thinking of the prophet and the gourd.

"This is mercy and compa.s.sion," whispered a voice in his heart, or perhaps it was a warning.

And when a steamer pa.s.sed, the faces of the pa.s.sengers did not grow gloomy, but brightened at the sight of the beautiful scenery; he even fancied that he saw some one wave a handkerchief, as people on a steamer do when they pa.s.s a summer resort.

He walked along a path beneath waving trees. It is true, there was not one lime tree; but he did not dare to wish for one, for fear the birches might turn into rods. He had learnt that much.

As he walked through a leafy avenue, he saw in the distance a white wall with a green gate. And somebody was playing on an instrument which was not an organ, for the movement was much jollier and livelier. Above the wall the pretty roof of a villa was visible, and a yellow and blue flag fluttered in the wind.

And he saw a gaily coloured ball rise and fall on the other side of the wall; he heard the chattering of children's voices, and the clinking of plates and gla.s.ses told him that a table was being laid.

He went and looked through the gate. The syringa was in full flower, and the table stood under the flowering shrubs; children were running about, the piano was being played and somebody sang a song.

"This is Paradise," said the voice within him.

The old man stood a long time and watched, so long that in the end he broke down, overcome by fatigue, hunger, and thirst, and all the misery of life.

Then the gate was opened and a little girl in a white dress came out.

She carried a silver tray in her hand, and on the tray stood a gla.s.s filled with wine, the reddest wine which the old man had ever seen. And the child went up to the old man and said:

"Come now, daddy, you must drink this!"

The old man took the gla.s.s and drank. It was the rich man's wine, which had grown a long way off in the sunny South; and it tasted like the sweetness of a good life when it is at its very best.

"This is compa.s.sion," said his own old broken voice. "But you, child, in your ignorance, you wouldn't have brought me this wine if you had known who I am. Do you know what I am?"

"Yes, you are a prisoner, I know that," replied the little girl.

When the old stone man went back, he was no longer a man of stone, for something in him had begun to quicken.

And as he pa.s.sed a steep incline, he saw a tree with many trunks, which looked like a shrub. It was more beautiful than the others; it was a buckthorn tree, but the old man did not know it. A restless little bird, black and white like a swallow, fluttered from branch to branch. The peasants call it tree-swallow, but its name is something else. And it sat in the foliage and sang a sweet sad song:

In mud, in mud, in mud you died, From mud, from mud, from mud you rose.

It was exactly as it had been in his dream. And now the old man understood what the tree-swallow meant.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TOBACCO SHED

Listen to the story of a young opera-singer who was so beautiful that the people in the street turned round to stare at her when she pa.s.sed.

And she was not only very beautiful, but she had a better voice than most singers.

The conductor of the orchestra, who was also a composer, came and laid his heart and all his possessions at her feet. She took his possessions, but left his heart lying in the dust.

Now she was famous, more famous than any other singer; she drove through the streets in her elegant victoria, and nodded to her portrait, which greeted her from all the stationers' and booksellers' shop windows.