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 TALES 
 
 OF THE 
 
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 J. A. D. BRIDGER, 
 OOKSELLER. NEW4SECON0-HAND. 
 Market Jew St. PENZANCE.
 
 TALES OF THE MASQUE.
 
 TALES OF THE MASQUE. 
 
 J. H. PEARCE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " JACO TRELOAR," ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 LAWRENCE AND BULL! 
 18, HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN. 
 1894. 
 
 .3*
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, 
 
 70 TO 76, LONG ACRE, W.C.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 1>AGE 
 
 THE LITTLE CROW OF PARADISE . . 3 
 
 A VOYAGE TO THE GOLDEN LAND . . II 
 THE MAN AND THE MONSTER . . -31 
 
 EGO SPEAKS 43 
 
 JOANNA 59 
 
 THE CALLING OF THE SEA ... 77 
 
 THE VALLEY OF VANISHED SUNSETS . 89 
 
 LEAH 97 
 
 A DROLL RESULT 117 
 
 THE SORCERY OF THE FOREST. . . I3I 
 
 A PLEASANT GOSSIP 145 
 
 THE VEIL OF MAYA 153 
 
 JOEL 167 
 
 THE GIFTS OF THE LITTLE GREY MAN . 191 
 
 PASSING ON 20I
 
 THE LITTLE CROW OF 
 PARADISE.
 
 THE LITTLE CROW OF 
 PARADISE. 
 
 On the walls of heaven there dwells a 
 little black crow : and this is the tale of 
 how his happiness was attained. 
 
 Once a year, as we know, the robin 
 goes to hell, bearing a drop of water in its 
 beak. The water is for some poor soul 
 in torment whom the robin loves in spite 
 of his sins : the power to take the journey 
 and to return from it unscathed, having 
 been granted by Christ to the robin for 
 its kindness to Him when He hung upon 
 the cross. 
 
 But to no other bird is this grace
 
 4 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 extended ; and into their songs there 
 creeps, in consequence, a strangely 
 sorrowful note. 
 
 Now the crow at the crucifixion — he 
 has been the Devil's bird always — did 
 nothing but cry mockingly, Ha ! ha! ha! 
 And though he could speak then as well 
 as you or I — the Devil having granted 
 him the gift of speech — ever since that 
 day when he mocked the Saviour he has 
 been reduced to a hoarse and melancholy 
 caw. 
 
 But not all the crows have a cinder for 
 a heart : here and there one has a heart 
 indeed. 
 
 And one day such an one loved a man, 
 and loved him faithfully. But the man 
 was so steeped in sins that his soul, when 
 it went to judgment, was as black as the 
 feathers of its one sole friend: and no other 
 portion could be granted to it but hell.
 
 The Little Crow of Paradise. 5 
 
 And when the crow heard, swaying in 
 his nest among the elms, that the friend 
 who had fed and fondled him was in 
 torment— was in the awful Pit of the 
 Great Thirst, with the lidless eyes of 
 Satan fixed unsleepingly upon him — ah, 
 then the crow's heart was humanised by 
 sorrow ; and he grieved for his friend as a 
 woman might have grieved. 
 
 "Will you take him a drop of water ? " 
 said the crow to the robin. 
 
 " He has done nothing to deserve it," 
 said the robin. " He must thirst." 
 
 " Then I will take him a drop of water 
 myself," said the crow. 
 
 So he went to the spring among the 
 elm-trees, where the water bubbled 
 coolingly, and with a drop of water in 
 his beak he flew down the world to 
 hell. 
 
 As he dipped below the horizon into
 
 6 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 the dreary world of darkness he could 
 hear, floating up from the fathomless pit 
 beneath him, the lamentable moaning 
 and sighing of the Lost : and the crow's 
 heart swelled with pity as he listened. 
 That far-off world, with its nest among 
 the elm-trees, he would give up gladly, if 
 he might only ease his friend ! 
 
 Down the vast black depths the crow 
 sank heavily : down, and ever down, 
 unrestingly downwards ; down — down — 
 down — till at last he was in hell. 
 
 In the black Pit of Thirst his friend 
 moaned helplessly : his throat and lips 
 parched into horrible blackness, and the 
 sharp brine running through his veins 
 instead of blood. 
 
 " Water ! Give me water ! " he gasped 
 to the crow. 
 
 The crow sank down and, alighting on 
 his shoulder, poured the cherished drop
 
 The Little Crow of Paradise. J 
 
 of water between the black, parched 
 lips. 
 
 " A hundred years of agony have 
 rolled away from me ! " gasped the man. 
 "Now caw to me once, that I may 
 remember the woodlands . . . ." 
 
 " Caw ! " cried the little black crow : 
 " Caw f caw I" 
 
 But at that moment the Ancient One — 
 who is of stone and without a heart — 
 thrust his huge claws forward : and the 
 crow was in his palm ! 
 
 Then God, who seeth all things, was 
 moved to compassion : and, as His 
 thought became a deed, Satan's huge 
 claws opened and up flew the little crow 
 straight to Paradise ; alighting, singed and 
 panting, on the vast gold walls. 
 
 Except the dove, tio bird has ever 
 entered heaven. The crow might not be 
 admitted to the shining streets of pearl,
 
 8 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 but within sight of heaven he should 
 dwell for ever, said the Merciful One. 
 And on the great gold walls, against 
 which the water of life ripples musically, 
 the Little Crow of Paradise still builds 
 his nest.
 
 A VOYAGE TO THE GOLDEN 
 LAND.
 
 A VOYAGE TO THE GOLDEN 
 LAND. 
 
 " How do'ee knaw they islands ovver 
 there are the wans they mayned ? " asked 
 the Softie, incredulously. 
 
 " Warn't I up Trebedhow* weth them, 
 an' heerd what they said ? They towld 
 me to shaw them they owld burrowsf up 
 'pon cleff, an' when I shawed them to 
 them they gov' me this here sexpence ! " 
 And Jimmy, diving into his trousers'- 
 pocket, displayed the cherished bit of 
 silver on his remarkably dirty palm. 
 
 " Iss ; but what about heaven bein' out 
 
 * The place of graves. t Barrows.
 
 12 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 there to Scilly ?* I want to knaw 'zackly 
 what they said about that." 
 
 " "Well, wan o' the genelmen, he said, 
 says he, 'twar all'ys the way o' some folks 
 (I cudn catch their names) to be buried 
 as close as they cud git to the sunset — 
 that there colour up in the sky when the 
 sun do go down. An' he said how they 
 folks buried up Trebedhow was buried 
 'pon the cleffs, so close to the say as they 
 cud git, so's they'd have onnly a li'l way 
 to go when they was sperrits : onnly 'cross 
 to the islands out past the Wolf."f 
 
 " Iss ? " said Zeke, drawing a deep 
 breath, and his clouded eyes beginning to 
 brighten a little. 
 
 " He said the Wolf out there was where 
 
 * The old British name for the Scilly Islands 
 was Sulleh — the rocks consecrated to the sun. 
 
 + An isolated rock between the Land's End 
 and the Scilly Islands.
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 13 
 
 a gayte black dog lived ; 'a used to ayte 
 up the ghostes, ef 'a cud catch them " 
 
 " Doan't ! " cried Zeke. " I doan't like 
 to hear that ! " 
 
 " But I'm sure 'bout Stilly, Zeke : 
 sartin sure ! " And Jimmy, who was 
 lying on the cliff-top on his stomach, 
 wriggled forward with a look of intense 
 conviction on his face. " I'm sartin sure, 
 'cos I axed the genelman ! ' Es heaven 
 ovver there, sir ; ovver to Stilly, sir ? ' I 
 axed un. An' 'a laughed rayle plaised. 
 weth 'es haands in 'es pockets, an' 'es 
 gayte gowld watch-chain shinin' some 
 lovely. ' So they folks wha's buried here 
 used to think,' says he. ' But es it, sir? ' 
 says I. ' Iss, o' corse,' says he. ' Heaven 
 all'ys ben down behind the sunset,' says 
 he. An' then 'a walked off; jawin' to 'es 
 friends." 
 
 " Well," said Zeke, wistfully, gazing
 
 14 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 away across the wide blue plain of waters 
 to where the distant chain of islets stood 
 out faintly on the horizon, " ef heaven es 
 ovver there, I'd like to sail ower to it. 'A 
 must be some lovely plaace, doan't 'ee 
 think so, Jimmy ? We shud have enough 
 to ayte there, an' no wan to clump* us. 
 We cud go fishin' all day, an' be some 
 happy, you ! " 
 
 " Iss," said Jimmy, but with evident re- 
 luctance. 
 
 " Do 'ee knaw they want to taake us 
 ovver to Maddern ?" f 
 
 " Who towld 'ee so ? " faltered Jimmy, 
 with terrified eyes. 
 
 " I heerd Unclei Mathey sayin' the 
 cart was comin' to fetch us." 
 
 * Strike or beat. 
 
 t The Union Workhouse of the peninsula is 
 situated at Madron. 
 
 X " Uncle" in the peninsula is not necessarily
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 15 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 "Dunnaw. But 'a said 'a was 
 ordered. I'd raather go to heaven to 
 mawther." 
 
 ' " So'd I," said Jimmy, now almost 
 whimpering. " I doan't want to go to 
 Maddern ! " he cried, excitedly. 
 
 " Shall us borra Bill Polglaze's li'l punt 
 an' be off?" 
 
 " Where to ? " 
 
 " Off to heaven, o' corse, ef 'tes ovver 
 to Scilly." 
 
 " I'd like to spend me sexpence fust," 
 said Jimmy. 
 
 " 'Spect there'd be shops ovver there 
 like in to Penzaance.* We cud git wan 
 o' the angels to shaw us ovver town." 
 
 a term implying relationship, old men and women 
 are often called " Uncle " and " Aunt." 
 
 * Tenzance is the chief town of the Land's 
 End peninsula.
 
 1 6 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 " That wed be bra' an' nice ! " said 
 Jimmy. " Iss ; le's go ! " 
 
 So the two children scrambled down 
 from the cliff-top and stole across the beach 
 to the little sandy cove where Bill Pol- 
 glaze's boat was drawn up beneath the 
 cliff. 
 
 It was a wonderful voyage : if they 
 were never to have another, the memory 
 of this one would last them for a life- 
 time. 
 
 The wide plain of waters, so superbly 
 blue in the distance, pulsed around them 
 in a glassy, green-tinged mass, as light 
 and buoyant as their own thoughts. And 
 when they glanced over the boat into the 
 depths beneath them they could see the 
 most exquisite patches and beds of colour 
 melting into each other and making a 
 very fairyland for the eyes. The white 
 flutter of the waves at the foot of the
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 17 
 
 cliffs, and across the Cowloes, the Shark's 
 Fin, and other rocks in the vicinity, only 
 served to bring out with added vividness 
 the brilliant hue of the vast level plain. 
 Even the rich, creamy foam that frothed 
 around the Longships* was entirely 
 robbed of its sinister significance by the 
 hot and glittering sunshine and the 
 placid beauty of the heavens, whose 
 deep blue arch was unfiecked by a 
 cloud. 
 
 The wide-pinioned gulls wheeling 
 buoyantly to and fro, even the low-flying 
 sable cormorants, with their heavily- 
 flapping wings and their awkward out- 
 lines, were a delight to their eyes this 
 delicious afternoon. And when the 
 children descried an occasional ' school ' 
 of fishes, they fell to watching the 
 
 * The reef on which the Land's End lighthouse 
 is placed.
 
 1 8 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 roughening surface of the water, and the 
 poppling and the tiny flashes of white, 
 with an intent curiosity as insatiable as 
 their wishes, for, children though they 
 were, they carried humanity in their 
 hearts. 
 
 " Ef we onnly had a line ! " said 
 Jimmy, regretfully. " I got a hook in 
 me trousers'-pocket. Wish I'd spent me 
 sexpence in a line ! " 
 
 " 'Spect the angels 'ull lend us lines," 
 said Zeke, contentedly. " Thee can tell 
 them thee got a hook : we cud git some 
 fish for their brekfus." 
 
 "Do 'ee think God'll be like the 
 p'leeceman," said Jimmy : "like that wan 
 that come from Penzaance to taake-up 
 faather?" 
 
 "No," said Zeke, decisively. "'Spect 
 'a'll be more like Mester Trenwith, what 
 left us slaip in 'es loft an' gov us saffern
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 19 
 
 buns.* I've heerd o' he afore : He's all 
 right, Jimmy." 
 
 "Well," said Jimmy, dubiously, "ef he 
 doan't taake me sexpence." 
 
 " He waan't do that," said Zeke. " He 
 got more money, 'spect, than the Queen. 
 Why 'es house es gowld from the hale to 
 the spence ! "t 
 
 " I'm glad," said Jimmy. " So he 
 waan't want me sexpence ; " and his hand 
 dived into his trousers'-pocket to lovingly 
 finger his solitary coin. " I'm rayle glad," 
 said Jimmy, " I shall like He, b'leeve." 
 
 As they passed the Longships' reef, 
 with its tall white lighthouse, the sun was 
 flashing brightly on the panes of the 
 lantern, and the children gazed at the 
 structure long and curiously. 
 
 * Buns coloured with saffron, a dainty of the 
 peninsula. 
 
 t From the entrance-hall to the cupboard. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 " 'Spect weth their glasses* they cud 
 see into heaven from there," remarked 
 Jimmy to the Softie, as they left the reef 
 behind them. 
 
 " Iss ; they'll see us an' be able to tell 
 faather. When 'a come out o' clinkf 
 p'raps 'a'll come ovver to us," added the 
 Softie, wistfully, looking back at the reef. 
 
 " Mawther'll be there waitin' for us, o' 
 corse," said Jimmy. " ' Spect she'll ha : 
 tay ready 'genst we come, like she used 
 to." 
 
 "Iss; 'spect so." 
 
 " I'm hungry ; arn't thee ? " 
 
 " Iss : I cud ayte a mossel as thick as 
 me fist." 
 
 " Well, we must maake haste ovver," 
 said Jimmy. Then suddenly, " I caan't 
 see the islands, can thee ? " 
 
 " No. But they're ovver there, right 
 * Telescopes. + Prison.
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 21 
 
 'nuff," said Zeke. " We must raw more 
 harder. Le's sing, shall us ? P'raps the 
 angels 'ull hear us an' look out for us." 
 
 And with that the two children began 
 to sing at their shrillest : — 
 
 We're goin' home, 
 
 No more to roam, 
 No more to sin and sorra ; 
 
 No more to wear 
 
 The brow o' care — 
 We're goin' home tomorra ! 
 
 Gradually, as the sun sank lower and 
 lower, the waters around them seemed to 
 widen in their loneliness and a chilling 
 sense of fear began to awake in the children. 
 
 " Shall us go back, Zeke ? " asked 
 Jimmy, quiveringly. 
 
 " We mus be 'most got to heaven, I shud 
 think," said the Softie, as he gazed up wist- 
 fully at the sky in the west, which was 
 now one mass of glowing gold. " See,
 
 22 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 Jimmy ! " and he nodded his head 
 towards the sky, " we caan't be far from 
 the sunset, can us ? An' down behind 
 the sunset es heaven, the genelman said." 
 
 " I'm afeerd," said Jimmy. " I want 
 to go back." 
 
 "Well," said Zeke : "but then we 
 shaan't git to heaven." 
 
 "Thee shall ha' haaf o' my sexpence ; 
 ef thee'll le' me go back." 
 
 " Well," said Zeke, with reluctant slow- 
 ness. And with that they endeavoured to 
 turn the boat's head shoreward; and 
 evidently believed they had accomplished 
 the task. For some time the swell had 
 hidden the land from them, and, as the 
 cliffs were invisible from the seats of the 
 punt, they now took it for granted that 
 they were rowing back to land. 
 
 Such a wonderful sunset they had 
 never seen before. The enormous crim-
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 23 
 
 son flames that spread across the sky, 
 extending from the horizon to far beyond 
 the zenith, made a feast of colour so 
 superbly brilliant that the magnificence of 
 the spectacle awed them almost painfully, 
 and the two little castaways felt half in- 
 clined to cry. 
 
 Under the gigantic waves of flame, the 
 hollows of the swell became tinged with 
 vermilion, and the air seemed dazzlingly 
 full of gold. 
 
 " We must ha' got nearer to heaven 
 than we knawed," whispered Jimmy. 
 
 " I wish we'd gone on," Zeke sighed, 
 regretfully. 
 
 When the keenness of the rich, clear 
 colours began to fade, and to the crimson 
 and purple splendours overhead there 
 succeeded a wistful flush of violet, and 
 finally a faint and pensive lemon that over- 
 flowed nearly half the heavens, then the
 
 24 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 children became aware that Fear was in 
 the boat with them, and their hearts 
 throbbed painfully under their ragged 
 little shirts. 
 
 At last there could be no doubt that 
 it was evening. In the east the moon, 
 that hitherto had been a phantom, began 
 to fill with light and glow silverly among 
 the clouds, and while the crests of the 
 long grey waves glimmered faintly, in the 
 dusky hollows it was certainly night. 
 
 The cormorants and gulls had winged 
 rheir way to the land ; the sky, that all 
 day had been so blue and boundless, had 
 narrowed cruelly and now hung over 
 them with a scowl ; and the children were 
 left with no other company than the 
 complaining wind and the great wan 
 moon. 
 
 Once they glimpsed a wandering 
 ' school ' of mackerel, that was making
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 25 
 
 a shimmer of silver drops amid the grey 
 undulations ; and at another time a band 
 of ungainly porpoises passed so close to 
 the boat that the children shrieked in 
 terror, thinking the uncanny snorts were 
 those of ghosts who were in pursuit of 
 them. " Mawther ! mawther ! " little 
 Jimmy screeched. 
 
 As the wind began to wail and sigh 
 across the water, Jimmy whimperingly 
 complained that he was ' steeving ' with 
 the cold. On which the Softie took off 
 his own ragged coat and affectionately 
 buttoned it around his little brother's 
 neck. 
 
 Without knowing it, the children had 
 drifted into the ' Chops ' of the Channel 
 — into the fairway of the unending 
 procession of ships that rounds the wild 
 Land's End from every point of the 
 compass.
 
 26 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 By this time all the lights of the 
 ' Chops ' were burning brightly. The 
 fixed white light of the Longships' reef, 
 the alternate red and white flashes of the 
 Wolf, and the two fixed lights on the 
 dreaded Seven Stones : at no time, as they 
 drifted helplessly with the tide — which 
 outside the Kettle's Bottom was running 
 like a mill-race — were the children 
 beyond the range of one or the other of 
 these. 
 
 Their position was, indeed, one of the 
 most imminent danger. But the children 
 were cowed and numbed into apathy, of 
 which the torpor, happily, was heaviest 
 on their thoughts. 
 
 " Le's cuddle together, Jimmy ! " said 
 the Softie, gently. " It'll keep 'ee 
 warmer. Cuddle up to me ! " 
 
 And while Jimmy snuggled up against 
 the coatless Softie, the latter fell to pray-
 
 Voyage to the Golden Land. 27 
 
 ing in his uncouth fashion : praying till 
 the big tears glistened on his cheeks. 
 
 Presently little Jimmy whimpered him- 
 self to sleep. But all through the night 
 the Softie remained watchful, revolving in 
 his dim and crippled mind the question 
 whether God would send one of His 
 angels to them, or whether, from the 
 lonely crag of the Wolf, its terrible name- 
 sake would steal on them through the 
 darkness, and its strong teeth would 
 crunch them, bones and all, as a dog's 
 white teeth might crunch up a rat. 
 
 Suddenly Zeke was aware of a deep, 
 mysterious humming, coming towards 
 him from somewhere out of the night. 
 
 "The Wolf! the wolf!" he screeched, 
 in his terror, vainly trying to wake up 
 Jimmy. 
 
 And at the same instant, something 
 took shape amid the greyness, and he
 
 28 • Tales of the Masque. 
 
 perceived a huge, black cliff towering 
 high above him. 
 
 A second afterwards the heavy iron 
 steamship was ploughing her way steadily 
 through the long grey swell, her portholes 
 gleaming, and her lights twinkling 
 merrily, and her great screw churning 
 the water into foam. But in the deep 
 black hollows of the pitiless ocean Zeke 
 and Jimmy were struggling frantically, 
 the water choking in their throats. 
 
 In the darkness neither could see the 
 eyes of the other, but they clung together 
 tightly, so precious was the human clasp. 
 
 And in this way, paralysed and speech- 
 less with terror, they sank down into the 
 vast abyss.
 
 THE MAN AND THE 
 MONSTER.
 
 THE MAN AND THE MONSTER. 
 
 While he was a child they concealed 
 from him the existence of this Monster, 
 of whom his parents stood in awe and to 
 whom he himself was born a thrall. His 
 parents, he imagined, held the strings 
 of the universe, and according as they 
 whispered so the heart of God was 
 swayed. 
 
 But when he grew older he became 
 aware of forces not to be propitiated even 
 at the hearthstone, and especially of a 
 shadowy Something in the background — 
 some gigantic presence, some monster — 
 of whom everyone stood in fear.
 
 32 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 " I should like to see this monster face 
 to face," he thought. 
 
 He implored his parents to let him face 
 it ; but they dissuaded him affectionately. 
 
 " Not yet," said the father : and the 
 mother echoed, " Not yet." 
 
 " You will have to face and wrestle 
 with him presently," they assured him. 
 " He stands waiting for us by the wayside, 
 and his fetters few of us escape." 
 
 "Then have you met him, mother?" 
 asked the lad, incredulously. " And you, 
 too, father ? " 
 
 And his parents answered " Yes." 
 
 " And do you wear his fetters ? " And 
 the little fellow looked them over from 
 head to foot. 
 
 The father glanced at the mother, and, 
 as he did so, he sighed deeply. And the 
 mother, remembering many things, could 
 only murmur, " Yes."
 
 The Man and the Monster. 33 
 
 The lad was astonished and greatly 
 pained. This Monster, then, had grieved 
 and annoyed his parents ! Very well, 
 when he met Him he would have this to 
 avenge. The World should see he could 
 remember ! And he thrilled at the 
 thought. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " laughed the Monster, who 
 had overheard the boast: "you think of 
 the World already, young master, do you ? 
 Possibly we shall not meet as strangers, 
 after all." 
 
 At last, when he was grown to man- 
 hood, Nathan was one day going towards 
 the house of his sweetheart — who was a 
 woodman's daughter living at the edge of 
 the forest — when he was staggered by 
 a sudden blow dealt him between the 
 eyes. 
 
 " Better think before going farther ! " 
 said a hoarse voice close to him. " Why 
 
 D
 
 34 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 make a fool of yourself? What will the 
 world say ? " 
 
 " What do I care for the world ! " cried 
 Nathan, angrily, as he turned and fronted 
 his insolent opponent. And immediately 
 he was aware that it was the Monster he 
 had so often heard of who now stood 
 here barring his path. 
 
 " Who are you, that you should dare to 
 meddle with vie ? " cried Nathan, passion- 
 ately. 
 
 " I don't argue," said the Monster, 
 " that's a simple waste of breath. But 
 you'll not pass me without wrestling with 
 me : and the one who wins rules the 
 roast." 
 
 So they began to wrestle together at the 
 edge of the wood. 
 
 Such a wrestling as this Nathan had 
 never before experienced : it was a wrest- 
 ling with the muscles and with the nerves,
 
 The Man and the Monster. 
 
 50 
 
 and with the brain most of all : a wrest- 
 ling that at last bewildered him so com- 
 pletely that in it he almost lost grip on his 
 identity, and the very forces of the 
 universe seemed leagued against him for 
 his defeat. 
 
 The air around them, as they fought, 
 seemed full of voices — so craftily could 
 the Monster manipulate his tones — and 
 the background of the neighbouring 
 forest, by a touch of magic, seemed no 
 less than the vast panorama of life, with 
 its myriad appeals to the memory and the 
 imagination, its seductions for the eye and 
 its flatteries for the heart. 
 
 And now Nathan was certain that 
 this Monster he was wrestling with was 
 some potent magician, not a mere mortal 
 man. 
 
 One fetter after another the Monster 
 threw over Nathan, and to break through 
 
 D 2
 
 ^6 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 them all seemed a task beyond his 
 strength. 
 
 There was a chain woven of the hair 
 of his father and mother, and since the 
 hairs seemed alive and endowed with 
 minatory voices, how could Nathan have 
 the heart to break through this ? 
 
 There was a chain composed of books, 
 and these the volumes most treasured — 
 and there was a chain of golden coins that 
 chinked temptingly in his ears. 
 
 No sooner had Nathan burst one of the 
 chains asunder than it was either pieced 
 together or the pressure of the others was 
 increased. 
 
 Nathan could not understand it : he 
 was wrestling with more than the Monster 
 — he was wrestling with his own moods 
 and sentiments as well. And he had a 
 traitor lodged within him who was always 
 urging him to submit.
 
 The Man and the Monster. 37 
 
 In vain Nathan tugged at, and writhed 
 around the Monster ; he was struggling 
 with Colossus, and could move him not 
 one whit. 
 
 Worst of all, he could not even elude 
 him and take to flight. Once prisoned in 
 that clutch he was prisoned beyond 
 escape. 
 
 His brain reeled as the panorama swept 
 distractingly before him, where he should 
 only have seen the crowding trees of the 
 forest : and the whisper of the many 
 voices, and the straining pressure of the 
 fetters .... he was unable to contend 
 against them and against the traitor in his 
 heart. 
 
 " I can't .... I give in ! " he gasped, 
 suddenly growing limp. 
 
 " You were bound to give in some 
 time," growled the Monster, carelessly. 
 " But take a peep at yourself in that pool
 
 38 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 yonder, friend. You will find you have 
 been wrestling with me longer than you 
 thought." 
 
 Nathan stooped to scan his features, 
 and lo ! he was grey and wrinkled. A 
 cold shiver ran through him. " Have I 
 lost so much of life ! " he groaned. " And 
 what have I gained in exchange ? " he 
 asked, dazedly, his eyes fixed on a band 
 of mourners who were slowly bearing a 
 coffin through the wood. 
 
 " Nothing that I know of," laughed 
 the Monster, " except wrinkles and a 
 ragged coat." 
 
 " And who are you, after all ? " asked 
 Nathan, gazing up at him. " I thought 
 someone whispered your name to me just 
 now." 
 
 "And what did they tell you I am 
 called ? " quoth the burly Monster.
 
 The Man and the Monster. 39 
 
 " Fate I " whispered Nathan, seating 
 himself heavily on a bank. 
 
 " A big name that," said the Monster, 
 laughingly. " I could be content with a 
 cheaper one. How do you like The 
 World V 
 
 " Then I was a fool to wrestle with 
 you," said Nathan, dejectedly ; his eyes 
 still watching the vanishing band of 
 mourners. 
 
 "Very likely," said the Monster : " but 
 now that I have conquered you .... 
 Don't stand mooning like that, man ! 
 Here ! buy a coat."
 
 EGO SPEAKS.
 
 EGO SPEAKS. 
 
 Fragments of a C07ifidence. 
 
 The dear, dear Earth, our mother and 
 protector, who feeds us with the known 
 and establishes our strength with the 
 familiar, who is always with us whoever 
 leaves us, and who holds our bodies till 
 they are dust : her attractions for us are 
 infinite and her love is inexhaustible : she 
 is our dear, dear mother, and we are her 
 children to the end. 
 
 But when Death's lean fingers finally 
 close upon us and the familiar swiftly and
 
 44 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 irrevocably recedes ; when the sensations 
 are unravelled and the weft of them 
 ruined fatally, and the consciousness 
 crumbles drowsily and the heart stands 
 still ; ah ! then, when the soul is flung out 
 into the darkness, what Power is there 
 that shall comfort us, and to what shall 
 we gravitate in our need ? 
 
 II. 
 
 I pass over the maddening agony of 
 my murder. To lie there helpless in the 
 darkened lane and have the life beaten 
 savagely out of my body, was an experi- 
 ence grim and appallingly gruesome. 
 The tramp, to whose greed and ferocity I 
 had succumbed, I would have murdered 
 myself, had I only had the power. But 
 my body lay there wrecked and dead : and 
 the unseen Ecro was adrift in the world.
 
 Ego Speaks. 45 
 
 The unfamiliar — the unfamiliar ! — I 
 had always hated it. I had no strength 
 of imagination to array my sympathies in 
 line with it, and no unsatisfied hunger 
 that made me crave to pierce its core. I 
 had always hated death for its secrecy 
 and its strangeness, for the things it 
 concealed and the new experiences it 
 would compel one to : and here was I 
 dead and the book of the familiar closed 
 irrevocably ! 
 
 If only annihilation might have 
 followed the stoppage of the pulse ! 
 
 III. 
 
 And now my grisly experiences began. 
 
 Up to the moment when the shrine of 
 my personality was shattered, I had been 
 a quiet, well-behaved, tax-paying citizen : 
 a married man with a wife and a couple
 
 46 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 of children, and with a small circle of 
 intimate acquaintances, whose respect, if 
 not their active affection, I was presumed 
 to have secured and retained per- 
 manently. 
 
 The Ego, as it finally was dislodged 
 from the body, had vitality enough to 
 take the world by the beard, so proud 
 and energetic and self-sufficient did it 
 seem. But even while it gathered up the 
 world in its glance, it was conscious of 
 a certain drain of vitality in less than an 
 instant after it was dislodged. 
 
 With the loss of its body it had lost 
 more than its protection : it had lost the 
 kernel and crown of its consequence as 
 well. And it seemed to me, unless I 
 misinterpret, that its health and strength 
 were not inherent, but depended on the 
 attitude of its fellows towards it, so that, 
 practically, from the moment it was dis-
 
 Ego Speaks. 47 
 
 lodged from its envelope it began fatally 
 to shrivel and collapse. 
 
 I watched the tramp empty and toss 
 away my purse, take my watch and chain 
 and scarf-pin and even the pencil-case I 
 carried, and then, with a grunt at the 
 smallness of his booty, he dragged my 
 body among the ferns that grew rankly 
 against the hedge and, looking around 
 hurriedly, took to his heels. 
 
 I was distracted with a multiplicity of 
 emotions. I wished to watch the body ; 
 I wanted to dog the heels of the 
 murderer ; and I desired to see my wife 
 to inform her of the deed and of where 
 she might find the body and of how she 
 might find the man. 
 
 Finally I decided to follow the 
 murderer for the present ; lest the man 
 should escape my vengeance after all. 
 
 But, to my dismay, the man kept
 
 •4-3 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 steadily plodding onward. He had soon 
 left the scene of the murder miles behind 
 him, and evidently had settled down to 
 an all-night tramp. He appeared to me 
 to be bound for London, which was 
 distant from here about fifty miles. 
 
 At last I gave up the wearying pursuit 
 and rapidly flitted to the neat little villa 
 which my consciousness had called home 
 while it had a body at command. 
 
 A more lame and impotent conclusion 
 to an errand had never befallen me in 
 the whole of my experience. 
 
 I was absolutely powerless to do any- 
 thing. There was I in the house, unseen 
 and unrecognised, and unable to com- 
 municate, even in the most rudimentary 
 fashion, with those who were nearest and 
 dearest to me on earth. 
 
 To add to my bewilderment and 
 appalling loneliness, the part which the
 
 Ego Speaks. 49 
 
 body had played in my life began to be 
 apparent to me at last. Without it I 
 found I was barred, most effectually, 
 from definite communication with those 
 still alive. I might manage in some way 
 to impress a consciousness — might com- 
 municate to it an indeterminate impulse, 
 or arouse in it a transient hallucination — 
 but the capture of the attention, as by 
 personal magic, I was henceforth 
 absolutely powerless to effect. Neither 
 through the eye, nor the ear, nor even 
 through the touch, could I manage to 
 impress a being still alive. And shut out 
 from communication by any of these 
 avenues, I found myself now as impotent 
 as a dream. 
 
 Once or twice I managed to arouse in 
 my wife a casual uneasiness as to my 
 prolonged absence. But she was a placid- 
 natured woman, not in the least senti- 
 
 E
 
 50 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 mental, and in the cosy domestic 
 atmosphere the husband was not missed. 
 
 In vain I endeavoured to directly 
 reach her thoughts : to convey to her some 
 definite, unmistakable idea, such as a 
 man may convey by a phrase or even a 
 glance. She leaned back in the arm- 
 chair dandling her infant placidly and 
 cooing to it in the most matter-of-fact 
 way in the world. 
 
 The sense of my isolation, and of my 
 absolute helplessness, was an experience 
 far more appallingly cruel than you who 
 are alive can in any way comprehend. 
 
 The expulsion of the Ego from its 
 battered fleshy tenement, grisly though it 
 was, was less gruesome than this. To be 
 a helpless sheaf and tangle of memories, 
 with nothing but the fragile knot of 
 consciousness to bind them into a 
 temporary whole ; and to feel the knot
 
 Ego Speaks. 5 i 
 
 loosening and the sheaf falling asunder — 
 falling into a ruin profound and irreme- 
 diable — this, indeed, was the very bitter- 
 ness of death. I would have welcomed 
 instant annihilation as a boon. 
 
 As the hours lengthened my wife grew 
 restless, and by midnight she had at last 
 become thoroughly alarmed. 
 
 The next morning my absence had 
 grown portentous, and the police were 
 communicated with and set on the quest. 
 
 The body was soon discovered and 
 carried home : but the murderer had by 
 this time escaped securely, and — to make 
 a long story short— he still remains 
 uncaught. 
 
 IV. 
 
 At the funeral, so great was the 
 interest this aroused, Ego swelled with 
 life almost to its old dimensions.
 
 52 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 The horses, with their plumes of 
 feathers and their velvet trappings, paced 
 slowly through the streets with the hearse 
 behind them. Through the glass sides of 
 the hearse one could see the long oak 
 coffin resting on the shining brass sup- 
 ports and almost smothered in wreaths of 
 hothouse flowers. But the dim form 
 seated at the head of the coffin — the Ego 
 from whom the veil had fallen for ever — 
 this the living could not see, however 
 closely they might look. 
 
 The streets were fuller, however, of 
 dead folks than they were of the living, 
 and the former, as they glided along 
 dumb and invisible, glanced sadly at the 
 wan and marrowless figure and bowed 
 their heads to it as those who understood. 
 
 The journey through the noisy, 
 crowded haunts, from which I was now 
 for ever exiled, was a time of strange
 
 Ego Speaks. 53 
 
 experiences as I sat crouched on the 
 coffin. To think the bounds of my 
 knowledge were enlarged so inconceiv- 
 ably, yet I was crippled so fatally and 
 cut off cruelly from so much ! 
 
 I was taking my last tithe of interest 
 from humanity. This drive through the 
 streets in the awful solitude of the hearse, 
 with the trappings on the horses and the 
 wreaths on the coffin .... and then the 
 pit in the graveyard for the abandoned 
 body, and for the spirit the vast black 
 pit of the past! 
 
 V. 
 
 When the funeral was over and the 
 murder had become forgotten — swept out 
 of memory by the press of other incidents 
 — Ego found its life oozing steadily away. 
 
 My wife that had been — my widow that 
 was — was fairly young and reasonably
 
 54 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 attractive, and before her year of con- 
 ventional mourning had expired she was 
 again a wife, and I was to her but a 
 memory : and a very thin and bloodless 
 memory too. 
 
 Even the children ceased to trouble 
 much about "father" now they had a 
 newer flesh-and-blood father to make pets 
 of them : and Ego shrivelled daily, and is 
 shrivelling still. 
 
 I had fancied, while I was still clothed 
 with a body, that, if I were freed from the 
 material thraldom of the flesh, I would 
 roam about the world feasting hungrily on 
 its scenes until I was thoroughly sated 
 with whatever it had to offer. 
 
 But what are art and literature, or 
 scenery however beautiful, to the un- 
 housed Ego with no register for its ex- 
 periences, with its capacities like slipping 
 sand, and the walls of its treasure-house
 
 Ego Speaks. 55 
 
 broken down ? The experiences of the 
 senses — how could I garner them ? The 
 experiences of the soul — wonderful and 
 terrible though I know them — how could 
 I store them up except in the terms of the 
 senses ? how could I hold them to ponder 
 over ? how could I share them if I 
 wished ? 
 
 I found the homeless Ego so helpless in 
 itself — so dependent on those who had 
 known of its existence and to whom alone 
 it could turn for consideration — that I was 
 practically rooted to the habitat of my 
 memories ; and only there, and along 
 these lines, could I exist. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Today I am still feebly existent. To- 
 morrow I may be wholly forgotten : and 
 shall have ceased.
 
 JOANNA.
 
 JOANNA. 
 
 Every one for miles around knew 
 Joanna. She was a tall, sun-browned, 
 shabbily-dressed woman, with freckled 
 hands, " as brown as a toad's back," and 
 with thick sandy hair that she stowed 
 away carelessly and unattractively under 
 a ragged straw hat. But her pale blue 
 eyes were quiet and patient, full of 
 mild resignation and " as open as the 
 day." 
 
 She had an old grey donkey — as patient 
 and harmless as herself — and she earned 
 her living as a seller of griglan brooms* 
 
 * Heath brooms.
 
 60 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 and scouring gard,* " hurts "t and black- 
 berries (in their season) being also among 
 her specialities. 
 
 Joanna lived up in the lonely "high 
 countries " — the forlorn stretch of treeless 
 moors in which the lesser hills unpictur- 
 esquely culminate — and she was only 
 known to the cottagers in the " low coun- 
 tries " as one among the many pedlars of 
 the district, though notable for her honesty 
 and her sparing use of speech. 
 
 After their fashion, the cottagers were 
 rather kind to her. Occasionally one 
 would give her an old patched gown, a 
 worn turnover,} or a discarded pair of 
 boots ; and, as no one had ever seen her 
 with a new hat, the presumption was 
 
 * Decomposed granite, used for scouring pur- 
 poses. 
 t Whortleberries. 
 
 X A small shawl for the shoulders.
 
 Joanna. 6\ 
 
 that her straw headgear was always ob- 
 tained as a gift, or else by way of friendly 
 barter. 
 
 Joanna was very good to the poor ass 
 that she so stolidly trudged beside all the 
 year round. She was never known to 
 overburden him, or even to strike him, 
 and she would often wait patiently on the 
 lonely highway while Neddy cropped a 
 meal from the tall hedges or took a drink 
 from some narrow rillet trickling through 
 the grass. 
 
 Neddy carried a couple of coarse canvas 
 bags, slung one on either side of him 
 and filled with scouring gard, and on his 
 back were piled the purple-tipped griglan 
 brooms. Joanna carried a large, shallow 
 basket, filled with " hurts " or with black- 
 berries, according to the season, and some- 
 times with bunches of juicy elder-berries, 
 that were carefully disposed on layers of
 
 6z Tales of the Masque. 
 
 ferns. Occasionally the basket would be 
 filled with elder-blossom — which the 
 cottagers used largely for making elder-tea 
 for colds — or with a purple heap of sloes 
 and " bullens,"* that were ultimately to 
 be manufactured into home-made wines. 
 Joanna was also an excellent knitter, and 
 sometimes she would bring with her 
 knitted night-caps and stockings, and even 
 an occasional pair of mittens. But for 
 these there was not a very remunerative 
 sale, and as the production of them meant 
 the outlay of a good many coppers — 
 —often, in fact, as much as a shilling — 
 Joanna could only indulge sparingly in 
 speculations of this kind, and at such 
 times she was always tremulously nervous 
 till she had realized her capital and felt 
 financially safe. 
 
 Of Joanna and her antecedents no one 
 * Wild plums.
 
 Joanna. 6$ 
 
 knew anything. Even her surname, if 
 she had one, had been dropped by the 
 way. She was for the cottagers merely a 
 weather-beaten wanderer, apparently as 
 friendless as the ass that trudged beside 
 her and with scarcely more pleasure in 
 her grey and narrow life. 
 
 But in her tiny cottage on Boswavas 
 moor, almost in the shadow of the ruined 
 circle of Boskednan, and with the bosses 
 of Cam Galva towering blackly above her, 
 Joanna, though lonely, was by no means 
 unhappy. 
 
 All around her stretched the wide, 
 wind-harried moor. The heather grew in 
 vast, tangled masses, with stalks as thick 
 as a child's wrist, and the sturdy furze- 
 bushes were so compact and tall that in 
 places they were as high as a six-foot man. 
 All day long, in the hot sunshine, the 
 kites kept wheeling to and fro across the
 
 64 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 moor and the finches and whinchats 
 flitted gossiping above the tussocks, the 
 weasels and brown stoats watching them 
 the while. And Joanna, looking out on 
 the landscape spread before her, would 
 watch the cows in the distant meadows, 
 and the smoke from the cottage chimneys, 
 and, listening to the hooters* of the 
 mines and music of the skylarks, would 
 try to believe that she was as happy as 
 the best. 
 
 Since the death of her mother, years 
 ago, Joanna had lived alone in the little 
 cob-walledf cottage with its single room 
 and its dilapidated roof of thatch, and 
 was content if she could get bread enough 
 to stay her hunger and could manage to 
 keep warm in spite of wind and rain. She 
 slept on a heap of ferns in the corner of 
 the hut, with her clothes and some ragged 
 
 * Steam whistles. t Earth-walled.
 
 Joanna. 65 
 
 old sacks for bedding, and in winter 
 stopped up the chinks of her dwelling 
 with ferns and heather as best she could. 
 Her fuel, of which she was very sparing, 
 consisted of turfs and furze, which she 
 obtained from the moor, with an occa- 
 sional gift of cinders from a neighbouring 
 mine, and her food and clothing she 
 obtained by peddling among the hamlets, 
 scouring the moors around her cottage to 
 obtain the necessary stock-in-trade. 
 
 It was a hard life, but she had never 
 known an easier one : and Joanna, after 
 a fashion, was content. 
 
 Her mother had been a bal girl* on the 
 floors! of Ding Dong,J and Joanna was a 
 little unwelcome "come by chance" — an 
 
 Mine girl. t Surface workings. 
 
 X I>i"g Dong is the name of a well-known 
 mine on the moor ; it is supposed to he oneof the 
 3l mines in Cornwall.
 
 66 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 infant which no one in the mine would 
 father, though it had been whispered at 
 the time, among the other bal maidens, 
 that she was really the child of the captain 
 himself. 
 
 Joanna's mother had died when her 
 daughter was about forty, and from that 
 time Joanna had lived absolutely alone ; 
 unless Neddy, the ass, who lived on the 
 moors around the cottage, should be con- 
 sidered, under the circumstances, as con- 
 stituting a companion. 
 
 The winter, just past, had been a hard 
 one for Joanna : how she had kept alive 
 through it she would have found it difficult 
 to explain. In fact, if the strict truth 
 must be told, she had been compelled to 
 do a little shame-faced begging among the 
 distant hamlets between Morvah and St. 
 Just : having, even in this dire pinch of 
 necessity, found it impossible to summon
 
 Joanna. 67 
 
 up sufficient courage to beg in the villages 
 through which she ordinarily peddled. 
 
 At last, however, Spring was approach- 
 ing. February, with its cruel blasts, was 
 over, and March was now more than a 
 week old. The grass had already begun 
 to sprout on the hillsides, the thorns were 
 budding beneath the sheltering earns, and 
 here and there a patch of gorse was in 
 blossom. As Joanna stood at her door 
 in the morning she could hear the bubbling, 
 liquid trills of the skylarks, and occasion- 
 ally the song of a solitary yellow-hammer 
 rippled around the cottage from the 
 bushes in its rear. 
 
 She was thinking that soon she might 
 be able to get a few days' work among 
 the field-hands down in the lowlands at 
 Gulval — her mother having made her 
 promise, most solemnly, that she would 
 never take a job on the floors of the mine 
 
 f 2
 
 68 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 — and in this way she would be able to 
 " rub along " through a week or two, 
 until she could start again on her 
 rounds through the little rain-sodden 
 hamlets. 
 
 Suddenly, however, there came an un- 
 expected change. 
 
 As Joanna looked out across the moor 
 one morning, she became aware that the 
 world was full of gloom. That the wind 
 was high she had known all night, so 
 loudly had it screamed and wailed around 
 the cottage ; but she was unprepared for 
 the sullen threatenings of the heavens. 
 
 The distant bay, which lay far below 
 her eyry, was almost indistinguishable in 
 the portentous shadow, and Joanna felt a 
 growing sense of discomfort : it was so 
 lonely up here in the heart of the gloom. 
 
 She suddenly wished that she had 
 neighbours near her ; that she had friends
 
 Joanna. 69 
 
 of some kind — that she was anything 
 except alone. 
 
 How terrible it would be (she thought, 
 with a shudder) if she should one day die 
 alone in her cottage : alone with the vague 
 white face of Death ! 
 
 Her heart grew heavy, and there was 
 trouble in her eyes. 
 
 All the morning the wind kept steadily 
 rising, till at last it had increased to a 
 whole gale. The world was as dark as if 
 it were sundown in December, and the 
 air was so full of the rush and roar of the 
 wind that Joanna, pressing her face 
 against the window, was almost terrified 
 at the -wild hurly-burly round the house. 
 
 Presently thin flakes of snow began to 
 appear, driven before the wind like fine 
 white spindrift. In a little while the 
 world was seamed with white wrinkles, 
 and clots of snow began to cling to the
 
 /O Tales of the Masque. 
 
 bushes and boulders, the whirling flakes 
 thickening in the air all the time.* 
 
 Soon it was impossible to see through 
 the window-panes, the flakes were plas- 
 tered up against them in such compact 
 white scales. 
 
 Joanna unfastened the door to go out 
 and scrape the panes, but the pressure of 
 the indomitable wind was so great that, 
 when she drew the bar, the storm almost 
 hurled her off her feet. So persistent and 
 savage was the roaring assault that, 
 although she at once endeavoured to 
 close the door again, she was unable to 
 accomplish the task, try as she would. 
 
 She could scarcely believe the evidence 
 of her own senses. And even while she 
 was straining and tugging at the door — 
 pulling at it with her hands, pressing 
 
 * This was the great blizzard of the 9th March, 
 1 891.
 
 Joanna. yi 
 
 against it with her body — the snow was 
 whirling about her and almost blinding 
 her, and there was a drift across the floor 
 nearly half a foot deep. 
 
 Again and again Joanna tried to close 
 the door : but the pitiless blizzard was far 
 too strong for her. The earthen walls of 
 the cottage were plastered with the flakes, 
 and they even made a sputtering 
 lodgment on the hearth. 
 
 Joanna's despair was terrible, and 
 tragic in its intensity. The tall, gaunt 
 woman, in her sodden garments, stood in 
 the middle of the cottage knee-deep in 
 snow, the flakes clinging to her dress 
 and clotting on her hair, and the wind 
 buffeting her and stinging her with 
 its icy burden till she felt her heart was 
 bursting and she could scarcely draw her 
 breath. 
 
 The fury of the wind, here on the up-
 
 7 2 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 lands, was so appalling that its uproar 
 alone was sufficient to unnerve one ; and 
 when the storm began at last to strip the 
 creaking rafters and she was aware that 
 the rotten thatch was being torn away 
 like paper, Joanna fell on her knees in 
 the thick white snowdrift and wailingly 
 buried her face in her hands. 
 
 She had lived alone and had tried to 
 be contented. But to die alone — in this 
 way. Oh, it seemed hard ! 
 
 She could have wept for herself : but 
 the tears were frozen on her lids. 
 
 She was afraid — she was afraid ! 
 
 Was it Death that crouched in front of 
 her, with such a pinched white face and 
 with such blackness in his eyes ? 
 
 The world was full of people — oh, 
 would no one succour her ? 
 
 If the wind would ' go to lie : ' if the 
 snow would only cease !
 
 Joanna. 73 
 
 She fell to sobbing in her helplessness 
 .... she was so weak she could merely 
 moan. At last the silence of exhaustion 
 supervened. 
 
 Across the roofless cottage the wind 
 howled exultantly and the snow fell 
 thick and fast between the rafters. 
 
 Night came down as Joanna lay here 
 exhausted — the great brute Night that 
 sees and knows so much — but Joanna 
 did not tremble now to look in its eyes. 
 Her own eyes were glazing : her ears 
 were already dulled. What she saw was 
 not the dense and menacing darkness, 
 but the vast green moor as she had 
 known it in summer, with the finches 
 twittering across it and the sun gleaming 
 in the distance .... 
 
 The snow deepened above her body. 
 Joanna was at rest.
 
 THE CALLING OF THE SEA.
 
 THE CALLING OF THE SEA. 
 
 Yes, it was verily Spring at last ! 
 
 The grass was starred with brilliant 
 yellow dandelions, and at the foot of the 
 hedgerows the primroses were in flower. 
 Never had the thickets been fuller of 
 music ; in the furze bushes the finches 
 were as merry as crickets ; and the sky — 
 how immeasurably wide it seemed — was 
 as blue as the eyes of a little sinless 
 child. 
 
 From the shoulder of the huge, grass- 
 ciothed hill, where he was engaged in 
 watching a flock of sheep, Elias was 
 aware of the enormous plain of the ocean,
 
 78 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 with its gleams of romance in the guise of 
 fleeting white sails, and its whisperings 
 and mutterings of incomprehensible 
 tragedies in the roar of its billows and 
 the wandering moan of the wind. And 
 the lad's heart swelled within him at the 
 vision : he desired, above everything, to 
 be out on yonder plain, with the waves 
 dancing under him and the wind 
 whooing in his ears. 
 
 Often — especially in the early mornings, 
 or in the narrowing twilight when night 
 was stealing across the hills — he had the 
 fancy (who shall say if it were only a 
 fancy ?) that he could hear the voice of a 
 maiden calling to him softly from the 
 sea : calling, calling, ever calling to him 
 wistfully, " Come I come ! come ! " 
 
 The line of the horizon was the gate- 
 way of paradise for him. If he could 
 only reach that line and pass beyond the
 
 The Calling of the Sea. J 9 
 
 gateway, how the world would widen out 
 and unroll itself before him ! and how 
 happy, how inconceivably happy he 
 would be ! 
 
 He would sit for hours watching the 
 sails gleaming in the sunshine, or the 
 black smoke trailing behind the thin- 
 bodied steamships, that crawled like tiniest 
 toys along the edge of the horizon, 
 though he knew them to be veritable 
 monsters of the deep, with the strength of 
 a thousand giants gathered within their 
 ribs. 
 
 Oh, if he could only become a sailor ! 
 If he could only discover the world 
 through the gateway of the sea ! 
 
 And still, in the grey, mysterious 
 gloaming, or in that eerie hour between 
 the dark and the dawn, the voice came 
 crying to him, plaining to him across the 
 waters — crying to him urgently, passion-
 
 8o Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 ately, seductively ; plaining to him with 
 the wistful yearning of a maiden — 
 "Come! come to me! Come! come/ 
 come ! " 
 
 There was, however, here no harbour- 
 age for vessels — it was merely a long, 
 bleak peninsula with a sheer wall of cliffs, 
 and with skerries and reefs sown thickly 
 along its shores — and Elias could only 
 see the sailing-vessels and steamships 
 passing to and fro at the edge of the 
 world, or the brown-sailed fishing-boats 
 creeping lazily along the coast. 
 
 To get a berth in a ship from here was 
 impossible : they were all peasants or 
 fishermen on the little wind-beaten 
 peninsula, and Elias must either take up 
 one of these primitive occupations, or 
 must shoulder his bundle and set off to 
 seek his fortune in the great hungry 
 world that lay beyond the hills.
 
 The Calling e»f the Sea. 8 1 
 
 At last he could no longer withstand 
 this call that so haunted him. He slung 
 his bundle across his shoulder and set off 
 for the nearest port. 
 
 But when he arrived at the port — it 
 was a small and sleepy one — the tiny 
 tidal harbour had not even a coasting 
 schooner in it. There was nothing beside 
 the quay but an un-decked fishing-smack, 
 beached in the mud and now being 
 tarred. 
 
 So Elias, for the nonce, had to seek 
 work in the town ; and presently he 
 obtained a job as carter to a coal-mer- 
 chant, who had come from the hamlet 
 where Elias had been born and, for 
 this and other reasons, felt attracted to 
 him. 
 
 In this quiet little seaport — if such it 
 could be called, for not more than two or 
 three coasting schooners called there in 
 
 G
 
 82 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 a month — Elias had now to content him- 
 self with his daily drudgery, and to wait 
 as patiently as he could for the fulfilment 
 of his hope. 
 
 When he had to turn his back on the 
 sea to drive inland among the hamlets, his 
 heart would grow as dull as a storm- 
 darkened landscape when the birds retreat 
 to their coverts and the wind begins to 
 moan. But the homeward journey, with 
 his face turned seaward, was like the 
 joyous anticipation of a festival ; and, as 
 he drove along the highway, he would 
 feast his eyes on the sea-line and, as often 
 as not, would carol like a boy. 
 
 Presently above his horizon rose a fair 
 young face — that of the coal-merchant's 
 winsome daughter — and Elias began to 
 experience the world-old trouble ; hunger- 
 ing and thirsting after the mirage called 
 love.
 
 The Calling of the Sea. 83 
 
 The new desire, for the present, drove 
 out the old one, or, rather, suppressed its 
 keener manifestations ; and Elias went a- 
 wooing and thought of little besides. 
 
 The girl was very human, and not un- 
 reasonably coy, so that in a little while 
 Elias was an accepted suitor, and by-and- 
 by, in due course, he obtained possession 
 of his bride and they set up house to- 
 gether in the little hamlet by the sea. 
 
 Soon, however, the novelty of the 
 situation wore off. 
 
 The girl was a good girl, and a very 
 loving one ; but the man had listened to 
 a voice sweeter and more seductive than 
 hers : and the old longing began to haunt 
 him more insistently than ever. 
 
 He was in love with the wide blue 
 spaces of water with their ever-changing 
 expression and their never-ceasing " cry ; " 
 and he envied the gulls and the cormor- 
 
 G 2
 
 84 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 ants and the wandering shoals of fishes 
 with an envy now sharpened into actual 
 jealousy, so human was his love and so 
 imperious its demands. 
 
 As he lay awake at night by the side of 
 his wife, the wind that growled in the 
 chimney, or rattled the loose-fitting 
 window-frames, seemed to be growling 
 angrily at him that he should remain a 
 mere shore-limpet instead of launching 
 out boldly on the vast unquiet sea. And 
 the huge billows thundering against the 
 cliffs below the cottage — he could feel 
 their thud, thud, thud, as he lay here in 
 bed — seemed endeavouring to reach him, 
 to obtain possession of him by violence, 
 that they might bear him off on their 
 shoulders into the dim unknown. 
 
 At last this longing of his became an 
 uncontrollable passion. On shore he 
 could no longer live, that was certain.
 
 The Calling of the Sea. 85 
 
 He pined to have the keen, salt smell in 
 his nostrils, and around him the heaving 
 world of waters, with the white sails 
 bellying-out above him and the ocean 
 flowing past, like a mill race, as they ran. 
 
 One day, while in this mood, he sud- 
 denly disappeared. 
 
 His wife sought long and earnestly for 
 him : but never again did the sight of 
 him gladden her eyes. 
 
 From time to time she heard vague, 
 flying rumours — faint, hearsay gossip as 
 reliable as that of the swallows — to the 
 effect that some such man as Elias had 
 been seen here or there, in the Atlantic or 
 in the Pacific, or had been heard of as 
 wrecked, or as on such-and-such a ship. 
 
 Nearer than this to him, however, the 
 wife could never get. 
 
 Once there reached her a rumour 
 averring that Elias had been seen living in
 
 86 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 a state of semi-savage freedom on one of 
 the warm, opulent South Sea islands : a 
 mere narrow reef of coral, with the vast 
 surf hammering against it incessantly and 
 the sea-birds clamouring across it all day 
 long. 
 
 But the truth or falsehood of this she 
 was never able to determine. 
 
 He had deserted his human wife for 
 the siren-voiced Ocean ; and the Sea, 
 having once obtained possession of him, 
 kept the secret of her lover, as such volup- 
 tuous creatures will.
 
 THE VALLEY OF VANISHED 
 SUNSETS.
 
 THE VALLEY OF VANISHED 
 SUNSETS. 
 
 Mr. Whitehead was very weary, and, 
 it being Sunday afternoon in the middle 
 of summer, he sat in the garden beneath 
 the trees and watched the sunshine on 
 the grass, glad to have an opportunity to 
 rest without reproach. 
 
 The bees were droning drowsily among 
 the tall holly-hocks and the light breeze, 
 drifting above the garden wall, rippled 
 among the leaves at the tips of the 
 branches till their multitudinous fluttering 
 made a music of its own. 
 
 At the other end of the garden, where
 
 90 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 there was a long grass plot, two of his 
 children were playing cheerfully together, 
 and Mr. Whitehead, sitting here restfully 
 in his chair, watched the children wist- 
 fully, and fell a-musing as he watched. 
 
 In Mr. Whitehead's brain, this hot 
 afternoon, there was a buzz and pressure 
 of thoughts that made his weariness 
 almost excessive : it was as if the traffic 
 of the streets — its pedestrians and its 
 vehicles — were rumbling, rattling, tramp- 
 ling through his brain, making the walls 
 of that theatre quiver and ache. 
 
 Then he thought of the dingy little 
 office in which he had worked so many 
 years ; of the faces that had come and 
 gone at its desks since he had first 
 planted his stool in the corner ; and of 
 the dreary, dreary drudgery of its tasks. 
 
 And with that he remembered that 
 when he left Heacham for London he
 
 The Valley of Vanished Sunsets. 91 
 
 had imagined to himself that life in the 
 vast metropolis would be full of appetising 
 pleasures and crammed with variety ; an 
 existence full of colour and as satisfying 
 as heaven. 
 
 But how few of his anticipations had 
 he been able to realise ! 
 
 He had been to a theatre once or 
 twice, and he had made acquaintances — 
 half-a-dozen or so — and he had seen an 
 exhibition here and an historical building 
 there. But of the vast, humming life and 
 of the buzzing pleasures of the metropolis 
 he had seen comparatively little, and had 
 sampled even less. 
 
 His daydreams of his life in London 
 had proved utterly illusory. They were 
 gone down into the " valley of vanished 
 sunsets " with his dead. 
 
 And with that he mused drowsily to 
 himself as he sat here, " How full of
 
 92 Tales of the Rlasquc. 
 
 men's memories must that distant valley 
 be ! I should like to spend an afternoon 
 strolling through its scenes." 
 
 " No, dears, don't disturb him ! Father 
 is sleeping," said the mother : and she 
 laid a handkerchief over his face to keep 
 away the teasing flies. " Come softly 
 indoors, mamma will tell you a pretty 
 story." And she took the little ones' 
 hands, and led them into the house. 
 
 "This, then, is the Valley of Vanished 
 Sunsets ! " mused Mr. Whitehead, as the 
 gates swung open and he passed down 
 the dewy path. 
 
 Never was greener grass seen by any 
 man : it was like the long, lush grass one 
 rolled in as a boy. 
 
 Mr. Whitehead's thoughts freshened 
 and his gait grew elastic as the aroma of 
 the grasses drifted into the air. 
 
 Now, Heacham, with its green, softly-
 
 The Valley of Vanished Sunsets. 93 
 
 swelling meadows and its broad, firm 
 beach with the waters of the Wash in 
 front of it, was surely as close to heaven 
 as little thoughts could wish to get ! The 
 sea-lavender in the marshes, what a joy it 
 was to gather it : and the gulls on the 
 shore, one could wonder at and watch 
 them by the hour ! 
 
 And here were the broad, silvery- 
 waters of the Wash stretching away 
 shimmeringly in front of Mr. Whitehead, 
 with the coast of Lincolnshire dim and 
 grey in the distance, and Boston spire 
 .... But was it the famous spire, or was 
 it not? 
 
 Talking of spires, here was the church 
 with its ivy-clothed buttresses : one could 
 see it from the hill-tops as one went 
 courting in the summer evenings — and 
 never kisses were sweeter than Jessie's in 
 those dear, sweet days !
 
 94 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 And Jessie was dead and buried .... 
 he would visit her grave in the church- 
 yard .... How the sea-wind moaned 
 through the screen of bushes along the 
 path ! 
 
 Ah, there were too many graves that he 
 remembered in that churchyard ! . . . . 
 Would he ever, himself, lie at rest 
 among its mounds ? 
 
 He had lived, and had married, and he 
 was middle-aged and tired of everything. 
 But, surely, to be thus tired was not one 
 of his daydreams ? 
 
 And he lay down on the grass to rest 
 and recall his thoughts. 
 
 " Father sleeps long," said the mother, 
 bending over him. 
 
 But he will sleep still longer. It is his 
 last sleep this.
 
 LEAH.
 
 LEAH. 
 
 Myself I never believed her to be a 
 witch, though there were those in the 
 village who set that name on her ; and 
 certainly she had a gift of some kind, as 
 was proved in the end to the cost of one 
 or two. 
 
 She was a splendid girl, though she had 
 detractors even of her beauty. She had 
 the finest figure I have ever seen, and her 
 face was one of those that lead a man to 
 make a fool of himself. She had large 
 black eyes, extraordinarily full of life : 
 they seemed to glow and dwindle and wax 
 and wane almost eeriely : and their long 
 
 H
 
 98 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 silken lashes she could use to some 
 purpose. More bewilderingly beautiful 
 eyes I never looked into. It was as much 
 as a man's soul was worth to fall beneath 
 their spell. 
 
 While she was still growing up the lads 
 of the village began to court her, and, girl 
 though she was, she was like a woman at 
 the game. I remember how she would 
 play off one of us against the other, and, 
 if need be, any of us against our sisters, 
 with a cleverness that caused endless 
 trouble amongst us, though at that time 
 the significance of our moods escaped us 
 and we only knew that Leah had made 
 us quarrel again. 
 
 When Leah was sixteen she had a 
 regular sweetheart : that is to say, one 
 whom she appropriated wholly to herself, 
 allowing no one else to share his at- 
 tentions. She ran around with Alf for
 
 Leah. 99 
 
 perhaps a twelvemonth, and then, without 
 any seeming rhyme or reason, she threw 
 him over and refused to have anything 
 more to do with him. 
 
 After Alf was dismissed, several others 
 tried to woo her, and she drifted around 
 occasionally with one or the other of the 
 young farmers : indifferently on her part, 
 as was very manifest, though the young 
 fellow themselves were in earnest to the 
 finger-tips. 
 
 But none of them seemed able to 
 capture her heart. She played with them 
 and threw them over with the airy in- 
 difference of the coquette. Yet each of 
 them felt certain — and it was this that 
 gave the sting to their disappointment — 
 that she had a hot and passionate heart, 
 if one could only get at it : a heart that 
 would stick at little, and that could fire a 
 clod as easily as it could animate a coal. 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo Tales of the Masque. 
 
 The other girls of the village, envious 
 of her wonderful and unaccountable 
 success — for there was scarcely one of the 
 young men of the parish whom she had 
 not at some time or other made cheap 
 and second-hand — began to spread the 
 report that she frightened away her lovers 
 through having a touch of the witch in 
 her : some uncanny gift, or power, which, 
 as soon as they became aware of it, the 
 young men hastened to escape from. 
 
 But the chatter of the girls made no 
 impression on Leah. She simply wiled 
 away their sweethearts from under their 
 very noses, and then, when she was tired 
 of them, let them flutter back again. 
 
 When Leah was about twenty, the 
 annual shifting of the Wesleyan ministers 
 by the Conference brought to the village 
 a young minister of about five-and-twenty, 
 the Reverend William Ernest Green. 

 
 Leah. 101 
 
 Leah was now in the very perfection of 
 her beauty, with large, glowing eyes that 
 seemed to pulsate with passion, and with 
 warm red lips almost wickedly provocative 
 — especially when she smiled and set the 
 dimples in her cheeks — and the Reverend 
 William was impressionable, and human 
 to the core. 
 
 Of course, as the minister was young 
 and unmarried, all the young women of 
 the village began to set their caps at 
 him. 
 
 There was quite an exceptional attend- 
 ance at the chapel at every service, and 
 the dressmaker and the milliner had their 
 hands full of work. Some of the girls, in 
 their eager rivalry, even trudged in to the 
 nearest market-town, in order to surpass 
 their competitors in smartness, as well a 
 to be earlier in the field with all 
 their arrows feathered. And the minis-
 
 102 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 ter found himself treated like a little 
 china idol, and, apparently, was very well 
 pleased with his cult. 
 
 But while the other girls were humming 
 and buzzing around their idol, Leah re- 
 mained quiet and seemingly unimpressed. 
 She made no attempt at adding to the 
 smartness of her appearance — in colours 
 and fabrics she had a strange, gypsy-like 
 taste, and, whether in the roadway or in 
 the chapel, she caught the eye with a 
 certain inevitableness — and she attended 
 chapel, if anything, a little more irregu- 
 larly than before. 
 
 And yet, in spite of her indifference — 
 assumed, or of intent — there soon crept 
 through the village a little hissing rumour 
 to the effect that the Reverend William 
 had been seen walking down the village 
 with her : walking with her, while with 
 the others he had not walked at all !
 
 Leah. 103 
 
 True, the walk began and ended within 
 sight of the cottages : and true, also, that 
 it was not immediately repeated. Indeed, 
 if one were very charitable, it might be 
 construed as accidental. But, none the 
 less, the buzz of gossip that followed the 
 event was loud enough and spiteful 
 enough to fill the social atmosphere for 
 weeks. Evidently it reached the ears of the 
 Reverend William, for the young minister 
 was, in many respects, as nervous as a cat, 
 and it was easy enough to see that he 
 was greatly disquieted. That Leah heard 
 of it of course went without saying ; the 
 greater portion of the gossip being flung 
 directly at her. 
 
 Presumably the minister learned the 
 lesson it was desired to teach him, for the 
 feelings of the marriageable sisters of the 
 Society were not again lacerated by the 
 sight of their beloved and guileless pastor
 
 104 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 parading the village in such questionable 
 company ; and the services were once 
 more as crowded as of old. 
 
 But her companions, or, rather, her 
 rivals, did not spare Leah in consequence. 
 On the contrary, they teased her to the 
 fullest limit that they dared — for there 
 was that in her that set a limit to the 
 daring of even the silliest — telling her 
 that, for once, she had found someone 
 who could see through her, and who was 
 not to be entrapped, however wily she 
 might be. 
 
 Leah smiled in their faces, a strangely 
 irritating smile : not so much a smile of 
 mere anger or defiance, as one that had 
 in it a contemptuous belittlement of their 
 opinions : a smile so gallingly sarcastic 
 that the triumph of her eyes was doubly 
 enhanced. 
 
 They averred that they could not under-
 
 Leah. 105 
 
 stand her ; she was as deep as the Bay of 
 Biscay. She had some wickedness in her 
 mind ; they would be surprised at nothing 
 that she might do. 
 
 But of this, of course, the Reverend 
 William could know nothing. He was a 
 guileless young man, and he had no wife 
 to warn him. Oh, if he only had the 
 sense to take to him a wife, how the 
 Reverend Mrs. William would cherish 
 and protect him ! and how difficult Leah 
 would find it to fascinate him, if he had a 
 Reverend Mrs. William with him always 
 as a shield ! The marriageable young 
 women (and some of the widows as well) 
 felt that never before had they so longed 
 to cherish anyone. Surely this longing 
 was a call from heaven? Ought they 
 not to see that it was obeyed ? 
 
 Meanwhile the Reverend William 
 preached as eloquently as ever, and all
 
 106 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 the females of his congregation watched 
 with breathless attention to see in whose 
 direction the balance of Fate would 
 dip. 
 
 Leah had of late attended chapel very 
 irregularly ; in fact, she had not been 
 there since the first Sunday in January — 
 in the village they kept a close watch on 
 matters of this kind — and it was now the 
 second Sunday in March. 
 
 There was a fairly crowded congregation 
 — the chapel being about three-parts full 
 — and in front of the rostrum, and not a 
 dozen yards from the preacher, sat Leah, 
 with all the woman in her glowing in her 
 eyes. 
 
 The Reverend William, as he stepped 
 softly from the preacher's vestry to the 
 rostrum, became instantly aware of her 
 magnetic presence, and a swift, electric 
 current seemed to tingle through his
 
 LeaJi. 107 
 
 nerves as he glanced at her for a second 
 and then hastily withdrew his eyes. 
 
 Never before had Leah looked so 
 fascinating. The clear, soft curves of her 
 face were most tempting. The minister 
 looked at her clean-cut nostrils, the soft 
 droop of her lips, the deep-lashed eyes, 
 and her glowing magnetic beauty as a 
 whole, and there surged through him a 
 hungry impulse to seize her face between 
 his hands and kiss it wildly and madly, 
 kiss it defiantly before them all. 
 
 If he dared to ! If he only dared to ! 
 If he could but summon up the courage 
 to achieve his desire ! 
 
 But, though the hot blood poured 
 through his veins like lava, he thought 
 .... and he knew .... and to the 
 thinking and the knowledge he suc- 
 cumbed. 
 
 Leah wore an entirely new costume ;
 
 io8 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 town-made and very stylish ; and the eyes 
 of the females in the congregation looked 
 her over and over enviously. In fact, 
 among the other girls and women in the 
 chapel — what with their ill-fitting 
 garments and their defective taste in 
 colours, their lack of ease in attitude and 
 their want of beauty of line generally — 
 Leah stood out here with a distinction as 
 absolute as if she were an oddly beautiful 
 flamingo that had suddenly alighted 
 among the poultry in a yard. 
 
 The Reverend William felt disquieted 
 to the very centre of his being. His 
 hands were moist with perspiration ; and 
 as he turned the leaves his fingers 
 trembled noticeably. 
 
 In the singing, Leah's rich, sweet con- 
 tralto seemed to pierce through the 
 intertangled mass of sounds with the 
 same unique effect as that with which
 
 Leah. 109 
 
 she physically dominated her neighbours: 
 and the Reverend William, in order to 
 taste her voice to its fullest sweetness, 
 spun out the singing as long as he could. 
 That he spun it out for her sake, Leah 
 recognised very clearly ; and she sang at 
 him and to him with a witchery that 
 overpowered him. 
 
 He gazed at her with an intentness, 
 with a gaze so shamelessly fascinated, that 
 the congregation quickly began to take 
 notice of it, and the girls, who watched 
 him hungrily, grew hot and breathed 
 deep. 
 
 When the singing and prayer were over 
 the minister seemed ill at ease. The 
 first face he had glanced at, was that 
 of Leah, who evidently had been quietly 
 watching for his glance, and though 
 Leah merely smiled with those wonder- 
 ful eyes of hers, the Reverend William
 
 1 1 o Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 coloured violently and trembled in all his 
 joints. 
 
 Finally, however, with an effort, he 
 drew on the sources of self-control within 
 him and managed to continue the service 
 on its appointed lines. 
 
 For the portion of scripture to be 
 read, he chose a chapter of the Song 
 of Solomon, and his reading of it was 
 a revelation to his congregation : a 
 revelation of secret wishes in them- 
 selves as well as of secret wishes in 
 their minister. They looked from one 
 to another uneasily, endeavouring to 
 catch, if they could, the significance 
 of the changeful expressions around 
 them, and more than one wondered 
 how much she unconsciously might have 
 revealed. 
 
 The atmosphere of the little building 
 seemed full of undischarged electricity ;
 
 Leah. 1 1 1 
 
 there was a sense of trouble and unrest 
 in the bosom of almost everyone. 
 
 During the sermon, Leah fixed her 
 eyes boldly on the preacher, who 
 appeared to surrender himself absolutely 
 to her glance. 
 
 It was less a sermon to the congrega- 
 tion than a discourse addressed to her : 
 a discourse that, in the end, became a 
 highly impassioned monologue, of which, 
 although the phraseology was religious, 
 the mood and attitude were as secular 
 as the glitter in his eyes. 
 
 The Reverend William had advanced 
 to the front of the rostrum, and stood 
 leaning on, and half over, the protecting 
 rail, gazing at Leah with an almost 
 unwinking gaze : evidently absorbed 
 beyond the prick of shame, and possibly 
 absorbed also beyond the registration of 
 his consciousness : for his fascination,
 
 1 1 2 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 evidently, was so deadly helpless that it 
 might have been the effect of mania or of 
 mesmerism, for all the freedom of 
 volition discernible in the man. 
 
 Presently the congregation was literally 
 shaken in every nerve. 
 
 " Leah ! " cried the minister ; and 
 again, agonisingly, "Leah/" 
 
 " Come ! " said Leah, sweetly, lifting her 
 hand and beckoning to him ; but never 
 for a moment removing her eyes from 
 his : " Come and sit beside me ! " And 
 then, imperiously, " Co?ne ! " 
 
 The climax of the drama was hidden 
 from me by the sudden uprising of the 
 congregation. In the gallery, in the 
 body of the chapel, the people stood up 
 excitedly in their seats : there was a 
 rustling of dresses, a shuffling of feet, the 
 sound of heavy respirations everywhere : 
 and presently, when I again caught sight
 
 Leah. 1 1 3 
 
 of the minister, he was seated beside 
 1 ,eah in front of the rostrum ; the whole 
 congregation staring at him in horror, 
 while he leaned against Leah as if he 
 were asleep. 
 
 They tried to induce him to leave 
 Leah, but something was wrong with the 
 man. A spring had broken in his nature 
 somewhere, and he clung doggedly to her 
 side : not arguing with, or repulsing them, 
 but keeping dumbly to his seat. 
 
 Finally Leah rose up and fronted the 
 congregation. " It is a little village, this, 
 and you are little people in it. But you 
 thought you were the world and knew 
 everything, didn't you ? With your hats 
 and your dresses you were stronger than 
 flesh and blood, you thought. But flesh 
 and blood wins after all, you perceive. 
 This man, here," and she waved her hand 
 towards the limp and pallid minister,
 
 1 14 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 " you thought you could teach to flout 
 me : you have succeeded, have you not ? 
 To be quite frank with you, I don't want 
 him : he is too little of a man for me. 
 He will suit some of you better : take 
 him, if you like ! " And, with a gesture 
 of disdainful abandonment of him, Leah 
 turned on her heel and contemptuously 
 walked away. 
 
 They conveyed the minister to his 
 lodgings and a critical illness ensued : an 
 illness from which he emerged physically 
 a wreck and with his head and face as 
 bald as the back of his hand. 
 
 Leah had quietly left the village the 
 morning after the minister's downfall : and 
 I have never seen her since, from that 
 day to this.
 
 ^ DROLL RESULT. 
 
 I 2
 
 A DROLL RESULT. 
 
 " Out of this, you selfish clog ! " thun- 
 dered the father. " If I am unfit for work 
 is that my fault ? You would begrudge 
 helping to keep your poor father alive, 
 would you ? You are no son of mine — 
 you are the son of a dog ! Begone ! " 
 
 And the father, with his face red with 
 passion, waved the young man angrily 
 towards the door. 
 
 " But, father," began the sister, " Paul 
 has always done his utmost " 
 
 " Done his utmost ! Then why does he 
 talk of marrying, the scamp ! He knows 
 I am unfit for work, and his paltry earn-
 
 1 1 8 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 ings — why, what are they ? They barely 
 pay for his keep, and provide a mouthful 
 
 for you and I, perhaps. And yet " 
 
 and he watched his son's eyes furtively, to 
 see if he could detect any signs of his 
 being cowed. " And yet," he burst out, 
 with renewed ferocity, "and yet he talks 
 of marrying — the selfish hound ! Out of 
 this, you cur ! No longer count me as 
 your father ! It has been self, self, self, 
 with you all your life long ! " 
 
 The young man opened the door and 
 went out. 
 
 " Am I so very selfish ? " he mused : 
 and he walked dejectedly towards his 
 sweetheart's cottage. 
 
 As he drew near the house in the 
 narrowing dusk, he fancied he saw an ac- 
 quaintance of his pass from between the 
 door-posts and hurry down the lane. " I 
 wonder why Will went off without speak-
 
 A Droll Result. 1 1 9 
 
 ing ? Have I offended him too ? " Paul 
 mused, dispiritedly. 
 
 " I am in great trouble, Janey," began 
 Paul, as soon as he saw her. 
 
 " What about, now ? " asked Janey, in- 
 differently. 
 
 " Father has turned me adrift. I think 
 only of self, he says." 
 
 " And he's quite right there ! " cried 
 Janey, emphatically. " You think only of 
 yourself — a truer word was never spoken ! 
 Here have we been engaged for three 
 years now, and not a word of marriage, 
 and no preparations for it. I tell you, I'm 
 tired waiting for you : you're too selfish 
 for me. It is all self, self, with you — no- 
 thing but self!" 
 
 And Janey flounced indoors with a very 
 red face. 
 
 " It must be true, then," said Paul, " it 
 is the verdict of everyone." And he
 
 120 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 walked away slowly ; his head hanging 
 down. 
 
 He daundered on, without thinking 
 whither he was walking, until presentlyj 
 when the darkness began to close him in 
 craftily, he was aware that he had wan- 
 dered into the heart of the moorland, 
 where the wind kept keening all day 
 long. 
 
 Deeper and denser grew the blackness 
 around him, till at last Paul recognised 
 that he was alone with Night — that sour 
 old hag whose hateful embraces only the 
 Devil can endure. "Ay, old mother, they 
 all hate you," he murmured. " It must 
 be for your selfishness they hate you : for 
 what do you give to any of us ? The Day 
 gives us light and warmth in abundance ; it 
 fills us with something — a touch of its own 
 cheerfulness ; and it freshens our thoughts 
 for us and gives us new ones of the
 
 A Droll Result. 121 
 
 best. But you, you close our lids, you 
 make us drunken with slumber, and then 
 you steal from us our thoughts and give 
 us your black dreams in place of them. 
 Self \syour curse, too, old mother, as it is 
 mine." And Paul's head drooped, as the 
 criminal's who is judged. 
 
 "Who is that mumbling to himself?" 
 asked a voice from the darkness. 
 
 Paul's hair stiffened in an instant, and 
 his mouth gaped widely. 
 
 " What are you abusing mother 
 for : you up there ? " cried the deep, 
 hollow voice from somewhere out of 
 sight. 
 
 Paul took to his heels and ran on any- 
 how, till suddenly he stumbled and fell 
 sprawling among the ferns. 
 
 " Well, and what do you want of me ? " 
 cried a voice at his ear. 
 
 Paul attempted to rise, but there were
 
 122 Tales of the Masqn 
 
 fingers in his hair, and be:- - -. he 
 thought, on his thr 
 
 He opened his eyes : a Figure was 
 bending over him : it was distinguishable 
 as a deeper darkness amid the shadows — 
 a formless something that could move and 
 grip and speak. 
 
 " Well, and what do you want of me ? '* 
 I rhe hollow voice. 
 
 •• Nothing, that I know of, sir," said 
 Paul, humbly : and gasped, and 
 
 re of an oppression at his heart. 
 How grueingly chill the night air 
 
 "You are burdened with too much 
 
 gure: ''is that s : 
 There was a whispered. " V 
 ■• I alone can heal you of that dis. 
 E ver ; " and Paul quaked in his t 
 at the hollow voice. " I alone. Do you 
 wish me to exerc -
 
 A Droll Result. 123 
 
 " No, no ! " wailed Paul. " I am not 
 yet ready ! " 
 
 " You will never be more ready than 
 you are now," said the Figure. " It is 
 the same cry from all of you, young and 
 old." 
 
 " Any way short of that ! " wailed Paul 
 to the Figure. " Any way, any way short 
 of that ! " 
 
 The fingers relaxed their grip and Paul's 
 heart grew elastic. His blood began to 
 leap ; he rose to his feet and ran on 
 breathlessly. 
 
 " Where are you running to — you ? " 
 cried a rough, cracked voice. 
 
 And Paul was aware of a little old 
 woman coming along through the ferns 
 with a lantern in her hand. 
 
 As the light of the lantern flickered on 
 her features, Paul felt something like a 
 qualm and shudder in his spine. Yet,
 
 124 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 that she was kin to him in some way, he 
 was sickeningly aware. 
 
 " Ho, cousin ! it is you, is it ? " said 
 she, with a grin of welcome. " What do 
 you want out here on the moor after 
 nightfall ? " 
 
 Paul told her of his misfortunes, 
 gasping out the words brokenly. " I want 
 to get rid of the 'self in me," he 
 groaned. 
 
 " Only my brother can quiet that in 
 you — once and for ever," said the little 
 old woman, blinking up in his face. " I 
 can strengthen it for you," and she 
 leered at him confidentially. " I have 
 done that for many men, and for many 
 women too." 
 
 " No, no ! Oh, no ! I want to get 
 rid of it!" 
 
 The old woman put her fingers to her 
 mouth and whistled shrilly.
 
 A Droll Result. 125 
 
 And Paul was aware of an exquisitely 
 beautiful damsel coming towards him 
 through the ferns, with her eyes fixed on 
 his. 
 
 " If you are bent on folly, cousin, put 
 your lips to my daughter's. Lady Folly 
 she is, and folly she will teach you : no 
 one is cleverer at the game," grinned the 
 hag. 
 
 And she held up her lantern, peering 
 up to watch their faces. 
 
 The damsel put her soft red lips to 
 Paul's and the forces of his nature were 
 subtly unknitted : his eyes lost their 
 steadiness and his will turned awry. 
 
 And presently Paul found himself 
 alone among the heather, with the 
 grey dawn widening mysteriously over- 
 head. 
 
 He stared blankly around him, feeling 
 dazed and helpless : so bewildered and
 
 126 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 weak he looked, one would have taken 
 him for a fool. 
 
 On he wandered aimlessly, he knew 
 not whither, until at last he found him- 
 self within sight of the hamlet that he 
 had left so disconsolately .... how 
 long ago ? 
 
 And just then Chance came strolling 
 along the roadway and asked what was 
 the matter with him and whither he was 
 bound. 
 
 Paul answered the questions meekly, 
 telling him all that had occurred. 
 
 " Oh ho ! is it so ? " laughed Chance, 
 and watched him jauntily. " You are 
 just the football I want, my dear young 
 cousin. Come, roll yourself into a ball, 
 if you please ! " 
 
 To the best of his ability Paul did as 
 he was directed : and a pitiable object 
 the poor fellow looked, crouching here
 
 A Droll Result. 127 
 
 in the dust with such dejection in his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Now I am going to kick you," said 
 Chance, with a laugh. 
 
 "Yes," said Paul, not daring to dis- 
 sent. 
 
 So Chance began to kick him along the 
 roadway like a ball. 
 
 Into the sleepy village Chance kicked 
 him ruthlessly, and the villagers woke up 
 and began to laugh raucously : never a 
 bigger fool than this had they had to jeer 
 at in their lives. 
 
 Hither and thither Chance kicked the 
 fellow — into the tavern and out of it, 
 into the hedge and into the ditch, and 
 into every rat-hole or sewer-trap the village 
 held concealed. 
 
 A man with no self-respect, no sense of 
 self-regarding decency ! why, the villagers 
 themselves be°;an to kick him in con-
 
 128 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 tempt. Such a thin-blooded, backbone- 
 less creature they despised ! 
 
 At last Chance handed him over to 
 them entirely. 
 
 "You will keep it up better than I 
 could," said Chance. 
 
 Presently, as the villagers were kicking 
 Paul along carelessly, they came to the 
 churchyard — and kicked him in there. 
 
 There was a pauper's grave newly dug 
 in a corner, and, seeing the grave was 
 empty, the villagers kicked him into that. 
 
 The old hag looked on leeringly from a 
 mound. " He sleeps soundly ; I should 
 like to break that sleep of his," she 
 muttered ; " the game was over too 
 soon ; " and, as she thought of it, she 
 laughed.
 
 THE SORCERY OF THE 
 FOREST.
 
 THE SORCERY OF THE FOREST. 
 
 Of our ship's crew only three remained 
 alive. That it was useless waiting here 
 any longer was evident. It was now three 
 weeks since we had been shipwrecked and 
 in the interval we had failed to sight a 
 single ship. 
 
 In front of us we had the limitless and 
 lonely ocean, and the dense and gloomy 
 forest rose threateningly at our back ; but 
 we judged that somewhere beyond the 
 forest — if we could only get through it — 
 we should strike a part of the coast-line 
 either inhabited by the natives or likely to 
 command a view of passing vessels. So 
 
 K 2
 
 132 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 we reluctantly decided to turn our backs 
 on the sea and win our way through the 
 forest if we could. 
 
 Dear God in heaven, what an ex- 
 perience that was ! As we plunged into 
 the vast green depths of the forest the 
 huge walls of vegetation shut us in com- 
 pletely. Before we had passed many 
 yards beyond the thickets at the out- 
 skirts we were in a world of trees : a world 
 alien and monstrous: a world which (how- 
 ever picturesque it may be to dream of) 
 was to our experiences uncanny to the last 
 degree. To be prisoned in a labyrinth of 
 vegetable monsters may sound pleasant to 
 the fancy : but it is to be prisoned none 
 the less. 
 
 I suppose we were what would be called 
 coarse men. Certainly, neither our tastes 
 nor our imaginations were unduly fastid- 
 ious. But the dense primeval forest with
 
 The Sorcery of the Forest. 133 
 
 its gloom and its monstrous growths, its 
 crawling, clinging, slippery vegetable life, 
 rankly full of sap and superabundant 
 moisture — its varieties of bestiality in 
 loathsome profusion, from snakes and 
 apes and ungainly vampire bats, to ants 
 and beetles swarming underfoot, and great, 
 hairy spiders swinging overhead — this at- 
 mosphere, these objects, oppressed our 
 consciousness like a nightmare : and the 
 thick, green dome that everywhere over- 
 arched us, became at last, to our sickened 
 fancies, like the ceiling of a vault. 
 
 The sense of insecurity, deepening into 
 actual fear, begotten by the stealthy 
 movements of the wild animals and of 
 the filthy brood of apes and monkeys, 
 was keen enough to take away half the 
 relish from our lives. The opulence of 
 the vegetation in no way charmed us, the 
 gigantic trunks and the infinite network
 
 134 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 of branches, the apparently inexhaustible 
 fertility of Nature (creating, as it were, in 
 very wantonness in these secret, ancient 
 haunts of shadow) disturbed us even to 
 the point of nausea. 
 
 It was not of fair Greek goddesses with 
 limbs of marble and with eyes of almost 
 infinite witchery that we instinctively 
 thought in these green recesses ; nor even 
 of horned and bearded satyrs, with 
 humanizing touches in their gambollings 
 and pipings : one thought rather of the 
 uncouth gods of the savages, swarthy 
 forms gross-lipped and evil-eyed, with the 
 appetites of animals and with bestiality 
 in every limb. No nude black Venus cast 
 her spell upon us here ; but rather the 
 monstrous, lustful, cannibal imaginings 
 that the man of the woods and of the 
 swamp and of the horrible slime-pit has 
 evolved from the foul black depths of his
 
 The Sorcery of the Forest. 1 3 5 
 
 nature : and of these the creeping poison 
 thickened in our blood. 
 
 We felt so feeble and helpless amid the 
 exuberant vitality, that the foundations of 
 our lives seemed broken up and destroyed. 
 Right and wrong, and the ordinary con- 
 ventionalities of life, lost their meaning 
 and significance in this primitive and 
 savage world, whose laws we entirely 
 failed to comprehend. The latent brute 
 in us began savagely to assert itself. 
 Whatever experiences in our past had 
 been sensual and unclean now set them- 
 selves, as it were, in the very forefront of 
 our thoughts and began to openly poison 
 and demoralize our minds. We had 
 entered the forest men — though sad and 
 disheartened ones — but it seemed possible 
 that, if these experiences continued, some 
 power in its sombre fastnesses would filch 
 from us our humanity and would sen-
 
 136 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 sualize us steadily to the level of the 
 beasts. 
 
 Through the rank, thick undergrowth 
 we made our way dolorously, feeding — 
 with more than a touch of the savage — on 
 anything and everything that seemed to 
 us edible. We lived the lives of pigs 
 rather than of human beings. Only the 
 primal instincts seemed to survive in us : 
 of everything else the sorcery of the forest 
 had despoiled us : and in the vast green 
 depths we were ignorant of our loss. 
 
 Things to interest us in the forest there 
 undoubtedly were. The opulent vegeta- 
 tion at times awed us by its magnificence. 
 The huge, columnar trunks with their 
 enormous girth ; the twisted masses of 
 parasites that hung from the branches, 
 apparently strong enough for cables for a 
 full-rigged ship ; the chaos of interlaced, 
 fantastic grasses; the arborescent ferns, with
 
 The Sorcery of the Forest. 137 
 
 their gigantic fronds ; and the startlingly 
 vivid blossoms of the orchids, whimsical 
 in shape to the point of grotesquerie, and 
 almost inconceivably gorgeous in their 
 hues : these occasionally caught our 
 fancies with such suddenness of appeal 
 that we gasped and stood breathless in 
 inexplicable awe. The indescribable 
 luxuriance of the mosses and crypto- 
 gamia ; the lush, strange forms and 
 fantasies of vegetation that made a world 
 of mystery of the so-called undergrowth ; 
 the weird green light ; the myriad voices 
 of the forest — the screams of parrots, the 
 cries of monkeys, the roar of the wind 
 along the roof — dear Lord ! these both 
 gladdened and saddened us as we toiled 
 onward : the little humanity that was left 
 to us seemed transformed as well as cowed. 
 We felt as helpless and insignificant as so 
 many ants : and in a world as far removed
 
 138 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 from that from which we drew our 
 memories, as if we had passed (through 
 dissolution) into a world saddening by its 
 strangeness, a world where our crudest 
 and wildest fancies had been suddenly 
 and bewilderingly transformed into facts. 
 
 The brilliantly-coloured birds brought 
 us no comfort, nor the georgeous-winged 
 butterflies, nor even the wandering bees. 
 We were oppressed by the unfamiliar 
 opulence and magnificence : we hungered 
 for the familiar with a terrible famine in 
 our hearts. 
 
 Cowed and frankly demoralized by our 
 surroundings, how intensely we longed to 
 see a human face ! 
 
 At last one day, to our unspeakable 
 relief, we were again confronted by a 
 human visage. 
 
 In the apparently impenetrable heart 
 of the forest we came across a cluster of
 
 The Sorcery of the Forest. 139 
 
 about a dozen huts, in which resided 
 some fifty or sixty savages ; black, 
 absolutely nude (male and female), and 
 with a language that to us was wholly 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 A life more rude and elementary we 
 had none of us ever witnessed. But 
 still, arrested though it was, the life was 
 human in its basis, and my companions 
 succumbed to it immediately and help- 
 lessly. 
 
 I admit that there was a certain stealthy 
 attractiveness in a life so primitive and 
 free as this. There was even a fascina- 
 tion in the dusky womenfolk : they were 
 like the supple, tawny, passionate bond- 
 slaves that occasionally form the fringe of 
 a harem in the East. 
 
 One young female caught my fancy 
 strangely : she was as lithe and active as 
 the ideal gipsy, and had as hot and rest-
 
 140 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 less blood in her veins. Though black 
 and nude and frankly sensuous, she had 
 for me an odd, uncanny attraction, and 
 here, in the dense green heart of the 
 forest, it seemed possible to divine in her 
 a wild black Venus, born of the torrid 
 heat and the monstrous woodland and by 
 no means free from the uncouthness of 
 her origin, but with the quick, hot heart 
 of a woman beneath her breasts. 
 
 After I had been living in the leaf- 
 covered huts about a week, this girl and 
 myself stole away together : creeping 
 through the undergrowth, crawling 
 stealthily through the grasses, the idea of 
 a dual life magnetizing both. 
 
 The supple black figure that hence- 
 forth kept beside me — false, savage, a 
 mere bundle of instincts and appetites — 
 was at first both attractive and invaluable 
 as a companion : but the crude and un-
 
 The Sorcery of the Forest. 141 
 
 relieved sensuousness of her nature finally 
 sickened me as the great, brutal forest 
 had done. 
 
 The hourly companionship, so close 
 and yet so narrow, at last became hateful 
 and altogether unendurable. I felt I 
 must escape from her, if I had to kill her 
 to be free. 
 
 One night as she lay sleeping I fled 
 from her in horror : and never since 
 (thank heaven !) have I seen her dusky 
 face. 
 
 "jv yfc gp gp 
 
 My life has many memories that I 
 scarcely care to linger over : but this of 
 the forest is the most nauseatincr of all.
 
 A PLEASANT GOSSIP.
 
 A PLEASANT GOSSIP. 
 
 In the green heart of an ancient wood- 
 land three birds sat perched on the 
 massive limb of an elm-tree, gossiping 
 together in the shady afternoon. 
 
 Beneath them the forest ways were 
 paved with blue-bells, and through the 
 fresh green foliage, that formed a 
 canopy over them, the light filtered 
 restfully, as through the windows of a 
 cathredral. 
 
 It was early spring : and the green, 
 winding glades were full of music. The 
 thrush and the blackbird sang eagerly 
 against each other, the secret cuckoos 
 
 L
 
 146 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 sounded their word of enchantment, and 
 the wind purred lispingly as it slid 
 among the leaves. 
 
 Many strange things have I seen, said 
 the wood-dove, but the strangest of all I 
 saw in the valley down yonder : a woman 
 with a crown of thorns sprouting from her 
 brow. For every grievous sorrow — and 
 her cross had been a heavy one — a 
 living thorn had pierctd her brow and 
 a drop of blood had left her heart. 
 When I saw her, a complete crown 
 circled her head, and her face was as 
 bloodlessly white and waxen as that of 
 one whom Death has frozen with his 
 kiss. 
 
 A stranger thing than that I have seen, 
 said the blackbird. I have seen a lad 
 whom Nature, in a freak of cruelty, created 
 as a mere fleshly husk without a soul. 
 But his mother, in her loving kindness,
 
 A Pleasant Gossip. 14.7 
 
 that the hope of heaven might still 
 hearten him, bestowed her own soul on 
 him — such tenderness has a mother — 
 and, with this soul within him, the lad is 
 growing to a noble man. 
 
 The woman with the crown of thorns 
 and the lad without a soul, were mother 
 and son, said the wise old raven. 
 
 A stranger thing than either I have 
 seen, said the raven : I have looked in the 
 eyes of a man escaped from hell. Down 
 by the sea-shore yonder there is a winding 
 cavern that pierces right through the heart 
 of the solid granite cliffs, and reaches 
 to the pitch-black lips of hell. Through 
 this cavern a lost soul crept from tor- 
 ment : and there I saw him — scarred, and 
 black, and wolfish — glaring out wildly at 
 the tossing leagues of water. He had 
 crept up from hell to the cold and restless 
 sea to cool himself again in its enfolding 
 
 L 2
 
 148 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 waters and to see once more the vast grey 
 spaces that he had loved so keenly when 
 the heart within his breast was still of flesh. 
 But no one may permanently escape from 
 hell. Ere nightfall the Old One had 
 gripped the man again. The sight of the 
 dear familiar sea for a few brief seconds, 
 and a momentary glance, through the 
 darkening window-panes, at the face of 
 his wife, to whose cottage he had made 
 his way — and then the fingers of the Old 
 One closed over him stealthily. Ere the 
 sun — a red ball at the horizon on his 
 arrival — had become a thin line of 
 crimson, just dipping out of sight, I saw 
 him again haled back through the cavern 
 to hell. Eyes more full of despair — un- 
 utterable, unendurable — I have never seen, 
 never ! said the wise old raven. Of the 
 woman with the crown of thorns this was 
 the husband.
 
 A Pleasant Gossip. 149 
 
 She lies now in her coffin, said a robin, 
 who had been listening. 
 
 That is well for her, said the raven to 
 his gossips.
 
 THE VEIL OF MAYA.
 
 THE VEIL OF MAYA. 
 
 " Shall I bestow on them this veil ? " 
 asked the gracious Presence. 
 
 The parents glanced at the babes 
 slumbering peacefully on their mother's 
 knees, and the father stroked his beard as 
 he mused on the question. 
 
 " Would it add to their happiness ? " 
 the mother asked, wistfully. 
 
 " Would it cripple their power to gather 
 knowledge ? " quoth the father. 
 
 " I have only the veil to bestow," said 
 the Presence. " Its value or its worth-
 
 1 54 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 lessness they must discover for them- 
 selves." 
 
 " Let my little daughter wear it," the 
 mother whispered, lovingly. 
 
 " I reject it for my son ! " said the 
 father, emphatically. 
 
 " So be it," said the Presence. Then, 
 flinging the mysterious veil over the 
 daughter, she laid her back in the 
 mother's lap and suddenly disappeared. 
 
 II. 
 
 The children were as subtly diverse in 
 character as if there were a racial chasm 
 between them : or as if one had been fed 
 on the honey of fairyland and the other 
 on the coarser fare of the trolds. 
 
 For the little girl the garden was on the 
 very skirts of Paradise. Playing in its 
 walks she could see the tiny, speckled
 
 The Veil of Maya. 1 5 5 
 
 gnomes hiding in the velvety bells of the 
 foxgloves, and in the vibrant twang of the 
 bees among the honeysuckle she could 
 hear the bugles of the little fairies who 
 were playing among the flowers. 
 
 The soft evening clouds, floating lightly 
 along the blue, were the flowing robes of 
 angels who ran playing across the sky : and 
 the vast red sun, just glimpsed between 
 the heights, was a great red giant glaring 
 over the hill-tops ere he finally laid himself 
 down to sleep. 
 
 Music the child held as the very 
 voice of God. Its melting strains made 
 wet her little eyelids, and to its joyful 
 notes her feet danced lightly. But 
 when it grew grave, and uttered deep, 
 solemn melodies — ah! then it was the 
 dear Father grieved in some way, and 
 her little heart would throb with a sym- 
 pathetic ache.
 
 156 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 As she grew up, men and women were 
 always beautiful and wondrous to her. 
 The bowed and wrinkled peasant, to 
 whom the idea of rest was soothing, and 
 the lady, fretted with idleness and as 
 graceful as a flower — they were both of 
 them her sisters, and the pressure of 
 either's hand was sweet. 
 
 The traffic in the streets was not the 
 movement of men and women who were 
 bent on business and spurred mainly by 
 the impulse of their needs, but the roar- 
 ing flood of life solemnly beating out its 
 music in harmony with the vast and 
 grander music of the spheres. 
 
 The church was the most precious and 
 most sacred of symbols : she could feed 
 her heart within its precincts in a hundred 
 different ways. And pulpiteers and 
 medicine men, the wranglers in the courts 
 and the licensed fighters, all the brigades
 
 The Veil of Maya. 157 
 
 that wear uniforms she admired most pro- 
 foundly. 
 
 So closely did the veil of Maya hang 
 before her eyes. 
 
 III. 
 
 But the brother in the flowers sought 
 for the pistils and the stamens, and 
 ferreted out in the trees the structure of 
 their leaves and the slow and painful cir- 
 culation of the sap. For him there was 
 no dryad in the trunk of the oak-tree, but 
 only the juices of the earth and the nutri- 
 ment of the sunshine built into the sylvan 
 monster and traceable in its cells. 
 
 The church, with its ritual, had grown 
 up around the altar, as the house, with its 
 domestic economy, had grown up around 
 the hearth : and the central stone of the 
 one, in spite of the embroidery of its
 
 i;S Tales of the Masque. 
 
 keepers, was no whit more divine than 
 the central stone of the other. The 
 bishop in his black apron, and the cook in 
 his white one, they were allied in occu- 
 pation and were on an equality in their 
 cult. 
 
 The streets were full of combative 
 human beings, each man hungering and 
 thirsting for the satisfaction of his needs. 
 And society was not something in- 
 expressibly beautiful, devised and pre- 
 rdained by the wisdom of a god : it was 
 a mere affair of balance, with weights 
 that were fraudulent in their denomina- 
 tions and with blind Chance constantly 
 meddling with the beam. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Ever\- one loved and admired the girl, 
 and when she £rew to womanhood she
 
 The Veil of Maya. 159 
 
 had suitors by the dozen, and the 
 glamour of love was heavy on her heart. 
 
 Her parents being dead, she married a 
 gay young officer whose exterior and 
 manners had fascinated her strongly. 
 From the charm of these she divined that 
 his heart was as an angel's — as unspotted 
 as a lily and as innocent as a child. 
 
 In vain her brother had endeavoured 
 to dissuade her from this folly : she had 
 been told so often that he was a mere blind 
 materialist, that it seemed to her that 
 here his judgment must be worthless. 
 
 " I am sorry to differ from you on this 
 point," said she : " but I feel that here I 
 must obey my heart." 
 
 Tom shook his head sadly. " You 
 will find it merely flesh and blood." 
 
 " Is love nothing more, then, than a 
 matter of cells and molecules ? " 
 
 Her brother wisely held his peace.
 
 160 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 Meanwhile Tom in the great orchestra 
 of life had with difficulty been finding 
 his instrument and his note. And now 
 that these were found he sat down 
 to play his part. No illusions did he 
 cherish — not even as to himself — men 
 were men and women women ; and the 
 pit of death was deep. 
 
 V. 
 
 The years sped on and Ellie was a 
 broken-hearted woman. 
 
 Her husband, thinking more of life's 
 pleasures than of its duties, had made 
 many perilous steps, and at last had made 
 a fatal one. A week ago " the honour- 
 able and gallant gentleman " had been 
 sentenced at the Old Bailey for a most 
 heartless seduction, and he now wore a 
 suit with the broad arrow stamped on it,
 
 The Veil of Maya. 161 
 
 instead of the gaily-coloured cloths and 
 embroideries of his trade. 
 
 And to-night poor Ellie, with this 
 shadow hanging over her, lay helpless 
 under the curse of Eve. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Death sat in his gloomy watch-tower 
 in the belfry, where the dust was thick 
 and the bats hung in clusters, and 
 looked sadly down on the rain-beaten 
 graves. 
 
 Presently he conned his fatal list of 
 names. 
 
 " To-night the twins ! " he muttered in 
 his beard. 
 
 Then with heavy steps he descended 
 from the belfry and passed out into the 
 slowly-gathering gloom. 
 
 " The veil of Maya I shall strip 
 
 M
 
 1 62 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 from her at last ! " muttered he ; and a 
 sombre fire began to smoulder in his 
 eyes. 
 
 But, behold ! another Form was in the 
 room before him : the grave and gracious 
 Presence that had bestowed on her the 
 veil. 
 
 " She will pass with the veil wrapped 
 closely around her," said the Presence 
 to the grim black Shape as he 
 entered. 
 
 And as Death laid his hand on her 
 heart and froze it, he was aware that 
 through it all the veil floated before her 
 vision, and in it she saw heaven, and 
 through it she saw her god. 
 
 " To the last the prey of illusions ! " 
 muttered Death. 
 
 " Even your coming it has sweetened 
 for her ! " said the Presence. 
 
 " Has it ? " said the Shape : " you
 
 The Veil of Maya. 163 
 
 will see if her brother will tremble at 
 me. Yet the veil of Maya, has never 
 shrouded him" 
 
 To the brother's room went the Shape, 
 and laid its hand upon his brain. 
 
 " So the end has come, then — the end 
 thus early ! " And Tom drowsed in his 
 chair, and as he drowsed he dreamed 
 confusedly ; the life flickered out, and in 
 the chair he lay a clod. 
 
 VII. 
 
 As I )eath climbed back to his lair in 
 the belfry and lay down in the darkness 
 in the thick, foul dust, he mused per- 
 plexedly on this veil of Maya, of which 
 men think so much but which counts for 
 so little in the end. 
 
 " With, or without it, there is life : and 
 with, or without it, all must face me. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 Has it any use, then, after all ? " mused 
 Death. 
 
 And with that he fell asleep, leaving 
 the question still unsolved.
 
 JOEL.
 
 JOEL. 
 
 To the west of the village, ever con- 
 fronting and dominating it, rose the 
 long, irregular line of hill-tops of which 
 Castle-an-Dinas is the culminating point. 
 
 To Joel Tregurtha, standing smoking 
 at his cottage door of an evening, the 
 huge, peaked hill, with the mouldering 
 ruin on its crest, was a perpetual pro- 
 vocation and challenge to thought. At 
 midsummer the sun set directly behind it, 
 lighting up its shoulders with his enormous 
 rays, and filling the heavens behind it with 
 the largess of his gold : while in winter 
 " the owld haythen," as Joel irreverently
 
 1 68 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 termed the sun, setting farther towards 
 the south, glorified certain of the lower 
 hill-tops, leaving the slopes of Castle-an- 
 Dinas weighted with gloom. 
 
 To Joel the hill seemed to have a 
 sentient individuality. He could imagine 
 it rejoicing in its glowing crown at mid- 
 summer, and grieving inarticulately when 
 it was lashed and sodden with the rains 
 and the sun bestowed his favours on the 
 rivals at its side. 
 
 As a lad, when he had to rise shivering 
 in the mornings, that he might be in time 
 to start work at the mine at seven o'clock, 
 Joel used to glance up at the long dun 
 slopes, which stretched far above the 
 chimneys and buildings of the mine, and 
 occasionally he would mutter, as he ran 
 along the road, " Darn it all! wish I was 
 thee, thee gayte duffer! nawthin' to do all 
 day but set there in the sun."
 
 Joel. 169 
 
 As he grew older, however, he was less 
 jealous of the hill. He had now a bonny 
 little sweetheart to stare at and wonder 
 over, and no mere lump of granite, 
 though a very god for idleness, could ever 
 taste a pleasure such as sweethearting 
 could supply. 
 
 J'.ut sweethearting seemed likely to be 
 a rather long affair. One could not get 
 married on ten shillings a week, especially 
 when one had a widowed mother to con- 
 sider : and in many ways life seemed to 
 become a rather confused tangle. One 
 must wait upon Providence, evidently, and 
 hope for the best. 
 
 Through it all, however, the great hill 
 stood there patiently, apparently as stable 
 as the solid earth itself. The gulls winged 
 their way across it and the skylarks 
 mounted above it singing, and the ferns 
 and heather clothed it with their thick
 
 1 70 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 green tangles, and it sheltered the fox and 
 the rabbit and the lizard and the snake ; 
 but whether it rejoiced at these things or 
 merely endured them passively, was as 
 much a mystery as the unvoiced secrets of 
 a heart. 
 
 And just as sluggishly Joel Tregurtha 
 lived in his groove. Almost as powerless 
 to unclasp the iron hands of Circumstance 
 as was the great green giant that he 
 watched so wistfully, Joel endured his 
 existence patiently and made no com- 
 plaint. 
 
 By-and-by his sweetheart grew weary of 
 waiting for him. She was in the heyday 
 of her life, with her wishes all unrealized, 
 and her day-dreams began to haunt her, 
 moving as shadows among her thoughts. 
 
 Joel was by this time a man ; but 
 heavily burdened. His sister, who was 
 always ailing, still lived at home un-
 
 Joel. 1 7 1 
 
 married ; and his mother, though she was 
 now an aged woman, was hale and hearty 
 yet and, he hoped, would live for years. 
 He was as weighted with expense as if he 
 were a married man, though the pleasure 
 of possessing a wife was denied to 
 him. 
 
 He represented to his sweetheart the 
 position of affairs and begged her to wait 
 for him — something might possibly turn 
 up : though what the " something " was 
 likely to be he neither defined to her nor 
 to himself. 
 
 :t Why not go to America like the 
 awthers ? " asked Lizzie. 
 
 Joel looked up at Castle-an-Dinas, now 
 black against the golden after-glow, and a 
 queer feeling of forlornness seemed to 
 clutch him at the heart. 
 
 " Iss . . . I cud do that," he muttered, 
 hoarsely.
 
 172 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 "If thee'll go to America, I doan't mind 
 waitin' for 'ee," said Lizzie. 
 
 " I'll think it ovver," said Joel ; and 
 went home greatly perturbed. 
 
 All that night Joel tossed sleeplessly on 
 his bed : his love for Lizzie, and his even 
 deeper love for his cradle-land, filling his 
 mind with a turmoil of wishes and regrets 
 that tired him more than a hard day's 
 work. 
 
 " Wha's wrong weth 'ee, Joel ? " his 
 mother called to him from her bedroom ; 
 hearing the sounds of his restless tossings. 
 ' ' Anything the matter weth 'ee ? Shall I 
 git up an' maake a cup o' tay ? Oppen 
 the winda, ef thee find it too close." 
 
 " All right, mawther ; 'tes the het, 
 b'leeve," said Joel. "I'll oppen the 
 winda a bit an' go to slaip." 
 
 " Iss, do," said Biddy; "else thee'll be 
 fine an' tired tomorra."
 
 Joel. 
 
 / 5 
 
 So Joel rattled the window noisily, and 
 Biddy went to sleep. 
 
 But there was no sleep for Joel for 
 hours yet. Not that he was thinking very 
 clearly or connectedly : he was rather 
 suffering from a sense of unusual be- 
 wilderment ; a feeling as if he were 
 oppressed by a suffocating weight. 
 
 He fell asleep at last through sheer 
 weariness, and did not wake till he heard 
 his mother calling to him from her bed- 
 room: "Jo-el! Jo-el! 'tes time to git up!" 
 
 He managed to see Lizzie on the 
 following evening and informed her that 
 he would go to America, as she had sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " When 'ull 'ee start ? " she asked, 
 eagerly. 
 
 " In the spring," said Joel. 
 
 " O-h ! " said Lizzie. " Tha's anawther 
 sex months."
 
 174 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 " It'll taake all that time to get ready," 
 he replied. 
 
 "Well," said Lizzie, dubiously, "s'pose 
 we must wait." 
 
 All that winter Joel was full of unrest. 
 It was as if some misfortune were stealing 
 on him stealthily and he could faintly 
 hear the approach of his enemy, though 
 unaware of the form in which it would 
 appear. He would stand for an hour at 
 a time smoking at his door, contemplating 
 the long, irregular line of hills with the 
 windy sky stretching greyly behind them 
 and on either hand the steel-blue glint of 
 the sea. For here, on the sloping heights 
 above Goldsithney, one could see across 
 the narrow neck of the pensinsula, and 
 from Joel's little cottage the two channels 
 were visible, with the superb panorama 
 of the rugged hills to boot. And the 
 man's heart yearned towards the familiar
 
 Joel. 175 
 
 landmarks, as the heart of a mother 
 towards the faces that have surrounded 
 her table, and out of whose traits the net 
 of memory has been spun. The wide 
 expanse of scenery fronting him daily, if 
 not an inspiration was, at least, a steady- 
 ing influence. The love and mercy of 
 God were more believable to him here 
 than they would be if he were shut up in 
 some eye-restricting valley, or, worst of 
 all, were prisoned helplessly among the 
 buildings of a town. How could he 
 leave the hills of his own dear Cornwall ? 
 The distant glimpses of Penzance, St. 
 Michael's Mount, Castle-an-Dinas — it 
 would surely break his heart if he had to 
 give up these ! And vague and inarticu- 
 late though the sorrow within him was, its 
 effect grew still more noticeable every day. 
 " Thee doan't seem happy," said 
 Lizzie, suspiciously.
 
 176 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 "No, nor I arn't," said Joel, lifelessly. 
 
 And the pleasures of sweethearting 
 " dragged " in sympathy with the mood. 
 
 " Arn't 'ee 'most ready for startin ? " 
 asked Lizzie, when the winds of March 
 began to wail across the peninsula and 
 the long brown hill-slopes were beginning 
 to be splashed with green. 
 
 "To tell 'ee the truth," said Joel, 
 hesitatingly, " mawther ben beggin' me 
 not to layve her. She's owld ; an' she's 
 afeerd she'll never see me no more. I 
 think, b'leeve, I'll ha' to stay home, after 
 all." 
 
 "Then it must be all ovver between 
 us," said Lizzie, firmly. " I'm losin' all 
 the fun o' life, hangin' on like this." And 
 he was aware of the angry discontent in 
 her eyes. 
 
 He would have pleaded with her, but 
 words always came to him confusedly :
 
 Joel. 177 
 
 and, in a case like this, the difficulties of 
 expression were insurmountable. He 
 had his feelings — if she would only 
 interpret them as easily as she seemed to 
 interpret his affection if he merely put his 
 lips to hers ! But language he knew well 
 he could not manipulate. If he had to 
 explain his feelings in words, then there 
 was no hope for him. 
 
 " O' coorse, ef thee put thy mawther 
 before me . . . ." and Lizzie waited to 
 hear a possible disclaimer. " I must 
 look after meself as thee waan't, sim- 
 minly : it had better be off between us," 
 she added, presently. 
 
 " Ef it must be, s'pose it must," said 
 Joel, helplessly. 
 
 And with this they parted dumbly in a 
 suddenly-darkened world. 
 
 If Joel grieved for the loss of his 
 sweetheart, his grief was inarticulate. He 
 
 N
 
 178 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 ate his meals as usual, and went to 
 mine as regularly as of old. More than 
 this one could only have affirmed of him 
 by a stretch of imagination, for he made 
 no attempt to discuss the matter, 
 remaining as stolidly incommunicative 
 as a cormorant on a rock. 
 
 Lizzie, being a rather attractive young 
 woman, though no longer in the first 
 bloom of girlhood, presently found 
 another sweetheart in the village ; and, 
 about twelve months after her parting 
 from Joel, she had the pleasure of 
 standing before the parson as a bride. 
 
 Joel made no attempt to find a second 
 sweetheart : he devoted himself, instead, 
 to making his mother comfortable and to 
 living as inoffensively and quietly as his 
 surroundings would permit. 
 
 Often, as he stood at the cottage door 
 of an evening, he would fall to musing
 
 Joel. 179 
 
 over the perplexing puzzle of life, and a 
 flavour of something like hopelessness 
 would become perceptible in his thoughts. 
 But, before he had been long solacing 
 himself with his pipe, his eyes would 
 seek, and rest contentedly on, their 
 familiar landmark, and, therewith, his 
 sour dissatisfaction would vanish as 
 rapidly as the flush of a winter sunset, 
 and an almost bovine quiet would settle 
 on his thoughts. The great solemn hill, 
 with its sure foothold in the world and 
 its simple, primitive wants and pleasures, 
 affected him as if it were a human 
 companion : only a companion cleansed 
 from human passions and infirmities ; 
 strong, unselfish, perennially calm. 
 
 When Lizzie became a mother, Joel 
 looked at the infant wistfully, and with a 
 vague twitch of pain in the recesses of his 
 heart. But as Lizzie herself remained 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o Tales of the Masque. 
 
 good-temperedly stolid, without a sign of 
 unusualness either in her eyes or at her 
 lips, he ultimately settled down to the 
 acceptance of her maternity and was as 
 kind as a godfather to her chubby little 
 boy. 
 
 About ten years after Lizzie's marriage, 
 when she was a stout and pleasant matron 
 with a troop of sturdy children, Joel's 
 mother passed away peacefully and almost 
 painlessly, and he was left alone with his 
 sister — now a soured old maid. 
 
 Joel still lived in the same thatched 
 cottage in which he had been born forty 
 years before, and the rugged granite hill- 
 tops were still the companions of his 
 musings as he stood smoking of an even- 
 ing between the posts of the door. 
 Through all the changes and crowding 
 disappointments of his life he had never 
 wavered in his affection for the exeat dun
 
 Joel. 1 8 r 
 
 hill, whose crest his eyes sought instinc- 
 tively morning and night : and its power 
 to soothe him and to attemper his 
 thoughts to patience, seemed, if anything, 
 to have grown with the advancing years. 
 He was as quiet under impositions, and 
 as unresentful of wrongs, as the placid 
 hill that carried its burden of cottages and 
 mine-stacks, as cheerfully as it carried its 
 airy tuft of ferns. 
 
 One day Joel's sister took to her bed. 
 According to the doctor, she was suffering 
 from some grave internal ailment and 
 there was little likelihood that she would 
 ever be better while she lived. 
 
 This, of course, meant an additional 
 burden for Joel; but he bore it un- 
 complainingly and with small expenditure 
 of words. 
 
 During the long drudgery of his life he 
 had always been careful, and he had
 
 1 82 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 managed to save about thirteen pounds. 
 But now this treasured hoard had con- 
 stantly to be drawn upon, and he saw 
 it gradually melting away before his 
 eyes. 
 
 Joel tried to wean himself from his 
 beloved pipe : but this bit of heroism he 
 was unable to accomplish. He, however, 
 reduced his allowance of tobacco from an 
 ounce to less than half an ounce a week, 
 and contented himself, when he was 
 short of the " weed," by merely keeping 
 the empty pipe nursed between his lips. 
 
 His sister lingered long enough to 
 practically exhaust his savings, leaving 
 him, at her death, with barely a pound 
 in hand. 
 
 He could not make up his mind to 
 have her buried by the parish, so the 
 remainder of his savings he expended on 
 her funeral, and, at forty-five, started the
 
 Joel. 183 
 
 world afresh with nothing but his wages 
 of three pounds a month. 
 
 After the death of his sister, Joel lived 
 alone : getting a woman to drop in 
 occasionally to do the chores, but other- 
 wise attending to everything himself. 
 
 He felt poor and depressed and very 
 lonely, and, for the first time in his life, 
 thoroughly disheartened with everything. 
 His world seemed empty : and even his 
 pipe had lost its flavour like everything 
 else. 
 
 But when he went to the door of his 
 cottage and turned his eyes to the hills, 
 the feeble ticking of self in a great empty 
 world seemed to die away completely : 
 and the mysterious tranquillity of the hills 
 fell on him — the deep, grave calm of the 
 wise and ancient hills. 
 
 He stood for hours gazing at the 
 long, green barrier, with the villages at its
 
 184 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 feet and the sky above its head, and a 
 peculiar exaltation took possession of him. 
 He was glad of the beauty of the world, 
 and he rejoiced, with awe, at its many 
 mysteries. Surely, after all, life was not 
 an empty riddle, though its meaning 
 might wisely be hidden from us here. He 
 watched the sunset almost reverently : the 
 hills were patient, and he could wait. 
 
 About eighteen months after Joel's 
 sister died, his old sweetheart, Lizzie, 
 became a widow ; her husband having 
 succumbed to an attack of typhoid fever. 
 
 Though he was now nearly fifty, Joel 
 had some thoughts of by-and-by asking 
 Lizzie to marry him : and Lizzie, on her 
 part, seemed to be expecting some such 
 offer, if one might judge by the increased 
 friendliness of her attitude towards him. 
 
 While matters were in this unsettled 
 state — Joel eyeing Lizzie wistfully, and
 
 Joel. 185 
 
 Lizzie meeting him more than half-way — 
 Joel still continued going to mine as 
 regularly as of old, never missing a 
 "coor" on any pretence. 
 
 One summer evening, when he was 
 what is called " night coor," Joel, in 
 passing Lizzie's cottage, saw her standing 
 at the door, and they exchanged a few 
 words of halting gossip. 
 
 " Thee must find it lonely comin' home 
 of a mornin'," said Lizzie, " not a bit o' 
 fire in the house, an' nowan to give 'ee a 
 cup o' tay. I'll give 'ee a kittle of hot 
 water when thee'rt passin' tomorra, ef 
 thee like." 
 
 " Thaank 'ee," said Joel, awkwardly. " I 
 shall be glad to have un, you." 
 
 "Tap to the door in passin', an' I'll 
 have un ready for 'ee." 
 
 " Thaank 'ee, I will : an' much obliged 
 to 'ee," said Joel.
 
 1 86 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 And they parted with a nod and a 
 friendly "good-night." 
 
 The next morning Lizzie was up before 
 five — though she knew Joel could not call 
 for the water till nearly seven — and by six 
 o'clock she had the kettle ready on the 
 hob and was warming a huge pasty in the 
 oven as an additional peace-offering for 
 her old sweetheart. 
 
 Suddenly a lad, with a white scared face, 
 came clattering up the empty roadway. 
 
 " Heerd the news ? " he called out, as 
 she came to the door on hearing the foot- 
 steps. 
 
 "No ! what news? Anything happened 
 down to mine ? " 
 
 " Bra' bad accident in shuttin'* wan o' 
 the hawls ! Wan man killed, an' two or 
 three hurt ! " 
 
 " Do 'ee knaw their names ? " asked 
 * Shootiner = blastine.
 
 Joel. 187 
 
 Lizzie, suddenly paling with apprehen- 
 sion. 
 
 " Joel Tregurtha es killed, an' Dicky 
 Fire have lost 'es haand, an' owld Bob 
 Hurry's skat blind ! " said the lad. 
 
 Lizzie went indoors and seated herself 
 heavily on a chair. 
 
 She sat there for quite a considerable 
 time ; her hands on her lap, and her eyes 
 wandering vaguely around the homely 
 little room. 
 
 Presently she was aware of the smell of 
 something burning. It was the pasty be- 
 ginning to blacken in the oven. 
 
 She jumped up hastily. " It'll do for 
 the children," she ejaculated. 
 
 And just then there was the sound of 
 trampling feet in the roadway. 
 
 She placed the pasty on a plate and 
 rushed to the door. 
 
 Past the little chapel came a group
 
 1 88 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 of miners with a litter, over which two 
 of them had considerately placed their 
 coats. 
 
 " Who es 'a ? " she asked, staring at the 
 litter on their shoulders. 
 
 "Joel Tregurtha, poor fella 1 " said one 
 of the bearers. " He was killed in 
 shuttin' a hawl laast night." 
 
 " Poor fella ! " said Lizzie. And again : 
 " Poor fella ! " 
 
 " Good job 'a got no wan to layve 
 behind un, : ' said the bearer. 
 
 " Poor fella ! " said Lizzie : and went 
 indoors.
 
 THE GIFTS OF THE LITTLE 
 GREY MAN.
 
 THE GIFTS OF THE LITTLE 
 GREY MAN. 
 
 In one of the most crowded of the 
 metropolitan thoroughfares, in the 
 busiest part of the afternoon, a little 
 grey man, of abnormal leanness, stood 
 hawking some tiny cubes of crystal. 
 
 He carried a small mahogany tray, 
 which was supported against his chest by 
 a stout leather strap, and on this highly- 
 polished tray — it had a surface like a 
 mirror — the tiny cubes lay scattered 
 carelessly. 
 
 Instead of advertising his wares with 
 blatant importunity, the hawker had a
 
 192 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 card nailed conspicuously on the tray, 
 with these words neatly written on it : — 
 
 you are welcome to the glfts of 
 the Little Grey Man. 
 
 The only thing he did to attract 
 attention was play on a long, old- 
 fashioned fiddle. From this he evoked 
 such odd, suggestive melodies — not so 
 much sweet or beautiful fancies as 
 fascinating caprices with the most 
 outre effects — that when, through the 
 fluctuating din of the traffic, the weird 
 notes travelled to the ears of a passer-by, 
 they seemed to vibrate in the deepest 
 chords of his nature and set free thoughts 
 as primal as his blood. 
 
 As often as not, the passer-by would 
 rush past the musician, eyeing him 
 askance with a kind of terrified scrutiny ; 
 a nameless trouble throbbing furtively in
 
 Gifts of the Little Grey Man. 193 
 
 his heart. ' Who is this man, that he 
 can touch the springs of memory thus 
 subtly? Does he know, or merely 
 surmise? I have not been thinking 
 aloud, surely ! ' And the wayfarer would 
 hurry on troubled and perplexed. 
 
 Occasionally, however, one would turn 
 to glance at the tray, and, after reading 
 the card, would shake his head and pass 
 on. To these men of the city who saw 
 everything bought and sold — a pair of 
 gloves or a horse, a man or a woman, all 
 of them purchasable — the idea of a gift 
 seemed a mockery and an absurdity. 
 They were too old now to be taken in by 
 such a trick. But though they passed on 
 mentally pluming themselves on their 
 shrewdness, they kept musing on the 
 oddity of the offer none the less. 
 
 Finally one of them turned back and 
 took up a crystal from the tray. 
 
 o
 
 194 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 " What's the trick ? " asked he, with 
 assumed indifference. 
 
 The little grey man made no reply. 
 But so penetratingly subtle were the 
 strains of the fiddle, or such magic was 
 gathered within the simple weft of 
 sounds, that it seemed to the man, as 
 he stood gazing at the crystal, that he 
 could hear a dialogue proceeding some- 
 where in the remote distance : a dia- 
 logue that apparently directly concerned 
 himself. 
 
 ' Do you call that ragged life a 
 success ? ' 
 
 ' / gave him everything that might 
 enable him to make it such.' 
 
 1 But is it a success ? ' 
 
 ' What leads you to think it other- 
 wise ? ' 
 
 1 What a wonderful soul you gave him : 
 it was a masterpiece, was it not ? Infinite
 
 Gifts of the Little Grey Man. 195 
 
 111 its range of qualities and in its subtle 
 adaptabilities, it was to be as flaivless as a 
 diamond, and as indestructible as ... . 
 yourself ' But the atmosphere in which 
 it has been compelled to exert itself has 
 apparently told cruelly on its qualities and 
 its texture. The breath of its fellow-men, 
 the atmosphere of its surroundings, these 
 have corroded it strangely and fatally, it 
 seems to me. Look down through his eyes 
 into the unclean depths of him : is that 
 ragged and rotten soul the masterpiece you 
 were so proud oft Would it not have 
 been wisest to have left out that bit of 
 mechanism, or, at any rate, to have 
 curtailed its capacity for self-destruction ? ' 
 and a burst of sneering laughter seemed 
 to echo along the strings. 
 
 So poignantly suggestive was the 
 sudden drift of thoughts, that the man 
 who held the crystal knew himself only 
 
 o 2
 
 196 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 by his memories, and the flavour of 
 these seemed bitter beyond belief. 
 
 " It is all right, then ? Can I take it ? " 
 questioned the man. 
 
 The peddler kept on working his bow. 
 
 The man nodded gravely. " Thank 
 you ; I think I shall appreciate it," said 
 he. And with that he walked away with 
 the crystal in his hand. 
 
 'Rest in any form vou wish: but 
 a single wish only.' 
 
 Such was the legend graved deeply on 
 the crystal : and the man had made his 
 choice and was ready with his wish. 
 
 " I should like to pass the remainder 
 of my life untortured by desire," he 
 mused, as he sat that evening at his 
 wine. 
 
 And the wish began at once to be 
 subtly fulfilled. 
 
 The book he had been dancing at he
 
 Gifts of the Little Grey Man. 197 
 
 no longer desired to read. He leaned 
 back and closed his eyes and presently 
 he was asleep. 
 
 And from that day onward desire died 
 out of him. 
 
 He neither cared to gaze on nature, 
 nor to lounge at the theatre : and business 
 and its cares were simply detestable 
 to him. Probably he had energy latent 
 somewhere in his nature s but it never 
 came to the front or availed him in any 
 way. The bias towards restfulness was 
 so pronounced and irresistible that he 
 sank into slothfulness as one sinks into a 
 slough. 
 
 His business went to ruin ; and his 
 life went to ruin with it. But he was 
 persistently and irritatingly content 
 through it all. 
 
 The lives that depended on him found 
 their support a rotten one and dropped
 
 198 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 off dejectedly into the black abysses of 
 the world : but even when he came to 
 die he was smilingly contented. 
 
 He had craved that desire might be 
 permanently rooted out of him ; and 
 whether it were a wise or foolish one, the 
 wish had been fulfilled.
 
 PASSING ON.
 
 PASSING ON. 
 
 I. 
 
 The hired nurse came to the bedside 
 and bent over me carelessly. 
 
 " He will soon pass now," she muttered, 
 as if relieved. "Perhaps if I open the 
 window it will make him pass easier." 
 And with that she went to the window 
 and opened it widely to the night. 
 
 A lean face stared in out of the dark- 
 ness : a face with cavernous eyes, fixed 
 and lidless, and with a brow as dry and 
 fleshless as a bleached white bone. 
 
 The eyes seemed to hold me, to draw 
 me towards them irresistibly. It was as if
 
 202 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 something wavered, dissolved, sank help- 
 lessly within me : as if stupefying vapours 
 rolled duskily across my eyeballs ; as if my 
 blood thickened dully .... and my life 
 died out. 
 
 And then came a sudden unaccount- 
 able buoyancy. I looked down on the 
 rigid countenance lying helpless among 
 the pillows ; on the rigid form outlined 
 beneath the thin, white counterpane. I 
 could have pitied the figure, so forlorn and 
 useless — such a mere blank wreck, cast 
 aside and abandoned — but the Face 
 within the darkness seemed to compel me 
 towards it, and suddenly I was outside 
 with it in the dense black night, and the 
 Form the face belonged to held me 
 gathered to its side. 
 
 I turned once, and only once, looking 
 over its shoulder, to cast a glance at the 
 tiny square of light we were leaving : the
 
 Passing on. 203 
 
 window of the room in which I had lived 
 and had died. Then the night closed 
 round me with its shroud of darkness, and 
 I could hear the far sea rolling and moan- 
 ing beneath my feet. 
 
 II. 
 
 I was abandoned even by the Form 
 that had borne me hither. As the dark- 
 ness slid away in misty folds, I was con- 
 scious of a world broadening remorselessly 
 around me, and was aware that I stood in 
 the Undiscovered Land. 
 
 There was, apparently, no hiatus in life, 
 after all. The mere material background 
 had changed its character and its appeal 
 — there were neither house nor shops, nor 
 the seductions of commerce or of things 
 conventional — but the passions and 
 desires, the wishes and cravings of the
 
 204 Tales of the Masque. 
 
 human consciousness were by no means 
 dead or eradicated even here. 
 
 I saw a man I had met somewhere in 
 that past life of mine and whom I re- 
 membered as being considered impregna- 
 bly virtuous. He was religious, of course ; 
 dabbled in generous actions as a pastime ; 
 was a Sunday-school teacher ; and occa- 
 sionally used to preach. I saw him here 
 dogged with a most repulsive shadow that 
 evidently caused the good man the most 
 exquisite annoyance. When he passed a 
 young girl, or even a flourishing matron, 
 his shadow took the semblance of a 
 hungry satyr, brimming over with appe- 
 tite and unrestrained in desire. If 
 he passed a godly fellow-worker, or a 
 man rich or merely respectable, his 
 shadow had an apish, leering enviousness 
 and a suggestion of almost impish malev- 
 olence. It was painfully annoying, this
 
 Passing on. 205 
 
 rude travesty of his emotions — which, of 
 course, were unaffectedly pious and 
 modest — and to a man so exquisitely con- 
 stituted the torture must have been great. 
 I pitied him heartily : and yet I could 
 scarcely repress a smile. 
 
 There was a man who on earth had 
 been a noted philanthropist, with a heart 
 big enough to embrace in it all the suffer- 
 ing ones of earth. Here his heart was so 
 small and dry and withered, that, as he 
 walked to and fro, it hopped up and down 
 in his bosom like a parched bean shaken 
 up and down in a pail. 
 
 There was another gaunt stranger 
 pacing to and fro along the highway who 
 on earth had passed for one of the most 
 unselfish of men. They had his statue in 
 the market-place and his model lodging- 
 houses in the slums. Here he was no- 
 thing but the mere bony skeleton of his
 
 206 Talcs of the Masque. 
 
 self-hood — the ego warped and very rotten 
 and as naked as a bone. It was amusing 
 to see how persistently the poor wretch 
 kept plucking handfuls of grass and scrap- 
 ing up the leaves that strewed the roadside 
 that he might weave out of these a garment 
 to hide his nakedness : and then, puff! a 
 breath of wind — and he was appallingly 
 nude again. 
 
 In an iron cage there was a strange 
 collection of curiosities, which a sleepy 
 old greybeard pointed out between his 
 dozes : beginning an eulogy, then dropping 
 asleep in the middle of it, and waking up 
 to end the description by a jest. He had 
 a man who had written books — sacrificing 
 everything to the writing of them — and 
 here was the poor creature now with a 
 mass of manuscript for a heart and with 
 rillets of ink trickling feebly through his 
 veins. He had an " honourable and
 
 Passing on. 207 
 
 gallant " soldier, so arrant a coward that, 
 being shut up in a compartment with a 
 frisky little spectre, he was continually 
 imploring someone to burst in and 
 protect him : even entreating a woman, 
 whom he had ruined and flung aside, that 
 she would come and share his misery and 
 shield his body with her own. He had 
 an endless variety of oddities, this sleepy 
 old greybeard, but his eulogies and his 
 satire were so inextricably tangled that it 
 was a weariness to listen to him and I was 
 glad to pass on. 
 
 But this passing on was, after all, a pro- 
 cess interminable. The land was fuller of 
 marvels than an ant-hill is of ants : and 
 the tragedies, the oddities, the grotesquerie 
 of its revelations, make my sides ache 
 with laughter .... for I am passing on 
 still. 
 
 Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, 70-76, Long Acre, W.C.
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 DROLLS FROM SHADOWLAND. 
 
 (Uniform with Tales of the Masque.) 
 One Vol. 18/no, $s. 6d. 
 
 " They are so simple at first sight that one is 
 surprised by their depth of suggestion, which 
 satisfies Milton's definition of the old tales of 
 enchantment, 'where more is meant than meets 
 the ear.' .... There is genius of an uncommon 
 kind in these ' Drolls from Shadowland.' " — 
 R. H. Stoddard, in the Mail and Express (New 
 York). 
 
 " They are all clever and powerful, highly 
 imaginative and weirdly fantastic. The tales are 
 full of character and excellent of their kind." — 
 — Guardian. 
 
 " Beautiful to read from their deep imagination 
 and haunting in their allegorical depth. Mourn- 
 ful, but not bitter ; brief, but not slight ; subtle, 
 but not obscure, in their hidden meanings, these 
 ' Drolls from Shadowland ' suggest nothing in 
 English literature. Their art is as consummate 
 as Daudet's. This is a masterpiece." — Traveller 
 (Boston, U.S.A.). 
 
 " This is a book in which poetry and prose are 
 blent. Mr. Pearce suggests subtly and nevei 
 
 P
 
 insists. His is imagination of a fine kind, and 
 one feels confident that this little book will give 
 him an assured place." — Illustrated London News. 
 
 ' ' All are marked by graceful fancy and imagi- 
 native power." — Speaker. 
 
 "Mr. Pearce has a weird imagination and an 
 unusual gift of curdling the blood with a few 
 strokes of the pen." — Academy. 
 
 " They are full of human interest, and though 
 a pungent but not unkindly satire gives them 
 tone and quality, the satire is tempered with a 
 broad and generous sympathy. Each of these 
 sketches has some core of truth expressed with 
 great beauty." — Bradford Observer. 
 
 " The enormous truths of life wink at us mys- 
 teriously out of dainty, elusive, fluttering, glinting 
 pictures." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " This most notable work." — Boston Advertiser 
 (U.S.A.). 
 
 By W. B. YEATS. 
 
 THE CELTIC TWILIGHT. 
 
 Men and Women, Dhouls and Faeries. 
 
 One Vol. i8mo, 3-r. 6d. 
 " For a pleasant, pathetic, charming view of 
 Irish people and Irish manners, no modern writer 
 is to be matched with Mr. Yeats." — Andrew 
 Lang, in the Illustrated London News.
 
 " Mr. Yeats has dwelled in the dim kingdom 
 of dhouls and fairies, of ghosts and witches, and 
 lived among those who still hold commerce with 
 the good people, and tell strange stories of the 
 haunted glens and waterways of the green hills of 
 Ireland." — Saturday Review. 
 
 " This book, which begins and ends with a 
 strain of exquisite music in verse, is written for 
 the most part in prose which is lyrical in feeling, 
 though restrained always within the most modest 
 limits of prose rhythms. It is such stuff as dreams 
 are made of, admitting us for a moment to see 
 ' how man mounts to the infinite by the ladder of 
 the impossible.' And so it has a charm and 
 value beyond its actual merit as a piece of 
 writing ; it opens up new horizons, too often 
 obscured for us by the smoke and chimney pots 
 of cities ; it reasserts the eternal reality of ro- 
 mance. " — Athenceum. 
 
 " It belongs to the shy and quiet things of 
 literature. It is all in twilight tones, and you 
 need to be used to walking in a grey dim light 
 before you recognize its beauty." — Sketch. 
 
 " Legends and dreams and fancies succeed each 
 other in a veritable phantasmagoria in Mr. Yeats's 
 remarkable book, to which we would gladly devote 
 more space, but that we could hardly give a fair 
 idea of it without quoting it in its entirety." — 
 Spectator. 
 
 P 2
 
 By KATHARINE TYNAN (Mrs. Hinkson). 
 
 A CLUSTER OF NUTS, 
 
 Being Sketches among my Own People. 
 
 " Kindly Irish of the Irish, 
 Neither Saxon nor Italian." 
 
 Crown 2>vo, y. 6d. 
 
 " Charming, tender, haunting — these are the 
 words that best describe one's impressions of Mrs. 
 Hinkson's 'Cluster of Nuts.' . . . There is no 
 plot in any of the stories, but each is a graceful 
 and tender outline of some phase of Irish charac- 
 ter." — Academy. 
 
 " It amazes you as much as it touches you to 
 find the scenes and sorrows of a peasant's set- 
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 as a sombre moor is made by the glow of the 
 sunset." — Truth. 
 
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 strained, and winning." — National Observer. 
 
 "Vaguely sad, pleasantly pathetic are the 
 stories that might have been deeply tragic seen 
 from another point of view, and for this reason we 
 prefer those that are memories of childhood, for 
 the standpoint of Mrs. Hinkson is the standpoint
 
 of every natural, healthy, dreamy child. The 
 cup-moss, the fairy rings, the tame pigeon, 
 and the apple-trees are life's realities, and the 
 love tragedies of the grown-up folk are as the 
 Greek mythology will be in twenty years to 
 come : she is never too much absorbed in them 
 to refrain from the playful yet wistful digressions 
 that make up so much of the charm of this 
 ' Cluster of Nuts.'" — Athenaum. 
 
 By MATJRUS JOKAI. 
 
 EYES LIKE THE SEA. 
 
 A ROMANCE. 
 
 Translated from the Hungarian of Maurus Jokai 
 by R. Nisbet Bain. 
 
 One Vol. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 " In some respects the heroine reminds us of 
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 and in feminine dexterity and sexual eccentricities 
 is no unworthy mate for either." — Athenaum. 
 
 "The vigour of the book is astonishing." 
 — World. 
 
 "'Eyes like the Sea' is one of those rare 
 books that break all the rules and defy criticism 
 by justifying their irregularities." — Guardian.
 
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 in which Jokai analyses Bessy's character. All 
 through the story, indeed, we feel ourselves in 
 the presence of a master of the human heart, and 
 again and again we come upon sentences pregnant 
 with that wisdom which it is the lot of but few to 
 acquire. " — Speaker. 
 
 By MOIRA O'NEILL. 
 
 AN EASTER VACATION. 
 
 A NOVEL. 
 
 One Vol. Crown Svo. 
 
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 move and have their being in ease and comfort." 
 — Athenaum, 
 
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 — Guardian. 
 
 "The reader may pick by the dozen out of the 
 pages shrewd, witty, pungent, thoughtful re- 
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 and compact, and we confidently bid him go and 
 do it." — World.
 
 7 
 
 Mr. GEORGE GISSING'S NOVELS. 
 
 Denzil Quarrier. One Vol. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 The Emancipated. One Vol. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 The Odd Women. One Vol. Crown Svo, 6s. 
 
 " A little buoyancy, a little of the joy of earth, 
 of the spirit of Mr. Meredith — nay, or of Rabelais 
 — what is the use of wishing these things to a 
 talent radically different ? It is much if such a 
 talent can end as Mr. Gissing's seems likely to, 
 in a creed that is somewhat dreary, but still 
 strenuous, self-contained, and not desperate nor 
 without dignity." — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 " Certainly his people live. You might brush 
 against many of them in the Strand from morning 
 till morning again. And, better, they live trans- 
 figured by the artist, who shews you the exact 
 significance of each life. ' The Odd Women ' is 
 a great vindication of realism from the charge of 
 dulness."— Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " Mr. Gissing's new novel ' The Odd Women ' 
 is intensely modern, actual in theme as well as in 
 treatment. . . . The book is better than merely 
 readable, it is absorbing. One feels that the 
 author is more than master of his subject ; that he 
 has turned it about and around, and thoroughly 
 knows its capabilities." — Athenceum,
 
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