Drolls From Shadowland Part 8

But Rastus Dabb, her sweetheart, was as cloddish and unimaginative as the heavy-uddered cows, with their great fleshy dewlaps, of which he was prouder than he was of anything else in his world. It was quite impossible to get his feet off the solid earth: and apparently his mind was anch.o.r.ed firmly to his feet. But Ruth had the attractiveness of all young things--she was fresh and cheerful, with a heart as light as a feather--and, by the law of contrast, she suited him to a nicety, more especially as she was an excellent little housewife to boot. So the courting prospered sunnily; and he let her "romance" as she pleased.

When she was a wife and mother, Ruth presently became acquainted with that grim Shadow who knows the secret of our tears--their source and the bitter in them--and knows, too, the secret of everlasting peace. And thereafter, when at intervals his wings darkened the world for her, her thoughts went out, with a strange yearning, towards the dead who had once inhabited the ruin and could now roam through it only as ghosts.

"Shall I one day have only such a foothold as theirs in this dear green world of ours?" she would ask herself, s.h.i.+veringly. And the Sunday-evening's sermon could soothe her not a whit.

At last, in the waning afternoon of life, when her smooth brown hair was as yet unstreaked with grey and her cheeks had still a splash of colour in them, she fell ill of some mysterious malady--mysterious, at least, to the sympathetic villagers--and one dreary day in the bl.u.s.tering autumn she was aware in her heart that the Shadow was in the room.

"Draw back the curtains as far as you can," said she to Rastus, who stood helpless by the bedside.

And when they were drawn, and she could see the great gaunt ruin frowning blackly above the slopes of the shadow-checkered hillside, she cried out suddenly, "I'm going there among them, Rastus! Oh, dear, hold me!" And with that she pa.s.sed.

FOOTNOTES:

[P] Fairies.

[Q] Melancholy, forlorn.

GIFTS AND AWARDS.

"TWO bonnier babes," said the grey old midwife, bending thoughtfully over them, "I never before a.s.sisted into the world."

The mother, lying wan in her bed, smiled happily.

"So bonny are they," said the wrinkled beldame, "that I will give to each of them one of my choicest gifts: something they will still keep hugged to their hearts when they are as close to the gates as you or I."

"And how close is that?" asked the mother, growing whiter.

The wise old midwife turned from the bedside and bent above the infants, mumbling to herself.

Presently the mother started up from a doze. There was no one in the room but her married sister. "I dreamed Death was in the room with me just now," said she. "And he had an old woman with him whom he called his Sister. She seemed to me to be giving my babies something: but what it was I don't know. At first I thought it was a plaything; but now I think it was a sorrow. At least. . . ."

"_Dear!_ DEAR!" cried her sister, in alarm, as if she saw the spirit drifting beyond her ken.

"My babies!" whispered the mother.

And presently she was "at rest."

Rick and d.i.c.k grew up somehow. Though motherless and fatherless they were not quite friendless, and in the struggle for existence they held their own and kept alive.

A more agreeable and cheerful fellow than d.i.c.k it would have been impossible to find, according to his companions. He seemed dowered with a disposition so equable and contented that it was a pleasure to be with him: and he radiated cheerfulness like a fire. Moreover, he was in thorough harmony with his surroundings. He found fault with nothing in the structure of society, and desired no change either in laws or inst.i.tutions: everything was ordered wisely, and was ordered for the best. In fact, he was the spirit of Content personified: and much patting on the back did he get for his reward.

"We must give him a helping hand, must push him forward, you know," said the Community, beaming on its cheerful young champion.

And d.i.c.k took the "pus.h.i.+ng forward" with admirable self-composure, and certainly seemed to deserve all he got.

As for Rick, the Community would have nothing to do with him. He was not quite an out-and-out pessimist, it was true; but he seemed to look on the Community as a most clumsily-articulated creature--a thing of shreds and patches, and the Cheap Jack of shams. He was always putting his finger on this spot or that; hinting that here there was a weakness, and there . . . something worse. Every advanced thinker, and the majority of theorists, could count on finding a sympathetic listener in him: and not infrequently they found in him an advocate also; such an arrant anti-optimist was the pestilent fellow. As if Civilization, after thousands of years of travail, had produced nothing better than a clumsy abortion with the claws of an animal and the tastes of Jack-an-ape! Why, the man must be mad, to have such irregular fancies! It was a pity laws against opinions were not oftener put in force: then--a click of the guillotine, and the world would have peace!

Rick listened grimly, and made a note of the imagery. "You will remember it better in black and white," said he.

In the course of years d.i.c.k became a churchwarden and a philanthropist (he took the infection very mildly and in its most agreeable form), and a highly respected gambler on, or rather member of, the Stock Exchange.

He was also joined "in the bands of holy matrimony" to a buxom young widow who was left-handedly connected with The Aristocracy Itself! The lady brought him a most desirable fortune to start with, and after some years made him a present of twins: so that d.i.c.k was now a notable man among his acquaintances, and had the ambition to become a bigger man still, by-and-by: a Common Councilman certainly, and an Alderman _perhaps_!

Meanwhile Rick had developed into a musty _savant_: a fellow whose tastes, if you might call them such, were of the most _outre_ order--in advance of everything that was sober, respectable, and conventional; and in aggressive alliance with everything that was disturbing, and that was maliciously and wickedly critical (said the saints).

"The kernel of his life is unhealthy," said his brother: "it has a deadly fungus growing in it, I am afraid."

"The fungus of discontent, dear friend," said the clergyman.

"I am afraid so," said d.i.c.k, with a prodigious great sigh. "Still, we must none the less pray for him unceasingly: for prayer availeth much, as we know."

The clergyman dramatically clasped his white hands together, looking up as one who speechlessly admires.

Rick sat musing in his gloomy study: thinking of the ladder he had climbed, and of the scenery of his life that now stretched out like a map before him.

Presently the study door opened softly, and a Figure came in and took a chair at his side.

"You have come, then!" said Rick. "I thought your coming must be near."

"Shall we start?" asked the Figure.

"I am ready," answered Rick.

And they pa.s.sed out together into the deep black night.

"Come, take my arm: we will call together for your brother."

"He has so much to make him happy! There are the little ones and his wife! Could you not delay a little?"

"He must come with us to-night."

d.i.c.k was attending a banquet which was being given in his honour to celebrate his recent election as a Common Councilman, and the l.u.s.t of life was in his every vein. But in the act of responding to the toast of the evening he was suddenly attacked by a fit of apoplexy. He staggered, and fell back--and they perceived that he was dead.

It was a bleak and a very depressing journey to pa.s.s nakedly and alone from the warm, well-lighted, and flattering banquet, and, most of all, from the comfortable and familiar earth, up to the Doom's-man and the Bar beside the Gates. If he could only have had a friend or two at his side!

On the way up, just as he was nearing the gates, d.i.c.k overtook Rick, who was a little way ahead of him.