CONTAINING
Eva’s Adventures in Shadow-Land.
By MARY D. NAUMAN.
AND
The Merman and The Figure-Head.
By CLARA F. GUERNSEY.
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
She had been reading fairy-tales, after her lessons were done, all the morning; and now that dinner was over, her father gone to his office, the baby asleep, and her mother sitting quietly sewing in the cool parlor, Eva thought that she would go down across the field to the old mill-pond; and sit in the grass, and make a fairy-tale for herself.
There was nothing that Eva liked better than to go and sit in the tall grass; grass so tall that when the child, in her white dress, looped on her plump white shoulders with blue ribbons, her bright golden curls brushed back from her fair brow, and her blue eyes sparkling, sat down in it, you could not see her until you were near her, and then it was just as if you had found a picture of a little girl in a frame, or rather a nest of soft, green grass.
All through this tall, wavy grass, down to the very edge of the pond, grew many flowers,—violets, and buttercups, and dandelions, like little golden suns. And as Eva sat there in the grass, she filled her lap with the purple and yellow flowers; and all around her the bees buzzed as though they wished to light upon the flowers in her lap; on which, at last,—so quietly did she sit,—two black-and-golden butterflies alighted; while a great brown beetle, with long black feelers, climbed up a tall grass-stalk in front of her, which, bending slightly under his weight, swung to and fro in the gentle breeze which barely stirred Eva’s golden curls; and the field-crickets chirped, and even a snail put his horns out of his shell to look at the little girl, sitting so quietly in the grass among the flowers, for Eva was gentle, and neither bee, nor butterfly, beetle, cricket, or snail were afraid of her. And this is what Eva called making a fairy-tale for herself.
But sitting so quietly and watching the insects, and hearing their low hum around her, at last made Eva feel drowsy; and she would have gone to sleep, as she often did, if all of a sudden there had not sounded, just at her feet, so that it startled her, a loud
Croak! croak!
But it frightened the two butterflies; for away they went, floating off on their black-and-golden wings; and the brown beetle was in so much of a hurry to run away that he tumbled off the grass-stalk on which he had been swinging, and as soon as he could regain his legs, crept, as fast as they could carry him, under a friendly mullein-leaf which grew near, and hid himself; and the crickets were silent; and the bees all flew away to their hive; and the snail drew himself and his horns into his house, so that he looked like nothing in the world but a shell; for when beetles, and butterflies, and crickets, and bees, and snails hear this croak! croak! they know that it is time for them to get out of the way.
And when Eva looked down, there, just at her feet, sat a great green toad.
She gave him a little push with her foot to make him go away; but instead of that he only hopped the nearer, and again came—
Croak! croak!
He was entirely too near now for comfort, so the little girl jumped up, dropping all the flowers she had gathered; and as she stood still for a moment she thought that she heard the green toad say:
“Go to the pond! Go to the pond!”
It seemed so funny to Eva to hear a toad talk that she stood as still as a mouse looking at him; and as she looked at him, she heard him say again, as plain as possible:
“Go to the pond! Go to the pond!”
And then Eva did just exactly what either you or I would have done if we had heard a great green toad talking to us. She went slowly through the tall grass down to the very edge of the pond.
But instead of the fishes which used to swim about in the pretty clear water, and which would come to eat the crumbs of bread she always threw to them, and the funny, croaking frogs which used to jump and splash in the water, she saw nothing but the same great green toad, which had hopped down faster than she had walked, and which was now sitting on a mossy stone near the bank. And when Eva would have turned away he croaked again:
“Stay by the pond! Stay by the pond!”
And whether Eva wished it or not, she stood by the pond—for she really could not help it—and looked. And it seemed to her that the sky grew dark and the water black, as it always does before a rain; and then the child grew frightened, and would have run away, but that just then, in the very blackest part of the pond, she saw shining and looking up at her a little round full moon, with a face in it; and it seemed to her, strange though you may think it, that the eyes of the face in the moon winked at her; and then it was gone.
And again Eva would have left the pond, but the green toad, which she thought had suddenly grown larger, croaked more loudly:
“Stay by the pond! Stay by the pond!”
And Eva obeyed, as indeed she could not help doing; and then again, in the pond, there came and went the little moon-face, only that this time it was larger, and the eyes winked longer.
For the third time the child would have turned away, frightened at all these strange doings in the pond; but for the third time the green toad, larger than ever, croaked:
“Stay by the pond! Stay by the pond!”
So, for the third time, Eva looked at the pond; and there, for the third time, was the shining moon-face, as large now as a real full moon, though, when Eva looked up, there was no moon shining in the sky to be reflected in the pond; and then the eyes in the moon-face looked harder at her, and the toad winked at her; and then the toad was the moon and the moon was the toad, and both seemed to change places with each other; and at last both of them shone and winked so that Eva could not tell them apart; and before she knew what she was doing she lay down quietly in the tall grass, and the moon in the pond and the green toad winked at her until she fell asleep.
Then the moon-eyes closed and the shining face faded; and the green toad slipped quietly off his stone into the water; and still Eva slept soundly.
And that was what Eva saw in the pond.
How long she lay there asleep the child did not know. It might only have been for a few minutes; it might have been for hours. Yet, when she did awake, and think it was time for her to go home, she did not understand where she could be. The place seemed the same, yet not the same,—as though some wonderful change had come over it during her sleep. There was the pond, to be sure, but was it the same pond? Tall trees grew round it, yet their branches were bare and leafless. A little brook ran into the pond, which she was sure that she never had seen there before. Was she still asleep? No. She was wide awake. She sprang to her feet and looked around. The green toad was gone, so was the moon-face; her father’s house was nowhere to be seen; there was no sun, but it was not dark, for a light seemed to come from the earth, and yet the earth itself did not shine; mountains rose in the distance; but, strangest of all, these mountains sometimes bore one shape, sometimes another; at times they were like great crouching beasts, then again like castles or palaces, then, as you looked, they were mountains again. Strange shadows passed over the pond, stranger shapes flitted among the trees.
Eva did not know how the change had been made, still less did she guess that she was now in Shadow-Land.
Yet it was all so singular that, as she looked upon the changing mountain forms, and the quaint shadows, a sudden longing came over her, with a desire to go home, and she turned away from the pond. And as she did so, a little fragrant purple violet, the last that was left of all the flowers which she had gathered, and which had been tangled in her curls, fell to the ground, melting into fragrance as it did so; and as it fell, there passed from Eva’s mind all recollection of father, mother, home, and the little brother cooing in his cradle: the changing mountain forms seemed strange no longer; she forgot to wonder at the singular earth-light, and at the absence of the sun; and noticing for the first time that she was standing in a little path which ran along the pond, and then followed the course of the little brook, whose waters seemed singing the words, “Follow, follow me!” Eva wondered no longer, but first stooping to pick up a little stick, in shape like a boy’s cane, with a knob at one end, just like a roughly carved head, and which was lying just at her feet, she walked along the little path, which seemed made expressly for her to walk in.
She walked on and on, as she thought, for hours, yet there came neither sunset nor moonrise, and there were no stars in the sky, which seemed nearer the earth than she had ever seen it before. There were clouds, to be sure, of shapes as strange as those of the mountains, which passed and repassed each other, although there was no wind to move them. Everything was silent. Even the trees, swaying, as they did, to and fro, moved noiselessly; the only sound, save Eva’s light steps, which broke the stillness was the silvery ripple of the brook, which kept company with the path Eva trod, and whose waters murmured, gently, “Follow, follow me!”
And Eva followed the murmuring brook, which seemed to her like a pleasant companion in this silent land, where, even as there was no sound, there was no sign of life; nothing like the real world which the child had left, and of which, with the fall of the little violet from her curls, she had lost all recollection; even as though that world had never existed for her. Once or twice, as she went on, holding her little stick in her hand, she imagined that she saw child-figures beckoning to her; but, upon going up to them, she always found that either a rock, or a low, leafless shrub, or else a rising wreath of mist, had deceived her.
Yet, though she was alone, with no one near her, not even a bird to flit merrily from tree to tree, nor an insect to buzz across her path, Eva felt and knew no fear, and not for a moment did she care that she was alone. The silvery ripple of the little brook, along which her path lay, sounded like a pleasant voice in her ears; when thirsty, she drank of its waters, which seemed to serve alike as food and drink; when tired, she would lie fearlessly down upon its grassy margin, and sleep, as she would imagine, only for a few minutes, for there would be no change in the strange sky nor in the earth-light when she would awake from what it had been when she lay down; and yet in reality she would sleep as long as she would have done in her little bed at home.
For two whole days, which yet seemed as only a few hours, the child followed the brook. During this time she had felt no desire to leave the path; she had unhesitatingly obeyed the rippling voice of the brook, which seemed to say, “Follow, follow me!” But now there was a change: the water, at times, encroached upon the path, and rocks obstructed the current, around which little waves broke and dashed, while strange little flames, which yet did not burn, and gave no heat, started from the waves, dancing on them; and misty shapes, more definite than those she had first seen, beckoned to her to come to them. Now, Eva felt an irresistible longing to leave the brook, and wander away; far, far into the deep forest, away from the dancing flames and the beckoning shapes.
And once or twice she did leave the path, and turn her back upon the brook. But every time that she stepped off the beaten track, faint though it was, her feet grew heavy, and clung to the earth, so that she could scarcely move; and the waves of the brook leaped higher and higher; and the dancing flames grew brighter; and the silvery voice, louder and clearer than ever, would call, “Follow, follow me!” till the child was always glad to return to the path, and then once again the way would grow easy to her feet, and the water would resume its former tranquillity.
On, on she went, still following the course of the brook. But at last a new sound mingled, though but faintly, with its musical ripple,—the distant voice of falling waters. And when first this new tone reached Eva’s ears, a few signs of life began to show themselves,—a sad-colored moth flitted lazily across the path into the forest,—a slow-crawling worm or hairy caterpillar hid itself under a stone as Eva passed,—the bright eyes of a mouse would peep out at her from under the shelter of a leaf, or else a toad would leap hastily from the path into the waters of the brook.
Still Eva walked onward, more eagerly than ever, for though the “Follow, follow me!” of the brook was now silent, she heard the voice of the other waters, and at every turn in the path she looked forward eagerly for the little joyous cascade she expected to see. For it she looked, yet in vain: though the sound of the waters grew louder, she saw nothing, till at last a sudden gleam of golden light, from a long opening in the forest, fell across the now placid waters of the brook; and Eva looked up to see, far away in this opening, a fountain playing in clouds of golden spray, amid which danced sparkles of light; and the path, parting abruptly from the brook which it had followed so long, led down the opening in the forest directly to this play of waters, whose voice Eva had heard and followed.
And as she turned away from the little brook, whose course and her own had so long been the same, it seemed to her that even the silvery ripple of its waters died away into silence; and, looking back once more, after she had taken a few steps, upon the way by which she had come, lo! the brook and its waters had wholly disappeared, and an impenetrable forest had already closed up the path behind her.
I have said that Eva wondered at nothing which came to pass in this land through which she was wandering; nothing surprised her, but the most singular occurrences appeared natural; and so it did not seem at all strange to her that the path and the brook should be swallowed up, as it were, by the dark, hungry, impenetrable forest; and it was almost with a feeling of pleasure at the change that after the one hurried glance she gave to the path by which she had come, and which was now no longer to be seen, that she went, still holding the little stick in her hand, up the opening between the trees to the beautiful fountain.
And as she drew near, the bright waters of the fountain played higher and higher, and sparkled and glistened in golden beauty; and rainbows of many colors surrounded it, so that Eva longed to dip her hands in its joyous flow, while the waters as they fell tinkled merrily like silvery fairy bells; and she came nearer and nearer, thinking she had never heard such sweet music as this water made, till she was within a few feet of the fountain.