THE STORY OF WILLIE AND FANCY

IT always seemed to Willie as if other children knew so many more things than he did, as if they played at some game at which he was left out, as if they had some clue to life and its enjoyment which he had somehow missed. Perhaps it was only because he had never known any children of his own age. His father and mother were dead, and he lived with his grandparents in a little cottage at the top of the hill, just about a mile from the village. There were two other cottages adjoining his grandfather’s but no one had lived in them since he could remember, and all three cottages were nearly tumbling down and yet never quite tumbled. The grandfather used to say it was a bad thing to live in a broken-to-bits cottage, but he never thought of leaving it. Willie was left to do just as he liked, for his grandparents were very old, and did not know how to amuse a little boy. His grandmother, to be sure, cut up her husband’s old clothes for him, and made him a seedcake once a fortnight, but that was all. The cut-up clothes were very funny; the trousers were generally too short, and the jacket sleeves too long, and he pockets were never in the right place; but somehow they always seemed to go well with Willie’s grave little face, and large blue eyes, and soft hair, that was brown in the shade and gold in the sun.

He was very lonely in the winter-time, for his grandmother was very old and nervous, and did not like his wandering about in the cold or when the snow was on the ground.

“You might fall and break your leg,” she said; “and then what would you do? Wooden legs are dear to buy and awkward to walk with; besides boots are always bought in pairs, and one boot would be wasted if you had no foot to put it on, so it is real economy to stay at home and keep two legs, my dear!” And Willie looked up with his big blue eyes at his grandmother, and said—

“Yes, granny, dear; but the odd boots would do to throw at the sparrows in the cherry-tree.”

“It would never do to throw new boots at them,” his grandmother answered; “it would frighten the poor little sparrows, for they have been used to old ones so long.”

And so all through the winter Willie seldom went far from the cottage; but he amused himself by getting over the fence into the next-door gardens, and then by the unbolted doors into the empty cottages. He was never tired of going through and through the deserted rooms. He looked in all the empty cupboards, and stood before all the rusty little fireplaces, trying to imagine what the people, who had dwelt there once, had been like; the people who had lived, and laughed, and worked, and wept, between the mouldy grimy walls; who had sat over the damp fireplaces, and kept their good things in the bare cupboards, and who had died of journeyed on to other places.

“Perhaps there were children,” he thought once, “and perhaps they ran in and out, and sang, and danced, and gathered the fruit in the garden in the summer, and played at snowball in the winter. I would give the world to have seen them.”

In the summer-time he was not nearly so lonely, for then he could go off for the whole day if he pleased, and wander about in the fields and woods, or over the brow of the hill to look at the long straight road beyond,—he never knew where that road led to,—and in the evening he went home past the blacksmith’s shop. The blacksmith lived just half-way between the village and the cottage, and there was generally a little group of children round the door of the forge; and Willie used to stand too, and watch the sparks fly upwards, and listen to the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer; but he always stood a little way off from the others, for they were strange to him, and he was shy. The blacksmith’s little daughter was generally sitting by the door sewing; it seemed as if she stitched away at the same piece of blue-checked linen for ever. She was evidently making something, but Willie often though it had had no beginning and would have no end, that for ever the blacksmith would be hammering at his anvil, and for ever his little daughter would be sitting by the door, stitching away at the same piece of coarse blue linen.

“Grandfather,” Willie asked one day, “is it far to the rest of the world?”

“The rest of the world?” his grandfather said looking up; “why, what are you thinking of, lad?”

“I want to see it, that is all; is it far?”

“It depends what part you want to see, it’s a long way from end to end of the world, if that is what you mean; and a vast deal lies between.”

“Shall I ever see it all, grandfather?”

“No, I should say not. I have seen little enough myself, and I don’t know you are going to see more. By and by you’ll have to learn, and when you have done learning you’ll have to work, and when you have done working, and maybe before, you’ll have to die. That’s what life is for most of us, lad—one after another, one after another; little enough difference there is in the lives of us, take them all round.”

“But some work in one way and some in another,” the old man’s wife said, looking up quickly; “and it’s the business of some to travel far, and of some to stay at home.”

“Tell me more, granny dear,” the boy said eagerly. His grandmother thought about more things than his grandfather did, or at any rate talked about more, and Willie liked best to listen to her. “What does one do if one wants to travel?”

“Get ready—ready for what one means to do.”

“Get what ready, dear granny?”

The old woman took her knitting, put on her glasses, and looking up into her little grandson’s face, said quickly, “Oneself.”

He waited a minute and then he asked, “What shall I be when I am a man, dear granny?”

“How can I tell, lad? you are only a boy yet. Bless me,” she said suddenly, “but you are eight years old, and it is time you took to getting ready to be a man.” Then she turned to her husband. “Tom, the boy is eight years old. We must write to the city and ask John what we shall do with him.” The old woman’s eldest son, who was a lawyer, lived in the city. He was a clever man, who had taught himself nearly all he knew and had made money, for people were glad to get his advice. “Yes, we must write John. He will tell us what to do with the lad. What would you like to be, Willie, some day when you are a man?”

Then Willie thought for a few minutes.

“Granny, dear, I should like to be something that should take me right to the end of the world; I want to see what there is there. And I should like to go to sea in a ship and to be wrecked; oh granny, I should like it so; and to escape in a little boat while the waves tossed and tossed all about, and we rode over them and over them ever so high.”

The old woman laid down her knitting, and took off her spectacles and wiped them well, and put them on again. “Willie, my little lad,” she said, “you have been reading books. Now, where did you get them?”

“It is only the book up on grandfather’s shelf, grandmother. I looked at the picture, and then I thought I should like to be one of the people in the boat.”

“Ah, well, people are safe enough once they are in a picture, but no one knows what they have had to go through before they got there. Don’t let pictures unsettle your mind, lad, and set you hankering after dangerous things that do you no good till they are past and gone, and maybe have taken you with them.”

“Oh, grandmother, but I am tired of seeing so little and being so little; I want to see more.”

“Ah, it’s wonderful the things one wants and never gets. It takes a long time to understand how little it is one ever gets of what one wants,” the grandfather said. “one grows used to doing without at last and so content.”

“More’s the pity if one’s young,” the old woman answered; and then she turned to Willie again and said, “Learn to do without things, lad; but never to be content not to get them while you have hands to work, and feet to run, and a head to think. Try after all things, but not to keep them, for they are better worth winning for others than for oneself. Remember that, dear, as long as you live.”

“But I don’t know any one to do things for, except you and grandfather,” the boy said, puzzled. He often wondered how it was that his grandmother talked so strangely. After the first few minutes she sometimes said things that seemed to belong not to the old woman who lived in the cottage and knitted day in and day out, and who thought of nothing save the chickens and the cherry-tree and the making of cakes and clothes for Willie and the keeping of the cottage tidy, but to some past life, and to some world in which she lived no longer, and of whose ways some knowledge lingered unknown to her memory; it was almost as if some past self awoke, a self of which the present one was unconscious.

“I don’t know any one but you and grandfather to do things for, and even then I don’t know how to do them, or how to begin, granny dear.”

“You won’t have far to look. There’ll be a crowd waiting when you lift up your eyes, dear. One has never far to seek when one has a mind to help—learn how to do first, and the chance to do will be at your elbow.”

“Ah, but, grandmother, I want to see so much, and first of all, I want to go right to the end of the world.”

“Well, well,” she said, and took up her knitting again, “we’ll ask your uncle John. There’s little that he cannot give one advice about. Your grandfather shall write soon enough. Go out and see that the chickens are gone to roost, and take a little run over the brown, and maybe you’ll think less of the end of the world for to-night.”

Then Willie went out and looked at the chickens. They fluttered their wings and flew past him as he entered the fowl-house, for they were just settling down to roost and did not want to be disturbed. He pulled-to the door of the fowl-house, and then he went out at the little wooden gate by the side of the cottage, and ran along the road that led over the hill. “If I could only run to the end of the world,” he thought, “or to the great sea, and hear the waves. I don’t want to do things,” he went on. “I want to see them.”

There was a little grassy bank at the side of the road; he sat down to think, and rested his face in his hand so long, wondering and wondering, that he did not notice the twilight gather closer and closer around him, or the mist rise up from the river and the fields, and wrap the trees in a soft gray cloak and hide all things before him. It was odd, but as he sat there, it seemed as if he could hear a soft voice singing the words that were running in his head—

“Right to the end of the world, my dear;

Right to the end of the world.”

“It isn’t a song,” he said to himself. “It is only what I was saying to myself and yet I thought I heard some one else singing it.” He looked up, but there was no one near. He saw the mist them. He felt is softly touching his face and hair. It made him think of the waves and the sailors. “If I could but see them just once,” he cried.

“I will take you Willie; come with me,” he heard a voice say; and looking up quickly, he saw that on the dewy green bank beside him a little girl was sitting. He looked at her face long and gravely. He could see it well in the dim light. It was very beautiful, and he had never seen it before; but yet he felt that he and she knew each other. He remembered her as one remembers some sweet dream, forgetting when one dreamt it. She had soft restless eyes that seemed to have a thousand things to say; her hair was like threads of gold and fell down to her waist, and her mouth was sweet, and her smile was bright. Oh, she was lovely, and never was any one half so sweet as Fancy when Willie first saw her.

“Dear Fancy,” he said, for he knew her name quite well, “have you come to me?” Then she crept up closer to him.

“We will go so far together,” she said softly. “Oh, Willie, you are not afraid, are you? The sea is creeping up to us. It has overtaken the river. It is sweeping over the meadows. Are you afraid?” she whispered. Then he held her tight and close, and her face was pale, and he saw no longer the gold upon her hair or the sweetness in her eyes, for the night had grown dark and the wind had risen and cried out shrilly from tree to tree, and slowly and surely the great sea was coming with many a leap and many a roar over the meadows and over the hill towards them. And yet he knew that somewhere, afar off in some still corner that fled back and back as the sea came on, the cottage was safe; the danger was only for him and for Fancy, and he was brave for both. And still the waves came madly on till suddenly they were at his feet, and then he ran, holding Fancy close, so that no harm should come to her.

“Perhaps we could ride on the waves,” she whispered. “See, there is a great ship; the wind is driving it on. Oh, we are going already; hold my hand; hold fast, lest we be lost.” But he could hear no more, for they were riding on and on, over and over the great waves, faster and faster than the ship, and nowhere was anything to be seen save the blackness and the sea and the sky and the great ship being driven on. Soon they overtook the ship. They saw the man at the wheel. They knew that he was not thinking of the storm and the waves, but of a little cottage high up upon a cliff, and of the sunshine falling down upon it, and of a woman shading her eyes with her hands and for ever turning her face southwards and watching, while the children played among the flowers and asked, “When will he come home, dear mother? when will he come home?” On went Willie and Fancy, on and on. There was a little boar, tossing higher and higher while Death rode on in front, but, oh so slowly! Willie could have cried out with fear, for he knew the boat would overtake it, and he saw the wild eyes and the scared white faces of the wrecked as they with their last hope passed by. On went Willie and Fancy, on and on, till far above them shone one little star, and the water became suddenly smooth, and the waves rocked them as a mother rocks her child to sleep, and gently carried them home to the cottage-gate, and in a minute Fancy had waved her hand to him, and Willie had climbed the narrow stairs that led to the little room in which he slept.

He heard Fancy’s voice long after she had left him. He heard it in his dreams that night. “We will go so,” she whispered. “We will see the end of the world together.”

“WHERE shall we go?” Fancy asked; “where shall we go to-day? The sun is in the sky, the flowers are all in bloom, and the birds are singing. Where shall we go to-day?” She did not wait for an answer, but danced all down the wood, taking the strangest flights and singing the wildest songs, telling Willie a hundred things he had never heard before, teaching him to hear where till now he had heard no sound, and to see where formerly he had seen nothing. He never knew how they went, how high they climbed, or the names of the places he passed, or of the people he met, but none of them were strange to him, for Fancy knew them well, and made them all known to him.

“Dear Fancy,” he said, “why did you not come before? I have been alone so long; till you came I had no companion.”

“You did not call me,” she cried. “You did not want me till the days when you went through and through the empty cottages thinking of all the people who once dwelt there; and then, though you said no word, I heard your voice calling me faintly, and I came a little nearer and a little nearer until at last I was sitting by you on the grassy bank.”

“And when shall we go to the end of the world?” he asked. “Let it be soon, for I am always thinking of it.”

“We will go to-night,” she said, “this very night. I will tap at the window-pane when you have slept one single hour, and then you must wake up and open wide the window, and there on the window-ledge I will be waiting.”

“How shall we get down?”

“We will climb down by the cherry-tree, and soon we will be far away.”

“Is it very far?” he asked; “for what will grandmother say?”

“It is very far, but we shall soon be there;” and then Fancy skipped away.

He saw her at the end of the wood, the sun still shining on her hair, and he held out his hands and called, “Come back for a little while now, and sing me one song more, dear Fancy;” but she laughed a merry mocking laugh, and was gone.

“Where have you been, my little lad?” his grandmother asked, “and what have you been doing?”

“Oh, grandmother,” he said, “I am so happy. I shall never be lonely more;” but his grandmother had no desire to listen.

“Ah, well, you will have to go to school soon and learn, and then you’ll have less time on your hands,” was all she said.

“Am I to go to school?” he asked.

“Your grandfather has written to uncle John about it. The blacksmith’s little daughter is going to school, and she is younger than you. She is going to learn some day how to teach others. It is time you were thinking of your books too.” And then the grandmother took up her knitting. “A great man is your uncle John,” she said presently, “a very great man; and all his greatness is his own doing. We never thought he’d be the man he is.” Then suddenly she said, “There’s a large cake in the over, dear lad; do you think you could go and turn it?”

So Willie went and turned the cake, and then sat down on the rug and looked at the great tabby cat fast asleep, and listened to the ticking of the clock, and thought how much he longed to see all the world before he did any work in it; and then he smelt the cake, and remembered how kind his grandmother was to him; yet here was he, who had never done anything in the world, grumbling and discontented because some day he would have to make a beginning. He got up and went back to his grandmother, and put his arms round her neck and his little face close to hers.

“Dear granny,” he said, “I will be a great man some day if I can. I will try to be like uncle John. Perhaps Fancy will teach me.”

“Fancy! Fancy will teach you nothing,” she said. “Don’t waste your time on Fancy;” and then she looked into the little lad’s blue eyes and grave pale face. “It is by your own head and your own heart that you will be great, my dear, if you have the will to mind them.”

III

“WILLIE, Willie,” called Fancy, “are you ready? I am waiting;” and in a minute Willie sprang up and opened the window; he was dressed, and had been listening for her tap. He clambered on to the window-ledge, and then together they jumped into the cherry-tree and down to the garden beneath. He stopped for a moment and looked round—at the cottage, and his own little window wide open, and the fowl-house, and the empty cottages beyond, and at the cherry-tree above him, and at Fancy—Fancy with her golden hair and restless eyes and eager bright face beside him.

“Are we going to the end of the world?” he asked with a sigh, for he had longed so much for this strange journey.

“Yes, we are going,” answered Fancy; “are you ready?”

“Yes, I am ready; but wait a minute,” he said, and picked a rose. It fell to pieces as he held it, and the rose leaves fluttered to his feet. He looked down at it, and something like a sob was in his throat, though he did not know why. It is long years since that summer night, and he has travelled far, and seen much, and many things are known to him now, yet no memory of past days stays with him more faithfully or is sweeter than the memory of this one evening when he stood beneath the cherry-tree with Fancy by his side and the rose leaves at his feet, waiting to start for the end of the world, he and Fancy hand in hand together.

“Come,” said Fancy, “come;” and looking into her eyes, and giving himself up to her guidance, they started. Slowly down the garden they went, over the fence at the bottom, then quickly across the field. They passed the blacksmith’s cottage; there was a light in the window, for the blacksmith’s wife was stitching at new clothes for her little daughter. On through the village they went; they heard the neighbours talking in the doorway, but they did not stay to listen. “We must run,” said Fancy. “Hold my hand tighter;” and through the woods and along the roads and over the great high hills, faster and faster they ran; they saw the twinkling lights of the city, and in a minute they were there; they heard a mother weeping, for her little one had died; they heard some merrymakers singing till the voices grew faint in the distance. “Quicker, quicker,” cried Fancy, “for we must journey faster than the wind and faster than time, and as yet we have not overtaken the middle of the night; the city is not sleeping yet: faster—faster—faster!” she cried, and on they went beyond the city and over the moors. They saw the mountains in the distance; the moon was slowly climbing them. On and on through the dense forest; on and on through the villages, and over the shining waters, past great cities, with their high buildings and their towers and their steeples; past the scattered houses around and beyond them—the houses that seemed as if they would have crept into the throng had their courage been great enough; past every habitation in which man could live, on and on, faster and faster went Willie and Fancy, till fewer and fewer became the landmarks, and farther and farther apart all things that the hand of man had placed, and taller and thicker were the trees, and vaster and vaster the great bare tracks of land, and then at last amid mighty stones that seemed hurled from some unseen height,—mountains and forest and sea and cities all far behind; then at last Willie and Fancy stood at the end of the world. Before them were only the clouds and the great moon shining, and the little stars that seemed like golden stairs leading up higher and higher; and beyond and above all towered two mountains in the midst of the stars and the clouds; the one bathed in golden light; the other dark and drear, wild and rugged with strange masses of blackness clinging to it.

“Come up higher, come up higher,” he could hear Fancy calling. “The little stars shall be your steps; come up higher.” And with his eyes still straining upwards, he went on climbing, up and up, treading on the stars till they were far beneath his feet and even the moon was behind, until at last he halted and saw the world afar off beneath him.

“Fancy,” he cried, “Fancy, where are you?”

“I am here beside you,” she whispered, for she was half afraid.

“There is a woman up there; tell me what she is doing?” Then Fancy looked up and laughed a wild strange laugh; it almost made Willie shudder, it seemed so out of place.

“She is there to rub up the world,” laughed Fancy. “Oh, it takes a great deal of rubbing, so many people make it dull, so few make it bright; and there she sits for ever working away, but it is little enough she can do, so little that few besides the children find the bright places.”

“What are the two hills over there? why is one dark and one so bright?”

“They are the sunshine and the storms. The one is made of laughter and gladness, of all the good that people do; the other of tears and sorrow and misery and vice; from the one the sunbeams and the warm sweet days of summer journey; from the other is hurled the storms, and from it steals the darkness. Every smile you cause, every good thing you do, makes the one hill taller, and is given back as sunshine into the world. Every tear you cause others to shed, every wrong you do, is heaped on to the dark hill there, and helps to make the sad days and stormy ones. Of joy and sorrow, of light and darkness, is the whole world made.”

“GET up,” called the grandmother; “it is the first day of school; get up, lad and feed the chickens, and hurry away to the village.”

“Oh, grandmother, but I like the woods so well,” Willie answered.

“Uncle John says you are to learn, learn on until he comes in the spring, and then he will see what you are fit for.” So Willie got up and fed the chickens, and took his books and went to school. He passed the blacksmith’s shop, but the blacksmith’s daughter was learning too, and no longer sat by the door of the forge. All down the road Fancy went by his side, singing to him in the fresh sweet morning; but he had no time to listen to her, he had to think of all he was going to do.

The first day and the first week and the first month went by, and every morning saw Willie going to the village; at first Fancy always went by his side, but he found that her songs came between him and his books, and he turned his head away and would not hear her, and would not see her, until at last she troubled him no more.

The days were not so sweet when she had ceased to sing him songs, and to take him breathless journeys, and tell him of the strange things that were or that might be between the earth and sky. He went on day after day trying to do his best, making his happiness in seeing his grandmother’s face light up when he was first in his class, or in hearing his grandfather say, “Ah, he’s a good lad; he’ll be as great as his uncle John some day.” At night, when he had learned his lessons, he went to sleep quickly lest Fancy should come and carry him off on some strange journey, and so unfit him for the next day’s work. Yet how he sometimes thought of her, and longed for her, and dreamt for a little while of those days that would surely come, when he and she would once more be companions!

At last the winter came; and with it the holidays; and Willie, being older, was allowed to walk about as he pleased, and so he wandered through the leafless woods, and over the brow of the hill, and looked again and again at the long straight road, wondering to what strange city it might lead.

One day, when the snow was on the ground, he went in the woods, and sat down beneath a tree, to think a while. The few leaves that lingered were sere and yellow, but as he looked down the pathway he thought, as he shivered, that they would look like gold, if the sun would but shine through the trees. And as he though this, suddenly he looked up, and there was Fancy. But, ah! how she was changed! All the colour had gone from her face, her eyes were sad, her hair was dull.

“Fancy,” he said, “is it you?” and his heart smote him for forgetting her.

“Yes, it is I,” she answered, sadly and bitterly.

“But how you are changed!” he said. “The blue is gone from your eyes, and the gold from your hair. Oh, Fancy, you are not so bright as you used to be.”

“How can I be?” she cried. “You will not hear me, you will not see me, you will not listen if I sing, or follow if I lead. How can I be the same?”

Then the tears came into Willie’s eyes.

“Sing to me,” he said; “sing one of your old sweet songs, dear Fancy, and let me wander with you again.” Then Fancy tried to sing, but her voice was weak and faltering, and she broke down in the middle of her song and sobbed.

“Oh, I cannot,” she cried, “for I am starved.”

“And I am almost frozen,” said Willie, his teeth chattering with cold. “But come closer, Fancy, and tell me what I can do to help you. Oh, my sweet Fancy,” he cried, “how happy we have been together!”

“But you are frozen,” she said; “what is the use of you? Is your heart cold too?”

“Oh no,” he answered, “that is very warm; it always is.”

“Let me creep in there,” she whispered, “and make it my home; and I will grow bright again, and make the world bright for you; and I will tell you strange stories, and sing you sweet songs, which you shall hear in your sleep, and call dreams. Take me into your heart, dear Willie, and let me rest there.”

“Fancy, oh Fancy,” he cried, “there is no one so sweet a you, even now;” and he held out arms, and she nestled down in them, and found her home at last. For many a day was she there; many a lonely hour did she beguile for Willie; many a song she sang to him, and many a tale she told him; and sometimes, when he had worked hard and yet could not accomplish what he wished, she would whisper some sound to him, that helped him, he hardly knew how, to do what before he had given up as hopeless.

But the months went on, and Willie had so much to do that, though Fancy still stayed in his heart, he had no time to listen her; and then sorrow came to him, for his grandfather died; and his heart was so full of grief there was no room in it for Fancy.

“I must work hard and learn all things, so that I may know how to comfort you, dear granny,” he said; “and by and by we will live together in the cottage again.”

But she answered, “Oh, no, dear lad, you will be great when you are a man, and the people will want you to go and live among them, to make their lives better.”

And still Fancy stayed by his side, half hoping that one day he would turn from his work, and see her, and once again go journeying with her. She had grown small and thin, and sad and grave, and her steps were slow and soft, and she was afraid to whisper to him lest he should tell her that the time for play had passed and the time for work had come, and send her from him.

At last there came the day on which she left him. Willie had grown tall and strong, and had to choose what he would be when he should be a man; and then his uncle sat down and talked to him of all the things that he might do. When Willie had listened, he looked up and said, “Uncle John, I should like to be a lawyer.” And when Fancy heard that sad word she fled away from him swiftly and for ever.

She went back again to the cottage and the woods, and the fields where she and Willie had been so happy, and sadly roamed alone, until the blacksmith’s little daughter, dreaming over her poetry books one day, went fast asleep, and Fancy, stealing up to her crept into her life and held fast to it for ever.

Long afterwards, when the blacksmith’s little daughter had become a woman, and was a teacher of others, and lived in a schoolhouse, Willie met her and wondered why it was he found some new beauty in her face. In her eyes there seemed to be some strange history that was half his own, and he thought that life with her would be sweeter than any life without her.

At last he fell to wondering if she would marry him, so that he might have her with him always; and when she said “Yes,” and everything around seemed changed and brighter far than it had since he had wandered away from the cherry-tree, he never for a moment thought that the reason was just this—that the blacksmith’s daughter had taken his Fancy.