Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland
"There's a man in that shop," said the Doctor, "who has been inFairyland.""Nonsense!" I said, and stared back at the shop. It was the usualvillage shop, post-office, telegraph wire on its brow, zinc pans andbrushes outside, boots, shirtings, and potted meats in the window."Tell me about it," I said, after a pause."I don't know," said the Doctor. "He's an ordinary sort of lout--Skelmersdale is his name. But everybody about here believes itlike Bible truth."I reverted presently to the topic."I know nothing about it," said the Doctor, "and I don't want to know.I attended him for a broken finger--Married and Single cricket match--and that's when I struck the nonsense. That's all. But it shows youthe sort of stuff I have to deal with, anyhow, eh? Nice to getmodern sanitary ideas into a people like this!""Very," I said in a mildly sympathetic tone, and he went on to tellme about that business of the Bonham drain. Things of that kind,I observe, are apt to weigh on the minds of Medical Officers of Health.I was as sympathetic as I knew how, and when he called the Bonhampeople "asses," I said they were "thundering asses," but even thatdid not allay him.Afterwards, later in the summer, an urgent desire to seclude myself,while finishing my chapter on Spiritual Pathology--it was really,I believe, stiffer to write than it is to read--took me to Bignor.I lodged at a farmhouse, and presently found myself outside thatlittle general shop again, in search of tobacco. "Skelmersdale,"said I to myself at the sight of it, and went in.I was served by a short, but shapely, young man, with a fair downycomplexion, good, small teeth, blue eyes, and a languid manner.I scrutinised him curiously. Except for a touch of melancholyin his expression, he was nothing out of the common. He was in theshirt-sleeves and tucked-up apron of his trade, and a pencil wasthrust behind his inoffensive ear. Athwart his black waistcoat wasa gold chain, from which dangled a bent guinea."Nothing more to-day, sir?" he inquired. He leant forward overmy bill as he spoke."Are you Mr. Skelmersdale?" said I."I am, sir," he said, without looking up."Is it true that you have been in Fairyland?"He looked up at me for a moment with wrinkled brows, with an aggrieved,exasperated face. "O shut it! " he said, and, after a momentof hostility, eye to eye, he went on adding up my bill. "Four,six and a half," he said, after a pause. "Thank you, Sir."So, unpropitiously, my acquaintance with Mr. Skelmersdale began.Well, I got from that to confidence--through a series of toilsomeefforts. I picked him up again in the Village Room, where of a nightI went to play billiards after my supper, and mitigate the extremeseclusion from my kind that was so helpful to work during the day.I contrived to play with him and afterwards to talk with him. I foundthe one subject to avoid was Fairyland. On everything else he wasopen and amiable in a commonplace sort of way, but on that he hadbeen worried--it was a manifest taboo. Only once in the room didI hear the slightest allusion to his experience in his presence,and that was by a cross-grained farm hand who was losing to him.Skelmersdale had run a break into double figures, which, by the Bignorstandards, was uncommonly good play. "Steady on!" said his adversary."None of your fairy flukes!"Skelmersdale stared at him for a moment, cue in hand, then flungit down and walked out of the room."Why can't you leave 'im alone?" said a respectable elder who hadbeen enjoying the game, and in the general murmur of disapprovalthe grin of satisfied wit faded from the ploughboy's face.I scented my opportunity. "What's this joke," said I, "about Fairyland?""'Tain't no joke about Fairyland, not to young Skelmersdale," saidthe respectable elder, drinking. A little man with rosy cheeks wasmore communicative. "They do say, sir," he said, "that they took himinto Aldington Knoll an' kep' him there a matter of three weeks."And with that the gathering was well under weigh. Once one sheephad started, others were ready enough to follow, and in a little timeI had at least the exterior aspect of the Skelmersdale affair.Formerly, before he came to Bignor, he had been in that very similarlittle shop at Aldington Corner, and there whatever it was did happenhad taken place. The story was clear that he had stayed out lateone night on the Knoll and vanished for three weeks from the sightof men, and had returned with "his cuffs as clean as when he started,"and his pockets full of dust and ashes. He returned in a state ofmoody wretchedness that only slowly passed away, and for many days hewould give no account of where it was he had been. The girl he wasengaged to at Clapton Hill tried to get it out of him, and threw himover partly because he refused, and partly because, as she said, hefairly gave her the "'ump." And then when, some time after, he let outto some one carelessly that he had been in Fairyland and wanted to goback, and when the thing spread and the simple badinage of thecountryside came into play, he threw up his situation abruptly, andcame to Bignor to get out of the fuss. But as to what had happened inFairyland none of these people knew. There the gathering in the VillageRoom went to pieces like a pack at fault. One said this, and anothersaid that.Their air in dealing with this marvel was ostensibly critical andsceptical, but I could see a considerable amount of belief showingthrough their guarded qualifications. I took a line of intelligentinterest, tinged with a reasonable doubt of the whole story."If Fairyland's inside Aldington Knoll," I said, "why don't you dig itout?""That's what I says," said the young ploughboy."There's a-many have tried to dig on Aldington Knoll," said therespectable elder, solemnly, "one time and another. But there'snone as goes about to-day to tell what they got by digging."The unanimity of vague belief that surrounded me was rather impressive;I felt there must surely be something at the root of so much conviction,and the already pretty keen curiosity I felt about the real factsof the case was distinctly whetted. If these real facts were to begot from any one, they were to be got from Skelmersdale himself;and I set myself, therefore, still more assiduously to effacethe first bad impression I had made and win his confidence to the pitchof voluntary speech. In that endeavour I had a social advantage.Being a person of affability and no apparent employment, and wearingtweeds and knickerbockers, I was naturally classed as an artistin Bignor, and in the remarkable code of social precedence prevalentin Bignor an artist ranks considerably higher than a grocer's assistant.Skelmersdale, like too many of his class, is something of a snob;he had told me to "shut it," only under sudden, excessive provocation,and with, I am certain, a subsequent repentance; he was, I knew,quite glad to be seen walking about the village with me. In due course,he accepted the proposal of a pipe and whisky in my rooms readilyenough, and there, scenting by some happy instinct that therewas trouble of the heart in this, and knowing that confidences begetconfidences, I plied him with much of interest and suggestion frommy real and fictitious past. And it was after the third whiskyof the third visit of that sort, if I remember rightly, that a proposof some artless expansion of a little affair that had touched andleft me in my teens, that he did at last, of his own free willand motion, break the ice. "It was like that with me," he said,"over there at Aldington. It's just that that's so rum. First I didn'tcare a bit and it was all her, and afterwards, when it was too late,it was, in a manner of speaking, all me."I forbore to jump upon this allusion, and so he presently threw outanother, and in a little while he was making it as plain as daylightthat the one thing he wanted to talk about now was this Fairylandadventure he had sat tight upon for so long. You see, I'd donethe trick with him, and from being just another half-incredulous,would-be facetious stranger, I had, by all my wealth of shamelessself-exposure, become the possible confidant. He had been bittenby the desire to show that he, too, had lived and felt many things,and the fever was upon him.He was certainly confoundedly allusive at first, and my eagernessto clear him up with a few precise questions was only equalledand controlled by my anxiety not to get to this sort of thing too soon.But in another meeting or so the basis of confidence was complete;and from first to last I think I got most of the items and aspects--indeed, I got quite a number of times over almost everything thatMr. Skelmersdale, with his very limited powers of narration, willever be able to tell. And so I come to the story of his adventure,and I piece it all together again. Whether it really happened,whether he imagined it or dreamt it, or fell upon it in some strangehallucinatory trance, I do not profess to say. But that he inventedit I will not for one moment entertain. The man simply and honestlybelieves the thing happened as he says it happened; he is transparentlyincapable of any lie so elaborate and sustained, and in the beliefof the simple, yet often keenly penetrating, rustic minds about himI find a very strong confirmation of his sincerity. He believes--and nobody can produce any positive fact to falsify his belief.As for me, with this much of endorsement, I transmit his story--I am a little old now to justify or explain.He says he went to sleep on Aldington Knoll about ten o'clock onenight--it was quite possibly Midsummer night, though he has neverthought of the date, and he cannot be sure within a week or so--and it was a fine night and windless, with a rising moon. I have beenat the pains to visit this Knoll thrice since his story grew upunder my persuasions, and once I went there in the twilight summermoonrise on what was, perhaps, a similar night to that of his adventure.Jupiter was great and splendid above the moon, and in the northand northwest the sky was green and vividly bright over the sunkensun. The Knoll stands out bare and bleak under the sky, but surroundedat a little distance by dark thickets, and as I went up towards itthere was a mighty starting and scampering of ghostly or quiteinvisible rabbits. Just over the crown of the Knoll, but nowhere else,was a multitudinous thin trumpeting of midges. The Knoll is, I believe,an artificial mound, the tumulus of some great prehistoric chieftain,and surely no man ever chose a more spacious prospect for a sepulchre.Eastward one sees along the hills to Hythe, and thence acrossthe Channel to where, thirty miles and more perhaps, away, the greatwhite lights by Gris Nez and Boulogne wink and pass and shine.Westward lies the whole tumbled valley of the Weald, visible as faras Hindhead and Leith Hill, and the valley of the Stour opensthe Downs in the north to interminable hills beyond Wye. AllRomney Marsh lies southward at one's feet, Dymchurch and Romneyand Lydd, Hastings and its hill are in the middle distance, andthe hills multiply vaguely far beyond where Eastbourne rolls upto Beachy Head.And out upon all this it was that Skelmersdale wandered, being troubledin his earlier love affair, and as he says, "not caring where he went."And there he sat down to think it over, and so, sulking and grieving,was overtaken by sleep. And so he fell into the fairies' power.The quarrel that had upset him was some trivial matter enoughbetween himself and the girl at Clapton Hill to whom he was engaged.She was a farmer's daughter, said Skelmersdale, and "very respectable,"and no doubt an excellent match for him; but both girl and loverwere very young and with just that mutual jealousy, that intolerantlykeen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautifulperfection, that life and wisdom do presently and most mercifullydull. What the precise matter of quarrel was I have no idea. She mayhave said she liked men in gaiters when he hadn't any gaiters on,or he may have said he liked her better in a different sort of hat,but however it began, it got by a series of clumsy stages to bitternessand tears. She no doubt got tearful and smeary, and he grew dustyand drooping, and she parted with invidious comparisons, grave doubtswhether she ever had really cared for him, and a clear certaintyshe would never care again. And with this sort of thing upon his mindhe came out upon Aldington Knoll grieving, and presently, aftera long interval, perhaps, quite inexplicably, fell asleep.He woke to find himself on a softer turf than ever he had slepton before, and under the shade of very dark trees that completelyhid the sky. Always, indeed, in Fairyland the sky is hidden, it seems.Except for one night when the fairies were dancing, Mr. Skelmersdale,during all his time with them, never saw a star. And of that nightI am in doubt whether he was in Fairyland proper or out where the ringsand rushes are, in those low meadows near the railway line at Smeeth.But it was light under these trees for all that, and on the leavesand amidst the turf shone a multitude of glow-worms, very brightand fine. Mr. Skelmersdale's first impression was that he was small,and the next that quite a number of people still smaller were standingall about him. For some reason, he says, he was neither surprisednor frightened, but sat up quite deliberately and rubbed the sleepout of his eyes. And there all about him stood the smiling elveswho had caught him sleeping under their privileges and had broughthim into Fairyland.What these elves were like I have failed to gather, so vagueand imperfect is his vocabulary, and so unobservant of all minordetail does he seem to have been. They were clothed in somethingvery light and beautiful, that was neither wool, nor silk, nor leaves,nor the petals of flowers. They stood all about him as he sat and waked,and down the glade towards him, down a glow-worm avenue and frontedby a star, came at once that Fairy Lady who is the chief personageof his memory and tale. Of her I gathered more. She was clothed infilmy green, and about her little waist was a broad silver girdle. Herhair waved back from her forehead on either side; there were curls nottoo wayward and yet astray, and on her brow was a little tiara,set with a single star. Her sleeves were some sort of open sleevesthat gave little glimpses of her arms; her throat, I think, wasa little displayed, because he speaks of the beauty of her neckand chin. There was a necklace of coral about her white throat,and in her breast a coral-coloured flower. She had the soft linesof a little child in her chin and cheeks and throat. And her eyes,I gather, were of a kindled brown, very soft and straight and sweetunder her level brows. You see by these particulars how greatlythis lady must have loomed in Mr. Skelmersdale's picture. Certainthings he tried to express and could not express; "the way she moved,"he said several times; and I fancy a sort of demure joyousnessradiated from this Lady.And it was in the company of this delightful person, as the guestand chosen companion of this delightful person, that Mr. Skelmersdaleset out to be taken into the intimacies of Fairyland. She welcomedhim gladly and a little warmly--I suspect a pressure of his handin both of hers and a lit face to his. After all, ten years agoyoung Skelmersdale may have been a very comely youth. And onceshe took his arm, and once, I think, she led him by the hand adownthe glade that the glow-worms lit.Just how things chanced and happened there is no telling fromMr. Skelmersdale's disarticulated skeleton of description. He giveslittle unsatisfactory glimpses of strange corners and doings, of placeswhere there were many fairies together, of "toadstool things thatshone pink," of fairy food, of which he could only say "you shouldhave tasted it!" and of fairy music, "like a little musical box,"that came out of nodding flowers. There was a great open placewhere fairies rode and raced on "things," but what Mr. Skelmersdalemeant by "these here things they rode," there is no telling. Larvae,perhaps, or crickets, or the little beetles that elude us so abundantly.There was a place where water splashed and gigantic king-cups grew,and there in the hotter times the fairies bathed together. There weregames being played and dancing and much elvish love-making, too,I think, among the moss-branch thickets. There can be no doubt thatthe Fairy Lady made love to Mr. Skelmersdale, and no doubt eitherthat this young man set himself to resist her. A time came, indeed,when she sat on a bank beside him, in a quiet, secluded place"all smelling of vi'lets," and talked to him of love."When her voice went low and she whispered," said Mr. Skelmersdale,"and laid 'er 'and on my 'and, you know, and came close with a soft,warm friendly way she 'ad, it was as much as I could do to keep my'ead."It seems he kept his head to a certain limited unfortunate extent.He saw "'ow the wind was blowing," he says, and so, sitting therein a place all smelling of violets, with the touch of this lovelyFairy Lady about him, Mr. Skelmersdale broke it to her gently--that he was engaged!She had told him she loved him dearly, that he was a sweet human ladfor her, and whatever he would ask of her he should have--evenhis heart's desire.And Mr. Skelmersdale, who, I fancy, tried hard to avoid lookingat her little lips as they just dropped apart and came together,led up to the more intimate question by saying he would like enoughcapital to start a little shop. He'd just like to feel, he said,he had money enough to do that. I imagine a little surprise in thosebrown eyes he talked about, but she seemed sympathetic for all that,and she asked him many questions about the little shop, "laughing like"all the time. So he got to the complete statement of his affiancedposition, and told her all about Millie."All?" said I."Everything," said Mr. Skelmersdale, "just who she was, and whereshe lived, and everything about her. I sort of felt I 'ad to allthe time, I did.""'Whatever you want you shall have,' said the Fairy Lady. 'That's asgood as done. You shall feel you have the money just as you wish.And now, you know--you must kiss me.'"And Mr. Skelmersdale pretended not to hear the latter part of herremark, and said she was very kind. That he really didn't deserve sheshould be so kind. And--The Fairy Lady suddenly came quite close to him and whispered, "Kissme!""And," said Mr. Skelmersdale, "like a fool, I did."There are kisses and kisses, I am told, and this must have been quitethe other sort from Millie's resonant signals of regard. There wassomething magic in that kiss; assuredly it marked a turning point.At any rate, this is one of the passages that he thought sufficientlyimportant to describe most at length. I have tried to get it right,I have tried to disentangle it from the hints and gestures throughwhich it came to me, but I have no doubt that it was all differentfrom my telling and far finer and sweeter, in the soft filtered lightand the subtly stirring silences of the fairy glades. The Fairy Ladyasked him more about Millie, and was she very lovely, and so on--a great many times. As to Millie's loveliness, I conceive himanswering that she was "all right." And then, or on some suchoccasion, the Fairy Lady told him she had fallen in love with himas he slept in the moonlight, and so he had been brought intoFairyland, and she had thought, not knowing of Millie, that perhapshe might chance to love her. "But now you know you can't," she said,"so you must stop with me just a little while, and then you mustgo back to Millie." She told him that, and you know Skelmersdalewas already in love with her, but the pure inertia of his mind kepthim in the way he was going. I imagine him sitting in a sortof stupefaction amidst all these glowing beautiful things, answeringabout his Millie and the little shop he projected and the needof a horse and cart. . . . And that absurd state of affairs musthave gone on for days and days. I see this little lady, hoveringabout him and trying to amuse him, too dainty to understand hiscomplexity and too tender to let him go. And he, you know, hypnotisedas it were by his earthly position, went his way with her hitherand thither, blind to everything in Fairyland but this wonderfulintimacy that had come to him. It is hard, it is impossible, to givein print the effect of her radiant sweetness shining through the jungleof poor Skelmersdale's rough and broken sentences. To me, at least,she shone clear amidst the muddle of his story like a glow-wormin a tangle of weeds.There must have been many days of things while all this was happening--and once, I say, they danced under the moonlight in the fairy ringsthat stud the meadows near Smeeth--but at last it all came to an end.She led him into a great cavernous place, lit by a red nightlightsort of thing, where there were coffers piled on coffers, and cupsand golden boxes, and a great heap of what certainly seemed to allMr. Skelmersdale's senses--coined gold. There were little gnomesamidst this wealth, who saluted her at her coming, and stood aside.And suddenly she turned on him there with brightly shining eyes."And now," she said, "you have been kind to stay with me so long,and it is time I let you go. You must go back to your Millie. You mustgo back to your Millie, and here--just as I promised you--they willgive you gold.""She choked like," said Mr. Skelmersdale. "At that, I had a sortof feeling--" (he touched his breastbone) "as though I was faintinghere. I felt pale, you know, and shivering, and even then--I 'adn'ta thing to say."He paused. "Yes," I said.The scene was beyond his describing. But I know that she kissedhim good-bye."And you said nothing?""Nothing," he said. "I stood like a stuffed calf. She just lookedback once, you know, and stood smiling like and crying--I couldsee the shine of her eyes--and then she was gone, and there wasall these little fellows bustling about me, stuffing my 'ands andmy pockets and the back of my collar and everywhere with gold."And then it was, when the Fairy Lady had vanished, that Mr. Skelmersdalereally understood and knew. He suddenly began plucking out the goldthey were thrusting upon him, and shouting out at them to preventtheir giving him more. "'I don't want yer gold,' I said. 'I 'aven'tdone yet. I'm not going. I want to speak to that Fairy Lady again.'I started off to go after her and they held me back. Yes, stucktheir little 'ands against my middle and shoved me back. They keptgiving me more and more gold until it was running all down mytrouser legs and dropping out of my 'ands. 'I don't want yer gold,'I says to them, 'I want just to speak to the Fairy Lady again.'""And did you?""It came to a tussle.""Before you saw her?""I didn't see her. When I got out from them she wasn't anywhereto be seen."So he ran in search of her out of this red-lit cave, down a longgrotto, seeking her, and thence he came out in a great and desolateplace athwart which a swarm of will-o'-the-wisps were flying to and fro.And about him elves were dancing in derision, and the little gnomescame out of the cave after him, carrying gold in handfuls and castingit after him, shouting, "Fairy love and fairy gold! Fairy love andfairy gold!"And when he heard these words, came a great fear that it was all over,and he lifted up his voice and called to her by her name, and suddenlyset himself to run down the slope from the mouth of the cavern,through a place of thorns and briers, calling after her very loudlyand often. The elves danced about him unheeded, pinching himand pricking him, and the will-o'-the-wisps circled round himand dashed into his face, and the gnomes pursued him shouting andpelting him with fairy gold. As he ran with all this strange routabout him and distracting him, suddenly he was knee-deep in a swamp,and suddenly he was amidst thick twisted roots, and he caught his footin one and stumbled and fell. . . .He fell and he rolled over, and in that instant he found himselfsprawling upon Aldington Knoll, all lonely under the stars.He sat up sharply at once, he says, and found he was very stiffand cold, and his clothes were damp with dew. The first pallorof dawn and a chilly wind were coming up together. He could havebelieved the whole thing a strangely vivid dream until he thrusthis hand into his side pocket and found it stuffed with ashes.Then he knew for certain it was fairy gold they had given him.He could feel all their pinches and pricks still, though there wasnever a bruise upon him. And in that manner, and so suddenly,Mr. Skelmersdale came out of Fairyland back into this world of men.Even then he fancied the thing was but the matter of a night untilhe returned to the shop at Aldington Corner and discovered amidsttheir astonishment that he had been away three weeks."Lor'! the trouble I 'ad!" said Mr. Skelmersdale."How?""Explaining. I suppose you've never had anything like that to explain.""Never," I said, and he expatiated for a time on the behaviour ofthis person and that. One name he avoided for a space."And Millie?" said I at last."I didn't seem to care a bit for seeing Millie," he said."I expect she seemed changed?""Every one was changed. Changed for good. Every one seemed big,you know, and coarse. And their voices seemed loud. Why, the sun,when it rose in the morning, fair hit me in the eye!""And Millie?""I didn't want to see Millie.""And when you did?""I came up against her Sunday, coming out of church. 'Where you been?'she said, and I saw there was a row. I didn't care if there was.I seemed to forget about her even while she was there a-talkingto me. She was just nothing. I couldn't make out whatever I 'ad seenin 'er ever, or what there could 'ave been. Sometimes when shewasn't about, I did get back a little, but never when she was there.Then it was always the other came up and blotted her out. . . .Anyow, it didn't break her heart.""Married?" I asked."Married 'er cousin," said Mr. Skelmersdale, and reflected on thepattern of the tablecloth for a space.When he spoke again it was clear that his former sweetheart had cleanvanished from his mind, and that the talk had brought back the FairyLady triumphant in his heart. He talked of her--soon he was lettingout the oddest things, queer love secrets it would be treachery torepeat. I think, indeed, that was the queerest thing in the wholeaffair, to hear that neat little grocer man after his story was done,with a glass of whisky beside him and a cigar between his fingers,witnessing, with sorrow still, though now, indeed, with a time-bluntedanguish, of the inappeasable hunger of the heart that presentlycame upon him. "I couldn't eat," he said, "I couldn't sleep. I mademistakes in orders and got mixed with change. There she was dayand night, drawing me and drawing me. Oh, I wanted her. Lord! howI wanted her! I was up there, most evenings I was up there on the Knoll,often even when it rained. I used to walk over the Knoll and round itand round it, calling for them to let me in. Shouting. Near blubberingI was at times. Daft I was and miserable. I kept on saying it was alla mistake. And every Sunday afternoon I went up there, wet and fine,though I knew as well as you do it wasn't no good by day. And I'vetried to go to sleep there."He stopped sharply and decided to drink some whisky."I've tried to go to sleep there," he said, and I could swear his lipstrembled. "I've tried to go to sleep there, often and often. And,you know, I couldn't, sir--never. I've thought if I could go to sleepthere, there might be something. But I've sat up there and laid upthere, and I couldn't--not for thinking and longing. It's thelonging. . . . I've tried--"He blew, drank up the rest of his whisky spasmodically, stood upsuddenly and buttoned his jacket, staring closely and criticallyat the cheap oleographs beside the mantel meanwhile. The littleblack notebook in which he recorded the orders of his daily roundprojected stiffly from his breast pocket. When all the buttons werequite done, he patted his chest and turned on me suddenly. "Well,"he said, "I must be going."There was something in his eyes and manner that was too difficultfor him to express in words. "One gets talking," he said at lastat the door, and smiled wanly, and so vanished from my eyes.And that is the tale of Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland just ashe told it to me.
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