The Singing Mouse Stories.
by Emerson Hough.
THE LAND OF THE SINGING MOUSE
This is my room. I live here; and my friends come here sometimes, such as I have left. There is little to offer them, but they are welcome to what there is. There is the table. There is the fire. There are not any keys.
That is my coat upon the wall. It is worn, a little. The barrels of the old gun are worn; and the stock of the rifle, broken in the mountains long ago, is mended but rudely; and the tip of the old rod is broken, and the silk is fraying in the lashings, and upon the hand-grasp the cord is loose. The silver cord will loosen and break in the best of men in time; wherefore, I beseech you, mock not at these belongings, though your own may far surpa.s.s them. You are welcome to anything there is here....
But the Singing Mouse will not come out, not while you are here.
True, after you have gone, after the fire has burned down and the room is all still--usually near midnight, as I sit and muse alone over the dead or dying fire--true, then the Singing Mouse comes out and asks for its bit of bread; and then it folds its tiny paws and sits up, and turning its bright red eye upon me, half in power and half in beseeching, as of some fading memory of the past--why, it sings, I say to you; it sings! And I listen.... During such singing the fire blazes up. The walls are rich in art. My rod is new and trig. There is work, but there is no worry.... I am rich, rich! I have the Singing Mouse. And so strange, so wondrous, so real are the things it sings; so bewitching is the song, so sweeter than that of any siren"s; so broad and fine are the countries; so strong and true are the friendships; so brave and kind are the men I meet--so beautiful the whole world of the Singing Mouse, that when it is over, and in a chill I start up, I scarce can bear the shrinking in of the walls, and the grayness of the once red fire, and my gold turned to earthenware, and my pictures turned to splotches. In my hand everything I touch feels awkward. A pen--a pen--to talk of that? If one could use it while in the land of the Singing Mouse--then it might do. I think the pens there are not of wood and iron, stiff things of torture to reader and writer. I have a notion--though I have not examined the pens there--that they are made from plumes of an angel"s wing; and that if they chose they could talk, and say things which would make you and me ashamed and afraid. Pens such as these we do not have.
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[Ill.u.s.tration: The Burden of A Song]
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THE BURDEN OF A SONG
The Singing Mouse came out. Quaintly and sweetly and with wondrous clearness it began an old, old song I first heard long ago. And as it sang, back with red electric thrill came the fine blood of youth, and beat in pulse with the song:
"When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green, And every goose a swan, lad, And every la.s.s a queen.
"Then hey! for boot and saddle, lad, And round the world away!
Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day!"
And young blood began its course anew. Booted and spurred, into the saddle again! Face toward the West! And off for round the world away!
"There are green fields in Thrace," sighs the gladiator as he dies. And here were green fields in the land before us. Only, these were the inimitable and illimitable fields of Nature.
Sheets and waves and billows and tumbles of green; oceans unswum, continents untracked, of thousandfold green. Then, on beyond, the gray, the gray-brown, the purple-gray of the higher plains; nearer than that, a broad slash of great golden yellow, a band of the st.u.r.dy prairie sunflowers; and nearer than that, swimming on the surface of the mysterious wave which constantly pa.s.ses but is never past on the prairies, bright red roses, and strong larkspur, and at the bottom of this ever-shifting sea, jewels in G.o.d"s best blue enamel. You can not find this enamel in the windows. One must send for it to the land of the unswum sea.
A little higher and stronger piped the compelling melody. Why, here are the mountains! G.o.d bless them! Nay, brother, G.o.d has blessed them; blessed them with unbounded calm, with boundless strength, with unspeakable peace. You can take your troubles to the mountains. If you are Pueblo, Aztec, you can select some big mountain and pray to it, as its top shows the red sentience of the on-coming day. You can take your troubles to the sea; but the sea has troubles of its own, and frets. There is commerce on the sea, and the people who live near it are fretful, greedy, grasping. The mountains have no troubles; they have no commerce.
The dwellers of the mountains are calm and unfretted.
And on the broad shoulders of the mountains once more was cast the burden of the young man"s troubles, and once more he walked deep into the peace of the big hills. And the mountains smiled not, neither wept, but gravely and kindly folded over, about, behind, the gray mantle of the canon walls, and locked fast doors of adamant against all following, and swept a pitying hand of shadow, and breathed that wondrous unsyllabled voice of comfort which any mountain-goer knows. Ay! the goodness of such strength! Up by the clean snow; over the big rocks; by the lace-work stream where the trout are--why, it"s all come again!
That was the clink made by a pa.s.sing deer. That was the touch of the green balsam--smell it, now! And there comes the mist, folding down the top; and there is the crash of the thunder; and this is the rush of the rain; and this is the warm yellow sun over it all--O, Singing Mouse, Singing Mouse!...
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Back again, now, by some impulse of the dog which hasn"t had any day. It is winter now, I remember, Singing Mouse, and I am walking by the sh.o.r.e of the great Inland Seas. There is snow on the ground. The trees look black in contrast as you gaze up from the beach against the high bank. It is cold. It is dark. There is a shiver in the air. There are icicles in the sky. Something is flying through the trees, but silent as if it came out of a grave. I have been walking, I know. I have walked a million miles, and I"m tired. My legs are stiff, and my legging has frozen fast to my overshoe; I remember that. And so I sit down--right here, you know--and look out over the lake--just over there, you see. The ice reaches out from the sh.o.r.e into the lake a long way; and it is covered with snow, and looks white.
I can follow that white glimmer in a long, long curve to the right--twenty miles or more, maybe. Yes, it is cold. But ah!
what is that out there, and what is it doing? It is setting all the long white curves of ice afire. It is throwing down hammered silver in a broad path, out there on the water. Those are not ripples. That is silver! There will be angels walking on that pathway before long! That is not the moon coming up over the lake! It is the swinging open, by some careless angel"s mischance, of the door of the White City of Rest!...
How old, how sore a man climbed up the steep bank! There were white fields. In the distance a dog barked. Away across the fields a bright and cheery light shone out from a window, and as the moon rose higher, it showed the house which held the light. It was not a large house, but it seemed to be a home.
Home!--what is that? I wondered; and I remember that I pulled at the frozen legging, and moved, with pain, the limbs grown tired and sore. And, as one looked at that twinkling, comfortable light, how plainly the rest of the old song came back:
"When all the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown, And all the sports are stale, lad, And all the wheels run down,
"Creep home and take your place there, The sick and maimed among.
G.o.d grant you find one face there, You loved when you were young."
The light in the little house went out. I think it was a happy home. May yours be so, always.
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[Ill.u.s.tration: The Little River]
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THE LITTLE RIVER
The Singing Mouse came out and sat upon my knee. It fixed its small red eye upon me, and lifted its tiny paws, so thin the fire shone through them. And it sang.... Like the voice of some night-wandering bird of melody, hid high in the upper realms of darkness, came faint sweet notes falling softly down. It was as if from the deep air above, and from the wide air around, there were dropping and drifting small links of silken steel, gentle but strong, so that one were helpless even had one wished to move. To listen was also to see.
There were low rolling hills, covered and crowned with a thick growth of hazel thickets and short oaks. Between these hills ran long strips of green, strung on tiny bands of silver.
And as these bands moved and thickened and braided themselves together, I seemed to see a procession of the trees. The cottonwoods halted in their march. The box-elders, and maples, and water-elms, and walnuts and such big trees swept grandly in with waving banners, and wound on and on in long procession, even down to two blue distant hills set at the edge of the world, unpa.s.sed guardians of a land of dreams. Ah, well-a-day! I look back at those two hills now, and the land of dreams lies still beyond them, it is true; but it is now upon the side whence I first gazed. It is back there, where one can not go again; back there, along that crystal, murmuring mystery of the little stream one knew when one was young!
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Ah, little river, little river, but I am coming back again. Once more I push away the long gra.s.s and the swinging boughs, and look into your face. Again I dabble my bare feet, and scoop up my straw hat full, and watch the tiny streams run down. Again I stand, bare and small and trembling, wondering if I can swim across. And--listen, little river--again at the same old place I shall cut me the willow wand, and down the long slope to the certain place I knew I am going to hurry, running the last quarter of a mile in sheer expectation, but forgetting not the binding on of the tough linen line. And now I cast my gaudy float on that same swinging, wimpling, dimpling eddy, and let it swim in beneath the bank. And--No! Can it be? Have I here, now, again, plainly in my hands, the strange and wonderful creature, the gift of the little stream? Is this its form, utterly lovable? Is this its coat, wrought of cloth of gold and silver?
Are these diamonds its eyes?... Oh, little river, little river, give me back this gift to keep for ever! Why take such things from us?... All I have I will give to you, if you will but give back to me, to have by me all the time, this little fish from the pool beneath the boughs. I have hunted well for him, believe me, hard and faithfully in many a place, but he is no longer there. I find him no longer, even in the remotest spots I search.... But this is he! This, in my hands, here in actual sight, is my first, my glorious, iridescent, radiant prize! Pray you, behold the glittering!
But along this little river there were other things when the leaves grew brown. In those low, easy hills strange creatures dwelt. Birds of brown plumage and wondrous, soul-startling burst of wing. Large gray creatures, a foot long or longer, with light tread on the leaves, and long ears that went a-peak when you whistled to them. Were ever such beings before in any land? For the pursuit of these, it seems, one must have boots with copper toes, made waterproof by abundant tallow. There must be a vast game-bag--a world too large for a boyish form--and strange things to eat therein, such as one sees no longer; for on a chase calling for such daring-do it may be needful that one walk far, across the hills, along the little river, almost to the Delectable Mountains themselves. Again I see it all. Again I follow through the hills that same tall, tireless figure with the grave and kindly face. Again I wonder at the uncomprehended skill which brought whirling down ten out of the dozen of those brown lightning b.a.l.l.s. Again I rejoice, beyond all count or measure, over the first leporine murder committed by myself, the same furthered by means of a rest on a forked tree. It seems to me I groan secretly again at the weight of that great gun before the night has come. I almost wince again at the pulling off of those copper-toed boots at night, there by the kitchen stove, after the chase is done. But, ah! how happy I am again, holding up for the gaze of a kind pair of eyes this great, gray creature with the lopping ears.
Now, as we walk by the banks of this magic river, I would that it might be always as it was in the earliest days. I like best to think myself mistaken when I suspect a greater stoop in this once familiar form which knew these hills and woods so well. It can not be that the quick eye has grown less bright. Yet why was the last mallard missed? And tell me, is not the old dog ranging as widely as once he did? Can it be that he keeps closer at heel? Does he look up once in a while, mournfully, with a dimmer eye, at an eye becoming also dimmer--does he walk more slowly, by a step now not so fast? Does he look up--My G.o.d!--is there melancholy in a dog"s eye, too?
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[Ill.u.s.tration: What the Waters Said]