Part 10

"This is a new discovery," cried he, "that a cuckoo holds so many feathers. We can make our fortunes in this way, wife--I going about killing cuckoos, and you plucking them into feather-beds."

Then his wife carried the cuckoo indoors, and set it down to roast. But directly the spit began to turn, the cat jumped up from before the front of the fire, and ran away screaming.

The smell of the roast came out to the man as he worked in his garden. "How good it smells!" said he. "Don't _you_ touch it, wife! You mustn't have a bit!" "I don't care if I don't," she replied: for she had watched it as it went turning on the spit; and up and down, up and down, it kept moving its wings!

When dinner-time came the man sat down, and his wife dished up the bird, and set it upon the table before him. He ate it so greedily that he ate it all--the bones, and the back, and the head, and the wings, and the legs down to the last claw.

Then he pushed back his plate, and cried, "So there's an end of him!" But just as he was about saying that, a voice from inside of him called, "Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"

"Oh my heart and liver!" cried the man. "What's that!"

Then his wife began laughing and jiggering at him. "It's because you were so greedy. If you had given me half of that cuckoo this wouldn't have happened. Now you see you are paid."

"Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" cried the voice again from within.

"What have I done to myself?" cried the man, in an agony of terror. "What a poisonous noise to come from a man's belly! I shall die of it, I know I shall!"

His wife only said, "See, then, what comes of being greedy."

He got up on to his feet, and looked down at his empty plate: there was not a scrap left on it. Then he put his hands to his sides, and shrieked, "I feel as if a windmill were turning round inside me! And I'm so light! Wife, hold me down--I'm going off my feet!" And as he spoke, he swung sideway, and began rising with a wobbling motion into the air. His wife caught him by the head, while his feet swung like the pendulum of a clock, and all the time a voice inside him kept calling, "Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"

Presently it seemed to the unfortunate man as if the windmill had stopped, and he was able to strike the ground with his feet once more. "Oh, blessed Mother Earth!" he cried, and began rubbing it up and down with his feet, and caressing it as if it had been a pet animal. But his face had grown very white.

"Put me to bed," he said to his wife; and she put him to bed on the top of the great feather-mattress which she had made only that morning from the cuckoo-pluckings.

The cuckoo kept him awake far into the night, and his wife herself could get no sleep; but towards morning he dozed off into a disturbed sort of slumber, and began to dream.

He felt his eyes turning inwards, so that he could see into the middle of his body. And there sat the cuckoo, like an unpleasant nestling, with great red eyes staring at him, and the wound on its head burning a blue flame. It seemed to grow and grow and grow, dislocating his bones, and thrusting aside his heart to make room for itself. Its wings seemed to be sawing out his ribs, and its head was pushed far up into his throat, where with its angry beak it seemed reaching to peck out his eyes. "I will torment you for ever," said the bird. "You shall have no peace until you let me go. I am the King of the Cuckoos; I will give you no rest. You will be surprised at what I can do to you; even in your despair you will be surprised." Then it drew down its head and pecked his heart, so that he woke in great pain. And as his eyes turned outwards he saw that it was morning.

"Wife," he said, before going out, "I feel as though, if I went out, I might be carried away, like a worm in a bird's beak. Fasten a chain round me, and drive it with a stake into the ground, and let me see if so I be able to work safely in my garden."

So his wife did as he told her; but whenever he caught hold of a spade the bird lifted him off his feet, so that he could not drive it into the ground. He wrung his hands and wailed, "Alas, alas! now my occupation is gone, and my wife and I shall become beggars!"

The villagers came and looked over the hedge, wagging their heads. "Ah, you are the man who killed the cuckoo yesterday! and already you are come to this!"

Every day things got worse and worse. His wife used to have to hold him down and feed him with a spoon, for if he took up a knife to eat with, the bird hurled him upon it so violently as to put him in danger of his life. Also it kept him ceaselessly awake with its cry, so that he was worn to a shadow.

One day in the end of the month of June he heard a change come in its horrible singing; instead of crying "Cuckoo" as before, it now broke its note as is the cuckoo's habit to do before it goes abroad for the winter, and cried "Cuck-cuck-Cuckoo, cuck-cuck-Cuckoo!" Some sort of a hope came into the man's heart at that. "Presently it will be winter," he thought to himself, "and the cuckoo must die then, even if I have to eat ice and snow to make him! if only I do not die first," he added, and groaned, for he was now indeed but a shadow.

Soon after this the cuckoo left off its crying altogether. "Is he dead already?" thought the man. All the other cuckoos had gone out of the country: he grew quite happy with this new idea and began to put on flesh.

But one night, at the dead of night, the cuckoo felt a longing to be in lands oversea come into its wings. The man woke with a loud cry, and found himself sailing along through the air with only the stars overhead, and the feeling of a great windmill inside him. And the cuckoo was crying with a new note into the darkness: the cry it makes in far lands oversea which is never heard in this country at all: a cry so strange and terrible and wonderful that we have no word that will give the sound of it. This man heard it, and at the sound his hair went quite white with fright.

When his wife woke up in the morning, her husband was nowhere to be seen. "So!" she said to herself, "the cuckoo has picked him up and thrown him away somewhere; and I suppose he is dead. Well, he was an uncomfortable husband to have; and it all came of being greedy."

She drew down the front blinds, and dressed herself in widow's mourning all through the winter; and the next spring told another man he might marry her if he liked. The other man happened to like the idea well enough, for there was a house and a nice garden for anyone who would have her. So the first fine day they went off to the Parson and got married.

It was a very fine day, and well on in spring: and just as they were coming back from the church they heard the note of a cuckoo.

The widow-bride felt a cold shiver go down her marrow. "It does make one feel queer," she said; "that sound gave me quite a turn." "Hullo! look at him up there!" cried the man. She stared up, and there was her husband sailing through the air, looking more of a shadow than ever, and very miserable with the voice of the cuckoo calling across the land from the inside of him.

The cuckoo deposited him at his own doorstep in front of the bridal couple.

"O you miserable scare-crow!" said his wife, "whatever brought you back?" The unhappy man pointed below the surface, and the shut-up cuckoo spoke for him.

"And here I find you marrying yourself to another!" cried her returned spouse: but the other man had shrunk away in disgust and disappeared, so there was no more trouble with him.

But the old trouble was as bad as ever, the cuckoo was just as industrious in his cuckooings, and just as untimely: and the man went on wearing himself to a shadow with vexation and grief.

So all the summer went by, till again the cuckoo was heard to break its note into a double sound. But this time, no glimmer of hope came to the man's mind. "Tie me fast to the bed," he said sorrowfully to his wife, "and keep me there, lest this demon of a bird carry me away again as he did last year; a thing which I could never survive a second time. Nay, give me a sheath-knife to keep always with me, for if he carry me away again I am resolved that he or I shall die."

So his wife gave him the sheath-knife, and by-and-by the bird became very quiet, so that they almost hoped he was dead from old age.

But one night, at the dead of night, into the birds wings came the longing to be once more in lands oversea. He stretched out his wings, and the man woke with a loud cry. And behold, there were he and his wife, sailing along under the stars tied into the feather-bed together, all complete and compact; and inside him was the feeling of a great windmill going round and round and round.

Then in despair he drew out his sheath-knife and cut himself open like a haggis. And on a sudden out flew the cuckoo, all plucked and bald and ready to roast. At the very same moment the bed-ticking burst, and away went the cuckoo with his feathers trailing after him, uttering through the darkness that strange terrible cry of the lands oversea.

But the man and his wife and the empty bed-ticking, they fell and they fell and they fell right down, till they got to the bottom of the deep blue sea; and there was an end of them.

A CHINESE FAIRY TALE

TIKI-PU was a small grub of a thing; but he had a true love of Art deep down in his soul. There it hung mewing and complaining, struggling to work its way out through the raw exterior that bound it.

Tiki-pu's master professed to be an artist: he had apprentices and students, who came daily to work under him, and a large studio littered about with the performances of himself and his pupils. On the walls hung also a few real works by the older men, all long since dead.

This studio Tiki-pu swept; for those who worked in it he ground colours, washed brushes, and ran errands, bringing them their dog chops and bird's nest soup from the nearest eating-house whenever they were too busy to go out to it themselves. He himself had to feed mainly on the breadcrumbs which the students screwed into pellets for their drawings and then threw about upon the floor. It was on the floor, also, that he had to sleep at night.

Tiki-pu looked after the blinds, and mended the paper window-panes, which were often broken when the apprentices threw their brushes and mahl-sticks at him. Also he strained rice-paper over the linen-stretchers, ready for the painters to work on; and for a treat, now and then, a lazy one would allow him to mix a colour for him. Then it was that Tiki-pu's soul came down into his finger-tips, and his heart beat so that he gasped for joy. Oh, the yellows and the greens, and the lakes and the cobalts, and the purples which sprang from the blending of them! Sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from crying out.

Tiki-pu, while he squatted and ground at the colour-powders, would listen to his master lecturing to the students. He knew by heart the names of all the painters and their schools, and the name of the great leader of them all who had lived and passed from their midst more than three hundred years ago; he knew that too, a name like the sound of the wind, Wio-wani: the big picture at the end of the studio was by him.

That picture! To Tiki-pu it seemed worth all the rest of the world put together. He knew, too, the story which was told of it, making it as holy to his eyes as the tombs of his own ancestors. The apprentices joked over it, calling it "Wio-wani's back-door," "Wio-wani's night-cap," and many other nicknames; but Tiki-pu was quite sure, since the picture was so beautiful, that the story must be true.

Wio-wani, at the end of a long life, had painted it; a garden full of trees and sunlight, with high-standing flowers and green paths, and in their midst a palace. "The place where I would like to rest," said Wio-wani, when it was finished.

So beautiful was it then, that the Emperor himself had come to see it; and gazing enviously at those peaceful walks, and the palace nestling among the trees, had sighed and owned that he too would be glad of such a resting-place. Then Wio-wani stepped into the picture, and walked away along a path till he came, looking quite small and far-off, to a low door in the palace wall. Opening it, he turned and beckoned to the Emperor; but the Emperor did not follow; so Wio-wani went in by himself, and shut the door between himself and the world for ever.

That happened three hundred years ago; but for Tiki-pu the story was as fresh and true as if it had happened yesterday. When he was left to himself in the studio, all alone and locked up for the night, Tiki-pu used to go and stare at the picture till it was too dark to see, and at the little palace with the door in its wall by which Wio-wani had disappeared out of life. Then his soul would go down into his finger-tips, and he would knock softly and fearfully at the beautifully painted door, saying, "Wio-wani, are you there?"

Little by little in the long-thinking nights, and the slow early mornings when light began to creep back through the papered windows of the studio, Tiki-pu's soul became too much for him. He who could strain paper, and grind colours, and wash brushes, had everything within reach for becoming an artist, if it was the will of Fate that he should be one.

He began timidly at first, but in a little while he grew bold. With the first wash of light he was up from his couch on the hard floor and was daubing his soul out on scraps, and odds-and-ends, and stolen pieces of rice-paper.

Before long the short spell of daylight which lay between dawn and the arrival of the apprentices to their work did not suffice him. It took him so long to hide all traces of his doings, to wash out the brushes, and rinse clean the paint-pots he had used, and on the top of that to get the studio swept and dusted, that there was hardly time left him in which to indulge the itching of his fingers.

Driven by necessity, he became a pilferer of candle-ends, picking them from their sockets in the lanterns which the students carried on dark nights. Now and then one of these would remember that, when last used, his lantern had had a candle in it, and would accuse Tiki-pu of having stolen it. "It is true," he would confess; "I was hungry--I have eaten it." The lie was so probable, he was believed easily, and was well beaten accordingly. Down in the ragged linings of his coat Tiki-pu could hear the candle-ends rattling as the buffeting and chastisement fell upon him, and often he trembled lest his hoard should be discovered. But the truth of the matter never leaked out; and at night, as soon as he guessed that all the world outside was in bed, Tiki-pu would mount one of his candles on a wooden stand and paint by the light of it, blinding himself over his task, till the dawn came and gave him a better and cheaper light to work by.

Tiki-pu quite hugged himself over the results; he believed he was doing very well. "If only Wio-wani were here to teach me," thought he, "I would be in the way to becoming a great painter!"

The resolution came to him one night that Wio-wani _should_ teach him. So he took a large piece of rice-paper and strained it, and sitting down opposite "Wio-wani's back-door," began painting. He had never set himself so big a task as this; by the dim stumbling light of his candle he strained his eyes nearly blind over the difficulties of it; and at last was almost driven to despair. How the trees stood row behind row, with air and sunlight between, and how the path went in and out, winding its way up to the little door in the palace-wall were mysteries he could not fathom. He peered and peered and dropped tears into his paint-pots; but the secret of the mystery of such painting was far beyond him.

The door in the palace-wall opened; out came a little old man and began walking down the pathway towards him.

The soul of Tiki-pu gave a sharp leap in his grubby little body. "That must be Wio-wani himself and no other!" cried his soul.

Tiki-pu pulled off his cap and threw himself down on the floor with reverent grovellings. When he dared to look up again Wio-wani stood over him big and fine; just within the edge of his canvas he stood and reached out a hand.

"Come along with me, Tiki-pu!" said the great one. "If you want to know how to paint I will teach you."

"Oh, Wio-wani, were you there all the while?" cried Tiki-pu ecstatically, leaping up and clutching with his smeary little puds the hand which the old man extended to him.

"I was there," said Wio-wani, "looking at you out of my little window. Come along in!"

Tiki-pu took a heave and swung himself into the picture, and fairly capered when he found his feet among the flowers of Wio-wani's beautiful garden. Wio-wani had turned, and was ambling gently back to the door of his palace, beckoning to the small one to follow him; and there stood Tiki-pu, opening his mouth like a fish to all the wonders that surrounded him. "Celestiality, may I speak?" he said suddenly.

"Speak," replied Wio-wani; "what is it?"

"The Emperor, was he not the very flower of fools not to follow when you told him?"

"I cannot say," answered Wio-wani, "but he certainly was no artist."

Then he opened the door, that door which he had so beautifully painted, and led Tiki-pu in. And outside the little candle-end sat and guttered by itself, till the wick fell overboard, and the flame kicked itself out, leaving the studio in darkness and solitude to wait for the growings of another dawn.

It was full day before Tiki-pu reappeared; he came running down the green path in great haste, jumped out of the frame on to the studio floor, and began tidying up his own messes of the night, and the apprentices' of the previous day. Only just in time did he have things ready by the hour when his master and the others returned to their work.

All that day they kept scratching their left ears, and could not think why; but Tiki-pu knew, for he was saying over to himself all the things that Wio-wani, the great painter, had been saying about them and their precious productions. And as he ground their colours for them and washed their brushes, and filled his famished little body with the breadcrumbs they threw away, little they guessed from what an immeasurable distance he looked down upon them all, and had Wio-wani's word for it tickling his right ear all the day long.

Now before long Tiki-pu's master noticed a change in him; and though he bullied him, and thrashed him, and did all that a careful master should do, he could not get the change out of him. So in a short while he grew suspicious. "What is the boy up to?" he wondered. "I have my eye on him all day: it must be at night that he gets into mischief."

It did not take Tiki-pu's master a night's watching to find that something surreptitious was certainly going on. When it was dark he took up his post outside the studio, to see whether by any chance Tiki-pu had some way of getting out; and before long he saw a faint light showing through the window. So he came and thrust his finger softly through one of the panes, and put his eye to the hole.

There inside was a candle burning on a stand, and Tiki-pu squatting with paint-pots and brush in front of Wio-wani's last masterpiece.

"What fine piece of burglary is this?" thought he; "what serpent have I been harbouring in my bosom? Is this beast of a grub of a boy thinking to make himself a painter and cut me out of my reputation and prosperity?" For even at that distance he could perceive plainly that the work of this boy went head and shoulders beyond his, or that of any painter then living.

Presently Wio-wani opened his door and came down the path, as was his habit now each night, to call Tiki-pu to his lesson. He advanced to the front of his picture and beckoned for Tiki-pu to come in with him; and Tiki-pu's master grew clammy at the knees as he beheld Tiki-pu catch hold of Wio-wani's hand and jump into the picture, and skip up the green path by Wio-wani's side, and in through the little door that Wio-wani had painted so beautifully in the end wall of his palace!

For a time Tiki-pu's master stood glued to the spot with grief and horror. "Oh, you deadly little underling! Oh, you poisonous little caretaker, you parasite, you vampire, you fly in amber!" cried he, "is that where you get your training? Is it there that you dare to go trespassing; into a picture that I purchased for my own pleasure and profit, and not at all for yours? Very soon we will see whom it really belongs to!"

He ripped out the paper of the largest window-pane and pushed his way through into the studio. Then in great haste he took up paint-pot and brush, and sacrilegiously set himself to work upon Wio-wani's last masterpiece. In the place of the doorway by which Tiki-pu had entered he painted a solid brick wall; twice over he painted it, making it two bricks thick; brick by brick he painted it, and mortared every brick to its place. And when he had quite finished he laughed, and called "Good-night, Tiki-pu!" and went home to be quite happy.

The next day all the apprentices were wondering what had become of Tiki-pu; but as the master himself said nothing, and as another boy came to act as colour-grinder and brush-washer to the establishment, they very soon forgot all about him.

In the studio the master used to sit at work with his students all about him, and a mind full of ease and contentment. Now and then he would throw a glance across to the bricked-up doorway of Wio-wani's palace, and laugh to himself, thinking how well he had served out Tiki-pu for his treachery and presumption.

One day--it was five years after the disappearance of Tiki-pu--he was giving his apprentices a lecture on the glories and the beauties and the wonders of Wio-wani's painting--how nothing for colour could excel, or for mystery could equal it. To add point to his eloquence, he stood waving his hands before Wio-wani's last masterpiece, and all his students and apprentices sat round him and looked.

Suddenly he stopped at mid-word, and broke off in the full flight of his eloquence, as he saw something like a hand come and take down the top brick from the face of paint which he had laid over the little door in the palace-wall which Wio-wani had so beautifully painted. In another moment there was no doubt about it; brick by brick the wall was being pulled down, in spite of its double thickness.

The lecturer was altogether too dumbfounded and terrified to utter a word. He and all his apprentices stood round and stared while the demolition of the wall proceeded. Before long he recognised Wio-wani with his flowing white beard; it was his handiwork, this pulling down of the wall! He still had a brick in his hand when he stepped through the opening that he had made, and close after him stepped Tiki-pu!

Tiki-pu was grown tall and strong--he was even handsome; but for all that his old master recognised him, and saw with an envious foreboding that under his arms he carried many rolls and stretchers and portfolios, and other belongings of his craft. Clearly Tiki-pu was coming back into the world, and was going to be a great painter.

Down the garden path came Wio-wani, and Tiki-pu walked after him; Tiki-pu was so tall that his head stood well over Wio-wani's shoulders--old man and young man together made a handsome pair.

How big Wio-wani grew as he walked down the avenues of his garden and into the foreground of his picture! and how big the brick in his hand! and ah, how angry he seemed!

Wio-wani came right down to the edge of the picture-frame and held up the brick. "What did you do that for?" he asked.