Short Fiction - H. G. Wells (funny books to read .TXT) 📗

were coffers piled on coffers, and cups and golden boxes, and a great heap of what certainly seemed to all Mr. Skelmersdale’s senses⁠—coined gold. There were little gnomes amidst 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 must go back to your Millie, and here⁠—just as I promised you⁠—they will give you gold.”

“She choked like,” said Mr. Skelmersdale. “At that, I had a sort of feeling⁠—” (he touched his breastbone) “as though I was fainting here. I felt pale, you know, and shivering, and even then⁠—I ’adn’t a thing to say.”

He paused. “Yes,” I said.

The scene was beyond his describing. But I know that she kissed him goodbye.

“And you said nothing?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I stood like a stuffed calf. She just looked back once, you know, and stood smiling like and crying⁠—I could see the shine of her eyes⁠—and then she was gone, and there was all these little fellows bustling about me, stuffing my ’ands and my pockets and the back of my collar and everywhere with gold.”

And then it was, when the Fairy Lady had vanished, that Mr. Skelmersdale really understood and knew. He suddenly began plucking out the gold they were thrusting upon him, and shouting out at them to prevent their giving him more. “ ‘I don’t want yer gold,’ I said. ‘I ’aven’t done 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, stuck their little ’ands against my middle and shoved me back. They kept giving me more and more gold until it was running all down my trouser 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 anywhere to be seen.”

So he ran in search of her out of this red-lit cave, down a long grotto, seeking her, and thence he came out in a great and desolate place 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 gnomes came out of the cave after him, carrying gold in handfuls and casting it after him, shouting, “Fairy love and fairy gold! Fairy love and fairy 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 suddenly set himself to run down the slope from the mouth of the cavern, through a place of thorns and briers, calling after her very loudly and often. The elves danced about him unheeded, pinching him and pricking him, and the will-o’-the-wisps circled round him and dashed into his face, and the gnomes pursued him shouting and pelting him with fairy gold. As he ran with all this strange rout about him and distracting him, suddenly he was knee-deep in a swamp, and suddenly he was amidst thick twisted roots, and he caught his foot in one and stumbled and fell⁠ ⁠…

He fell and he rolled over, and in that instant he found himself sprawling upon Aldington Knoll, all lonely under the stars.

He sat up sharply at once, he says, and found he was very stiff and cold, and his clothes were damp with dew. The first pallor of dawn and a chilly wind were coming up together. He could have believed the whole thing a strangely vivid dream until he thrust his 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 was never 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 until he returned to the shop at Aldington Corner and discovered amidst their 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 of this 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?”

“Everyone was changed. Changed for good. Everyone 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-talking to me. She was just nothing. I couldn’t make out whatever I ’ad seen in ’er ever, or what there could ’ave been. Sometimes when she wasn’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 the pattern of the tablecloth for a space.

When he spoke again it was clear that his former sweetheart had clean vanished from his mind, and that the talk had brought back the Fairy Lady triumphant in his heart. He talked of her⁠—soon he was letting out the oddest things, queer love secrets it would be treachery to repeat. I think, indeed, that