Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  And here he was waiting in the old antiquated drawing room of the Keller brownstone, while an almost as antiquated butler went to inform his master of the advent of a guest. In a few minutes Warren heard footsteps running down the stairs and Charlie of old stood before him. The one-time chums shook hands warmly, voiced equally as warm greetings, and surreptiously eyed each other for the changes the years must have brought. There followed a few minutes of reminiscences of college days. However, through it all Keller appeared restlessly nervous, and after the first wave of greeting had passed he spoke in jerky sentences. “Pardon my rush, Jack, old man, but I’ve just left some work of mine up-stairs that can’t stand waiting. Wait until I finish—or would you prefer to come to the lab. and wait? Just a half hour or so and I’ll be ready to show you the town, or what have you?”

  “Oh, sorry, if I interrupted you, Charlie. I’ll go along with you. I understand you’ve done some big work in your time.”

  Keller was modest about what he called his success as he led the way up the carpeted stairs and into the large room upon the the third floor that he called his lab.! Jack was surprised to discover the wealth of equipment that filled the room. He himself had not been in a scientific laboratory since he had left the university. Keller left him alone while he went into a box-like affair in one corner of the room that Jack recognized as a dark room. Left alone, Warren strolled about the room gingerly peering at the various apparatus, retorts, arrays of glass tubes and other paraphernalia. He came to stop before what looked to him like an ordinary camera, but it had several strange looking attachments, which he did not try to understand. Then Keller appeared from the dark room carrying several small sheets of developed photographs that he was handling carefully. On seeing his guest looking at the camera he observed, “Ah my Z-ray camera interests you, eh?”

  Warren turned to him. “Z-ray? Isn’t that something new? I thought you were devoted to the X-ray.”

  Keller grinned. “I had to study the X-ray to be able to discover the Z-ray. They work in conjunction.”

  “Oh, do they?”

  Keller seemed hesitant. Then he thrust forward the photographs that were still damp from the developing solution. He watched his friend’s face as lie studied the pictures. Warren looked at them a minute, then he was grinning. “Oh, you and Conan Doyle, eh? Since when have you been interested in fairies, Charlie?”

  Keller smiled back. “Ever since I was knee-high to a duck, Jack.”

  Warren whistled. “But really you arc not going into this thing seriously, old man! Why, you’ll be a laughing stock, if that gets out. Is that what all this means?” and he waved an arm to take in the camera and the laboratory.

  Keller nodded. “It’s a long story, Charlie, and I’ve not told a soul yet, but since you dropped in on me on the very day that I found it, you are welcome to hear all about it!”

  “You mean, Charlie, that you have actually photographed those things—that. . . .”

  Keller nodded again. “It is true, and if you don’t believe me I’ll take you out in the garden and let you photograph them yourself! It was lucky for me that I found one of the ‘holes’ right in my own garden!”

  “WHAT in the world are you talking about? Tell me, you haven’t lost your mind . . . like so many of these inventor fellows do?”

  The other laughed at that, and without another word he picked up the camera and led Warren downstairs and through a side door that led into a pretty garden in the rear of the house. One does not expect to find such a beauty spot in the heart of the fifties, and that had added to its charm in the days of Grandfather Keller. He had built up the entire square block of houses in his day, but in their center he had preserved enough ground to make the garden what it was. And it had been the scene of many a fete in the old days. There was a frog-pond, and tall cedar trees on its rim, a rose garden that bore every species of rose known to man, a gravel walk that drifted in and about the hedgerows and a little bit of a sunken garden. At one end, against a tall stone mossy wall, was a loggia where were set a half dozen garden chairs, and here and there in the garden were arranged little bowers that invited a twosome. Keller here had been somewhat of a poet. Here as a boy Charlie Keller had spent almost all of his boyhood, and here had been many a love-quarrel forgotten. People had visited the Kellers just to stroll in the old-fashioned garden. And now Charlie had found another use for it.

  He took Warren along the gravel walk to a corner where was placed a stone bench and near it on a pedestal stood a “round tummied” Cupid, ready to shoot one of his arrows. Keller squinted up at the sun. It was four o’clock of a mid-summer day so that the sun was still high enough for taking pictures. Carefully he set his camera on the bench and kneeling upon the grass he placed his eye against the peephole, and spent a half a dozen minutes in focusing it properly. He motioned to Warren to come close, and put the bulb of the camera in his hand. “Push,” he told his friend, and Jack, as though to humor a maniac, did so.

  “Well, now,” observed Keller, “you’ve done it! You’ve photographed two fairies!”

  Warren was now certain that the other was out of his mind, but he managed a grin, though he wanted to turn his back and leave Charlie and his toys forever. But Charlie Keller understood what was passing through Jack’s mind and sympathetically he smiled. “Here, Jack, look in for yourself and ask yourself if you are dreaming or not,” he suggested. “You think I’m crazy, but after you see what I have seen, decide then whether or not you call me or yourself insane.”

  Reluctantly Warren knelt and placed his eye to the sighting hole of the camera, expecting to see nothing more than the leaves of the rose bush that faced the camera’s eye. And for a moment he did not seen anything, but Keller urged him to continue to look through. What was that beautiful shade of light that had crept into everything? The very light itself was entrancing. Then he saw something that so startled him that he lost his balance and sat on the ground with a plop. But he was back again at the camera staring with the greatest of wonder and misbelief at what he had seen.

  They were a dozen feet away, or so it appeared in the camera. They were fairies, those little bits of ephemeral things with their gauzy wings and dresses of flower petals. And there was—by gosh—there was an elf—just as one sees them in children’s picture books. Why, out there was a world of tiny flying things, no larger than a half a dozen inches high and flying about like butterflies and bees! It was incredible, but they moved and they were alive. There was one tiny creature sticking its head into the heart of a flower, a violet, and when it looked up again, it appeared as though it had just relished a tidbit!

  Warren could not tear his eyes from the camera. It was the strangest and most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Then he looked on beyond the fairies, to a pretty piece of flower covered ground with clouds and blue skies overhead where before had been only a rose bush and the garden wall beyond! Realizing this, Warren took his eyes away and glared almost angrily at Keller who was standing a foot away and smiling broadly.

  “Say, what’s this? Are you trying to play with me, Charlie Keller? Why this thing’s no more than one of those penny-shows you see in a machine in Coney Island!” He was blustering now over the hoax which he thought his friend had pulled upon him.

  “Don’t be a fool, Jack. Do you think I’d bother to bring you into the garden for that? And where could one photograph those things? No, my friend, you have simply been looking into the Fourth Dimension! And those creatures you saw there are really living and enjoying life as you see them. I could not have ‘faked’ such a scene. Now, could I?”

  “But Charlie, it’s impossible,” muttered Warren, his blustering gone.

  “No, no, Jack, it is the truth. Come into the house. I had better tell you more about it.”

  HE picked up the camera almost lovingly, and preceded Warren through the garden. About to enter the house, he paused. “No, on second thought, let’s sit here in the garden. It’s more pleasant, and besides, the story will sou
nd better out here where it belongs.” He led the way to the company of wicker chairs under the loggia. He pressed a buzzer and in a minute or so the antiquated butler came forth beaming, bearing a tray with its decanter of rare brandy and the glasses. Thus refreshed Charlie began to talk.

  “As a child, Jack, I believed in fairies. Of course lots of children do—or used to. I don’t know if they have lost the capacity of believing in this day of machines and traffic regulations—I hope not—for I can remember the joy with which I used to listen to all stories about fairies and their ilk. Not the stories of Fairy Princes and of Witches that one finds so prevalent in a certain type of so-called Fairy Tales, but the stories of the doings of the Little Folk. I think that of all writers Lord Dunsany had come closer to the real heart of the fairies.

  “In those days I had an old nurse, Irish Nora. Perhaps that accounts for my deep love and understanding of the Wee People. Her mind was filled with tales of them as well of the banshees and witches, and the stories she told me of them were true—she averred that she had seen a number of fairies back home as a child—and I believed her—I still do!

  “Now, this all sounds irrelevant to what I have to tell you, but it is all part of it, for had I not believed in the fairies, I would never have gone ‘through’ as I did. Even as a young man I was still interested in fairies and many a surreptitious hour I stole in the Children’s Libraries reading about them—for though the stories have been written by three dimensional beings, they sometimes have caught the truth about the Little People, and I don’t doubt but that some of them had a first hand acquaintance with the Fairy Folk, preposterous as that sounds.

  “Sir Conan Doyle’s alleged photographs of fairies are the real thing! You yourself have just seen creatures identical to the pictured fairies he has been so ridiculed for, but whereas his photographs are true replicas of the Folk, they came to him through accident, while mine have come after years of study and science.

  “You may recall the summer I went to Ireland on a walking tour all by myself? I think it was when I was a sophomore, and I recall how everyone joshed me when I returned the next fall and had to admit that I had spent my summer hiking through Ireland. But the trip was of more import than I let be known, for I had gone there purposely to learn more about the fairies and to see them if it was possible.

  “For some reason the Irish seem closer to the Wee Folk than other peoples. People like to attribute that to their child-like minds, their love of make-believe. But I thought differently and reasoned that they knew more of them because there were fairies in that country whereas other countries had more or less been neglected by the tiny winged people. In England and Scotland you will hear talk of them among the country-folk, but not as you hear it in Ireland.

  “So to Ireland I traveled.

  “I left the cities behind and plunged into the country away from the beaten paths and into a rural section that had not changed since the days of Blind Rafferty.[*] It took a while for me to insinuate myself into the regard of the old folk, but I set about to make myself as likable as I could. Also I knew a few words of Irish Gaelic learned from that old nurse of mine. So I began to make friends and always I managed to lead the conversation around to the Wee People. I knew that the Irish are somewhat frightened to speak of them, for they will still talk of changelings and the little brownies who come and turn the milk sour overnight. And I heard a great many tales of that description. Also tales of folk who had been given wishes by the fairies in reward for some good deed performed in their behalf, or of the old woman who had been starving and awoke one morning to find the cat she had fed, despite her adversities, playing with a piece of silver, and that thereafter every morning she found another piece of money under the cat’s paw.

  “Only I was not content to listen to these tales. I wished to find the fairies—so it was that I learned that not many miles away in a wild part of the country was what the good people called the Fairy Ring! That was a ring in the grass that was unmistakable and which it was told was danced upon by the fairies at night! But woe unto him who ever fell asleep in that circle, for then he would surely awaken and come back with strange tales to tell and would lose his mind in the bargain. For the wee folk did not like for mortals to sleep in that circle!

  “You may be sure that the next morning I was off toward that ring at dawn. I had to ask a number of countrymen I met on the way, for the direction, and was stared at askance for my daring. Three, of those I met up with, denied that they knew of such a place, but I thought all were lying. Then I met the crone. She was more like a witch, with her toothless gums and her thin straggling hair falling over her pointed face. She eyed me peculiarly for a moment.

  “ ‘Ay, lad, you’re a brave un,’ she averred. ‘But don’t ye pay eny ’tention to what the wiseacres be telling ye. And shure they be such a ring, and ef ye sleep within its circle ye’ll have pretty dreams to remember all yer life. And the Wee Folk’ll be mannerly-like. Only don’t ye be taking enything from ’em, not the weest flower, for they’ll resent that. You see, me good lad, Oi’ve been there—oi’ve seen ’em. Worra, worra—but for me stiff joints oi’d be goin’ back meself, and be content to end me days wid ’em.’

  “THAT was all very heartening, so I gave her a piece of silver and was given explicit directions, And two hours later I was crawling through the copse which the old one had described in about the wildest piece of country I had seen as yet. Giant gnarled old trees, groaned and moaned in the wind, and the grass underfoot was long and gone to seed. And there was the ring as plain as day, a brown ring on the sward as though the grass had been worn away by dancing feet! Only it was not a perfect circle as I had been led to believe, but an uneven, ragged line, circular, though roughly drawn. Surely fairies would not have danced that way. With beating heart I approached it, examined it, and tried to collect my thoughts, for with its finding had come a dazed sort of mind. It was all too good to be true.

  “Then as I was tired from the long walk and the sun beating down upon my head had made me drowsy, I dropped to the grass. I recalled then that if one went to sleep, the fairies would come. So without hesitation I made sure that all of me was within the circle which was large enough to accommodate three or more. Before I went to sleep, though, I noticed something that appeared strange, but I was too sleepy to fathom, and that was the strange beautiful light that seemed ethereal. It hung all about me, a color that was mauve, old-rose and orchid. But in a twinkling of an eye I was asleep.

  “I have no way of telling how long I slumbered there, but I was awakened suddenly by strange shrill little voices and was puzzled at first to find myself not abed. However, it did not take long for me to recollect everything. I looked about and I saw the fairies!

  “There were about a half a dozen little creatures, hardly different than those you saw in the camera, Jack. Two were elves, little greenish fellows with pointed noses, little transparent wings like those the flies have, and two pointed antennas coming out of their eyebrows. Another was a gnome, a little hunchbacked creature with round beady eyes and a neat suit of brown cloth. The other three were fairies scarcely different than the conventional type you see in story-books, with dainty, beautifully formed bodies and big butterfly wings. They were sitting about either on the grass or upon the leaves of a bush close by. The gnome squatted on the projecting root of the plant. Not three feet away sat a brown rabbit with ears cocked surveying us all. The fairy people were taking me all in and appeared to have been waiting patiently for some time for me to awake. One of the elves stretched his tiny arms and yawned. Then I noticed the light about us, the same lovely coloring I had seen when I dropped off to sleep.

  “I guess I would have sat there indefinitely if one of the fairies had not spoken. She was a lovely little thing of pink and cream with a mass of golden hair and the bluest of blue eyes. I have yet to see a prettier fairy.

  “ ‘Good day to you,’ she said and she had spoken to me in Gaelic! ‘La Maith agad,’ she said, giving it
the sweetest known pronunciation. ‘Laiv maw agatli.’

  “I returned her greeting, but I was a little disappointed for I knew that I could not carry on a very long conversation in that tongue and there was much I wished to learn. She must have read my thoughts, for the next time she spoke it was in English!

  “ ‘Why,’ she asked me, ‘do all you people fall asleep before you come “through?’ ”

  “I stared at her. ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘it is because we are told that is the way we enter Fairyland! But I must admit that in my own case I was too tired from my walk here to do otherwise.’

  “ ‘It’s been a long time since one of your kind have come “through at all,” she observed.

  “ ‘Oh,’ said I for something better to say, ‘you do not have many visitors, then?’

  “ ‘Well, the truth of it is, that we do not encourage them to come. They like it so well here that they would all wish to stay—and then where would we be? They would overrun everything and put factories everywhere and make a pretty mess of it all. No, we discourage it, you see, and they believe the tales we tell about putting a madness on them. As though we could do that!”

  “TO be sure that speech startled me. ‘I see,’ said I, ‘but aren’t you afraid I might do the same thing, now that you’ve told me that you can’t put a madness on me?’

  “She smiled broadly at that. ‘You’re different. They are but simple folk and you are a man with understanding. It would do not good for us to try tricks on you, for you would see through it all. Besides, did you not come from your distant country to find us?’

  “I nodded, surprised at her discernment. It was as though she had read my mind.

  “ ‘I am reading your mind,’ said she in answer to my thought, ‘and I learn by it that you are a man who has always had love for us and a belief in us. You are welcome for as long as you wish to stay in our country. You may ask what questions you have in mind, although it is just as well that I tell you everything right now before we go any further!’