“Ah, there was your mistake, my lady! You should have loved me much, loved me devotedly, loved me savagely—loved me eternally! Then I should have tired of you the sooner, and not hated you so much afterward!—But let bygones be bygones!—where are we? Locality is the question! To be or not to be, is not the question!”
“We are in the other world, I presume!”
“Granted!—but in which or what sort of other world? This can’t be hell!”
“It must: there’s marriage in it! You and I are damned in each other.”
“Then I’m not like Othello, damned in a fair wife!—Oh, I remember my Shakespeare, madam!”
She picked up a broken branch that had fallen into a bush, and steadying herself with it, walked away, tossing her little skull.
“Give that stick to me,” cried her late husband; “I want it more than you.”
She returned him no answer.
“You mean to make me beg for it?”
“Not at all, my lord. I mean to keep it,” she replied, continuing her slow departure.
“Give it me at once; I mean to have it! I require it.”
“Unfortunately, I think I require it myself!” returned the lady, walking a little quicker, with a sharper cracking of her joints and clinking of her bones.
He started to follow her, but nearly fell: his knee-grass had burst, and with an oath he stopped, grasping his leg again.
“Come and tie it up properly!” he would have thundered, but he only piped and whistled!
She turned and looked at him.
“Come and tie it up instantly!” he repeated.
She walked a step or two farther from him.
“I swear I will not touch you!” he cried.
“Swear on, my lord! there is no one here to believe you. But, pray, do not lose your temper, or you will shake yourself to pieces, and where to find string enough to tie up all your crazy joints, is more than I can tell.”
She came back, and knelt once more at his side—first, however, laying the stick in dispute beyond his reach and within her own.
The instant she had finished retying the joint, he made a grab at her, thinking, apparently, to seize her by the hair; but his hard fingers slipped on the smooth poll.
“Disgusting!” he muttered, and laid hold of her upper arm-bone.
“You will break it!” she said, looking up from her knees.
“I will, then!” he answered, and began to strain at it.
“I shall not tie your leg again the next time it comes loose!” she threatened.
He gave her arm a vicious twist, but happily her bones were in better condition than his. She stretched her other hand toward the broken branch.
“That’s right: reach me the stick!” he grinned.
She brought it round with such a swing that one of the bones of the sounder leg snapped. He fell, choking with curses. The lady laughed.
“Now you will have to wear splints always!” she said; “such dry bones never mend!”
“You devil!” he cried.
“At your service, my lord! Shall I fetch you a couple of wheel-spokes? Neat—but heavy, I fear!”
He turned his bone-face aside, and did not answer, but lay and groaned. I marvelled he had not gone to pieces when he fell. The lady rose and walked away—not all ungracefully, I thought.
“What can come of it?” I said to myself. “These are too wretched for any world, and this cannot be hell, for the Little Ones are in it, and the sleepers too! What can it all mean? Can things ever come right for skeletons?”
“There are words too big for you and me: all is one of them, and ever is another,” said a voice near me which I knew.
I looked about, but could not see the speaker.
“You are not in hell,” it resumed. “Neither am I in hell. But those skeletons are in hell!”
Ere he ended I caught sight of the raven on the bough of a beech, right over my head. The same moment he left it, and alighting on the ground, stood there, the thin old man of the library, with long nose and long coat.
“The male was never a gentleman,” he went on, “and in the bony stage of retrogression, with his skeleton through his skin, and his character outside his manners, does not look like one. The female is less vulgar, and has a little heart. But, the restraints of society removed, you see them now just as they are and always were!”
“Tell me, Mr. Raven, what will become of them,” I said.
“We shall see,” he replied. “In their day they were the handsomest couple at court; and now, even in their dry bones, they seem to regard their former repute as an inalienable possession; to see their faces, however, may yet do something for them! They felt themselves rich too while they had pockets, but they have already begun to feel rather pinched! My lord used to regard my lady as a worthless encumbrance, for he was tired of her beauty and had spent her money; now he needs her to cobble his joints for him! These changes have roots of hope in them. Besides, they cannot now get far away from each other, and they see none else of their own kind: they must at last grow weary of their mutual repugnance, and begin to love one another! for love, not hate, is deepest in what Love ‘loved into being.’ ”
“I saw many more of their kind an hour ago, in the hall close by!” I said.
“Of their kind, but not of their sort,” he answered. “For many years these will see none such as you saw last night. Those are centuries in advance of these. You saw that those could even dress themselves a little! It is true they cannot yet retain their clothes so long as they would—only, at present, for a part of the night; but they are pretty steadily growing more capable, and will by and by develop faces; for every grain of truthfulness adds a fibre to the show of their humanity. Nothing but truth can appear; and whatever
