Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 698

'All-Hallows eve, is it not?' inquired the new-comer, bending close to Miss Daly. 'Has any one got a ring? Have you?'

'No, indeed; no one has yet, I believe.'

'Then I'm in luck, for here is one in my cake; and there, Miss Daly, why you have the other half.'

'Well now,' whispered some of those near, 'if that isn't an omen, to get a ring the same minute!'

''Tisn't the right half,' exclaimed Hogan, somewhat roughly. 'I have that. – Don't you know, Eliza,' he whispered, 'I got one before.'

'This fits exactly,' said Crofton, trying his own and Eliza's together. And so they did; but it seemed that seeing was not believing, in Hogan's case.

'No,' he persisted; 'they aren't fits at all. Let me try.' He stretched out his hand, and almost snatched the little shining crescent from the white fingers of Crofton, who relinquished it quietly, and with a provoking smile watched the other's vain efforts to make it fit.

'You see now it won't do,' he said banteringly. 'What haven't been made for each other won't go together, no matter how you may try. But cheer up; you'll find the match yet.'

The young farmer, however, returned his smile with a very black frown, and stood up. As he did so he perceived Crofton whisper to Eliza, who laughed merrily and glanced at him. He could willingly have struck the young gentleman at that moment. He determined, however, not to let him have altogether his own way if possible; and when the tea was removed and dancing begun, he went up to Eliza and requested her hand. But Eliza was engaged, and told him so.

'Dance the next with me then, won't you?' he pleaded earnestly.

'No; I won't: I don't want such a sulky partner,' answered she with a saucy laugh.

'I am not sulky, Eliza; indeed I am not. I'm only sorry and vexed that you should turn from me so, and for a stranger. It is not fair treatment.'

'Not fair treatment indeed!' returned the girl, with a queenly toss of her graceful little head and a curl of her rosy lip. 'Ah, now say no more, Will Hogan.' And away she went round and round with Crofton, while the fiddles struck up a merry tune.

Hogan stood still between two minds whether he would go away at once; but he was reluctant to let his rival see him abandon the field. When, however, the dance was finished, and the burning of nuts and other Hallow-eve rites began, he still found no opportunity of approaching Eliza; and all the omens which in other years had been favourable to his cause were against him. At last, when Eliza's nut being placed beside his, instantly bounded away and fell into the fire, there was silence for a moment, and glances were exchanged.

Dancing having recommenced, several came round Eliza requesting her hand; but she answered hurriedly that she could not take part in this dance, but would in the next. She had things to look after just now, and must leave them for a little while. Saying which, she quietly quitted the room.

A few minutes after, a slight figure wrapped in a cloak might have been seen gliding through the farm-stead. On emerging by the back-gate on the road, it stood still for a moment and looked behind. The pale moonbeams gleamed on the face; but so blanched were the features, so altered the expression, that even had any of her friends been near they might almost have failed to recognise Eliza. With a shiver, as if the chill wind pierced her after the heated room she had left, she drew the hood of her cloak closer over her face and began to speed rapidly along. Nor did she pause or again look around till, some distance from home, she at last stopped, breathless, at the gate of a potato-field. For a minute or two she stood before it, as if irresolute.

'Shall I go back without trying it after all?' she murmured. 'No; I will go on, and see what comes of it.'

She entered the field and began to walk slowly across the ridges, counting them as she went till she had numbered TWELVE; then she stood still and listened intently. The wind, which was high, swept over the wide unsheltered space around. Was that its murmur she heard? She held her breath. Low moans and sobbing sighs seemed to mingle with it. Surely no wind ever wailed with such human anguish as that. Louder and clearer it rose, swelling on the breeze, full of more piercing passionate sorrow. She remained rooted to the spot, terror-stricken, her heart almost ceasing to beat. The sounds seemed to come along the ground. As she listened, a slender figure rose up slowly, as if from off the earth, confronting her in the uncertain light, and gazing upon her with a cold sorrowful eye. Shrieking, Eliza rushed back, stumbling and sometimes falling over the ridges as she ran. How she gained the road, she scarcely knew, but she found herself flying along it, with the cry of 'Doomed, doomed!' ringing in her ears. She had heard it, low and despairing, as she left the field, as if wrung from some soul in mortal terror and anguish; now it seemed repeated by a hundred voices exclaiming: 'Doomed, doomed!' She flew before it, pressing her hands to her ears, to shut out the sound.

The farm-house was reached in a shorter time than one could have imagined possible. She wrenched open the gate, rushed up the garden-path, and with trembling hands knocked loudly at the door. The summons rang through the house, above the music and dancing, and the buzz of laughing voices. Everybody flew into the hall. On the door being opened, Eliza rushed in, and would have sunk fainting on the threshold if Hogan had not caught her in his arms. She was carried into the room and laid on the sofa, while every remedy for fainting was procured. Where had she been? was the question each asked the other. Her hair, damp and dishevelled, hung about her, her dress was torn and soiled, her hands covered with clay, and bleeding. At length the remedies had effect; consciousness began to return, and when it did, it came quickly. She opened her eyes and gazed earnestly round, as if seeking for some face. If it was Crofton she sought, he was not there, having left some time before.

'What has happened, dearest Eliza?' whispered Hogan, close by her side. 'Where have you been?'

'I went out, and was frightened,' she murmured.

'And what frightened you, mavourneen?' asked he coaxingly, as if speaking to a wayward child.

But she made no reply, nor could any questioning draw from her an explanation. The party broke up, and each went home indulging in all manner of conjectures as to what had happened. It was whispered by some that Eliza had gone to the Twelfth Rig.

VITAL FORCE

Though we have not the slightest conception of what life is in itself, and consequently could not define it, we may, for the sake of convenience, think of it in this paper as some kind of force.

'In the wonderful story,' says Professor Huxley in his Lay Sermons, 'of the Peau de Chagrin, the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire, the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin disappear with the gratification of a last wish. Protoplasm or the physical basis of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light – so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on for ever. But happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs in its capacity of being repaired and brought back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present lecture is conceivably expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By-and-by I shall have recourse to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size.'

This explanation may be very philosophical, but it is only a roundabout way of saying that, within reasonable bounds, we can recover the effects of exhaustion by proper food and rest; which, as a fact, people are pretty well acquainted with. The error to be avoided is, in any shape to make such a pull on the constitution as to be beyond the reach of recovery. Life-force, or call it protoplasm, is an inherent quantity not to be heedlessly wasted; and this truth becomes more apparent the older we grow. Why is one man greater, in the sense of being more powerful than another? Because he knows how to get out of himself a greater amount of work with less waste of life-force.