MR TOOKS' PROMISE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2131, 6 March 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR TOOKS' PROMISE.

It was always dark up where Mr Tooki lived — up among the spiders ami cobwebs, away up above the every-day life of busy men, among beams ami rafters and pulley ropes, so thick that it gave one the choakes just to look at them. Mr Tooks lived there iv this theatrical cloud-land, though he did not call it his home, lie was there before daylight in the morning, and never left at night, if he did leave at all until the great light in the hall across the way had ceased to illuminate the surroundings. Mr Tooks went out with that light and came iv agtin before the blush of morn, so that his life seemed to spend itself in one eternal darkness, as vast as it was black, and as black as it was sorrowful. There was only one happiness in Tooks' life, and that was a promise ; yet that promise danced ever before him like a will-o'-the-wisp, casting joyful rays along the stretching vistas of blackness. Tooks hoped some day to make a ' hit. 1 Just what it was to make a 'hit' Tooks hardly knew- It always came %yith a great clapping of hands and stamping of feet and hurrahs and cat-calls, and such a general bustling about that every one •eemed filled with a pleasurable excitement ; and that ' hit ' was talked of away up there in Mr Tooks' dark loft for days and weeks to come. Just how he was to make this ' hit * was another enigma that Tooks' mind had \ never taken to as in a death-grip, but that it would be made the promue was always there ; and Tooks saw himself out before those flaring, mystifying footlights, for this Mr Tooks was in a theatrical way, and he heard the great storm of clashing palms, he saw that vast sea of upturned faces, just as he had seen them through the peephole in the curtain many and many a time, though they had not seen Mr Tooks ; and in the great silence that followed he conld hear himself thanking the owners of these same joyful faces for having made happy ami bright his whole future existence. He thanked them for having thus dragged him up, or lather down by the ueck, ns it were, from his awful obscurity ; for having straightened out his little shrivelled right leg— for what was a shrivelled right leg upon a man who had made so famous a 'hit?' — anl his eyes sparkled until they shone like meteors through the dusky surroundings, and a laugh ventured to gurgle out of his facial orihef, so sharp, so clear, and withal so positive, that Snip, the longbodied short lecged little terrier that kept watch over the chalk lines and porte-ciayons, actually barked with joyous surprise. Snip was a discreet dog, and only barked upon great occasions, if he ever barked at all. To hear Tooks laugh was to say that one had lived more than a decade ; for, although a smile frequently ventured to steal quietly up aud down Tooks' wrinkled, careworn face, a laugh must be of tho boldest sort to oven echo in hi? neighbourhood. Tooks' did laugh, however, though the little row of gas-jets just at his black burned steadily on, not heeding the unusual interruption. As a careful artist— for it was as an artist that Mr Tooks was known on the • home bills'— he painted slowly, dreaming betimes, while away off through that canvas, primed and reprimed and thickened with its many coloured coats as it was, Tooks' eyes followed the promise ; and his ears heard, besides the sweet sounds of that madly-intoxicating applause, the cheery laugh of a little child who loved Papa Tooks, grim and grizzled and sad au:l sallow as he was, who saw in his little shrivelled right leg the. proportions of Adonis ; who, saw through his shock, J gri//,ied hair a halo of glory, and to whom 1 his sallow, sad face was a beacon-light of i JoyOthers had made) 'hits' and Tooks knew he must some day, though, as said before, just now he had never thought to ask himself. After all, the * hit' was not so much to Tooks. It was only Vi he caied for. VI was the little goldenhaired uheinb Tooks saw thiottgh his canvas bound dream. Tooks' always saw Vi hoveling about somewhere when that sky-laiking promise brought the 'hit' around to dangle under his nose. The ' hit ' in reality was for Vi and not for looks at all. It was a monument he was going to build for her, that she might some day lay his withered body under when the tired spirit had forsaken so miserable a frame, and bringing tho neighbours around say, ' Well, he was called out. Its writ there on the stone.' That was the promise of Tooks' life, and the darkness was bright to him as he painted on in the miserable gloom, not seeing that the great light in the hall across the way Ind gone glimmering out almost an hour ago. This light was a signal for Mr Tooka to lay down his tooU and quit. The darkness of yesterday had blended into the darkness of to-day, and with the deepening shadows Tooks departed. Throne-chairs and other stage properties stood about him fairly crying to he gileleel. The sky on that broul expanse of muslin had barely bee-n made to merge in with the distant landscape, and tlm drying edges threatened destruction to the beauty of the entire picture ; but when that light went Tooks went, though the glue pot bubbled with disappointment, and the palette groaned to be relieved of its burden of colour. There's more flats to prime 'gin mornin,' called out Sullie, Mr Tooks' assistant— for Tooks had long since risen I to Iho dignity of employing an assistant ; but the sallow little man heeded him n<'t, for the procoss of di*robiu>r had begun. Tooks' wardrobe was, like Took*, himself, unique. His face, a mixed yellow and gray as to complexion, was xbnded from above by a heavy visored cap of silk, black as tho surrounding gloom. About his neck was a comforter of mnny folds and divers colours, an inseparable part almost of the man, while a darkcoloured short coat hung from his shoulder*, and heavy breeches, long and loose, encased his lower limbs. A red sash of fantastic shape was bound several times about his waist, giving Mr Tooka the air of a pirate king of some diminu- | tive sort, and as he clambered about among the ropes and fly-rails he was in constant danger of being mistaken by even tho most prosaic of his fellows for a sid sea-dog. But Tooks was nothing of the tort. Tooks wa«, as tho few, and I among them Sullie bis assistaut, chose to call him, a scenic artist, bur, us the many understood, ho wan a stage-carpenter, proporty-man, artist, Bcene-shifter, and everything in general, about a dimlylighted, poorly-equipped, and badly managed little theatre, the manager of which had not scrnplod to write ♦ opera hou«o' over the door. Hero was where Tooks was jroing to make his 'hit, 1 and to this end he had toiltd for years. Di\vn from the. flies ho had scrambled aud across tho silent stage he wended his way. The door wns open, and as Mr Tooks stepped from the inner to the outer darknev, the wood winurs pictured with the images of mighty oaks, seemed to bow their heads in silent admiration of the sorrowing little man. Snip had scrambled down as had Mr Tooks, and Snip and Snllie went out into darknes with him. It was fir^t to the cast and then to tho north that Mr Tooks took his way. He passed by pie-shops redolent of the fumes of coftee and rolls, and encountered not dozens but scores of sausage-pedlars, with their smoking and, to tho nostrils of the famished Mr Tooks, savoury viands ; but Tooks must comu to Soylhi aud (ylurybdis before he.

allowed the inner Mr Tooks to think of either hrat-wurst or pot-pics Scyllii and Churybdu wore two 1 41 l tenotnonts that towered on cither sido of the wiiy, escaping one of which Mr Tooks had fallen hit > tho other. In its dingy attio ho found it lmv hipped room, whore Mrs Took**, Vi, ami the promise •ill dwelt together. Snip looked in once in ft while to hco how \'i came on, but Mrs Tooks' temper was i>uch that th<' dojr generally preferred to await his m i*tcr in tho hall below, and having pre-empted si little nook under the Mttirw.iy tn imiged to avoid both the porter and Mrs Tooks. Tooks had many burdens to bear but the greatest, most lasting, and hcominirly never perishable one was Mrs Tooks. Mrti Tooks was not exactly a scolding wife, but she was *<o superior to Tooks in th-3 matter of worldly knowledge that but for tb.s one promise of his life Tooka would have despised himself. Mrs Tooks had only married Tooks through sympathy, and but for the fact that he might have some day forgotten to come in out of the cold, and that Ins death would then have been laid at tier door she probably would have ceased to concern herself about him altogether She knew she was a fool to care about him at all, but as women were made for sorrow she accepted Tooks as her allotted portion and grumbled but little save when he snored or put his oold feet upon her. Mrs Tooks knew nothing of theati us or their applause. The painted gardens or gilded barges that Took a t Uked of had for her no existence other than in the speaker's mind, and as for a ' hit,' she failed to comprehend it at all ; no that Tooks' promise, like Tooks' dog, was forced to keep itself as much as possible fromthepresenceof the master* wife. Mrs Tooks, in a way peculiarly her own, generally contrived to build up a monument of sorrow against his coming, in the shadow of which he took hit meals. Tooks was thinking of this as he ploughed through the darkness of the narrow street leading to the portals of Charybdis, his home. He had scarcely rounded the corner, however, when a spectre, blacker than the surroundings, planted itself directly in the pathway, and a voice welled up from it like a squeaky bubble, saying, 'If you please, Mr Tooks, you's wanted.' Tooks was rarely ever surprised. Life to him was a sort of fitful dream, gazing out upon the horizon of which as a picture he saw only two objects, Vi and that promise, and but few incidents of any character ever brought back to him the debasing realisms of the day. However, that he should be wanted at home had a tendency to awaken him, and though he uttered not a syllabic, his gesture was one of questioning surprise. 1 Yes, sir, if you please,' said the diminutive bit of blackness before him, as if an answer to his implied interrogatory, *Vi ] is took suddenly ill and they want you at home.' Vi ! Vi ! Tooks waited to hear no more. He brushed by this dirty, squeaking, but withal plaintive bit of voice, which continued muttering as to the frequency of the doctor's visits and the dangerous nature of the fever which had come upon her. Tooks 1 lameness was no hindrance) to his progress; he seemed to fly, and for onec at least his eagerness could not koep pace with his ambling little legs. The doom of Charybdis were fairly burnt open : its five flights of steps wer« as nothing to him; aud before the imp-like messenger realised that Mi Tuoks hid been upoken to, Tooks himself .stood trembling beside the f ever- ridden couch away up uudcr tho eaves of hid towering tenement. Mrs Tooks said nothing upon his entrance. She was of hu unforgiving nature, and Tooks had skulked of Lite. For three days be had not ventured near the home. This was the only outward sign Tooks ever gave of his inward sufferings ; it was his only rebellious action. When the weeds hung hoariest upon Mrs Tooks' laboriously-erected monument, and when they sought to wrap their ol immy folds about him, Tooks went down and out of Chnrybdi*, and up and into the ohokey pnint-loff, among tho cobwebs and spiders and rom lined until little Vi , brought a ponce offering in tbn w.iy of ! some boiled tiipe, or ch-eso-c.iko and :l 1 pot of boor. But Vi h.id not como this? tHe, and Tooks v.-as jishy white when the little burning hands reached out to him from ■ beneath the coverlet and the parched and 1 feverish lips .s.iid, " P.ipa, why didn't you I come:'' I A LMeat gro;in lifted itself olesir up against that little hipped roof, and the shrivelled 1 iifht l«?g bent and the body 1 iweml it-elf down across the little bed, but Tooks s.iid nevor a word. Mr Tooks ' knewa'l. IT* ««w then the little black ) box th it wont out two days later covered I with its sombre pall ; and heard the horrible rumble of the clods as the earth I closed upon it, shutting out forever from his night those golden ringlets imd laughing eyes, and the little hands that used to pluck imaginary nosegays from the painted fields of canvas aw.»y up on that old paint-frame, and in Via grave they laid 'folks' heart. The flowprn still bloomed in the win-dow-trarden np there in ■ h-irybdis. The yreraniunn blossomed in the tnmsito can, while the du-ty miller and the Wandering Jew fousrht for supremacy in, the old soap box, just as of old; but the prodding of the dirt about their roots reminded Tooks of the gruvedigyer's grind, and their once dflliurhtful odours now smelt *o him but of the tomb. 80 upon the third dar, Tooks and Snip went dovn and out of Chnrybdis again but the promise follows them not. Ajrain the darkness found Mr Tooks up in that mysterious labyrinth of ropes md ;;ro->be;unfl, but his big brush swi.shed nlowly over the cuivm and his tawdry paintings skeined more lustreless than ever. The d>iy wore mi .i^w.", tWmujh night came slowly enough. Still To ik* murmured not. The urreat light across the way flickered uneasily awhili* aud went out ; but Tooks m ide no si«;n. The pilette was cleaned in the sfcock-j irs, the few htubs of brushes wished, and Sullie stole noislessly away. Mr Tooks was at last ulone. Suddenly he looked ; something had startled him. He gazed upon the darkness, and there was that promise, only a few feet away, but clearer and plainer and brighter than before. It beckoned Mr Tooks aud he followed. In a trice he was down upon the stage. He heard the murmurings of a vast audieuce, then their applause. Palm sounded against palm, and there was a stamping of feet and the usual uproar from the gallery. Then the curtain rose. A full blaze of golden light burst upon the scene, and Mr Tooks heard his own name called as from a thousand throats. He felt himself gently but irresistibly led on, and as a soft voice whispered to him he lifted his eyes and saw Vi. Tooks had waited many years, but his 1 hit ' was made at last. From out the darkness he had been called and the promise fulfilled, brighter on account of its sorrows, and most enduring because for all time, and there under the great roll of the lifting curtain, in the full glare of that mysterious light, poor Tooks lay dead.

Loud Verxox, who is this year President of the British Dairy Farmers' Association, has made a proposal for the institution of experiments, with the object of soh ing the following questions : — 1. What is the smallest quantity of food upon which stall-fed cattle cau be successfully and economically kept. 2. To what extent does a further supply of food repay its cost in the enhanced value of tho milk ? 3. What relation should the constituents of the food have to each other to produce (</) milk, (<5) butter, (1) cheese ? It is suggested that these experiments should be carried out under the superintendence of a committee of the British Dairy Fanners' Association ; and Lord Vernon, who has undertaken to provide everything necessary for their use, desires that any information obtained should be published for the benefit of those connected with dairy (arming.