A SHORT STORY.

ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG. BY A. E. COPPARD.

ONE time I was in a little Italian town not far from Pisa, and it had a scrap of waste ground in the middle of it that no one seemed to own or to require. A sweet grove of pollarded sycamores grew along one of its three sides—it had the shape of a triangle—with two blocks of tall yellow dwellings along the others and a statue of Christopher Columbus in one corner. The triangle was occupied, in a sort of way, by a caravan, a shooting alley, and a merry-go-round ; of course you wouldn't break your neck looking it a fair like that • it was too small, indeed it wasn't big, just the whirligig and the shooting stall. Well, I lived there- in one of those yelloW buildings a deuce of a hard time with a man who had fallen in love ; a great philosopher fellow, my fiaend, with no money, not a bean—they never have. And she was a beautiful girl with sandy hair and a sandy face and a necklet of coral beads : an English girl from Scunthorpe. All day long Dapson—that was his name—would be singing a little bit of a song :— " I sat with my love in the ivy tree, And hid her coat wider the briar."

But I can take my oath that was a thing he never would do, for he was a turtle itself for shyness, very shy. A person of great mind, though, full of rich thoughts, but he was not fond of exposing them—unless it was to myself. He was like a man who kept his treasures in a dim room—they were dim treasures, too, and you wouldn't understand them—only at odd times he would take up one of these treasures and polish it till it would shine, or tap it and tune it until it rung like a marriage bell. That was his imagination, his ideas. And this girl, she used to hang her stockings out of her window overlooking the roundabout and things. I suppose she hung them there to dry, and not for any token, for when I told her one day that Dapson was pining to a thread for love of her : Good sakes ! " she said, " I'd want to marry something a little better than that backward creature. ' And then she added, looking very straight at me, " But not so very much better, neither."

" His aunt," I said, " keeps him short of money, but she has erysipelas and she'll die of it yet."

" What's the use complaining you're poor ? " said the bright girl ; " there's always more money in the world than you can do with ! "

" Will you be going to the fair when it opens ? " I asked her.

" The4 fair ! What fair ? " she said.

" This little bit of a spree." And I pointed out of her window.

" Oh, that ! But it is open," she said.

" Then why don't it begin ? "

" It has begun."

" What do you tell me ? There's not a soul goes into it."

" And never will, for nobody wants it, and to tell you the truth it wants nobody either." " Then why don't it go away ? "

" That I can't tell you, but I've heard that it's been here for years." " That's queer," I said, " for I've seen the master of it, an old man with big moustaches, very gentle he seems, and he's` always painting new paint on his attractions, Making it very neat and very fetching." " Gentle ! ' she cried.

" Indeed, yes, so it seems." " Good sakes ! Once he had a pony, but it was half- starved, so they say, and a wife that was three parts dead for the same reason, so I've heard, and some children that ought never to have been alive." " And where are they now then—don't they look after him ? " I asked her.

" They are in their graves, poor dears ; where else could they be ? " The devil take him ! " said I.

When I left her I took a walk into the fair and every- thing was quiet, even the shooting alley. It was painted like a castle, with clay pipes stuck in every cranny, and bits of shell you'd gather from the shore dangling on threads from the battlements, to be popped at by boys. Just one little gun, and no more. The merry-go-round was not a great contrivance : seven wooden horses there were, painted a white that was very white, with black tails, black manes and eyes, their hoofs black and a red ring round each eye ; but their mouths and nostrils were red as dripping blood, and their necks and behinds were dappled with rose spots as big as crab apples. Then there were two lions amongst them, and one dragon ; sandy lions with thin rumps, but massy heads—the half of them was head, like a John Dory, and very ferocious. That dragon was large as a hog, but more like a fish-- saving the legs, and his eyes were gold and his teeth were green and a dreadful conglomeration he was, with a great show of paint on him. To turn it all there was a handle in the middle, and an organ full of brass spouts shining like a doctor's doorknocker, but not a groan or a grunt coming from the lot of it. I couldn't understand it. All spick and span with new paint, saving the caravan that was burst to a ruin that you.wouldn't put a crow in. The old man of the fair went by me, going with a pail of water he had drawn from the fountain. He was mumbling to himself, he was always mumbling, and what I heard him, say was just this. "'She's better to-day, better to-day, she'll soon be well. Oh yes, she's much better to-day." I tell you, I couldn't understand it at all.

Indoors I went and found Dapson, and I told him about the young girl—how she was pining to a thread for love of him. But he said he didn't care now, so I asked him why was that ? And he asked me did I happen to notice her stockings hanging out, and did I see anything peculiar about them ?

" PeCuliar ! " I said.

" About the feet of them ? " said he.

" No; I did not."

" Well," he said, " I look at them every day, morning and evening, and they affect me curiously, strangely they affect me. Can you understand ?—they look ungainly, heavy, they give me a painful impression. In short," said he, " they convey to me- the disagreeable Suggestion that her feet have lumps on them ! '

" Lumps ! " I thought he was crazy. " Yes, something rather monstrous. It's quite in- describable, I'm bewitched by it can you understand ? "

" But what sort of lumps ? " I thought he was crazy. " Oh, I can't explain, but it's spoilt everything, and it's quite impossible for me to love her now." He put his head down between his hands. Sick and sorry he looked. " I wish I had never seen them."

" I think," I said, " you are -too much cooped up in here in the summer heat. Come out, now, and sit in the public gardens." For I knew the young girl would be walking there with her two little feet going sweetly as a deer's.

But he would not do that. " Summer is good, yes," i he said, ". but if you can't sit in the house the flies in the garden are mad to kill you, and they would kill you if you didn't smoke, and you can't smoke without tobacco," he said, ." and you can't get tobacco without money, and money simply isn't to be had." " Come out, you," said I again to him then, " and let's gO to the fair ! " I told him what I had heard of it and seen of it. He would not do that either, but • he sat up and began turning over one of his thoughts, and polishing it, and tapping and tuning it. " For some reason," he began, " no one patronizes that charming institution. Even I, who am full of admiration, have never spent a coin upon it. And this is the reason—it would be sacrilege ! Do you follow me ? Times are not bad, and the children play, but no one ever seeks to bestride those gallant beasts, or try his skill with the popgun. And it does not seem to cause any coneern to the owner, that old man. On the contrary. He cherishes his steeds and lions in a strange way. How delicately dreadful they are with their snarly mouths Day by day I see him with a pot of white paint, or a pot of blue or red or green, adding a daub of colour to the dragon's eye, the lions' manes, or the horses' hoofs. Like an artist he touches here, touches there, and then withdraws to scan the effect with a closed eye, and perhaps an anxious smile curving under his old moustache. Then sometimes he paints the white pipes whiter, or shines the barrel of the little gun—how fearfully it gleams ! And I feel that he is dwelling in an absurd world of love of these simple, funny things. No longer a means of life to him they have come into life itself, transcendent and for ever young. Some days they actually seem to have grown fatter ! He will never suffer a strange hand to touch them now, no one must use them but him alone, for they mean splendid things to him, and he worships them, like a monk. Do rou understand this ? "

" It's queer talking," I answered. " Ah," he went on, " the heart of man is full of queer- nesses and strange loves. And yet, after all, it's most full of strange hatreds. Turn and turn about we come to hate most things, even life itself. I'm not sure whether one hates life more for the responsibilities it entails, or for the disappointments it daily brings." " Ha, ha ! - Were you thinking of those stockings again ? " I asked him, with a playful shout. No, no," he was speaking quietly, turning it over in his mind as he said it, I was thinking of my aunt's erysipelas. It is true each responsibility seems to give you a new stsength,- but that in turn becomes only a . new weakness ; whereas disappointments put such - a lnitre upon your desperate hopes that they become bright landmarks on your road, hostages as it were for the ultimate attainment."

" Meaning the erysipelas, I suppose ! " " No, the stockings I mean,'.' he cried.

" Mr. Dapson," I put to him decently, " you had better come out in the air and sit in the public gardens."