第28章

"Puff, darling, puff!" said she. "Puff away, my fine fellow! yourlife depends on it!"This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to amere thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better thana shrivelled pumpkin for a head- as we know to have been thescarecrow's case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold inremembrance, Mother Rigby was a witch of singular power and dexterity;and, keeping this fact duly before our minds, we shall see nothingbeyond credibility in the remarkable incidents of our story. Indeed,the great difficulty will be at once got over, if we can only bringourselves to believe that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff,there came a whiff of smoke from the scarecrow's mouth. It was thevery feeblest of whiffs, to be sure; but it was followed by anotherand another, each more decided than the preceding one.

"Puff away, my pet! puff away, my pretty one!" Mother Rigby keptrepeating, with her pleasantest smile. "It is the breath of life toye; and that you may take my word for."Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched. There must have beena spell either in the tobacco or in the fiercely-glowing coal thatso mysteriously burned on top of it, or in the pungently-aromaticsmoke which exhaled from the kindled weed. The figure, after a fewdoubtful attempts, at length blew forth a volley of smoke extendingall the way from the obscure corner into the bar of sunshine. There iteddied and melted away among the motes of dust. It seemed a convulsiveeffort; for the two or three next whiffs were fainter, although thecoal still glowed and threw a gleam over the scarecrow's visage. Theold witch clapped her skinny hands together, and smiledencouragingly upon her handiwork. She saw that the charm workedwell. The shrivelled, yellow face, which heretofore had been no faceat all, had already a thin, fantastic haze, as it were of humanlikeness, shifting to and fro across it: sometimes vanishing entirely,but growing more perceptible than ever with the next whiff from thepipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, suchas we impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and halfdeceive ourselves with the pastime of our own fancy.

If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubtedwhether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid,wornout, worthless, and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow; butmerely a spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and shade socolored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. Themiracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallowsubtlety; and, at least, if the above explanation do not hit the truthof the process, I can suggest no better.

"Well puffed, my pretty lad!" still cried old Mother Rigby.

"Come, another good stout whiff, and let it be with might and main.

Puff for thy life, I tell thee! Puff out of the very bottom of thyheart, if any heart thou hast, or any bottom to it! Well done,again! Thou didst suck in that mouthful as if for the pure love ofit."And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so muchmagnetic potency into her gesture that it seemed as if it mustinevitably be obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone when itsummons the iron.

"Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?" said she. "Stepforth! Thou hast the world before thee!"Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on mygrandmother's knee, and which had established its place among thingscredible before my childish judgment could analyze its probability,I question whether I should have the face to tell it now.

In obedience to Mother Rigby's word, and extending its arm as if toreach her outstretched hand, the figure made a step forward- a kind ofhitch and jerk, however, rather than a step- then tottered andalmost lost its balance. What could the witch expect? It wasnothing, after all, but a scarecrow stuck upon two sticks. But thestrong-willed old beldam scowled, and beckoned, and flung the energyof her purpose so forcibly at this poor combination of rotten wood,and musty straw, and ragged garments, that it was compelled to showitself a man, in spite of the reality of things. So it stepped intothe bar of sunshine. There it stood- poor devil of a contrivancethat it was!- with only the thinnest vesture of human similitude aboutit, through which was evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous,faded, tattered, good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready tosink in a heap upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness tobe erect. Shall I confess the truth? At its present point ofvivification, the scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm andabortive characters, composed of heterogeneous materials, used for thethousandth time, and never worth using, with which romance writers(and myself, no doubt, among the rest) have so over-peopled theworld of fiction.

But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of herdiabolic nature (like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss out of herbosom), at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she hadtaken the trouble to put together.

"Puff away, wretch!" cried she, wrathfully. "Puff, puff, puff, thouthing of straw and emptiness! thou rag or two! thou meal bag! thoupumpkin head! thou nothing! Where shall I find a name vile enough tocall thee by? Puff, I say, and suck in thy fantastic life along withthe smoke! else I snatch the pipe from thy mouth and hurl thee wherethat red coal came from."Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing for it but topuff away for dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied itselflustily to the pipe, and sent forth such abundant volleys of tobaccosmoke that the small cottage kitchen became all vaporous. The onesunbeam struggled mistily through, and could but imperfectly definethe image of the cracked and dusty window pane on the opposite wall.