THE STORY OF SPARK or LOUNGING LAD
Not at all long ago there lounged upon the earth a lad so removed from his times that he considered himself a bright spark. Indeed, being a hard head and a ropey neck taller than the rest, he reckoned himself the cleverest and most brightly shining spark among all the heavenly bodies in all the seven skies.
And he might have been right, as we might witness.
One morning, short before dawn, whilst out for a breath of cold air and a good smoke, the lad chanced to meet a pretty short maid. She was, to tell a fact, the prettiest as well as the cleverest short maid in the whole lengthy world. And they met right there in the starry gloom, as if coincidently, for the very first time.
"I could never love you!" announced the lad without a thought.
"Oh, hello," said she. "Are you chatting me up?"
"Foolish girl!" answered he in his casual way. "I understood from that gleam in your eye that you were enchanted to meet me. Or was it simply the brightness of me wot glanced off the dew of your cheek, as we happened to meet on this slippery slope, under all these fat stars? Either way, I could never love you!"
The short maid blushed. "You have a fair point," said she upon a tippy-toe, regarding him ever more closely.
"I have as many fair points as there are fat stars," said he, and he continued upon his way, in all apparent ignorance of her shocking fairness.
Off and off, he went at a pace, and on and on and up the next hill. To the work of his legs he now whistled a tune, an oddly beautiful tune, the notes of which neither rose nor fell, but rather hung on the mist as if awaiting some perfect conclusion. At last his road crossed that of a plotting widow out shopping for strange ingredients. The tune fell right out of his head, Ne'er to be Loved 'tween his Lips again, as it might have been called.
"Oh well," he loudly mused, "I'll come up with a better over breakfast. Now, lady widow! You are bent and unpretty, but I am right as rain and VERY clever. Is there a service I might grant you, and thereby lighten your load? Answer now missus, loud and honest!"
Just then, between that honest exclamation and the next rotten one, a sudden breeze collided with an attending tulip-bush and an uncommon rustling like whispers was the result:
Take a care, lad! rustled the whispers: This missus spins her words soft and sticky as web-silk! And yet more did it say, but did the Spark hear it, or pay heed if he did? Take a guess - be WRONG - and read on!
"Well, young Spark, indeed yee might," answered the widow, "though yee ought not trouble such a sorry thing as me (as yee shall find out). I have a daughter, I do, just a one in the world; but she be the daftest stray. She be so daft and so stray, I've a fear she'll never be wed. For who but the gallantest half-clever man would marry the daftest, I say daftest, of strays (and her a true Redhead an' all)?"
"Tell on," said the lad, growing widely intrigued.
"Well then! I would ask of yee mister (ahoy there sonny, be yee rich as yee reek?); I would ask of yee Master, loud and blunt, if yee wouldn't relieve me, in my fading years, of this exquisite heap o'worry and marry the loyal burden, rusted locks and stockings an' all?"
"Be she pretty?" asked our lad.
"She be pretty as she be daft!" tricked the widow, and the bright Spark instantly agreed, proclaiming the proposal the finest he had ever yet made...
Now, unbeknown to the plotting widow, that daughter she took for her own daft daughter was no other body in this ludicrous tale than her own last husband, a very low wizard, whom she had murdered away for irrelevant reasons some score years previous. Returned had he, from some deep depth, in the guise of a chuckly babe, to settle that bad account. Twenty years a-plotting thick and sour as the milk that reared him, and the imposter had blossomed to a useless and right irksome weight for the merry bending of his old wife's neck.
A slow revenge was his, this daughter-in-disguise, this dog in a manger (and as repute would have it, this dandy of a local slapper).
But tidings of imminent wedlock upset the grander plan, and refused did the wizard, right there at the telling.
"Daft and daftest daughter of mine!" sizzled the witch in a fume, "you'll do as you're bid, for you've been a weight 'round my neck since yee dropped on it. Be yee flesh and offal of mine or no, you'll pair with that lad and be turned, at long last, to a use I might celebrate. Be up for it, or I'll 'ave yee for a-dunkin'!" and she blew right off about town, posting notices of intent and knocking up stores to gather fine lace, and casinos and hovels to gather nice party guests, and gunpowder (at the barracks) for the rockets...
Now, unbeknown to the lounging lad, that dawn-veiled vision upon whom he had rudely snorted had been well chatted up by his speech and stiff manner, and strangely impressed by the constellation of features on that high head of his; but most especially by them alternately vague and piercing black eye-balls. Being, notwithstanding, the cleverest short maid in the whole lengthy world, she researched him up, and then caught him up: right there in the hut of abode which he shared with thirteen rough potato planters.
Thus, with no other plan in her own high head than to marry the lofty twat, she rapped good and loud upon the door of that hut and proclaimed her decent intention, bold as bricks, upon the opening of it.
"Ho hum! So you be my wife," were his words at that romantic instant. "I dare say I deserve it!"
"And I be yours forever!" were her words, after a longish pause, quite absent of thought.
"Then the thing be settled," said he. "For though I doubt I could ever love you, as I have already told, only a fool would dispute you be pretty as a poke among damsels. But tell me a thing; be you really so daft as all that?"
"As daft as this sparkle you see in my eye!" said she, again without a hindering thought, and they kissed as she leaped the threshold.
A right good eve had they, through supper and grog, and a dizzying dance had she, with her catch and all his rough mates: till up and up rose a gorgeous sun.
"I have to meet the change of day," the lady then managed with a glow, and a yawn, and quite full of it, "and tart myself about; and visit some castles to gather some guests, and the barracks for gunpowder and rockets."
And as she did those things (and a nicely wrapped heap of things besides) the lounging groom slept out that last free day beneath dreams of bouncy fat babes, and suppers well cooked, and slippers well warmed; and a generous mother-in-law well pleased...
Now, the cleverest short maid in the whole lengthy world, though she be clever as all that, and gay, and set upon a respectable path, might none-the-less be ignorant of a startling fact. Towards dear silver-haired parents she now bustled with her rockets and frills and joyous bulletin. Out there, on a rise in the East, they dossed; in a retiring house upon high cliffs, near a junction of riotous seas. But that silvered ma and that silvered pa, wealthy and free from warts as might be wished for, were not, in the cold fact of it, her own. Won her, in a crooked game with a gypsy madam, they had, a whole score years before this date; in a drafty tent at a fair on it's way to the Northern Wars. Indeed, saved her, they had, from a fate aimed at an attic-closet in a regiment's brothel; to raise her like their own, in a string of happy homes, with another purpose fixed to their minds entirely.
"Well daughter! You be with us again, and we be glad of it!" they pronounced in a voice.
"For not longer than a moment, my dears," said she, unhampered by a single true fact. "For I am to marry, and I would that we get tipsy, and glad of it, together!"
"Married!" said they, again in a voice , but of a tone less bright, amid crookedy, paranoid glances.
"On the Morn of Morns; and bless me quick, for that be tomorrow! Now let me in, dears, that I might stick to tradition and fix up that old wedding kit that once you wore, good Mother of all Ma's!"
Well, they did let her in, and aptly so - but did they let her out again? Not in time for anybody's wedding, nor divorce, nor funeral! Not by a long while, they didn't. For she were theirs again now, and for a long long afterwards: and theirs was a foul, secret business, as we shall find out...
Whilst, away to the South, that very low wizard, pretty as daft under sharp widow's eyes, was suiting up well in his own wedding frock; and cursing the day and all. But anger turns quick enough to healthy plotting in dodgy tales; and a plum of a plot he did hatch, no mistake.
Before a backdrop fateful and grim as burying bells, rolled out this bride: pretty enough at a squinty glance, well got up; and fat, fat, fat with wedding fruit!
"Be yee with child?" blew-up the witch, nimble to spot the error.
"I 'ardly likes to say," came the reply like a treacherous dart, from out of a crimson blush.
"Deceit grows quick in your petticoats, miss!" grizzled the hag, busting forty-eight pair of snake-hide buttons. "You'll be my death with shame shoveled on!" and she rustled and scraped among her own petticoats as if she purposed to prove it. "Now get yee in and under a quilt - while I go a-hexin' folks forgetful, and a-resettin' that faulty church clock!"
"But what of my day, and my love at the parish?" splashed a few words through a crock of tears; "and what of the rockets and the cracked-open grog?"
"Deadweight of a frump of an eye-sore! Daft slut! As long as yee be a-bulgin', your belly be a blot upon me. But more tragic as that, a blot upon my schemes. Get up to your cell and lay low!" concluded the hag, a-scampering off toward the noisy, merry peeling...
Now, unbeknown to either bride, their hero, twice the star-crossed groom (buoyant with bitters and fully occupied a-whistling stag-evening melodies) had fell head long into a gully and cracked it widely open. Lain there a week had he, all but buried beneath smelly wild-flowers and dead bats, all but snuffed out. But then fate was given its mean chance to rescue him.
"Ahoy! What manner of corpse be this in a ditch?" remarked a shadow, out for a prowl along the thistle-row.
"I be no corpse at all!" managed the lad, a-rising up for air.
"Then yee be mine forever!" clapped the shadow, dropping on him, and whisking him off, off, off to the West; to a white-washed tent entitled Home from Home, in a traveling fair which never went nowhere, neither in name, nor in public...
(unfinished)
notes
After three divorces he goes to his mistresses funeral, where he falls in love with the one he finds lying there.
A full score years later and a second bright lad at the end of a longish quest...
For a week the hag stormed, then cursed him, though he was all but snuffed in any case.
'But fate caught up quick on (her) behalf, a-saving the runaway for a new life as a big cat-tamer...'
21 years at the fair.
Lounging Lad the atheist priest (swindle an easy buck)
pretty short maid has a babe who grows mad for revenge upon the Grey ones. he searches out his father starting at the potato planters cottage (remember her well, they do).
Spark tells his boy of the promise to the widow, and that his wife, the boys mother (stuff of bad repute) came around for that first and last morsel of nuptials - and on considering back, he (Spark) was well out of the whole affair. (Spark the Younger: 'Insults to boot!')
'My daughter your mother?' (confusion).
'Well you better go up and tell her! She must of 'ad that other sprog under those sheets these twenty years... A curse she's been to me; now go up and break it. None too gently, neither...'
- 'and my grandfather?' (''e were the wrong sod for me') 'More insults!'
finds the daft daughter, still in bed, still thick with child, who drops cover and explodes...
end:
a marriage of sorts:
"I told I could never love you."
