Читать книгу Self-Doomed. A Novel - Farjeon Benjamin Leopold - Страница 4

But although in our waking hours we are generally successful in keeping the workings of our mind in check, it is different when we are asleep. Then we are the slaves, and imagination is the master, the magician which plays us the most extravagant pranks. It is like sitting in a theatre, witnessing the representation of a play which sways us this way and that, which makes us laugh, which makes us weep, which makes us enjoy, which makes us suffer.

On the night following Louisa's departure I dreamed of the old days and of Louisa in the pride of her beauty. I was sitting on my low stool, soling and heeling her boots, golden boots, with jewels round the eyelet holes. A silver hammer was in my hand, and as I tapped and tapped and drove in the shining nails, musical notes rang out.

"Louisa is yours she loves you, loves you, loves you!"

And then the linnet which hung above me in a crystal cage piped sweetly,

"Let me out-let me out!"

I opened the door of the cage, and straight through the window flew the little bird-through the open window, from which I saw the church and the churchyard so closely associated with one memorable Sunday in my life. And who should come dancing towards me over the tombstones but Louisa, dressed in the self-same dress she had worn on that Sabbath, and with the self-same bit of ribbon at her throat. The linnet, wheeling round and round her pretty head, encircled it with thin lines of light, and still in the musical ringing of the silver hammer I heard the song,

"She loves you, loves you, loves you!"

Suddenly we were walking in a great field of flowers, and I was gazing in rapture at Louisa's golden boots. A thousand linnets were singing above us, the flowers were whispering around us, Louisa's hand was resting in mine.

"Then it is all a dream these eighteen years," I said to her.

And she answered, "Yes, it is all a dream. How could you be so foolish as to believe that I loved any man but you? What proof of my love shall I give you?"

"Make this field of flowers," I said, "grow above our heads,so that we shall be hidden from the world, and there shall be only you and I."

Immediately the flowers began to grow higher, higher, higher, shutting out the light till we were in almost perfect darkness, and then the linnet came and perched on my shoulder, and whispered,

"She is fooling you! She is not a young girl at all; she is an old witch! Put me in your waistcoat-pocket, and you will see what she really is."

I did so, and the linnet ticked like a watch:

"She loves-not you-not you-not you. She loves-a wolf-a wolf-a wolf."

And through a pathway of light in the field of flowers ran Louisa, changed into a shrivelled old woman with gold boots on her feet, and after her raced Steven Wolf, who, catching her, flung her high in the air. I rushed with fury upon the monster, and he raised a great sheet of bright brass, and crashed it on my head-

Bang! The din was enough to drive one crazy, and Louisa screaming at the top of her voice as she spun round and round in the air, with her golden boots-

Bang! Bang! Bang! I jumped out of bed in a fright, and ran to the bedroom door and threw it open; and there I beheld old Anna sitting in the passage outside, crying in her loudest voice that every bone in her body was broken, while a lot of my best plates and dishes, all in little pieces, lay around her. She was coming down-stairs with a trayful of crockery in her arms when she tripped, and fell all the way down. That was the end of my dream. I could not help laughing heartily at it, which made old Anna cross-tempered the whole of the day.

After breakfast I thought over my interview with Louisa, and of the new apprentice who would soon take up his abode with us. How his mother would grieve at parting from him! It would never have done for me to have married that trustful woman. She was so unworldly that she had never even asked me whether Gideon was to receive any wages during the seven years of his apprenticeship. It was an act of folly which would have made me angry had she been my wife; but she had been another man's, and he had broken her heart. That was as clear as the light which, shining through my shop-windows, had exposed her gray hairs to the eyes of one who, years ago, was ready to die for her. To think that, at any time of his life, a man should be so simple as to have such ideas!

So Gideon Wolf came to me, and, being duly apprenticed, lived with me and learned my trade. Old Anna was against it from the first. I had taken the important step without consulting her, and the moment she set eyes on Gideon she prophesied that evil would come of his residence in the house.

"Have not things gone on well enough to please you, Master Fink?" she asked.

"They have always gone on well," I replied.

"Then you must be growing avaricious in your old age," she remarked.

"Old age has not come upon me yet, Anna," I said, "and if I had a grain of avariciousness in my body I would pluck it out by the root."

Anna was as much a companion as a servant, and I had too great a respect for her to be angry at anything she said.

"Why do you make the change, then, Master Fink?" I could not answer her without deceiving her, so I merely shrugged my shoulders and smiled.

"Ah, you may smile," she continued, "and make light of it; but that won't alter what's done. Tell me one thing, Master Fink."

"I will tell you many, Anna that is, as many as I can."

"When you have a watch in good going order, one that has not lost or gained a minute for years, that you can depend upon as you can depend upon the sun, is it the act of a good workman, out of simple wilfulness, to take it to pieces and put it together again?"

"I understand your meaning, Anna, but rely upon me-I have a good reason for what I have done. Let us not anticipate evil. Go down to your kitchen, and prepare for me my favorite dinner, French beans stewed sweet and sour. You have not your equal in that dish; you really make me enjoy my life."

Before many months had passed I shared Anna's fears respecting Gideon Wolf. Little by little it was made clear to me that he had a thoroughly bad nature, that he was sly, greedy, envious, small-minded, mean-spirited. Occasionally I sent his mother a small sum of money which I said was due for services he had rendered; and you may be sure, in addition to this, that I paid him fair wages. But had I known how he would turn out, I would as soon have taken the son of the Arch Fiend himself for my apprentice as the son of Louisa Wolf. Too late did I discover that I had made a bad bargain.