Читать книгу The House of the White Shadows - Farjeon Benjamin Leopold - Страница 6

As the little wooden clock in the parlour of the inn of The Seven Liars struck the hour of five, Fritz the Fool ran through the open door, from which an array of bottles and glasses could be seen, and cried:

"They are coming-they are coming-the great Advocate and his lady-and will arrive before the cook can toss me up an omelette!"

And having thus delivered himself, Fritz ran out of the inn to the House of White Shadows, and swinging open the gates, cried still more loudly:

"Mother Denise! Dionetta, my pearl of pearls! Haste-haste! They are on the road, and will be here a lifetime before old Martin can straighten his crooked back!"

Within five minutes of this summons, there stood at the door of the inn of The Seven Liars, the customers who had been tippling therein, the host and hostess and their three children; and ten yards off, at the gates of the villa. Mother Denise, her pretty granddaughter, Dionetta, and old Martin, whose breathing came short and quick at the haste he had made to be in time to welcome the Advocate and his lady. The refrain of the breaking-up song sung in the little village school was dying away, and the children trooped out, and waited to witness the arrival. The schoolmaster was also there, with a look of relief on his face, and stood with his hand on the head of his favourite pupil. The news had spread quickly, and when the carriage made its appearance at the end of the lane, which shelved downward to the House of White Shadows, a number of villagers had assembled, curious to see the great lord and lady who intended to reside in the haunted house.

As the carriage drove up at the gates, the courier jumped down from his seat next to the driver, and opened the carriage door. The villagers pressed forward, and gazed in admiration at the beautiful lady, and in awe at the stern-faced gentleman who had selected the House of White Shadows for a holiday residence. There were those among them who, poor as they were, would not have undertaken to sleep in any one of the rooms in the villa for the value of all the watches in Geneva. There were, however, three persons in the small concourse of people who had no fears of the house. These were Mother Denise, the old housekeeper, her husband Martin, and Fritz the Fool.

Mother Denise, the oldest servant of the house, had been born there, and was ghost and shadow proof; so was her husband, now in his eighty-fifth year, whose body was like a bent bow stretched for the flight of the arrow, his soul. Not for a single night in sixty-eight years had Mother Denise slept outside the walls of the House of White Shadows; nothing did she know of the great world beyond, and nothing did she care; a staunch, faithful servant of the Almer family, conversant with its secret history, her duty was sufficient for her, and she had no desire to travel beyond the space which encompassed it. For forty-three years her husband had kept her company, and to neither, as they had frequently declared, had a supernatural visitant ever appeared. They had no belief whatever in the ghostly gossip.

Fool Fritz, on the contrary, averred that there was no mistake about the spiritual visitants; they appeared to him frequently, but he had no fear of them; indeed, he appeared to rather enjoy them. "They may come, and welcome," he said. "They don't strike, they don't bite, they don't burn. They reveal secrets which you would like nobody to find out. If it had not been for them, how should I have known about Karl and Mina kissing and courting at the back of the schoolhouse when everybody was asleep, or about Dame Walther and her sly bottle, or about Wolf Constans coming home at three in the morning with a dead lamb on his back-ah, and about many things you try and keep to yourselves? I don't mind the shadows, not I." There was little in the village that Fritz did not know; all the scandal, all the love-making, all the family quarrels, all the secret doings-it was hard to keep anything from him; and the mystery was how he came to the knowledge of these matters. "He is in affinity with the spirits," said the village schoolmaster; "he is himself a ghost, with a fleshly embodiment. That is why the fool is not afraid." Truly Fritz the Fool was ghostlike in appearance, for his skin was singularly white, and his head was covered with shaggy white hair which hung low down upon his shoulders. From a distance he looked like an old man, but he had not reached his thirtieth year, and so clear were his eyes and complexion that, on a closer observance, he might have passed for a lad of half the years he bore. A shrewd knave, despite his title of fool.

Pretty Dionetta did not share his defiance of ghostly visitors. The House of White Shadows was her home, and many a night had she awoke in terror and listened with a beating heart to soft footsteps in the passage outside her room, and buried her head in the sheets to shut out the light of the moon which shone in at her window. Fritz alone sympathised with her. "Two hours before midnight," he would say to her; "then it was you heard them creeping past your door. You were afraid, of course-when one is all alone; I can prescribe a remedy for that-not yet, Dionetta, by-and-by. Till then, keep all men at a distance; avoid them; there is danger in them. If they look at you, frown, and lower your eyes. And to-night, when you go to bed, lock your door tight, and listen. If the spirits come again, I will charm them away; shortly after you hear their footsteps, I will sing a stave outside to trick them from your door. Then sleep in peace, and rely on Fritz the Fool."

Very timid and fearful of the supernatural was this country beauty, whom all the louts in the neighbourhood wanted to marry, and she alone, of those who lived in the House of White Shadows, welcomed the Advocate and his wife with genuine delight. Fool Fritz thought of secretly-enjoyed pleasures which might now be disturbed, Martin was too old not to dislike change, and Mother Denise was by no means prepared to rejoice at the arrival of strangers; she would have been better pleased had they never shown their faces at the gates.

The Advocate and his wife stood looking around them, he with observant eyes and in silence, she with undisguised pleasure and admiration. She began to speak the moment she alighted.

"Charming! beautiful! I am positively in love with it. This morning it was but a fancy picture, now it is real. Could anything be more perfect? So peaceful, and quaint, and sweet! Look at those children peeping from behind their mother's gown-she can be no other than their mother-dirty, but how picturesque! – and the woman herself, how original! It is worth while being a woman like that, to stand as she does, with her children clinging to her. Why does Mr. Almer not like to live here? It is inexplicable, quite inexplicable. I could be happy here for ever-yes, for ever! Do you catch the perfume of the limes? It is delicious-delicious! It comes from the grounds; there must be a lime-tree walk there. And you," she said to the pretty girl at the gates, "you are Dionetta."

"Yes, my lady," said Dionetta, and marvelled how her name could have become known to the beautiful woman, whose face was more lovely than the face of the Madonna over the altar of the tiny chapel in which she daily prayed. It was not difficult to divine her thought, for Dionetta was Nature's child.

"You wonder who told me your name," said the Advocate's wife, smiling, and patting the girl's cheek with her gloved hand.

"Yes, my lady."

"It was a little bird, Dionetta."

"A little bird, my lady!" exclaimed Dionetta, her wonderment and admiration growing fast into worship. The lady's graceful figure, her pink and white face, her pearly teeth, her lovely laughing mouth, her eyes, blue as the most beautiful summer's cloud-Dionetta had never seen the like before.

"You," said the Advocate's wife, turning to the grandmother, "are Mother Denise."

"Yes, my lady," said the old woman; "this is my husband, Martin. Come forward, Martin, come forward. He is not as young as he was, my lady."

"I know, I know; my little bird was very communicative. You are Fritz."

"The Fool," said the white-haired young man, approaching closer to the lady, and consequently closer to Dionetta, "Fritz the Fool. But that needn't tell against me, unless you please. I can be useful, if I care to be, and faithful, too, if I care to be."

"It depends upon yourself, then," said the lady, accepting the independent speech in good part, "not upon others."

"Mainly upon myself; but I have springs that can be set in motion, if one can only find out how to play upon them. I was told you were coming."

"Indeed!" with an air of pleasant surprise. "By whom, and when?"

"By whom? The white shadows. When? In my dreams."

"The white shadows! They exist then! Edward, do you hear?"

"It is not so, my lady," interposed Mother Denise, in ill-humour at the turn the conversation was taking; "the shadows do not exist, despite what people say. Fritz is over-fond of fooling."

"It is my trade," retorted Fritz. "I know what I know, grandmother."

"Is Fritz your grandson, then?" asked the Advocate's wife, of Mother Denise.

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Mother Denise.

"What is not," remarked Fritz sententiously, "may be. Bear that in mind, grandmother; I may remind you of it one day."

The Advocate, upon whom not a word that had passed had been lost, fixed his eyes upon Fritz, and said:

"A delusion can be turned to profit. You make use of these shadows."

"The saints forbid! They would burn me in brimstone. Yet," with a look both sly and vacant, "it would be a pity to waste them."

"You like to be called a fool. It pleases you."

"Why not?"

"Why, rather?"

"I might answer in your own words, that it can be turned to profit. But I am too great a fool to see in what way."

"You answer wisely. Why do you close your eyes?"

"I can see in the dark what I choose to see. When my eyes are open, I am their slave. When they are closed, they are mine-unless I dream."

The Advocate gazed for a moment or two in silence upon the white face with its closed eyes raised to his, and then said to his wife:

"Come, Adelaide, we will look at the house."

They passed into the grounds, accompanied by Mother Denise, Martin, and Dionetta. Fritz remained outside the gate, with his eyes still closed, and a smile upon his lips.

"Fritz," said the host of the inn of The Seven Liars, "do you know anything of the great man?"

Fritz rubbed his brows softly and opened his eyes.

"Take the advice of a fool, Peter Schelt. Speak low when you speak of him."

"You think he can hear us. Why, he is a hundred yards off by this time!"

Fritz pointed with a waving finger to the air above him.

"There are magnetic lines, neighbours, connecting him with everything he once sets eyes on. He can see without seeing, and hear without hearing."

"You speak in riddles, Fritz."

"Put it down to your own dulness, Peter Schelt, that you cannot understand me. Master Lamont, now-what would you say about him? That he lacks brains?"

"A long way from it. Master Lamont is the cleverest man in the valley."

"Not now," said Fritz, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder in the direction taken by the Advocate; "his master has come. Master Lamont is a great lawyer, but we have now a greater, one who is a more skilful cobbler with his tongue than Hans here is with his awl; he can so patch an old boot as to make it better than a new one, and look as close as you may, you will not see the seams. Listen, Master Schelt. When I stood there with my eyes shut I had a dream of a stranger who was found murdered in your house. An awful dream, Peter. Gather round, neighbours, gather round. There lay the stranger dead on his bed, and over him stood you, Peter Schelt, with a bloody knife in your hand. People say you murdered him for his money, and it really seemed so, for a purse stuffed with gold and notes was found in your possession; you had the stranger's silver watch, too. Suspicious, was it not? It was looking so black against you that you begged the great man who has come among us to plead for you at your trial. You were safe enough, then. He told a rare tale. Forty years ago the stranger robbed your father; suddenly he was struck with remorse, and seeking you out, gave you back the money, and his silver watch in the bargain. He proved to everybody's satisfaction that, though you committed the murder, it was impossible you could be guilty. Don't be alarmed, Madame Schelt, it was only a dream."

"But are you sure I did it?" asked Peter Schelt, in no way disturbed by the bad light in which he was placed by Fritz's fancies.

"What matters? The great man got you off, and that is all you cared for. Look here, neighbours; if any of you have black goats that you wish changed into white, go to him; he can do it for you. Or an old hen that cackles and won't lay, go to him; she will cackle less, and lay you six eggs a day. He is, of all, the greatest."

"Ah," said a neighbour, "and what do you know of his lady wife?"

"What all of you should know, but cannot see, though it stares you in the face."

"Let us have it, Fritz."

"She is too fair. Christine," to a stout young woman close to him, "give thanks to the Virgin to-night that you were sent into the world with a cast in your eye, and that your legs grow thicker and crookeder every day. You will never drive a man out of his senses with your beauty."

Fritz was compelled to beat a swift retreat, for Christine's arms were as thick as her legs, and they were raised to smite. Up the lane flew the fool, and Christine after him, amid the laughter of the villagers.