Читать книгу The Twilight of Magic - Hugh Lofting - Страница 11

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Two days later the children were back again at the east entrance of the church.

‘Well, Michael,’ said Anne eagerly, ‘what did the shell tell you?’

‘Nothing,’ said he. ‘What could you expect? No one ever talks about me.’

‘But didn’t it ever even grow warm?’ asked Giles with wide-open eyes.

‘Oh, aye, it grew warm once,’ grumbled Michael. ‘And when I listened to it, I heard only Timothy barking. He’d gone out after I was abed—across the river, chasing rats. Afraid he was, I reckon, that he’d not get back in time to take me out in the morning. My own dog barking—talking in his own language—that was all I heard. What else could I hear, Michael the blind beggar?—No one ever talks about me ... Here’s your shell, youngsters. Go, and my blessing with you.’

Sadly the children took the shell and made their way back towards home. For a space neither of them spoke.

‘Well, what do we do now?’ said Giles at last. ‘We didn’t learn much from that. It seems to me, in spite of what you say, we ought to seek some richer person. After all, if we are to make a fortune for Father by means of the shell I suppose it will be by selling it. We couldn’t expect to make anything out of a blind man.’

‘Have patience,’ said Anne. ‘So it often happens in fairy stories—that great fortune came from the last place to be expected. No harm is done—if no good. Remember we must be careful. You know how down they are in this town on anything that smells of magic. You remember how Agnes told us about their hauling her up before the courts for witchcraft. If we were questioned about where we got the shell and had to confess we got it from “Shragga the Witch”, what then? We’ve got to think of her as well as ourselves.’

‘Yes, perhaps you’re right,’ said Giles gloomily. ‘It would almost seem as though this town goes witchcraft-mad every once in a while. Luke told me that even the old philosopher Johannes was not spared from their hunting and meddling. Just because he studies the science of alchemy he had to be brought before the judges. Even harmless old Johannes.’

‘Johannes! That’s an idea,’ cried Anne. ‘He, at least, would not give us away. And he would be interested, too. He does not smell the Devil in everything new. Let’s take the shell to him!’

The philosopher Johannes lived up in the hills behind the town. The children had visited him once before—by accident. They had been hunting blackberries and lost their way. They blundered upon a tiny cabin. At first they had been frightened by the angry red face that popped out of the window. But presently when the angry red face had heard their sad story it invited them to come in, while the road home could be explained to them. And, finally, they had gone away with no feeling of fear in their hearts for this man who lived alone in the hills.

Now, without hesitation, they made plans for a second visit to him. They would have to go home and get lunch first. The clock in the church tower was striking noon as they broke into a run.

Elsbeth, the old cook, quickly provided them with a light meal, and they were on their way out again ten minutes after they arrived.

The trip was a long one, with a good deal of climbing. It took them two hours of hard travel before they stood before the door of the philosopher’s little home. Giles knocked gently. The door was opened, just a crack, through which one eye looked forth suspiciously.

‘May we come in and see you about something?’ asked Anne. ‘We will not stay very long.’

‘Is anyone else with you?’ asked the old man.

‘No,’ said Anne. ‘We are alone.’

The door was opened wide, the children passed in and it was closed again—and locked—behind them.

The time before, when they had been inside the hut, was late in the evening and they had seen little or nothing of the philosopher’s one-room home. But today, with a bright sun shining overhead, they were able to see the room clearly.

It was indeed a most unusual place. In some ways it reminded them of Agnes’s little house; and yet it was very different. Everywhere there were bottles, crystals, queer glass balls and pipes and things that are used in the study of chemistry. Everywhere, too, there were books: books on the table, all mixed up with the bottles and chemicals; books in rows and piles upon the shelves; books on the floor in stacks; books on the little bed beneath the window.

And then there were smells. Anne’s keen nose had never smelt so many gathered together in one small room before. Some were not unpleasant; some were very strong; and some were perfectly horrible. The worst one of all seemed to be coming from a small vessel set over a little charcoal fire in the corner. This, it would seem, was the chemistry work the philosopher was busy with when the children had knocked and interrupted him.

Giles inquired what the nature of this work was; and the philosopher, usually so grumpy and silent, seemed quite pleased to explain it. He at once started off into a long and learned explanation in which there was a lot about ‘salts of metals’, ‘temperatures’, ‘effects of mineral gases’—most of it far beyond the understanding of the children.

Anne watched the old man’s eager face as he turned to explain the mysteries of chemistry to her young brother; and she guessed that it was many a long day since anyone had shown a friendly interest in his work.

‘Aren’t you ever lonely up here, Sir?’ she said when at last he paused.

‘Lonely?’ he said, ‘er—no. Why should I be? No man is ever lonely if his work is what he lives for.’

‘But what do you hope to do with all this—’

It was Giles speaking. He broke off and, blushing a little with sudden shyness, waved his hand towards the cluttered benches that ran half-way round the walls of the room.

‘With chemistry?’ asked the old man. ‘Why, boy, we hope to do everything. Look here!’

The philosopher reached up to a shelf and lifted down a big glass jar filled with a curious amber-coloured paste that might have been frozen honey.

‘You see that,’ said he. ‘If I were to place that beneath a castle wall and set a flame to it I could blow a hole in the ramparts big enough to march an army through, a score abreast. And then what use would be their archers and cross-bowmen? The King, I reckon, would give me the price of half his realm for fifty barrels of that paste, in time of war.—But,’ (he set the heavy jar back upon the shelf) ‘I do not work for the destruction of Man. That stuff, there, I discovered by accident—and nearly lost my life when first it exploded.’

‘What are all these papers?’ asked Anne, examining a pile of parchment sheets that lay on a side-table.

‘Oh, that’s a book I’m writing,’ said Johannes.

‘What’s it about?’ asked Anne, who, while she was very proud of what little reading she could do, was quite unable to make head or tail of this.

‘It’s a book on chemistry—a first book, an easy one,’ said the philosopher. ‘But it’s in Latin. Can you read Latin?’

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said Anne in an airy tone which might mean that it was only by chance that she had not yet mastered that language. ‘But why do you write it in Latin?’

‘Because,’ said Johannes, ‘Latin is the only language that all the world speaks—or, that is, that all the world reads—in books.’

‘You have written many books, Sir?’ asked Giles.

‘Yes, quite a few,’ said the philosopher.

‘We never see them in our schools. And yet they give us books on mathematics with figures and little jiggly things such as you have here,’ said Anne, turning over the pages.

The philosopher smiled.

‘Well, you see,’ said he, ‘with this kind of work it is different. Chemistry—or alchemy, as many call it—is something that people still connect with witchcraft and deviltry. Your schools, you say? Yes, they will take in works on mathematics today; but only a few years ago they wouldn’t do even that, mark you—at least nothing new in mathematics. Some day perhaps they’ll let books on chemistry into the schools. But not now. No, we have to work like thieves behind closed doors and sealed windows, lest we be called wizards and witches for bringing forward anything new ... Anything new!’—The philosopher suddenly threw his arms in the air and his face got even redder than usual—‘Anything new!—That’s what they’re afraid of. They want to make the world stand still. Sometimes I believe they’d sooner see it go backwards rather than forwards ... But you said you wanted to talk to me of something, eh?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Giles, suddenly brought back to the real reason of their visit. ‘We have here a shell. It does unusual things. We thought that you, a man of science, would be interested in it—though we have an end of our own to serve in bringing it to you.’

Slowly Giles brought the twisted green shell out of his pocket and laid it on the bench among the bottles and jars.

‘Usually, Sir,’ said he, ‘as of course you know, one only hears the roaring of the sea in an empty shell, if he holds it to his ear.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the philosopher. ‘I remember doing it myself as a child. Go on.’

‘But this shell does more than that,’ said Giles. ‘It tells you what anyone is saying about you anywhere in the world.’

‘What!’ cried the philosopher. ‘Poof! Poof!—Do you take me for a ninny, boy?’

‘It is true, Sir,’ said Giles. ‘Please believe us. This shell, when carried in your pocket, gives warning if anyone speaks of you.’

‘How?’ asked Johannes.

‘By growing warm,’ said Giles.

‘But this is ridiculous,’ cried the philosopher. ‘It cannot be done.’

‘Sir,’ said Giles, ‘have you not in your chemistry here made wonders happen? Your paste that can blow a hole through a castle wall, just with the touch of a spark. How is that done?’

‘Tut—tut!’ grunted the philosopher. ‘But all that I can explain. I can show you in figures and formulae, in diagrams and diameters, just how the paste works. But this! This is unexplainable.’

‘But, Sir,’ Anne put in, ‘can we explain how any shell gives out sounds—noises like the sea? Why?’

‘Oh, that is quite simple,’ said the philosopher. ‘The peculiar shape of a shell inside gives you an echo of all the little noises in the air about you which the naked ear cannot catch. The general roar sounds somewhat like the roar of the sea—which is also made of many small noises mixed together.’

‘Very well, then,’ said Anne; ‘why should not this shell have extra-funny insides and carry the echo of voices better than anything else?’

‘Humph!’ grunted Johannes. ‘That’s an interesting notion—very interesting. You talk much older than you look, young lady. I don’t say I believe it, but it is an interesting thought ... Well, what is it you would have me do?’

‘We want you to keep it, Sir,’ said Anne suddenly, taking up the shell and pushing it into the philosopher’s hands. ‘Just keep it—in your pocket always. We will come back later, by your leave, and see what luck you may have had with it.’

Suddenly the pot on the fire boiled over, making a great sputtering in the coals. The philosopher leapt to attend it.

‘Yes,’ said he; ‘come back when you wish, children; I’m busy now. But you at least I shall always be glad to see—whether your crazy shell works or no. Knock two and two—tap-tap, tap-tap—So! Then I shall know it is you.’