Kitabı oku: «Household stories from the Land of Hofer», sayfa 16

With that he disappeared, and Fearless Johnny slept quietly for the rest of the night.

In the morning, when the sun was up, and the birds began to sing cheerily on the branches, the landlord began to feel some compunction for having abandoned such a fine young Bursch to a night by himself among the unquiet spirits; so he summoned all his courage, and all his servants, and all his neighbours, and, thus prepared, he led the way up to the haunted castle. Finding that it was firmly fixed by the chain, they all entered in a body, for none durst be the first; and the entrance, having been made for the giant, was big enough for all.

Zovanin having had such a disturbed night was still fast asleep, but their footsteps and anxious whisperings woke him. In answer to all their questionings he gave an account of what had happened to him, but still complained that, after all, he had not been able to find Fear!

Zovanin was now a rich man, and had a mighty castle to live in where he might have ended his days in peace, but he was always possessed by the desire of finding out what Fear was, and this desire was too strong to let him rest.

The neighbours, however, told him he might find Fear out hunting; and many were the hunting-parties he established, and wherever the wild game was shyest, there he sought it out. Once, as he sprang over a chasm his horse made a false start, and was plunged into the abyss, but Fearless Johnny caught at the bough of a birch-tree that waved over the mountain-side. The branch cracked, and it seemed as if nothing could save him, but Fearless Johnny only swung himself on to another on the ledge below, and climbed back by its means to the path. Another time, as he was pursuing a chamois up a precipitous track, a great mass of loose rock, detached from the height above, came thundering down upon him. An ordinary hunter, scared at the sight, would have given himself up for lost, but Fearless Johnny stood quite still and let it bound over his head, and he came to no harm.

So he still was unable to find Fear. After some years, therefore, he once more went abroad to seek it. This time, however, he provided himself with a fine suit of armour and a prancing charger, and a noble figure he cut as he ambled forth.

After a long journey, with many adventures, he came one hot day, as he was very thirsty, to a fountain of water in the outskirts of a town, and as he dismounted to drink he observed that the whole place looked sad and deserted; the road was grass-grown, and the houses seemed neglected and empty. As he went up to the fountain to drink, a faint voice called to him from the wayside, “Beware, and do it not! Think you that we all should be lying here dying of thirst if you could drink at that fountain?”

Then he looked round, and saw that, as far as eye could reach, the banks of the wayside were covered with dying people heaped up one on the other, and all gazing towards the fountain!

“Know you not,” continued the weary voice, “that a terrible dragon has taken possession of all the fountains; and that the moment one goes to drink of them he appears, as though he would eat you up, so that you are bound to run away for very fear?”

“‘Fear!’” cried Zovanin; “is Fear here at last?” and he joyfully ran to the side of the well.

All the weary, dying people raised themselves as well as they could, to see what should befall him who was not afraid of the terrible dragon.

But Fearless Johnny went up to the fountain’s brim to dip his hand into the cooling flood. Before he could do so, however, the terrible dragon put his head up through the midst, with a frightful howl, and spueing fire out of his nostrils. Zovanin, instead of drawing back, instantly took out his sword and, with one blow, severed the monster’s head from the trunk! Then all the people rushed to the fountain, hailing him as their deliverer. But ere they had slaked their thirst, the dragon, which had sunk back into the depth of the water, reappeared with a new head, already full grown, and more terrible than the last, for it not only spued out fire from its nostrils, but darted living sparks from its eyes.

When the people saw this they all ran away screaming, and Zovanin was left alone; but, as usual, he did not lose heart, and with another well-aimed blow sent the second head of the monster rolling by the side of the first!

The people came back, and began to drink again when they saw the huge trunk disappear beneath the surface; but it was not many minutes before another head cropped up, more terrible than either of the preceding, for it not only spued fire from its nostrils and darted living sparks from its eyes, but it had hair and mane of flames, which waved and rolled abroad, threatening all within reach. All the people fled at the sight, and Zovanin was once more left alone with the monster. Once more he severed the terrible head; and after this the dragon was seen no more.

“That must be very wonderful blood out of which three heads can spring,” thought Fearless Johnny; and he filled a vial with the dragon’s blood, and journeyed farther.

After a time he came to the outskirts of another town. It was not deserted like the last. The streets were full of people making merry – in fact, every one was so very merry that they seemed a whole community of madmen. Another might have been afraid to encounter them at all; but not so Fearless Johnny, he spurred his horse and rode right through their midst. But for all his seeming so fearless and self-possessed, the people got round him, and seized his horse’s bridle, and dragged him from the saddle.

“What do you want with me, good people?” cried Zovanin; “let me hear, before you pull me to pieces.”

When they found him so cool, spite of the wild way in which they had handled him, they began to respect him, and loosed their hold.

“If you want to know,” answered one, “it is soon told. We are all in this town wholly given up to amusement. We have done with work and toil, and do nothing but dance, and drink, and sing, and divert ourselves from morning to night. But after enjoying all this a long time, we begin to find it rather wearisome, and we are almost as tired of our pastime as we used to be of our labour. So the king has decreed that every stranger who comes by this way shall be caught, and required to find us a quite new diversion, and if he cannot do that, we will make him dance on red-hot stones, and flog him round the town, and get some fun out of him that way, at all events; as you don’t look very likely to find us a new pastime, we may as well begin with putting you on your death-dance.”

“Don’t make too sure of that!” said Fearless Johnny, not at all disconcerted; “take me to your king, and I’ll show you a diversion you never heard of before.”

When he came to the king, the king laughed, and would hardly listen to him, because he looked so broad and heavy, and not at all like one who could invent a merry game.

But Johnny protested that if they would let him cut off any one’s head, he would stick it on just as before, and the man should be never the worse.

The king was greatly delighted with the idea, and most anxious to see the performance, promising that he would not only let him go free if he succeeded, but would load him with honours and presents into the bargain. Zovanin professed himself quite ready to prove his skill, but no one could be found who was willing to let the experiment be tried on him.

This angered the king greatly; and at last he called forward his jester, and ordered Zovanin to make the trial on him.

The jester, however, objected as much as any one else, only, as he belonged entirely to the king, he could not disobey him. “But think, your majesty,” said the poor hunchback, “what will your majesty do without his jester, if this quack does not succeed in his promises?”

“But I shall succeed!” thundered Fearless Johnny; and he spoke with such assurance, that the king and all the people were more desirous than ever to see the feat, and cried to him to commence. When the jester found that all hope of wriggling out of the cruel decree was vain, he threw himself on his knees, and begged so earnestly that the king would grant him two favours, that he could not resist. The two favours were, that he should have the satisfaction of repeating the trick on Johnny, if he allowed him to try his skill on him, and also that he should first give proof of what he could do on the ape, with whose pranks he was wont to amuse the king.

The king and Zovanin both agreed to the two requests, and the poor ape was brought forward, and delivered over to make the first essay.

Zovanin did not keep the breathless multitude long in suspense; with one blow he severed its head, threw it up high in the air, that all might see it was well cut off, and then placed it on again, smearing in some drops of the dragon’s blood by way of cement. The head and trunk were scarcely placed together again, with the dragon’s blood between, than the ape bounded up as well as before, and just as if nothing had been done to him; but, on the contrary, finding himself the object of great attention, and excited by the shouts of the people, he sprang and gambolled about from side to side with even greater alacrity than his wont.

“Now, Sir Hunchback!” cried Zovanin, “it is your turn. You see it’s not very bad; so come along, and no more excuses.”

“Go it, hunchback!” said the king; and all the people shouted, “The hunchback’s head! the hunchback’s head!” with such vehemence that it was evident there was no means of getting out of the trial. It was true, Zovanin had proved he could put a head on again; but the jester shrank from the cold steel nevertheless, and it was only with a look which concentrated all his venom that he yielded himself up. Fearless Johnny struck off his head in a trice, then threw it up high in the air, as he had done the ape’s, and then cemented it on again with the dragon’s blood as well as ever.

“Now for you!” screamed the hunchback, when he found his head back in its right place once more.

Zovanin had no fear, but sat down on the ground instantly, so that the hunchback might reach him more conveniently. “This is all you have to do,” he said: “take my sword in your two hands, and swing it round across my throat. Then pour the contents of this vial over the stump of the throat, and clap the head down on it again.”

“Yes, yes! I think I ought to know how it’s done, as well as you,” answered the dwarf, hastily; and he swung the sword round with a will, sending Johnny’s head rolling at the king’s feet. The people caught it up and handed it round; and it might soon have got lost in the crowd, but that the king shouted to them to bring it back, because he wanted to see it stuck on again. So they gave it back to the jester, and he smeared the rest of the dragon’s blood over the stump of the throat – but in putting the head on, took care to turn it the wrong way, which, as he managed to bend over Johnny’s recumbent body, no one observed till he rose to his feet. Then all the people screeched, and yelled, and shouted, so that John could not make out what was the matter, but, getting angry, demanded his horse, that he might ride away from them all.

The king ordered his horse to be brought, and Johnny sprang into the saddle, and the cries of the people made the beast start away faster even than Johnny himself wished; only Johnny could not make out why he seemed to him, for all his urging, always to go backwards.

At last, he got quite away from the shouts of the people, into a calm, quiet place, where there was a lake shut in by high hills, which, with the mulberry-trees, and vines, and grassy slopes, were all pictured in the lake’s smooth face.

Zovanin was hot with his ride, and so was his mount; so he walked him into the shallow water, while he himself dismounted, and bent down to drink.

At the sight that met his gaze in the water, a shout burst from his lips more terrible than the shouts of all the people. He gazed again, and couldn’t think what had befallen him; but, so horrified was he at the sight of his own back where he was wont to see his breast, that he fell down and died of fear on the spot! And thus Fear visited him at last – in a way which would certainly never have occurred, if the jester had put his head on again in the way nature designed for it.

THE DOVE-MAIDEN

In the days when heathenism still disputed the advance of Christianity in Tirol, there lived a nobleman in a castle, of which no trace now remains, overlooking the egg-shaped Lago di Molveno. The nobleman and his family had embraced the teaching of St. Vigilius, and were among his most pious and obedient disciples. Eligio, his eldest son, however, had two faults which led him into great trouble, as our story will show; but as he was of a good disposition, and was always desirous to make amends for his wrong-doing, he found help and favour, which kept him right in the main. His two faults were – an excess of fondness for card-playing and an inclination to think he knew better than his elders, which led him to go counter to good advice.

It so happened that whenever he played at cards he always won; and this made it such a pleasure that he could not be persuaded to leave it off, though he knew he was wasting all the time he ought to have devoted to more manly pursuits. Nor was there for a long time any lack of people to play with him, for every one said his luck must turn at last, and each thought he should be the fortunate person in whose favour this would happen. But when at last they found he still won, and won on, they got shy of the risk, and refused to incur it any more.

When Eligio found this to be the case, he determined to travel abroad, and play against strangers. His parents tried to make use of the opportunity to lead him to break with his bad habit, but it was of no avail, and, as experience is a good school, they agreed to let him go forth and see what the world was made of.

It was a brave sight as he descended the terrace of the castle accoutred in the noble array befitting his rank, and with a retinue of followers handsomely attired too. But his lady mother watched him depart with a boding heart, and then went into the chapel to pray that he might be preserved amid all dangers.

Nothing particular occurred to mar the pleasure of travel for several days, till he came to a large and fertile plain, studded with many towns, whose white stone-built houses sparkled in the sun. “Ha! now we come to life and human kind again!” cried Eligio; and putting spurs to his steed he rode joyously to the first of these smiling towns. It had no lofty towers, no heaven-pointing spires – nowhere was seen the sign of the saving cross, which from boyhood he had been taught to reverence and to see planted every where before him in consecration of every affair of life. But there were sounds of mirth and revelry, as of a perpetual feast, and all around the place was gay with dancers and mummers, musicians, dice-throwers, and card-players. Eligio wandered about till he saw a number of these making up a fresh party, and courteously asked to be allowed to join them. They accepted his company willingly, and fortune favoured him as usual. Again and again he tried, and it was always the same. It was as much as his train of followers, numerous as they were, could do to gather in and take charge of all his gains. The stranger’s unvarying luck became the talk of the place, and all the people collected to see him play.

Towards evening there came amid the crowd a tall man of serious mien, who, having watched his play with much attention, said to him, as he saw him complete a game which gave him once more the benefit of a considerable haul, —

“Truly, you are an expert player, young man; I had thought myself hitherto the best of our countryside, but I doubt me if I should be right to measure my skill with yours. However, you must be tired with your long travel and with the excitement of the day’s play, and if you will honour my poor board with your presence at dinner I will ask you afterwards to let me try my power against yours with the cards.”

Eligio thanked him for his courteous speech, and assured him he should have the greatest pleasure in doing as he wished.

The stranger then led him to his abode, which was appointed with a sumptuousness such as had never entered into Eligio’s dreams in his mountain home. Marble courts and fountains, surrounded by bowers of exquisite flowers, formed the approach, and then they passed beneath endless-seeming arcades of polished marble into a vast alcove encrusted with alabaster of many colours, the dim light only reaching through its clear golden veins, no sound disturbing its still repose but the cool murmur of a fountain which fed a marble lake. Here noiseless attendants advanced, and, having helped Eligio and his host to undress, afforded him a delicious bath, complete with ministrations of unguents and scents – very different from the plunge into the icy waters of the Lago di Molveno, which was his greatest luxury at home.

They now arrayed him in an entirely new suit of superb attire; and then, to the sound of hushed music, led him and his host through the arched corridors to a banqueting-hall, where every thing of the choicest was ready laid.

Nothing could have been more delightful than the charming and accomplished conversation of his hospitable entertainer, who, when the long succession of various viands was at length exhausted, proposed that they should repair to an upper room and commence their game.

Delighted as Eligio had been with his extraordinary entertainment, he was yet burning to try his luck with his obliging host, and accordingly followed him with alacrity to a divan spread on the roof, having for its only covering a leafy pergola⁹³, and lighted by lamps contrived with such art that they seemed to be the very bunches of grapes themselves which gave the rays.

The cards were brought, and the friends set to work. The first game was a long one; the host seemed to be in great fear of not succeeding, and pondered every throw. Eligio played in his own rough-and-ready style, expecting luck to come as it always had – he never troubled himself how.

But this time luck did not come to him, and his entertainer was the winner! The stakes were large, but his hospitable friend had been so urbane throughout, that he could not show any ill-will. His attendants were called in, and paid the debt.

The winner put up the cards as though he did not wish to play again.

“Come, you must give me my revenge,” said Eligio.

“Oh, certainly, if you wish it,” he replied; and they played again. This time Eligio paid more attention to his style, and calculated every card he played; but it was of no use, he was beaten again. Caring more for the disappointment than the loss, he saw the money counted out without a sigh; but the unusual sense of having been overcome rankled in his mind. He had offered to play high because it seemed required by the princely character of the house where he had been so sumptuously received; and of all the treasure he had brought with him, and of all he had won through a day’s undeviating luck, there only remained enough to repeat the stakes. Nevertheless he pledged the same sum once more, and they played again.

This time fortune seemed to have come back to him. All went right up to the end; Eligio’s heart felt lightened. So luck was coming back, was it? He played with an interest which he had almost ceased to find – but his adversary threw down his last card which reversed every thing, and once more he was the winner!

Eligio called in his followers, and ordered them to pay out the last farthing of his treasure; but even this distressed him less than having nothing more to stake, whereby to have a chance of retrieving his luck. “Let be,” said his new friend, soothingly; “perhaps to-morrow your luck will turn. Come down with me to supper, and have a quiet night’s rest, and think no more about the play.”

“I can’t rest, and I can’t eat!” said Eligio; “I can do nothing till my luck turns. I must stake something. Ah! there’s my horse – but that’s not enough. Put along with it all my retainers. If I lose, they shall be yours, and serve you.”

“Since you insist, I have no objection,” said his host. “My men know their service well, and will not shame you if you win and I have to render you an equal number of them; and for your horse, I can match him, how good soever he may be, with the swiftest Arab in the whole world.”

Eligio sat down, hardly heeding his words, intent only on re-establishing his success. But his pains were vain; the game went against him like the last, and, scarcely mastering his vexation, he called in his retainers and told them they had passed into the service of the new master.

But this only left him in the same position as before. Still he wanted to retrieve his fortune, and again he had no stake.

“Leave it for to-night,” recommended his host; “better times will come with the morrow.” But Eligio would not hear of it; the passion and excitement were too strong within him; he could not turn to other thoughts.

“Myself! my life! that is all I have left to play. Will you accept the wager of my life?”

“If you insist,” replied his host, “I have no objection, but it is an odd sort of play. I really never heard of such a thing before; but any thing to oblige you – though I really advise you to leave it till the morning, when you are cooler.”

And all the time he was a magician of the heathen, who had invited Eligio for the express purpose of bringing him to this strait; but, as he saw how impetuous and excited he was, he knew that he would but fall into his snare the more surely for whetting his ardour with a little opposition.

Eligio would, indeed, listen to no mention of delay, and they sat down and played – with the same result as before! His life was now at the magician’s disposal, and he stood in a desponding attitude, waiting to hear what the magician decided to do with him.

As he stood there, however, a great cry rose in the room beyond – a cry of a young maiden’s voice in distress – and from under the usciale⁹⁴ came running, in terror for its life, a sleek white rat, and behind it, in close pursuit, a bouncing cat. “Save my rat! oh, save my white rat!” cried the maiden’s voice; and her steps approached as if she would have run into the room after her pet. “Keep back, child! keep back! Enter not, for your life!” cried the magician, sternly; and nothing more was heard but the gentle maiden’s sobs.

Quick as thought, however, Eligio had started from his despondent attitude at the sound of her distressful voice, and with one blow had stamped the life out of the treacherous cat. The little white rat, freed from fear of its tormentor, returned softly to its mistress, and an exclamation of joy was Eligio’s reward.

“Who have you got there, father? Mayn’t I come in and thank him?” said the maiden, prettily pleading.

“On no account. Don’t think of it!” was the magician’s angry reply.

“Then you must do something for him instead. Ask him what he wants, and do it for him, whatever it is.”

“Very well, that’ll do; go back to your own apartment,” replied the magician, impatiently.

“No, it won’t do, like that. You don’t say it as if you meant it. Promise me you will give him something nice, and I will go. It’s only fair, for he has done me a great pleasure, and you mustn’t be ungrateful.”

“It is enough reward, fair maiden, to hear from your sweet voice that you are satisfied with me,” Eligio ventured to say; but this made the magician more angry, and, to ensure his daughter’s departure, he promised he would do as she wished, but forbade either of them to speak a single word more to the other.

“I have promised my daughter to give you a good gift,” he said, when he had satisfied himself that she was gone to a distance; “and under present circumstances I do not see that I can give you a better boon than to grant you a year of the life which you have lost to me. Go home and bid adieu to your friends, and be sure that you are back here by this day year, or woe be to your whole house!”

Eligio now began to suspect that he had fallen into the power of one of those against whom he had been often warned. No ordinary mortal could have cared to win his life; no ordinary mortal could have threatened woe on his whole house. But the more convinced he felt of this, the more terrible he felt was the spell that bound him.

Sad and crestfallen he looked as he toiled his way back to the castle on the Lago di Molveno, and very different from the brave order with which he had started.

When his parents saw him all alone, and looking so forlorn, they knew that his bad habit had got him into trouble, but he looked so sad that they said nothing; but by little and little he told them all. It was a year of mourning that succeeded that day; a year so sad that it seemed no boon the maiden had procured him, but a prolonged torment, yet when that thought came he spurned it from him, as ungrateful to her who had meant him well. In fact his only solace was to recall that clear, ringing voice so full of sympathy, and to picture to himself the slender throat and rosy lips through which it must have passed, the softly-blushing cheeks between which those lips must have been set, and the bright, laughing, trusting eyes that must have beamed over them, till he seemed quite to know and love her.

But then, again, of what use? was not his year nearly run out? Was not her father determined they should not meet? Was it not a greater torture to die knowing there was one left behind he might have loved, than to have died that night alone, as he had been then?

Meantime the year was drawing to a close, and, not to give an appearance of shrinking from his plighted word, Eligio started betimes to render his life up to him who had won it of him. It was a sad parting with his parents, but he held up through it bravely; and when they advised him to take a large sum of money with him to buy himself off, though he felt it would be of no use, he would not say them nay, as he had so often done before.

With a heavy heart he set out; and first he stopped at the chapel of St. Anthony, at the foot of the hill, where dwelt an old hermit, to make his peace with heaven before he was called to lay down his life. Then he rose and pursued his way.

As he journeyed farther he met a hermit coming towards him who he thought was the same he had spoken with in the chapel. “Tell me, father,” he said, “how comes it that you, whom I left behind me in the chapel, are now coming towards me on the road?”

“I am not the hermit whom you left behind you in the chapel,” replied the advancing figure, gravely. “But I have heard all you confided to him, for I am St. Anthony; and because I am satisfied with the good disposition I have observed in you, I am come to give you help.”

Eligio fell on his knees full of thankfulness, for never had he felt more in need of help than now.

“Something I know, my son, of the ways of these men who hunt the lambs of our flock to destroy them, and I am minded to save you from the one into whose power you have fallen, and with you the fair maiden whose voice charmed you in his house.”

Eligio started with joyful surprise, and clasped the saint’s feet in token of gratitude.

“She is not his daughter, as you have supposed,” continued the saint, “but a child of our people, whom he stole from us. And now you must attend to my bidding, and do it exactly, or you will fail, and lose her life as well as your own.”

Eligio felt the reproach, for he knew how often he had preferred his own way to the advice of his elders, but he was humble now in his distress, and listened very attentively to the directions prescribed to him.

“Continue this public road towards the city,” then said St. Anthony, “till you get to the last milestone; then count the tenth tree that you pass on the right hand and the eleventh on the left hand, and you will see a scarcely perceptible track through the brake to the right. Follow that track till you come to a knoll of ilex-trees, there lie down and rest; but to-morrow morning awake at daybreak and lie in wait, and you shall see a flock of white doves come before you. They will lay aside their feathers and hide them, but you must watch them very closely, for they are the magician’s daughters; but among them will be she whom I commission you to deliver. You must observe where she puts her feathers, for the maidens will all then go away for the rest of the day in their own natural form. As soon as they are gone, take her feathers from their hiding-place and possess yourself of them. In the evening they will all come back and resume their dove form and fly away, but your maiden will continue seeking hers; then come forward and tell her that you want her help to overcome the sorceries of the magician. Remember this well, my son, and for the rest do as she bids you.” So saying, the saint raised his hands in blessing, and passed on his way to the chapel, where he had to instruct the hermit in the conduct he had to pursue in the manifold dangers with which he was surrounded from the malice of the heathen.

Eligio walked briskly along, once more filled with the hope and energy incident to his youth and character. “Why should I count the trees?” he said to himself; “surely, it will do if I look out for the track when I come to the brake!” But the terrible warning he had had was too recent that he should forget its lessons already. “Perhaps it’s better to keep to the letter. The saint laid great stress on my doing exactly as he bid me; it is better to be on the safe side, for another worthier life than mine is concerned with me, this time.”

So he walked on steadily till he came to the last mile, and then counted the trees conscientiously, till he found the path through the brake, and made his way to the ilex grove, where he laid him down and slept peacefully. But long before daybreak he was awake with the anxiety not to be behindhand, and closely he watched for the arrival of the enchanted doves.