Part 24

The haughty mayor was highly displeased at this proposal. He made every possible excuse; and as Willibald repeatedly reminded him of his promise, he did what the despots of those dark times were in the habit of doing, and which those of our enlightened days still practise, he declared his dignity offended, pronounced Willibald to be a disturber of the peace, an enemy of the public security, and allowed him to forget in a prison the promises of his lord, the mayor. Not satisfied herewith, he accused him of witchcraft, caused him to be tried by pretending he was the very bag-piper and rat-catcher of Hameln, who was, at that time, and is still in so bad a repute in the German provinces, for having carried off by his infernal art all the children of that ill-fated town.

‘The only difference,’ said the wise mayor, between the two cases was, that at Hameln only the children had been made to dance to his pipe, but here young and old seemed under the same magical influence. By such artful delusions, the mayor turned every merciful heart from the prisoner. The dread of necromancy, and the example of the children of Hameln, worked so strongly, that sheriffs and clerks were writing day and night. The secretary calculated already the expense of the funeral pile, for necromancers, witches and wizards were burnt in those days; the sexton petitioned for a new rope to toll the dead-bell for the poor sinner; the carpenters prepared scaffolds for the spectators of the expected execution; and the judges rehearsed the grand scene, which they prepared to play at the condemnation of the famous bag-piper. But although justice was sharp, Willibald was still sharper; for as he laughed very heartily over the important preparations for his end, he now laid himself down upon his straw and died!

Shortly before his death, he sent for his beloved Robert, and addressed him for the last time.

‘Young man,’ said he, ‘you seest that in your way of viewing mankind and the world I can render you no assistance. I am tired of the whims your folly has obliged me to perform. You have now acquired experience enough fully to comprehend that nobody should calculate, or at least ground, his designs on the goodness of human nature, even if he himself should be too good to lose entirely his belief in the goodness of others. I, for my own part, would not rely upon the fulfilment of my last request to you, if your own interest would not induce you to its performance. When I am dead, be careful to see that my old bag-pipe is buried with me. To detain it would be of no use to you, but it may be the cause of your happiness, if it is laid under ground with me.’

Robert promised to observe strictly the last commands of his old friend, who shortly after closed his eyes. Scarcely had the report of Willibald’s sudden death spread, when old and young came to ascertain the truth. The mayor was more pleased with this turn of the affair than any other; for the indifference with which the prisoner had received the news of his approaching promotion to the funeral pile, induced his worship to suppose the old bag-piper might some fine day be found invisible in his prison, or rather be found not there at all; or the cunning wizard, being at the stake, might have caused a wisp of straw to burn instead of his person, to the eternal shame of the court of Neisse. He therefore ordered the corpse to be buried as speedily as possible, as no sentence to burn the body had yet been pronounced. An unhallowed corner of the churchyard, close to the wall, was the place assigned for poor Willibald’s resting-place. The jailor, as the lawful heir of the deceased prisoner, having examined his property, asked what should become of the bag-pipe, as a _corpus delicti_.

Robert, who was present, was on the point to make his request, when the mayor, full of zeal, thus pronounced his sentence:

‘To avoid every possible mischief, this wicked, worthless tool shall be buried together with its master.’ So they put it into the coffin at the side of the corpse, and early in the morning pipe and piper were carried away and buried.

But strange things happened in the following night. The watchmen on the tower were looking out, according to the custom of the age, to give the alarm in case of fire in the surrounding country, when about midnight they saw, by the light of the moon, Willibald rising out of his tomb near the churchyard wall. He held his bag-pipe under his arm, and leaning against a high tombstone upon which the moon shed her brightest rays he began to blow, and fingered the pipes just as he was accustomed to do when he was alive.

While the watchmen, astonished at this sight, gazed wisely on one another, many other graves opened; their skeleton-inhabitants peeped out with their bare skulls, looked about, nodded to the measure, rose afterwards wholly out of their coffins, and moved their rattling limbs into a nimble dance. At the church windows, and the grates of the vaults, other empty eye-holes stared on the dancing place: the withered arms began to shake the iron gates, till locks and bolts sprung off, and out came the skeletons, eager to mingle in the dance of the dead. Now the light dancers stilted about, over the hillocks and tombstones, and whirled around in a merry waltz, that the shrouds waved in the wind about the fleshless limbs, until the church clock struck twelve, when all the dancers, great and small, returned to their narrow cells; the player took his bag-pipe under his arm, and likewise returned to his vacant coffin.

Long before the dawn of the day, the watchmen awoke the mayor, and made to him, with trembling lips and knocking knees, the awful report of the horrid night scene. He enjoined strict secrecy on them, and promised to watch with them the following night on the tower. Nevertheless, the news soon spread through the town, and at the close of the evening, all the surrounding windows and roofs were lined with virtuosi and cognoscenti of the dark fine arts, who all beforehand were engaged in discussions on the possibility or impossibility of the events they expected to witness before midnight.

The bag-piper was not behind his time. At the first sound of the bell announcing the eleventh hour, he rose slowly, leaned against the tombstone, and began his tune. The ball guests seemed to have been waiting for the music, for at the very first notes they rushed forth out of the graves and vaults, through grass hills and heavy stones. Corpses and skeletons shrouded and bare, tall and small, men and women, all running to and fro, dancing and turning, wheedling and whirling round the player, quicker or more slowly according to the measure he played, till the clock tolled the hour of midnight. Then dancers and piper withdrew again to rest.

The living spectators, at their windows and on their roofs, now confessed that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’ The mayor had no sooner retired from the tower, than he ordered Robert to be cast into prison that very night, hoping to learn from his examination, or perhaps by putting him to the torture, how the magic nuisance of his foster-father might be removed.

Robert did not fail to remind the mayor of his ingratitude towards Willibald, and maintained that the deceased troubled the town, bereft the dead of their rest and the living of their sleep, only because he had received, instead of the promised reward for the liberation of the mayor, a scornful refusal, and moreover had been thrown into prison most unjustly, and buried in a degrading manner. This speech made a very deep impression upon the minds of the magistrates; they instantly ordered the body of Willibald to be taken out of his tomb, and laid in a more respectable place.

The sexton, to show his penetration on the occasion, took the bag-pipe out of the coffin, and hung it over his bed. For he reasoned thus: if the enchanting or enchanted musician could not help following his profession even in the tomb, he at least would not be able to play to the dancers without his instrument.

But at night, after the clock had struck eleven, he heard distinctly a knock at his door; and when he opened it, with the expectation of some deadly and lucrative accident requiring his skill, he beheld the buried Willibald _in propriâ persona_.

‘My bag-pipe,’ said he, very composedly, and passing by the trembling sexton, he took it from the wall where it was hung up; then he returned to his tombstone, and began to blow. The guests, invited by the tune, came like the preceding night, and were preparing for their midnight dance in the churchyard. But this time the musician began to march forward, and proceeded with his numerous and ghastly suite through the gate of the churchyard to the town, and led his nightly parade through all the streets, till the clock struck twelve, when all returned again to their dark abodes.

The inhabitants of Neisse now began to fear lest the awful night wanderers might shortly enter their own houses. Some of the chief magistrates earnestly entreated the mayor to lay the charm by making good his word to the bag-piper. But the mayor would not listen to it; he even pretended that Robert shared in the infernal arts of the old piper, and added, ‘The son deserves rather the funeral pile than the bridal bed.’

But in the following night the dancing spectres came again into the town, and although no music was heard, yet it was easily seen by their motions that the dancers went through the figure of the ‘Grandfather’s Dance.’ This night they behaved much worse than before, for they stopped at the house wherein a betrothed damsel lived, and here they turned in a wild whirling dance round a shadow, which resembled perfectly the spinster in whose honour they moved the nightly bridal dance. Next day the whole town was filled with mourning, for all the damsels whose shadows were seen dancing with the spectres had died suddenly. The same thing happened again the following night. The dancing skeletons turned before the houses, and wherever they had been, there was, next morning, a dead bride lying on the bier.

The citizens were determined no longer to expose their daughters and mistresses to such an imminent danger. They threatened the mayor to carry Brunhelda away by force and to lead her to Robert, unless the mayor would permit their union to be celebrated before the beginning of the night. The choice was a difficult one, for the mayor disliked the one just as much as the other, but as he found himself in the uncommon situation where a man may choose with perfect freedom, he, as a free being, declared freely his daughter to be Robert’s bride.

Long before the spectre hour the guests sat at the wedding table. The first stroke of the bell sounded, and immediately the favourite tune of the well-known bridal dance was heard. The guests, frightened to death, and fearing the spell might still continue to work, hastened to the windows, and beheld the bag-piper, followed by a long row of figures in white shrouds, moving to the wedding-house. He remained at the door and played, but the procession went on slowly, and proceeded even to the festive hall. Here the strange pale guests rubbed their eyes, and looked about them full of astonishment, like sleep walkers just awakened. The wedding guests fled behind the chairs and tables; but soon the cheeks of the phantoms began to colour, their white lips became blooming like young rosebuds; they gazed at each other full of wonder and joy, and well-known voices called friendly names. They were soon known as revived corpses, now blooming in all the brightness of youth and health: and who should they be but the brides whose sudden death had filled the whole town with mourning, and who, now recovered from their enchanted slumber, had been led by Willibald with his magic pipe out of their graves to the merry wedding feast. The wonderful old man blew a last and cheerful farewell tune, and disappeared. He was never seen again.

Robert was of opinion, the bag-piper was no other than the famous Spirit of the Silesian Mountains.[1] The young painter had originally met him once when he travelled through the hills, and acquired his goodwill by rendering him some service, for the old man was, or pretended to be, in great distress, and Robert gave him wine and food, and housed him for many days. Then suddenly the strange piper disappeared, but shortly returned and promised the youth he would grant him anything he wished if he could, and he declared that with his magic pipes he could subdue anyone to his will. Then it was that Robert beseeched him to help him to win the consent of the Mayor of Neisse to wed his daughter. Willibald promised the youth to assist him in his love-suit, and he kept his word, although after his own jesting fashion.

Robert remained all his lifetime a favourite with the Spirit of the Mountains. He grew rich, and became celebrated. His dear wife brought him every year a handsome child, his pictures were sought after even in Italy and England; and the ‘Dance of the Dead,’ of which Basil, Antwerp, Dresden, Lubeck, and many other places boast, are only copies or imitations of Robert’s original painting, which he had executed in memory of the real ‘Dance of the Dead at Neisse!’ But, alas! this picture is lost, and no collector of paintings has yet been able to discover it, for the gratification of the cognoscenti, and the benefit of the history of the art.

[1] The Spirit of the Silesian Mountains plays a great part in the German Popular Tales. He always appears full of mirth and whims. The people know him best by his nickname Rubezahl, the turnip counter. The accident which gave rise to this nickname has been related in a masterly manner in _Musäus’s German Popular Tales_.

XIV

THE MYSTIC SPELL

A WEIRD STORY OF BRAZIL

TOLD BY SIGNOR DON ALONZO RODERICK, SPANISH CONSUL AT RIO DE JANEIRO.

Rio and its neighbourhood is perhaps one of the most beautiful spots on the face of the globe. Indeed, I am not sure but what it may claim to be absolutely without a rival, for it has features that are unique. Nature would almost seem to have exhausted her efforts to build up a scene which lacks no single detail necessary for imposing pictorial effect, though, as most people know, hidden beneath all this entrancing beauty death lurks in a hundred forms; and he who is not wary and ever on his guard is liable to be struck down with appalling suddenness.

My predecessor had suffered much in his health, and succumbed at last to the scourge of yellow fever. When I arrived to take up his work I found everything in such confusion that I had to labour very hard to reduce chaos to order and put the consular business shipshape. It thus came about that for many months I was unable to leave my post in Rio, and as a consequence my health began to suffer. Soon after my arrival I made the acquaintance of a Portuguese gentleman named Azevedo Souza, a merchant of high standing in Rio. His business was of a very mixed character, and amongst other things he was an orchid exporter. In this branch of his trading he had been exceptionally successful. Through his instrumentality collectors had had brought under their notice some wonderful and hitherto unknown specimens of these marvels of nature. His collecting station was far up north in the interior. He spoke of it enthusiastically as an earthly paradise, and gave me many pressing invitations to be his guest, when he paid his periodical visits to look after his affairs in that region.

Senhor Souza was an estimable gentleman, and very highly respected. He had a charming family, amongst them being a daughter, Juliette by name, and one of the sweetest young ladies I have ever had the pleasure of associating with. At this period Juliette was about seven-and-twenty, and as the apple of his eye to her father. She was invaluable to him in his business, at any rate to the orchid branch of it; for not only had she an all-round cleverness, but probably she knew more about orchids than any living woman. She herself was the means of introducing to the scientific world an entirely new orchid, the flower of which was of such transcendent beauty that the Brazilians, used as they are to floral glories, said that this particular bloom must have been ‘specially cultivated in God’s own garden.’ Juliette made a most arduous and hazardous journey into the depths of virgin forests in search of this plant, and narrowly escaped losing her life.

Perhaps, when I say that I was a bachelor the reader will readily guess that my acquaintance with Juliette aroused in me an admiration which I devoutly hoped would find its consummation in a happy union, for she was by no means indifferent to my attentions. Not only was she highly cultivated, but had astonishing linguistic powers, and spoke many languages fluently. She was perfectly acquainted with Spanish, and had read the beautiful literature of Spain extensively. Senhor Souza encouraged my suit, and at last the time came when I was emboldened to tell Juliette she was the one woman in the world who could make me happy. Ah, I shall never forget that night until the grave closes over me. We were seated in the veranda of Senhor Souza’s splendid villa, situated just on the outskirts of the town, and commanding an enchanting view of the bay of Rio, with its remarkable Sugar Loaf Mountain and the marvellous range beyond it. And what a night it was! The glory of the stars, shining as they can only shine in the tropics; the sparkling moonlit sea; the soft, flower-perfumed breeze that stirred the foliage to a languorous _susurrus_; the fireflies that like living jewels filled the air, begot in one a feeling of reverence, and strengthened one’s faith in the Great God who created such a world of beauty. Those who have never experienced such a night under a tropical sky know nothing of what the true poetry of nature means. It stirs one with a ravishing, ecstatic feeling of delight which is a foretaste of the joys of heaven.

I had been sitting for some time with Juliette’s hand in mine. We were silent, being deeply impressed with the magical beauty of the night, for we both had poetical instincts; indeed, Juliette’s was a highly strung romantic temperament, and she was able to express her thoughts in language that could stir the pulses and move to tears.

But this night of all nights was a night for love, and as I pressed her hand I asked her to crown my happiness by becoming my wife. To my astonishment she shuddered, sighed deeply, and then in a tone of the most touching pathos exclaimed:

‘Oh, why--oh, why have you asked me that?’

‘Juliette,’ I answered in amazement, ‘is it not a natural question for a man to ask a woman sooner or later, when every beat of his heart tells him that he loves her?’

‘Yes, yes,’ she replied in distressful tones, and shuddering again violently, ‘but, but----’

‘But what?’ I asked as she paused.

‘I pray you press me not for an answer.’

‘This is extraordinary!’ I remarked, feeling distressed beyond the power of words to express; and yet, distressed as I was, she was infinitely more troubled; she sobbed like one whose heart was rent. ‘You know that I love you, Juliette,’ I went on. ‘You have encouraged me. You have tacitly bidden me to hope; and now----’

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ she cried with a catching of her breath, and a spasmodic closing of her fingers round mine. ‘And I love you, I love you. But I have been living in a fool’s paradise. I have been dreaming dreams. I thought that the sweet delicious time would go on indefinitely. You waken me now abruptly, and I no longer dream. I must not, cannot be your wife.’

‘Juliette, what is this mystery?’ I exclaimed, growing excited, for I was sure some extraordinary influence was at work, and that she was under a spell.

She laughed, though it wasn’t the light laugh of joy peculiar to her, but a little forced spasmodic laugh of bitterness and despair.

‘I will tell you,’ she answered, trying to master her emotions by a mighty effort of will. ‘It is better that you should know, otherwise you may deem me fickle, and think that I have trifled with your feelings. Years ago, when I was a little girl, I had a nurse, a strange old Brazilian crone who had been in the family service for many years. She was very fond of all my brothers and sisters, but for some reason I could never understand took a strong dislike to me. I think this dislike was mutual, for I remember that she used to make me shudder at times, and fill me with a nameless dread. This, perhaps, was hardly to be wondered at, for she treated me roughly and unkindly, and many a time I complained to my father. He, however, shared my mother’s belief in the old woman’s fidelity and gentleness, and would chide me for what he termed my unfounded, childish fears. Consequently I ceased to complain, and kept my little sorrows to myself.

‘The name of this old nurse was Joanna Maria. One day she and I and an elder sister who was about two years my senior had been down to the bay, and wandering about the sea-shore in search of the beautiful shells which are often thrown up after a storm. Old Joanna was peculiarly irritable and fretful that morning. Once, when I stumbled over a rock and fell into a pool of sea-water, she snatched me up fiercely, and shook me until nearly all the life was frightened out of me. Then she sat down, made me sit beside her, and, looking at me fixedly with her bleared eyes, said:

‘“I am going to tell you your future. It grows dark, very dark; a foreigner will come from over the sea and will talk love to you, but if you listen to him and become his wife, a sudden and awful death will overtake you; you will leave him a widow while yet he is a bridegroom. Love and wifedom are not for you. I put a curse upon you.”’

In spite of the fact that dear Juliette told me this with moving solemnity and gravity, I burst into laughter, and taking her in my arms said: