Hugh Lamb – The Invisible Eye: Tales of Terror by Emile Erckmann and Louis Alexandre Chatrian (страница 17)
He walked the hall with hard, firm step, like the tick-tack of a clock; and with his hand on the guard of an immense sword, striking the floor with his heel, he cried, ‘This is mine!… Mine … Hans Burckart … Count of Barth!’
It was like an old rusty machine grinding out necromantic words. It made my flesh creep. But at the same time the door at the other end opened, and the Count of Barth disappeared through it. I heard his automatic step descend a stair that never seemed to come to an end. The sound of his footfall on each step grew fainter and fainter, as though he were descending to the fiery depths of the earth.
As I still listened, hearing nothing, lo! suddenly the great hall was filled with many people. The spinet sounded … they danced … they sang … made love and drank good wine. I saw against the blue background of the moon, young ladies loll round the spinet; their cavaliers, clad in fabulous lace, and numberless knick-knacks, sat with crossed legs on gold-fringed stools, leaning forward, tossing their heads, waddling about, making themselves pleasant. The little withered fingers of an old lady, with a nose like a parrot’s beak, clicked on the keys of the spinet; bursts of thin laughter rocketed left and right, ending in a mad rattle that made the hairs stand up in my neck.
All this society of folly and grace and fine manners exhaled a smell of rose water and mignonette soured by old age. I made again some superhuman efforts to get rid of this nightmare. Impossible! But at the same moment one of the young ladies said: ‘Gentlemen, make yourselves at home … This domain—’
She did not have the time to finish. A silence of death followed her words. I looked around. The phantasmagoria had disappeared.
Then the sound of a horn struck my ears. Outside, horses were prancing, dogs barking, and the moon, calm, contemplative, shone into my alcove. The door opened, as by a wind, and fifty hunters, followed by young ladies, two hundred years old, with long trailing gowns, filed majestically from one hall to the other. Four serfs also passed, bearing on their stout shoulders a stretcher of oak branches on which rested – bleeding, frothy at the mouth, with glazed eyes – an enormous wild boar. I heard the sound of the horn still louder outside. Then it died away in the woodlands like the sleepy cry of a bird … and then … nothing!
As I was thinking of this strange vision, I looked by chance in the silent shadows, and was astonished to see the hall occupied by one of those old Protestant families of bygone days, calm, dignified, and solemn in their manners. There was the white-haired father, reading a big Bible; the old mother, tall and pale, spinning the household linen, straight as a spindle, with a collar up to her ears, her waist bound by fillets of black ratteen; then the chubby children with dreaming eyes leaning on the table in deep silence; the old sheep dog, listening to his master; the old clock in its walnut case, counting the seconds; and farther away, in the shadow, the faces of girls and the features of lads in drugget jackets and felt hats, discussing the story of Jacob and Rachel by way of declaring their love.
And this worthy family seemed to be convinced of the holy truths; the old father, with his cracked voice, continued the edifying story with deep emotion:
‘This is your promised land … the land of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob … which I have designed for you from the beginning of the world … so that you shall grow and multiply there like the stars of the sky. And none shall take it from you … for you are my beloved people, in whom I have put my trust.’
The moon, clouded for a few moments, grew clear again, and hearing nothing more I turned my head. The calm cold rays lighted up the empty hall; not a figure, not a shadow … The light streamed on the floor, and, in the distance, some trees lifted their foliage, sharp and clear, against the luminous hillside.
But suddenly the high walls were hidden in books. The old spinet gave way to the desk of a learned man, whose big wig showed to me above an armchair of red leather. I heard the goose-quill scratching the paper. The writer, lost in thought, did not stir. The silence overwhelmed me. But great was my surprise when the man turned in his chair, and I recognised in him the original of the portrait of the Jurist Gregorius that is No. 253 in the Hesse-Darmstadt Picture Gallery. Heavens! how did this great person descend from his frame? That is what I was asking myself when in a hollow voice he cried, ‘Ownership, in civil law, is the right to use and abuse so far as the law of nature allows.’ As this formula came from his lips, his figure grew dimmer and dimmer. At the last word he could not be seen.
What more shall I tell you, my dear friends? During the following hours I saw twenty other generations succeed each other in the ancient castle of Hans Burckart … Christians and Jews, lords and commoners, ignorant people and learned, artists and philistines, and all of them claimed the place as their legitimate property. All thought themselves the sovereign masters of the property. Alas! the wind of death blew them out of the door. I ended by becoming accustomed to this strange procession. Each time one of these worthy persons cried, ‘This is mine!’ I laughed and murmured, ‘Wait, my friend, wait, you will vanish like the rest.’
I was weary when, far away, very far away, a cock crowed, and with his piercing voice awoke the sleeping world. The leaves shook in the morning wind, and a shudder ran through my body. I felt my limbs were at last free, and rising on my elbow I gazed with rapture over the silent countryside … But what I saw was scarcely calculated to make me rejoice. All along the little hill-path that led to the graveyard climbed the procession of phantoms that had visited me in the night. Step by step they advanced to the lich-gate, and in their silent march, under the vague grey shadowy tints of the rising dawn, there was something terrible. As I looked, more dead than alive, my mouth gaping, my forehead bathed in a cold sweat, the leaders of the procession seemed to melt into the old weeping willows. There remained only a little number of spectres. And I was beginning to recover my breath, when my uncle Christian, the last figure in the procession, turned round under the old gate, and motioned to me to come with him. A voice, far away … ironical, cried: ‘Kasper … Kasper … Come … This land is ours!’
Then everything disappeared, and a purple line, stretching across the horizon, announced the dawn. I need not tell you that I did not accept the invitation of Master Christian Haas. It will be necessary for someone more powerful than he to force me to take that road. But I must admit that my night in the castle of Burckart has singularly altered the good opinion I had conceived of my own importance. For the strange vision seemed to me to signify that if the land, the orchards, the meadows do not pass away, the owners vanish very quickly. It makes the hair rise on your head when you think on it seriously.
So, far from letting myself slumber in the delight of an idle country life, I took up music again, and I hope next year to have an opera produced in Berlin. The fact is that glory, which common-sense people regard as moonshine, is still the most solid of all forms of ownership. It does not end with life. On the contrary, death confirms it, and gives it a new lustre. Suppose, for example, that Homer returned to this world. No one would think of denying him the merit of having written the
I
In those happy days of youth, when the sky appears of a deeper blue and the foliage of a more vivid green, when mountain-torrents rush down with greater impetuosity and noise, when lakes are calmer, and their limpid depths more clear; when Nature is clothed in unspeakable grace, and all things sing to us in our hearts, and whisper of love, of art, of poetry – in that happy time I wandered alone through the grand old forest of Hundsrück.
I wandered from town to town, from one forester’s house to the next; singing, whistling, looking about me, without any definite object; fancy-led, seeking ever a deeper depth still more distant and more leafy, where no sound but the whisperings of the wind and the music of trees could ever reach me.
One morning I stepped out before daylight from the door of the Swan hostelry at Pirmasens to cross the wooded hills of Rothalps to the hamlet of Wolfthal. The boots came to arouse me at two o’clock, as I had requested; for towards the end of August it is best to travel at night, as the heat during the day, concentrating at the bottom of the gorges, becomes insupportable.