Tales of terror
wanderer who passes at nightfall shudders while he surveys its utter
desolation, and exclaims as he travels on:
‘Surely this is a spot where guilt may thrive in safety, or bigotry
weave a spell to enthral her misguided votaries.’
XIII
THE DANCE OF THE DEAD
FOUNDED ON A WELL-KNOWN GERMAN LEGEND
Neisse is a small town in Silesia. At the period of this story it lay
somewhat out of the beaten track, and its inhabitants led a simple,
primitive sort of life, although bickerings and wranglings, cheating
and knavery were not altogether unknown among them. On the whole,
however, they were a fairly virtuous people, and the town earned an
enviable reputation for hospitality, in spite of the fact that the
mayor was far from being hospitable himself, but he did not hesitate to
dispense hospitality with a lavish hand when he could do so out of the
town funds.
This mayor, whose name was Hertzstein, was an exceedingly proud and
ambitious man. He had been born in very humble circumstances indeed,
his father having been a charcoal burner; but Rupert Hertzstein was
endowed with more than average intelligence, though even as a lad he
displayed a grasping, covetous disposition that made him many youthful
enemies. As he grew in years he by no means changed, but he managed to
make his way. Before he was fifteen he went to Saxony and apprenticed
himself to a worker in precious metals, and showed so much intelligence
that before he had completed the term of his apprenticeship he was
master of his trade.
He was twenty-two when he returned to his native town, with a little
money and a young wife. A daughter was born to him, and grew to be
the most beautiful girl in Neisse. Her father prospered, made money,
and became mayor. Indeed, he was a little king in his own way, but was
tyrannical and exacting, and while everybody adored Brunhelda, his
pretty daughter, he was far from being respected. When any of the young
men of the village tried to win his favour in the hope of gaining the
daughter’s hand, he ordered them off with a peremptoriness that left no
doubt about his determination.
‘My girl,’ he used to boast, ‘shall marry a lord. My father was a
charcoal burner, and in my youth I knew the curse of poverty. Now I
am going to be the founder of a family, and rather than let Brunhelda
marry a humble person I would carry her to her grave.’
Although he expressed himself thus forcibly and emphatically, he did
not explain how he hoped to get a lord as a son-in-law, but that was a
detail; and, being a deep, designing, and crafty man, he probably had
some matured plan in his own mind.
Now it chanced that when Brunhelda was two-and-twenty a young artist
came to Neisse, which was famed for a very ancient church and for
marvellous views, which were to be obtained from different parts of
the town, for it stood on an eminence in a very beautiful and fertile
country. It was, therefore, no uncommon thing for artists to visit the
place. This particular one became known as Robert Kuno, and he took up
his quarters at the village inn. One day he was in the ancient church
sketching a very picturesque archway, when Brunhelda entered with
a number of other girls, laden with flowers, as they were going to
decorate the church in honour of some festival.
Robert was at once attracted by Brunhelda’s beauty, and, getting into
conversation with her, he begged that she would pose for him while he
made a drawing. She was by no means loth to do this. Indeed, she felt
flattered, for she knew she was good-looking, and she would have been
a strange woman if she had had no vanity. Robert placed her in the
position he wanted near the archway, and produced a sketch, which he
promised to turn into a painting, and he asked her to favour him again
on the morrow, which she did, and the next day, and the day after that,
and as a natural result the young artist began to talk to her in a way
which by no means displeased her, although she knew that her father
would be furious if he came to hear of it. And sure enough he did hear
of it. Some envious jade went to him, and told him that Brunhelda was
going day after day to the church to meet the artist.
The day following the mayor repaired to the church, and screened
himself behind a pillar and witnessed the flirtation between Brunhelda
and the artist, until at length, losing his self-control, he suddenly
presented himself before them, and there was a scene. He used some
very harsh terms to the young man, and, seizing the sketch he had been
making of the girl, he stamped on it, and vowed if Robert did not leave
Neisse within twelve hours he would have him arrested as a vagabond and
confined in the stocks. Then he took his daughter home and lectured
her on the monstrous wickedness of her conduct in allowing a ‘vulgar,
common artist fellow’ to talk love to her.
As Robert failed to comply with the order to clear off, the mayor, true
to his word, had him arrested as a vagabond, having no visible means of
subsistence, and he was placed in the stocks which stood on the green
opposite the mayor’s house. The tyrannical magistrate thought that when
his daughter saw her admirer in such an undignified position she would
be disgusted, and think no more of him. But herein he was mistaken, for
he caught her kissing her hand to him from her window, and manifesting
every sign of sympathy. So Robert was at once set at liberty, on
condition that he immediately left the place, which he consented to do,
much to the joy and comfort of the mayor.
It was nearly a year after that an old bag-piper one day entered the
town of Neisse. He was a strange, weird-looking old man, with great
masses of white hair hanging about his shoulders, and heavy, beetling
eyebrows screening his keen, grey eyes. His pipes, which seemed older
than himself, were unlike any that had been seen before, and when
the old piper tuned them up he awoke the most marvellous melody.
Whence he came and whither he was going no one knew, and being by no
means communicative, they were left in ignorance. But one thing he
made clear--he did not lack money, and as there happened to be a very
pretty little cottage to let, whose owner had recently died, the piper
bargained for it and bought it, and soon after a young man came to live
with him, and rumour soon had it that this young man was the strange
piper’s foster-son. Apparently the son was nearly blind, for he wore
large blue goggle glasses, and always went about with a stick.
The son was very reserved and would not mix with the people, but the
old piper became such a favourite owing to the sweet music he was able
to discourse, that he was invited every evening, when the weather was
fine, to repair to the village green, where the people were wont to
dance. He was so wonderfully well-informed, too, and seemed to have
travelled so extensively, that the old citizens invited him to their
dinners, and he was petted and flattered. He played his pipes at
christenings and wedding feasts, as well as pathetic and solemn airs
when the dead were committed to the earth.
One marvellous tune that he played was known as ‘Grandfather’s Dance,’
and so inspiriting was this, such a wild, mad, rhythmical jingle, that
even the oldest of men and women who could move their limbs at all
could not resist its strains, and fell to dancing. Indeed, the strains,
it was averred, restored youth to the old, and even the paralytic and
the rheumatic threw away their crutches when they heard them.
Now, strangely enough, the effect of the old man’s art on his
foster-son was _nil_. He remained silent and mournful at the most
mirth-inspiring tunes the piper played to him; and at the balls, to
which he was often invited, he rarely mingled with the gay, but would
retire into a corner, and fix his eyes on the loveliest fair one that
graced the room, neither daring to address, nor to offer her his hand.
This one was Brunhelda, and occasionally he managed to get speech with
her, and it was noted that she was by no means averse to talk to him.
And at such times she easily read in his brightening face the eloquent
gratitude of his heart; and although she turned blushingly away, the
fire on her cheeks, and the sparkling in her eyes, kindled new flames
of love and hope in her lover’s bosom, for this young man was none
other than the artist who had resorted to this stratagem to woo her.
And he was neither blind nor near sighted, but the goggles afforded him
a disguise.
Willibald, such was the name of the piper, had for a long time promised
to assist the love-sick youth in obtaining his soul’s dearest object.
Sometimes he intended, like the wizards of yore, to torment the
mayor with an enchanted dance, and compel him by exhaustion to grant
everything; sometimes, like a second Orpheus, he proposed to carry
away, by the power of his harmony, the sweet bride from the Tartarian
abode of her father. But Robert always had objections: he never would
allow the parent of his fair one to be harmed by the slightest offence,
and hoped to win him by perseverance and complacency.
Willibald said to him one day, ‘You are an idiot, if you hope to win,
by an open and honourable sentiment, the approbation of a rich and
proud old fool. He will not surrender without some of the plagues of
Egypt are put in force against him. When once Brunhelda is yours,
and he no more can change what has happened, then you will find him
friendly and kind. He will bow to the inevitable. I blame myself for
having promised to do nothing against your will, but death acquits
every death, and still I shall help you in my own way.’
Poor Robert was not the only one on the path of whose life the mayor
strewed thorns and briars. The whole town had very little affection for
their chief, and delighted to oppose him at every opportunity; for he
was harsh and cruel, and punished severely the citizens for trifling
and innocent mirth, unless they purchased pardon by the means of heavy
penalties and bribes. After the yearly wine-fair in the month of
January he was in the habit of obliging them to pay all their earnings
into his treasury, to make amends for their past merriments. One day
the tyrant of Neisse had put their patience to too hard a trial, and
broken the last tie of obedience from his oppressed townsmen. The
malcontents had created a riot, and filled their persecutor with deadly
fear; for they threatened nothing less than to set fire to his house,
and to burn him, together with all the riches he had gathered by
oppressing them.
At this critical moment, Robert went to Willibald, and said to him,
‘Now, my old friend, is the time when you may help me with your art, as
you frequently have offered to do. If your music be really so powerful
as you say it is, go then and deliver the mayor by softening the
enraged mob. As a reward he certainly will grant you anything you may
request. Speak then a word for me and my love, and demand my beloved
Brunhelda as the price of your assistance.’
The bag-piper laughed at this speech, and replied:
‘We must satisfy the follies of children in order to prevent them
crying.’ And so he took his bag-pipe and walked slowly down to the
town-house square, where the rioters, armed with pikes, lances, and
lighted torches, were laying waste the mansion of the worshipful head
of the town.
Willibald placed himself near a pillar, and began to play his
‘Grandfather’s Dance.’ Scarcely were the first notes of this favourite
tune heard, when the rage-distorted countenances became smiling and
cheerful, the frowning brows lost their dark expression, pikes and
torches fell out of the threatening fists, and the enraged assailants
moved about marking with their steps the measure of the music. At last,