CHAPTER VI
[PIERRE LAMONT READS LOVE-VERSES TO FRITZ THE FOOL]
The bedroom allotted to Pierre Lamont by Mother Denise was situated on the first floor, and adjoined the apartments prepared for Christian Almer. As he was unable to walk a step it was necessary that the old lawyer should be carried upstairs. His body-servant, expressly engaged to wheel him about and attend to his wants, was ready to perform his duties, but into Pierre Lamont's head had entered the whim that he would be assisted to his room by no person but Fritz the Fool. The servant was sent in search of Fritz, who could not easily be found. It was quite half an hour before the fool made his appearance, and by that time all the guests, with the exception of Pierre Lamont, had left the House of White Shadows.
Out of sympathy with Pierre Lamont's sufferings Father Capel had remained to chat with him until Fritz arrived. But the priest was suddenly called away. Mother Denise, entering the room, informed him that a peasant who lived ten miles from the House of White Shadows urgently desired to see him. Father Capel was about to go out to the man, when Adelaide suggested that he should be brought in, and the peasant accordingly disclosed his errand in the presence of the Advocate and his wife, Pierre Lamont, and Christian Almer.
"I have been to your house," said the peasant, standing, cap in hand, in humble admiration of the grandeur by which he was surrounded, "and was directed here. There is a woman dying in my hut."
"What is her name, and where does she come from?"
"I know not. She has been with us for over three weeks, and it is a sore burden upon us. It happened in this way, reverend father. My hut, you know, is in the cleft of a rock, at the foot of the Burger Pass, a dangerous spot for those who are not familiar with the track. Some twenty-four days ago it was that my wife in the night roused me with the tale of a frightful scream, which, proceeding from one in agony near my hut, pierced her very marrow, and woke her from sleep. I sprang from my bed, and went into the open, and a few yards down I found a woman who had fallen from a height, and was lying in delirious pain upon the sharp stones. I raised her in my arms; she was bleeding terribly, and I feared she was hurt to death. I did the best I could, and carried her into my hut, where my wife nursed and tended her. But from that night to this we have been unable to get one sensible word from her, and she is now at death's door. She needs your priestly offices, reverend father, and therefore I have come for you."
"How interesting!" exclaimed Adelaide. "Who will pay you for your goodness to this poor creature?"
"God," said Father Capel, replying for the peasant. "It is the poor who help the poor, and in the Kingdom of Heaven our Gracious Lord rewards them."
"I am content," said the peasant.
"But in the contemplation of the Hereafter," said Pierre Lamont, "let us not forget the present. There are many whose loads are too heavy--for instance, asses. There are a few whose loads are too light--scoffers, like myself. You have had occasion to rebuke me, this night, Father Capel, and were I not a hardened sinner I should be groaning in tribulation. That to the last hour of my life I shall deserve your rebukes, proves me, I fear, beyond hope of redemption. Still I bear in mind the asses' burden. You have used my purse once, in penance; use it again, and pay this man for the loss inflicted upon him by his endeavours to earn the great spiritual reward--which, in all humility I say it, does not put bread into human stomachs."
Father Capel accepted Pierre Lamont's purse, and said: "I judge not by words, but by works; your offering shall be justly administered. Come, let us hasten to this unfortunate woman."
When he and the peasant had departed, Pierre Lamont said, with mock enthusiasm:
"A good man! a good man! Virtue such as his is a severe burden, but I doubt not he enjoys it. I prefer to earn my seat in heaven vicariously, to which end my gold will materially assist. It is as though paradise can be bought by weight or measure; the longer the purse the greater the chance of salvation. Ah, here is Fritz. Good-night, good-night. Bright dreams to all. Gently, Fritz, gently," continued the old lawyer, as he was being carried up the stairs, "my bones are brittle."
"Brittle enough I should say," rejoined Fritz; "chicken bones they might be from the weight of you."
"Are diamonds heavy, fool?"
"Ha, ha!" laughed Fritz, "if I had the selling of you, Master Lamont, I should like to make you the valuer. I should get a rare good price for you at that rate."
In the bedroom Pierre Lamont retained Fritz to prepare him for bed. The old lawyer, undressed, was a veritable skeleton; there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his shrivelled bones.
"What would you have done in the age of giants?" asked Fritz, making merry over Pierre Lamont's attenuated form.
"This would have served," replied Pierre Lamont, tapping his forehead with his forefinger. "I should have contrived so as to be a match for them. Bring that small table close to the bedside. Now place the lamp on it. Put your hand into the tail-pocket of my coat; you will find a silk handkerchief there."
He tied the handkerchief--the colour of which was yellow--about his head; and as the small, thin face peeped out of it, brown-skinned and hairless, it looked like the face of a mummy.
Fritz gazed at him, and laughed immoderately, and Pierre Lamont nodded and nodded at the fool, with a smile of much humour on his lips.
"Enjoy yourself, fool, enjoy yourself," he said kindly; "but don't pass your life in laughter; it is destructive of brain power. What do you think of the spirit, Fritz, the appearance of which so alarmed one of the young ladies in our merry party to-night?"
"What do you think of it?" asked Fritz in return, with a quivering of his right eyelid, which suspiciously resembled a wink.
"Ah, ah, knave!" cried Pierre Lamont, chuckling. "I half suspected you."
"You will not tell on me, Master Lamont?"
"Not I, fool. How did you contrive it?"
"With a white sheet and a lantern. I thought it a pity that my lady should be disappointed. Should she leave the place without some warranty that spirits are here, the house would lose its character. Then there is the young master, your Christian Almer. He spoke to me very much as if I were a beast of the field instead of a--fool. So I thought I would give him food for thought."
"A dangerous trick, Fritz. Your secret is safe with me, but I would not try it too often. Are there any books in the room? Look about, Fritz, look about."
"For books!" exclaimed Fritz. "People go to bed to sleep."
"I go to bed to think," retorted Pierre Lamont, "and read. People are idiots--they don't know how to use the nights."
"Men are not owls," said Fritz. "There are no books in the room."
"How shall I pass the night?" grumbled Pierre Lamont. "Open that drawer; there may be something to read in it."
Fritz opened the drawer; it was filled with books. Pierre Lamont uttered a cry of delight.
"Bring half-a-dozen of them--quick. Now I am happy."
He opened the books which Fritz handed to him, and placed them by his side on the bed. They were in various languages. Lavater, Zimmermann, a Latin book on Demonology, poems of Lope da Vega, Klingemann's tragedies, Italian poems by Zappi, Filicaja, Cassiani, and others.
"You understand all these books, Master Lamont?"
"Of course, fool."
"What language is this?"
"Latin."
"And this?"
"Spanish."
"And this?"
"Italian. No common mind collected these books, Fritz."
"The master that's dead--father of him who sleeps in the next room."
"Ha, ha!" interposed Pierre Lamont, turning over the pages as he spoke. "He sleeps there, does he?
"Yes. His father was a great scholar, I've heard."
"A various scholar, Fritz, if these books are an epitome of his mind. Love, philosophy, gloomy wanderings in dark paths--here we have them all. The lights and shadows of life. Which way runs your taste, fool?"
"I love the light, of course. What use in being a fool if you don't know how to take advantage of your opportunities?"
"Well said. Let us indulge a little. These poets are sly rascals. They take unconscionable liberties, and play with women's beauty as other men dare not do."
Fritz's eyes twinkled.
"It does not escape even you, Master Lamont."
"What does not escape me, fool?"
"Woman's beauty, Master Lamont."
"Have I not eyes in my head and blood in my veins?" asked Pierre Lamont. "It warms me like wine to know that I and the loveliest woman for a hundred miles round are caged within the same roof."
Fritz indulged in another fit of laughter, and then exclaimed:
"She has caught you too, eh? Now, who would have thought it? Two of the cleverest lawyers in the world fixed with one arrow! Beauty is a divine gift, Master Lamont. To possess it is almost as good as being born a fool."
"I shall lie awake and read love-verses. Listen to Zappi, fool."
And in a voice really tender, Pierre Lamont read from the book:
"A hundred pretty little loves, in fun, Were romping; laughing, rioting one day."
"A hundred!" cried Fritz, chuckling and rubbing his hands. "A hundred--pretty--little loves! If Father Capel were to hear you, his face would grow as long as my arm.
"Wrong, Fritz, wrong. His face would beam, and he would listen for the continuation of the poem."
And Pierre Lamont resumed:
"'Let's fly a little now,' said one, 'I pray.'
'Whither?' 'To beauty's face.' 'Agreed--'tis done.'
"Faster than bees to flowers they wing their way
To lovely maids--to mine, the sweetest one;
And to her hair and panting lips they run--
Now here, now there, now everywhere they stray.
"My love so full of loves--delightful sight!
Two with their torches in her eyes, and two
Upon her eyelids with their bows alight."
"You read rarely, Master Lamont," said Fritz. "It is true, is it not, that, when you were in practice, you were called the lawyer with the silver tongue?"
"It has been said of me, Fritz."
The picture of this withered, dried-up old lawyer, sitting up in bed, with a yellow handkerchief for a night-cap tied round his head, reading languishing verses in a tender voice, and striving to bring into his weazened features an expression in harmony with them, was truly a comical one.
"Why, Master Lamont," said Fritz in admiration, "you were cut out for a gallant. Had you recited those lines in the drawing-room, you would have had all the ladies at your feet--supposing," he added, with a broad grin, "they had all been blind."
"Ah me!" said Pierre Lamont, throwing aside the book with a mocking sigh. "Too old--too old!"
"And shrunken," said Fritz.
"It is not to be denied, Fritz. And shrunken."
"And ugly."
"You stick daggers into me. Yes--and ugly. Ah!" and with simulated wrath he shook his fist in the air, "if I were but like my brother the Advocate! Eh, Fritz--eh?"
Fritz shook his head slowly.
"If I were not a fool, I should say I would much rather be as you are, old, and withered, and ugly, and a cripple, than be standing in the place of your brother the Advocate. And so would you, Master Lamont, for all your love-songs."
"I can teach you nothing, fool. Push the lamp a little nearer to me. Give me my waistcoat. Here is a gold piece for you. I owe you as much, I think. We will keep our own counsel, Fritz. Good-night."
"Good--night, Master Lamont. I am sorry that trial is over. It was rare fun!"