It followed him through the great hall with its marble floor and high, arched entrance, followed him down the wide steps and out into the street, whispering all the while, pointing back at the smooth front of stone and the plate-glass windows; then, when they reached Rudolph’s home, pointing scornfully at the humble cottage, and the entrance that is neither high nor arched. It followed him in, this demon, into the single apartment that is hall and library and kitchen combined. It sat down beside him in the corner. “Bah!” it muttered in disdain, “this lounge can’t compare with that sofa where you rested just now. But wasn’t it soft, though!” It called his attention to all the objects around, sneering at the curtains because they are not of damask, at the floor because it is uncarpeted, at the wall-paper because it is cheap. It noticed Rudolph’s mother laying the table, and asked, “Do you imagine that ladies who live in fine houses ever get supper themselves? Bah! don’t you believe it!” It noticed Rudolph’s father leaning back in his arm-chair with closed eyes, weary after the day’s labor, and queried, “Do you suppose that gentleman you saw to-night ever gets tired, ever works? No, of course he doesn’t. He never wears work-clothes, shabby and worn like that! He always goes dressed in broadcloth, and his purse is always full, and he carries himself like a prince, and asks no odds of anybody. And did you mind how he looked down at you, as if you were nothing but a worm?—because your father’s only a carpenter! Wonder if he’ll treat him so? Bah! isn’t it wretched to be poor and to have to work!” And when Rudolph took his place at the table, it was—“Bah! do you think gentlemen ever eat anything so common as this?” and he pushed from him the simple food, untasted, and went back to his corner; and there he sat the whole evening, and there he has spent every evening since, his face buried in his hands, the demon whispering in his ear. For it has never left him; no, not for a moment. It has followed him everywhere. In school, day after day it kept up a continual buzzing, hindering him from getting his lessons—he, the one who had always known them so well. It would compare his own garments with those of one and another better clad than he. “And there’s Jesse James—see, he carries a gold watch!” “And isn’t it mean for ’em to call you a ‘Dutchman!’ just because your father and mother came from Germany—though you never lived there in your life—and because you’re poor and only a carpenter’s son. Pity your father couldn’t have been a count, or a baron, or something like that! How everybody would have stared when he rode along in his glittering carriage, and how everybody would have wanted to be friends, and would have asked him to dinner, and all that! And how polite everybody would have been to you! You wouldn’t have been a ‘Dutchman’ then; oh, not at all! And if he had been a grand-duke, oh, think of it! How everybody would have gone down to the depot to meet him, and how people would have crowded around to shake hands with him, and what a fuss they would have made over him—as they did one winter when Alexis was here, you know, and you climbed up a lamp-post to get a glimpse of him. Wasn’t he splendid, though! How grand it must be to be the son of a Czar!”
But during the Christmas holidays, now almost over, there has been no school, and Rudolph has had nothing to do but the marketing, and keeping the walk before the house clear of snow, and running here and there about the city on errands for his father—who never has any vacation, the year round. And all these days, oh, how that demon has tantalized him! It would lead him through the market to where lay great heaps of turkeys and geese and ducks, so plump and tempting, ready for the oven. “But you can’t buy any, they cost too much!” It would draw him close up to the bakery windows. “Wouldn’t Karl like one of those delicious cakes, though! But you can’t buy it, it costs too much. Isn’t it too bad to have to count the pennies so?” All the way down the street, of pleasant afternoons, it would keep tormenting, pointing now at the richly-dressed ladies out shopping: “Pity your mother can’t have velvets, and feathers, and furs, like that, and be fashionable!” now exclaiming: “Look! there goes Jesse James. He’s taking his sister out for a sleigh-ride. Aren’t those horses just splendid! and that robe, look at it! it’s a real tiger’s skin! and the bells, oh, how they jingle! By the way, did you hear him telling one of the schoolboys, last week, about the Christmas present he was going to give his cousin Florence?—a set of diamonds! think of it! Here are some, right here in this shop-window. Look at them! see how they shine!... Pity you can’t make somebody a Christmas present!—your cousin Mina, for instance. Pity you can’t take somebody out sleigh-riding. Never had a sleigh-ride yourself, for that matter. Never had a ride any way, except in a street-car. Never had a single chance to drive a horse, even.... What’s the reason some can have everything they want, and others—oh! don’t it make you mad the way things go on in this world?”
Yes, it does make him “mad.” He goes about glum and scowling. (He used to be pleasant enough.) The ripple of his laughter is no longer heard, and he frolics no more with little Karl, who hardly dares approach him, he is so cross. And thus it is that his mother is led to question if he is not well, and thus it is that his father comes to suspect what is the trouble, and to guess the name of the demon that has crept in to disturb their peaceful home, and to vex the bright, ambitious boy he is so proud of. The book he is reading has lost its interest, for hours he scarcely turns a page; and it is a great relief to lay it aside when the consoling little Karl, feeling that something is amiss, climbs sleepily into his arms and lays a velvety cheek against his own.
Meanwhile, there is that wicked demon up-stairs upon the pillow, never ceasing its poisonous whispering, till Rudolph, unable to shake off the tormentor, at last gives way to sobs and tears, thankful that he is alone and in the dark, for he wouldn’t have so much as a ray of daylight catch him crying.
Oh, Rudolph, is there no one to come to you here and drive away that demon, by telling you of all the mighty ones who have risen from humbler stations than yours—aye, climbed, round by round, up the ladder of fortune till they reached the top, admired and applauded by the crowds below—will no one comfort you by telling you of these?
Wait; here comes some one into the room, comes close to the bedside—a stranger. Perhaps he has come for that.... But no; listen to what he says:
“Arise, Rudolph, and accompany me to the palace of the Czar.”
The lad stares in amazement at the speaker—a tall, gaunt personage, wrapped in a black mantle that almost touches the floor, and so conceals the head and face with its ample folds that only the eyes are visible. What black, piercing eyes!—blacker than the mantle. Rudolph stares, and then arises, obedient.
The two travelers are not long in reaching their destination, and Rudolph soon finds himself in the imperial palace, in a great saloon, magnificent beyond comparison with that oak-paneled library he saw some time ago. There is dancing here, and the glittering dresses of the dancers dazzle him, and the music is so delightful it drives him nearly wild. When finally he lifts his dizzy eyes from the whirling throng, he sees, sitting in state at the farther end of the apartment, one who he concludes is the Czar; for all who approach him bow low and speak to him reverently.