Jezebel's Daughter Part 48

The next dose of brandy fired Jack's excitable brain with a new idea. He fell on his knees at the table, and clasped his hands in a sudden fervor of devotion. "Silence!" he commanded sternly. "Your wine's only a poor devil. Your drinkable gold is a G.o.d. Take your cap off, Schwartz--I'm worshipping drinkable gold!"

Schwartz, highly diverted, threw his cap up to the ceiling. "Drinkable gold, ora pro n.o.bis!" he shouted, profanely adapting himself to Jack's humor. "You shall be Pope, my boy--and I'll be the Pope's butler. Allow me to help your sacred majesty back to your chair."

Jack's answer betrayed another change in him. His tones were lofty; his manner was distant. "I prefer the floor," he said; "hand me down my mug."

As he reached up to take it, the alarm-bell over the door caught his eye.

Debased as he was by the fiery strength of the drink, his ineradicable love for his mistress made its n.o.ble influence felt through the coa.r.s.e fumes that were mounting to his brain. "Stop!" he cried. "I must be where I can see the bell--I must be ready for her, the instant it rings."

He crawled across the floor, and seated himself with his back against the wall of one of the empty cells, on the left-hand side of the room.

Schwartz, shaking his fat sides with laughter, handed down the cup to his guest. Jack took no notice of it. His eyes, reddened already by the brandy, were fixed on the bell opposite to him. "I want to know about it," he said. "What's that steel thing there, under the bra.s.s cover?"

"What's the use of asking?" Schwartz replied, returning to his bottle.

"I want to know!"

"Patience, Jack--patience. Follow my fore-finger. My hand seems to shake a little; but it's as honest a hand as ever was. That steel thing there, is the bell hammer, you know. And, bless your heart, the hammer's everything. Cost, Lord knows how much. Another toast, my son. Good luck to the bell!"

Jack changed again; he began to cry. "She's sleeping too long on that sofa, in there," he said sadly. "I want her to speak to me; I want to hear her scold me for drinking in this horrid place. My heart's all cold again. Where's the mug?" He found it, as he spoke; the fire of the brandy went down his throat once more, and lashed him into frantic high spirits.

"I'm up in the clouds!" he shouted; "I'm riding on a whirlwind. Sing, Schwartz! Ha! there are the stars twinkling through the skylight! Sing the stars down from heaven!"

Schwartz emptied his bottle, without the ceremony of using the gla.s.s.

"Now we are primed!" he said--"now for the mad watchman's song!" He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the paper from the table, and roared out hoa.r.s.ely the first verse:

The moon was shining, cold and bright, In the Frankfort Deadhouse, on New Year's night And I was the watchman, left alone, While the rest to feast and dance were gone; I envied their lot, and cursed my own-- Poor me!

"Chorus, Jack! 'I envied their lot and cursed my own'----"

The last words of the verse were lost in a yell of drunken terror.

Schwartz started out of his chair, and pointed, panic-stricken, to the lower end of the room. "A ghost!" he screamed. "A ghost in black, at the door!"

Jack looked round, and burst out laughing. "Sit down again, you old fool," he said. "It's only Mrs. Housekeeper. We are singing, Mrs.

Housekeeper! You haven't heard my voice yet--I'm the finest singer in Germany."

Madame Fontaine approached him humbly. "You have a kind heart, Jack--I am sure you will help me," she said. "Show me how to get out of this frightful place."

"The devil take you!" growled Schwartz, recovering himself. "How did you get in?"

"She's a witch!" shouted Jack. "She rode in on a broomstick--she crept in through the keyhole. Where's the fire? Let's take her downstairs, and burn her!"

Schwartz applied himself to the brandy-flask, and began to laugh again.

"There never was such good company as Jack," he said, in his oiliest tones. "You can't get out to-night, Mrs. Witch. The gates are locked--and they don't trust me with the key. Walk in, ma'am. Plenty of accommodation for you, on that side of the room where Jack sits. We are slack of guests for the grave, to-night. Walk in."

She renewed her entreaties. "I'll give you all the money I have about me!

Who can I go to for the key? Jack! Jack! speak for me!"

"Go on with the song!" cried Jack.

She appealed again in her despair to Schwartz. "Oh, sir, have mercy on me! I fainted, out there--and, when I came to myself, I tried to open the gates--and I called, and called, and n.o.body heard me."

Schwartz's sense of humor was tickled by this. "If you could bellow like a bull," he said, "n.o.body would hear you. Take a seat, ma'am."

"Go on with the song!" Jack reiterated. "I'm tired of waiting."

Madame Fontaine looked wildly from one to the other of them. "Oh, G.o.d, I'm locked in with an idiot and a drunkard!" The thought of it maddened her as it crossed her mind. Once more, she fled from the room. Again, and again, in the outer darkness, she shrieked for help.

Schwartz advanced staggering towards the door, with Jack's empty chair in his hand. "Perhaps you'll be able to pipe a little higher, ma'am, if you come back, and sit down? Now for the song, Jack!"

He burst out with the second verse:

Backwards and forwards, with silent tread, I walked on my watch by the doors of the dead.

And I said, It's hard, on this New Year, While the rest are dancing to leave me here, Alone with death and cold and fear-- Poor me!

"Chorus, Jack! Chorus, Mrs. Housekeeper! Ho! ho! look at her! She can't resist the music--she has come back to us already. What can we do for you, ma'am? The flask's not quite drained yet. Come and have a drink."

She had returned, recoiling from the outer darkness and silence, giddy with the sickening sense of faintness which was creeping over her again.

When Schwartz spoke she advanced with tottering steps. "Water!" she exclaimed, gasping for breath. "I'm faint--water! water!"

"Not a drop in the place, ma'am! Brandy, if you like?"

"I forbid it!" cried Jack, with a peremptory sign of the hand. "Drinkable gold is for us--not for her!"

The gla.s.s of wine which Schwartz had prevented him from drinking caught his notice. To give Madame Fontaine her own "remedy," stolen from her own room, was just the sort of trick to please Jack in his present humor. He pointed to the gla.s.s, and winked at the watchman. After a momentary hesitation, Schwartz's muddled brain absorbed the new idea. "Here's a drop of wine left, ma'am," he said. "Suppose you try it?"

She leaned one hand on the table to support herself. Her heart sank lower and lower; a cold perspiration bedewed her face. "Quick! quick!" she murmured faintly. She seized the gla.s.s, and emptied it eagerly to the last drop.

Schwartz and Jack eyed her with malicious curiosity. The idea of getting away was still in her mind. "I think I can walk now," she said. "For G.o.d's sake, let me out!"

"Haven't I told you already? I can't get out myself."

At that brutal answer, she shrank back. Slowly and feebly she made her way to the chair, and dropped on it.

"Cheer up, ma'am!" said Schwartz. "You shall have more music to help you--you shall hear how the mad watchman lost his wits. Another drop of the drinkable gold, Jack. A dram for you and a dram for me--and here goes!" He roared out the last verses of the song:--

Any company's better than none, I said: If I can't have the living, I'd like the dead.

In one terrific moment more, The corpse-bell rang at each cell door, The moonlight shivered on the floor-- Poor me!

The curtains gaped; there stood a ghost, On every threshold, as white as frost, You called us, they shrieked, and we gathered soon; Dance with your guests by the New Year's moon!

I danced till I dropped in a deadly swoon-- Poor me!

And since that night I've lost my wits, And I shake with ceaseless ague-fits: For the ghosts they turned me cold as stone, On that New Year's night when the white moon shone, And I walked on my watch, all, all alone-- Poor me!

And, oh, when I lie in my coffin-bed, Heap thick the earth above my head!

Or I shall come back, and dance once more, With frantic feet on the Deadhouse floor, And a ghost for a partner at every door-- Poor me!

The night had cleared. While Schwartz was singing, the moon shone in at the skylight. At the last verse of the song, a ray of the cold yellow light streamed across Jack's face. The fire of the brandy leapt into flame--the madness broke out in him, with a burst of its by-gone fury. He sprang, screaming, to his feet.

"The moon!" he shouted--"the mad watchman's moon! The mad watchman himself is coming back. There he is, sliding down on the slanting light!

Do you see the brown earth of the grave dropping from him, and the rope round his neck? Ha! how he skips, and twists, and twirls! He's dancing again with the dead ones. Make way there! I mean to dance with them too.

Come on, mad watchman--come on! I'm as mad as you are!"