The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales by Various

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This was the story as he tells it: His brother Morten--truly a son of
Belial--cherished a deadly hatred toward pastor Soeren Quist since the
day the latter had refused him the hand of his daughter. As soon as he
heard that the pastor's coachman had left him, he persuaded Niels to
take the place.

"Watch your chance well," he had said, "we'll play the black coat a
trick some day, and you will be no loser by it."

Niels, who was rough and defiant by nature, soon came to a quarrel
with his master, and when he had received his first chastisement, he
ran at once to Ingvorstrup to report it. "Let him strike you just once
again," said Morten. "Then come to me, and we will pay him for it."

Then came the quarrel in the garden, and Niels ran off to Ingvorstrup.
He met his brother in the woods and told him what had occurred.

"Did anyone see you on the way here?" asked Morten.

Niels thought not. "Good," said Morten; "now we'll give him a fright
that he will not forget for a week or so."

He led Niels carefully to the house, and kept him hidden there the
rest of the day. When all the household else had gone to sleep the two
brothers crept out, and went to a field where several days before they
had buried the body of a man of about Niels' age, size, and general
appearance. (He had hanged himself, some said because of ill-treatment
from Morten, in whose service he was. Others said it was because of
unhappy love.) They dug up the corpse, although Niels did not like the
work, and protested. But Morten was the stronger, and Niels had to do
as he was ordered. They carried the body back with them into the
house.

Then Niels was ordered to take off all his clothes, piece by piece,
even to his shirt, and dress the dead man in them. Even his leaden
earring, which he had worn for many years, was put in the ear of the
corpse. After this was done, Morten took a spade and gave the head of
the corpse two crashing blows, one over the nose, the other on the
temple. The body was hidden in a sack and kept in the house during the
next day. At night the day following, they carried it out to the wood
near Veilbye.

Several times Niels had asked of his brother what all this preparation
boded. But Morten answered only, "That is my affair. Do as I tell you,
and don't ask questions."

When they neared the edge of the wood by Veilbye, Morten said, "Now
fetch me one of the coats the pastor wears most. If you can, get the
green dressing gown I have often seen him wear mornings."

"I don't dare," said Niels, "he keeps it in his bed chamber."

"Well, then, I'll dare it myself," said Morten. "And now, go your way,
and never show yourself here again. Here is a bag with one hundred
thalers. They will last you until you can take service somewhere in
another country. Go where no one has ever seen you, and take another
name. Never come back to Denmark again. Travel by night, and hide in
the woods by day until you are well away from here. Here are
provisions enough to last you for several days. And remember, never
show yourself here again, as you value your life."

Niels obeyed, and has never seen his brother since that day. He had
had much trouble, had been a soldier and lost his health in the war,
and finally, after great trials and sufferings, had managed to get
back to the land of his birth. This was the story as told me by the
miserable man, and I could not doubt its truth.

It was now only too clear to me that my unfortunate brother in the
Lord had fallen a victim to the hatred of his fiendish enemy, to the
delusion of his judge and the witnesses, and to his own credulous
imagination.

Oh, what is man that he shall dare to sit in judgment over his
fellows! God alone is the Judge. He who gives life may alone give
death!

I did not feel it my duty to give official information against this
crushed and broken sinner, particularly as the district judge is still
alive, and it would have been cruelty to let him know of his terrible
error.

Instead, I gave what comfort my office permitted to the poor man, and
recommended him not to reveal his name or tell his story to anyone in
the district. On these conditions I would give him a home until I
could arrange for a permanent refuge for him in my brother's house, a
good distance from these parts.

The day following was a Sunday. When I returned from evening service
at my branch parish, the beggar had disappeared. But by the evening of
the next day the story was known throughout the neighborhood.

Goaded by the pangs of conscience, Niels had gone to Rosmer and made
himself known to the judge as the true Niels Bruus. Upon the hearing
of the terrible truth, the judge was taken with a stroke and died
before the week was out. But on Tuesday morning they found Niels Bruus
dead on the grave of the late rector Soeren Quist of Veilbye, by the
door of Aalsoe church.

_HUNGARIAN MYSTERY STORIES_

FERENCZ MOLNAR

_THE LIVING DEATH_

There is a very serious reason, my dear sisters, why at last, after an
absence of twenty years in America, I am confiding to you this strange
secret in the life of our beloved and lamented father, and of the old
house where we were children together. The truth is, if I read rightly
the countenances of my physicians as they whisper to each other by the
window of the chamber in which I am lying, that only a few days of
this life remain to me.

It is not right that this secret should die with me, my dear sisters.
Though it will seem terrible to you, as it has to me, it will enable
you to better understand our blessed father, help you to account for
what must have seemed to you to be strange inconsistencies in his
character. That this secret was revealed to me was due to my indolence
and childish curiosity.

For the first, and the last, time in my life I listened at a keyhole.
With shame and a hotly chiding conscience I yielded to that insatiable
curiosity--and when you have read these lines you will understand why
I do not regret that inexcusable, furtive act.

I was only a lad when we went to live in that odd little house. You
remember it stood in the outskirts of Rakos, near the new cemetery. It
stood on a deep lot, and was roughly boarded on the side which looked
on the highway. You remember that on the first floor, next the street,
were the room of our father, the dining room, and the children's room.
In the rear of the house was the sculpture studio. There we had the
large white hall with big windows, where white-clothed laborers
worked. They mixed the plaster, made forms, chiseled, scratched, and
sawed. Here in this large hall had our father worked for thirty years.

When I arrived, in the holidays, I noted a change in our father's
countenance. His beard was white, even when he did not work with the
plaster. Through his strong spectacles his eyes glittered peculiarly.
He was less calm than formerly. And he did not speak much, but all the
more did he read.

Why, we all knew that after the passing away of our mother he became a
bookworm, reading very often by candlelight until morning.

Then did it happen, about the fourth day after my arrival. I spent my
leisure hours in the studio; I carved little figures, formed little
pillar heads from the white plaster. In the corner a big barrel stood
filled with water. It was noon; the laborers went to lunch.

I sat down close to the barrel and carved a Corinthian pillar. Father
came into the studio and did not notice me. He carried in his hands
two plates of soup. When he came into the studio he closed the door
behind him and looked around in the shop, as though to make sure he
was not observed. As I have said, he did not notice me. I was
astonished. Holding my breath, I listened. Father went through the
large hall, and then opened a small door, of which I knew only so much
that it led into a chamber three steps lower than the studio.

I was full of expectation. I listened. I did not hear a word of
conversation. Presently father came back with the empty plates in his
hand. Somebody bolted the chamber's door behind him.

Father went out of the studio, and I, much embarrassed, crept from
behind the barrel.

I knew that the chamber had a window, which looked back toward the
plowed fields. I ran out of the studio and around the house. Much to
my astonishment, the chamber's window was curtained inside. A large
yellow plaid curtain hid everything from view. But I had to go,
anyway, for I heard Irma's voice calling from the yard:

"Antal, to lunch!"

I sat down to the table with you, my sisters, and looked at father. He
was sitting at the head of the table, and ate without saying a word.

Day after day I troubled my head about this mystery in the chamber,
but said not a word to anybody. I went into the studio, as usual, but
I did not notice anything peculiar. Not a sound came from the chamber,
and when our father worked in the shop with his ten laborers he passed
by the small door as if beyond it there was nothing out of the
ordinary.

On Thursday I had to go back to Germany. On Tuesday night curiosity
seized me again. Suddenly I felt that perhaps never would I know what
was going on in my father's house. That night, when the working people
were gone, I went into the studio. For a long time I was lost in my
thoughts. All kinds of romantic ideas passed through my head, while my
gaze rested on that small mysterious chamber door.

In the studio it was dark already, and from under the small door in a
thin border a yellow radiance poured out. Suddenly I regained my
courage. I went to the door and listened. Somebody was speaking. It
was a man's voice, but I did not understand what he was saying. I was
putting my ear close to the door, when I heard steps at the front of
the studio. Father came.

I quickly withdrew myself behind the barrel. Father walked through the
hall and knocked on the door softly. The bolt clicked and the door
opened. Father went into the chamber and closed the door immediately
and locked it.

Now all discretion and sense of honor in me came to an end. Curiosity
mastered me. I knew that last year one part of this small room had
been partitioned off and was used as a woodhouse. And I knew that
there was a possibility of going into the woodhouse through the yard.

I went out, therefore, but found the woodhouse was closed. Driven by
trembling curiosity, I ran into the house, took the key of the
woodhouse from its nail, and in a minute, through the crevice between
two planks, I was looking into that mysterious little room.

There was a table in the middle of the room, and beside the wall were
two straw mattresses. On the table a lighted candle stood. A bottle of
wine was beside it, and around the table were sitting father and two
strangers. Both the strangers were all in black. Something in their
appearance froze me with terror.

I fled in a panic of unreasoning fear, but returned soon, devoured by
curiosity.

You, my sister Irma, must remember how I found you there, gazing with
starting eyeballs on the same mysteriously terrifying scene--and how I
drew you away with a laugh and a trifling explanation, so that I might
return and resume my ghastly vigil alone.

One of the strangers wore a frock coat and had a sunburned, brown
face. He was not old yet, not more than forty-five or forty-eight. He
seemed to be a tradesman in his Sunday clothes. That did not interest
me much.

I looked at the other old man, and then a shiver of cold went through
me. He was a famous physician, a professor, Mr. H----. I desire to lay
stress upon it that he it was, for I had read two weeks before in the
papers that he had died and was buried!

And now he was sitting, in evening dress, in the chamber of a poor
plaster sculptor, in the chamber of my father behind a bolted door!

I was aware of the fact that the physician knew father. Why, you can
recall that when father had asthma he consulted Mr. H----. Moreover,
the professor visited us very frequently. The papers said he was dead,
yet here he was!

With beating heart and in terror, I looked and listened.

The professor put some shining little thing on the table.

"Here is my diamond shirt stud," he said to my father, "It is yours."

Father pushed the jewel aside, refusing the gift.

"Why, you are spending money on me," said the professor.

"It makes no difference," replied father; "I shan't take the diamond."

Then they were silent for a long while. At length the professor smiled
and said:

"The pair of cuff buttons which I had from Prince Eugene I presented
to the watchman in the cemetery. They are worth a thousand guldens."

And he showed his cuffs, from which the buttons were missing. Then he
turned to the sunburned man:

"What did you give him, General Gardener?"

The tall, strong man unbuttoned his frock coat.

"Everything I had--my gold chain, my scarf pin, and my ring."

I did not understand all that. What was it? Where did they come from?
A horrible presentiment arose in me. They came from the cemetery! They
wore the very clothes in which they were buried!

What had happened to them? Were they only apparently dead? Did they
awake? Did they rise from the dead? What are they seeking here?

They had a very low-voiced conversation with father. I listened in
vain. Only later on, when they got warmed with their subject and spoke
more audibly, did I understand them.

"There is no other way," said the professor. "Put it in your will that
the coroner shall pierce your heart through with a knife."

Do you remember, my sisters, the last will of our father, which was
thus executed?

Father did not say a word. Then the professor went on, saying:

"That would be a splendid invention. Had I been living till now I
would have published a book about it. Nobody takes the Indian fakir
seriously here in Europe. But, despite this, the buried fakirs, who
are two months under ground and then come back into life, are very
serious men. Perhaps they are more serious than ourselves, with all
our scientific knowledge. There are strange, new, dreadful things for
which we are not yet matured enough.

"I died upon their methods; I can state that now. The mental state
which they reach systematically I reached accidentally. The solitude,
the absorbedness, the lying in a bed month by month, the gazing upon a
fixed point hour by hour--these are all self-evident facts with me, a
deserted misanthrope.

"I died as the Indian fakirs do, and were I not a descendant of an old
noble family, who have a tomb in this country, I would have died
really.

"God knows how it happened. I don't think there is any use of worrying
ourselves about it. I have still four days. Then we go for good and
all. But not back, no, no, not back to life!"

He pointed with his hand toward the city. His face was burning from
fever, and he knitted his brows. His countenance was horrible at this
moment. Then he looked at the man with the sunburned face.

"The case of Mr. Gardener is quite different. This is an ordinary
physician's error. But he has less than four days. He will be gone
to-morrow or positively day after to-morrow."

He grasped the pulse of the sunburned man.

"At this minute his pulse beats a hundred and twelve. You have a day
left, Mr. Gardener. But not back. We don't go back. Never!"

Father said nothing. He looked at the professor with seriousness, and
fondly. The professor drank a glass of wine, and then turned toward
father.

"Go to bed. You have to get up early; you still live; you have
children. We shall sleep if we can do so. It is very likely that
General Gardener won't see another morning. You must not witness
that."

Now father began to speak, slowly, reverently.

"If you, professor, have to send word--or perhaps Mr.
Gardener--somebody we must take care of--a command, if you have--"

The professor looked at him sternly, saying but one word:

"Nothing."

Father was still waiting.

"Absolutely nothing," repeated the professor. "I have died, but I have
four days yet. I live those here, my dear old friend, with you. But I
don't go back any more. I don't even turn my face backward. I don't
want to know where the others live. I don't want life, old man. It is
not honorable to go back. Go, my friend--go to bed."

Father shook hands with them and disappeared. General Gardener sat
stiffly on his chair. The professor gazed into the air.

I began to be aware of all that had happened here. These two
apparently dead men had come back from the cemetery, but how, in what
manner, by what means? I don't understand it perfectly even now.
There, in the small room, near to the cemetery, they were living their
few remaining days. They did not want to go back again into life.

I shuddered. During these few minutes I seemed to have learned the
meaning of life and of death. Now I myself felt that the life of the
city was at a vast distance. I had a feeling that the professor was
right. It was not worth while. I, too, felt tired, tired of life, like
the professor, the feverish, clever, serious old man who came from the
coffin and was sitting there in his grave clothes waiting for the
final death.

They did not speak a word to each other. They were simply waiting. I
did not have power to move away from the crack in the wall through
which I saw them.

And now there happened the awful thing that drove me away from our
home, never to return.

It was about half-past one when someone tapped on the window. The
professor took alarm and looked at Mr. Gardener a warning to take no
notice. But the tapping grew louder. The professor got up and went to
the window.

He lifted the yellow curtain and looked out into the night. Quickly he
returned and spoke to General Gardener, and then both went to the
window and spoke with the person who had knocked. After a long
conversation they lifted the man through the window.

On this terrible day nothing could happen that would surprise me. I
was benumbed. The man who was lifted through the window was clad in
white linen to his feet. He was a Hebrew, a poor, thin, weak, pale
Hebrew. He wore his white funeral dress. He shivered from cold,
trembled, seemed almost unconscious. The professor gave him some wine.
The Hebrew stammered:

"Terrible! Oh, horrible!"

I learned from his broken language that he had not been buried yet,
like the professor. He had not yet known the smell of the earth. He
had come from his bier.

"I was laid out a corpse," he whimpered. "My God, they would have
buried me by to-morrow!"

The professor gave him wine again.

"I saw a light here," he went on. "I beg you will give me some
clothes--some soup, if you please--and I am going back again." Then he
said in German:

"Meine gute, theure Frau! Meine Kinder!" (My good wife, my children.)

He began to weep. The professor's countenance changed to a devilish
expression when he heard this lament. He despised the lamenting
Hebrew.

"You are going back?" he thundered. "But you won't go back! Don't
shame yourself!"

The Hebrew gazed at him stupidly.

"I live in Rottenbiller Street," he stammered. "My name is Joseph
Braun."

He bit his nails in his nervous agitation. Tears filled his eyes. "Ich
muss zu meine Kinder," he said in German again. (I must go to my
children.)

"No!" exclaimed the professor. "You'll never go back!"

"But why?"

"I will not permit it!"

The Hebrew looked around. He felt that something was wrong here. His
startled manner seemed to ask: "Am I in a lunatic asylum?" He dropped
his head and said to the professor simply:

"I am tired."

The professor pointed to the straw mattress.

"Go to sleep. We will speak further in the morning."

Fever blazed in the professor's face. On the other straw mattress
General Gardener now slept with his face to the wall.

The Hebrew staggered to the straw mattress, threw himself down, and
wept. The weeping shook him terribly. The professor sat at the table
and smiled.

Finally the Hebrew fell asleep. Hours passed in silence. I stood
motionless looking at the professor, who gazed into the candlelight.
There was not much left of it. Presently he sighed and blew it out.
For a little while there was dark, and then I saw the dawn penetrating
the yellow curtain at the window. The professor leaned back in his
chair, stretched out his feet, and closed his eyes.

All at once the Hebrew got up silently and went to the window. He
believed the professor was asleep. He opened the window carefully and
started to creep out. The professor leaped from his chair, shouting:

"No!"

He caught the Hebrew by his shroud and held him back. There was a long
knife in his hand. Without another word, the professor pierced the
Hebrew through the heart.

He put the limp body on the straw mattress, then went out of the
chamber toward the studio. In a few minutes he came back with father.
Father was pale and did not speak. They covered the dead Hebrew with a
rug, and then, one after the other, crept out through the window,
lifted the corpse out, and carried it away. In a quarter of an hour
they came back. They exchanged a few words, from which I learned that
they had succeeded in putting the dead Hebrew back on his bier without
having been observed.

They shut the window. The professor drank a glass of wine and again
stretched out his legs on the chair.

"It is impossible to go back," he said. "It is not allowed."

Father went away. I did not see him any more. I staggered up to my
room, went to bed, and slept immediately. The next day I got up at ten
o'clock. I left the city at noon.

Since that time, my dear sisters, you have not seen me. I don't know
anything more. At this minute I say to myself that what I know, what I
have set down here, is not true. Maybe it never happened, maybe I have
dreamed it all. I am not clear in my mind. I have a fever.

But I am not afraid of death. Here, on my hospital bed, I see the
professor's feverish but calm and wise face. When he grasped the
Hebrew by the throat he looked like a lover of Death, like one who has
a secret relation with the passing of life, who advocates the claims
of Death, and who punishes him who would cheat Death.

Now Death urges his claim upon me. I have no desire to cheat him--I am
so tired, so very tired.

God be with you, my dear sisters.

MAURUS JOKAI

_THIRTEEN AT TABLE_

We are far amidst the snow-clad mountains of Transylvania.

The scenery is magnificent. In clear weather, the plains of Hungary as
far as the Rez promontory may be seen from the summit of the
mountains. Groups of hills rise one above the other, covered with
thick forest, which, at the period when our tale commences, had just
begun to assume the first light green of spring.

Toward sunset, a slight purple mist overspread the farther pinnacles,
leaving their ridges still tinged with gold. On the side of one of
these hills the white turrets of an ancient family mansion gleamed
from amid the trees.

Its situation was peculiarly romantic. A steep rock descended on one
side, on whose pinnacle rose a simple cross. In the depth of the
valley beneath lay a scattered village, whose evening bells
melodiously broke the stillness of nature.

Farther off, some broken roofs arose among the trees, from whence the
sound of the mill, and the yellow-tinted stream, betrayed the miners'
dwellings.

Through the meadows in the valley beneath a serpentine rivulet wound
its silvery way, interrupted by numerous falls and huge blocks of
stone, which had been carried down in bygone ages from the mountains
during the melting of the snows.

A little path, cut in the side of the rock, ascended to the castle;
while higher up, a broad road, somewhat broken by the mountain
streams, conducted across the hills to more distant regions.

The castle itself was an old family mansion, which had received many
additions at different periods, as the wealth or necessities of the
family suggested.

It was surrounded by groups of ancient chestnut trees, and the terrace
before the court was laid out in gardens, which were now filled with
anemones, hyacinths, and other early flowers. Now and then the head of
a joyous child appeared at the windows, which were opened to admit the
evening breeze; while various members of the household retinue were
seen hastening through the corridors, or standing at the doors in
their embroidered liveries.

The castle was completely surrounded by a strong railwork of iron, the
stone pillars were overgrown by the evergreen leaves of the gobea and
epomoea.

It was the early spring of 1848.

A party, consisting of thirteen persons, had assembled in the
dining-room. They were all members of one family, and all bore the
name of Bardy.

At the head of the board sat the grandmother, an old lady of eighty
years of age, whose snow-white hair was dressed according to the
fashion of her times beneath her high white cap. Her face was pale and
much wrinkled, and the eyes turned constantly upwards, as is the case
with persons who have lost their sight. Her hand and voice trembled
with age, and there was something peculiarly striking in the thick
snow-white eyebrows.

On her right hand sat her eldest son, Thomas Bardy, a man of between
fifty and sixty. With a haughty and commanding countenance,
penetrating glance, lofty figure, and noble mien, he was a true type
of that ancient aristocracy which is now beginning to die out.

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