FRITZ THE FOOL
As the little wooden clock in the parlour of the inn of The Seven
Liars struck the hour of five, Fritz the Fool ran through the open
door, from which an array of bottles and glasses could be seen, and
cried:
"They are coming--they are coming--the great Advocate and his
lady--and will arrive before the cook can toss me up an omelette!"
And having thus delivered himself, Fritz ran out of the inn to the
House of White Shadows, and swinging open the gates, cried still more
loudly:
"Mother Denise! Dionetta, my pearl of pearls! Haste--haste! They are
on the road, and will be here a lifetime before old Martin can
straighten his crooked back!"
Within five minutes of this summons, there stood at the door of the
inn of The Seven Liars, the customers who had been tippling therein,
the host and hostess and their three children; and ten yards off, at
the gates of the villa. Mother Denise, her pretty granddaughter,
Dionetta, and old Martin, whose breathing came short and quick at the
haste he had made to be in time to welcome the Advocate and his lady.
The refrain of the breaking-up song sung in the little village school
was dying away, and the children trooped out, and waited to witness
the arrival. The schoolmaster was also there, with a look of relief on
his face, and stood with his hand on the head of his favourite pupil.
The news had spread quickly, and when the carriage made its appearance
at the end of the lane, which shelved downward to the House of White
Shadows, a number of villagers had assembled, curious to see the great
lord and lady who intended to reside in the haunted house.
As the carriage drove up at the gates, the courier jumped down from
his seat next to the driver, and opened the carriage door. The
villagers pressed forward, and gazed in admiration at the beautiful
lady, and in awe at the stern-faced gentleman who had selected the
House of White Shadows for a holiday residence. There were those among
them who, poor as they were, would not have undertaken to sleep in any
one of the rooms in the villa for the value of all the watches in
Geneva. There were, however, three persons in the small concourse of
people who had no fears of the house. These were Mother Denise, the
old housekeeper, her husband Martin, and Fritz the Fool.
Mother Denise, the oldest servant of the house, had been born there,
and was ghost and shadow proof; so was her husband, now in his
eighty-fifth year, whose body was like a bent bow stretched for the
flight of the arrow, his soul. Not for a single night in sixty-eight
years had Mother Denise slept outside the walls of the House of White
Shadows; nothing did she know of the great world beyond, and nothing
did she care; a staunch, faithful servant of the Almer family,
conversant with its secret history, her duty was sufficient for her,
and she had no desire to travel beyond the space which encompassed it.
For forty-three years her husband had kept her company, and to
neither, as they had frequently declared, had a supernatural visitant
ever appeared. They had no belief whatever in the ghostly gossip.
Fool Fritz, on the contrary, averred that there was no mistake about
the spiritual visitants; they appeared to him frequently, but he had
no fear of them; indeed, he appeared to rather enjoy them. "They may
come, and welcome," he said. "They don't strike, they don't bite, they
don't burn. They reveal secrets which you would like nobody to find
out. If it had not been for them, how should I have known about Karl
and Mina kissing and courting at the back of the schoolhouse when
everybody was asleep, or about Dame Walther and her sly bottle, or
about Wolf Constans coming home at three in the morning with a dead
lamb on his back--ah, and about many things you try and keep to
yourselves? I don't mind the shadows, not I." There was little in the
village that Fritz did not know; all the scandal, all the love-making,
all the family quarrels, all the secret doings--it was hard to keep
anything from him; and the mystery was how he came to the knowledge of
these matters. "He is in affinity with the spirits," said the village
schoolmaster; "he is himself a ghost, with a fleshly embodiment. That
is why the fool is not afraid." Truly Fritz the Fool was ghostlike in
appearance, for his skin was singularly white, and his head was
covered with shaggy white hair which hung low down upon his shoulders.
From a distance he looked like an old man, but he had not reached his
thirtieth year, and so clear were his eyes and complexion that, on a
closer observance, he might have passed for a lad of half the years he
bore. A shrewd knave, despite his title of fool.
Pretty Dionetta did not share his defiance of ghostly visitors. The
House of White Shadows was her home, and many a night had she awoke in
terror and listened with a beating heart to soft footsteps in the
passage outside her room, and buried her head in the sheets to shut
out the light of the moon which shone in at her window. Fritz alone
sympathised with her. "Two hours before midnight," he would say to
her; "then it was you heard them creeping past your door. You were
afraid, of course--when one is all alone; I can prescribe a remedy for
that--not yet, Dionetta, by-and-by. Till then, keep all men at a
distance; avoid them; there is danger in them. If they look at you,
frown, and lower your eyes. And to-night, when you go to bed, lock
your door tight, and listen. If the spirits come again, I will charm
them away; shortly after you hear their footsteps, I will sing a stave
outside to trick them from your door. Then sleep in peace, and rely on
Fritz the Fool."
Very timid and fearful of the supernatural was this country beauty,
whom all the louts in the neighbourhood wanted to marry, and she
alone, of those who lived in the House of White Shadows, welcomed the
Advocate and his wife with genuine delight. Fool Fritz thought of
secretly-enjoyed pleasures which might now be disturbed, Martin was
too old not to dislike change, and Mother Denise was by no means
prepared to rejoice at the arrival of strangers; she would have been
better pleased had they never shown their faces at the gates.
The Advocate and his wife stood looking around them, he with observant
eyes and in silence, she with undisguised pleasure and admiration. She
began to speak the moment she alighted.
"Charming! beautiful! I am positively in love with it. This morning it
was but a fancy picture, now it is real. Could anything be more
perfect? So peaceful, and quaint, and sweet! Look at those children
peeping from behind their mother's gown--she can be no other than
their mother--dirty, but how picturesque!--and the woman herself, how
original! It is worth while being a woman like that, to stand as she
does, with her children clinging to her. Why does Mr. Almer not like
to live here? It is inexplicable, quite inexplicable. I could be happy
here for ever--yes, for ever! Do you catch the perfume of the limes?
It is delicious--delicious! It comes from the grounds; there must be a
lime-tree walk there. And you," she said to the pretty girl at the
gates, "you are Dionetta."
"Yes, my lady," said Dionetta, and marvelled how her name could have
become known to the beautiful woman, whose face was more lovely than
the face of the Madonna over the altar of the tiny chapel in which she
daily prayed. It was not difficult to divine her thought, for Dionetta
was Nature's child.
"You wonder who told me your name," said the Advocate's wife, smiling,
and patting the girl's cheek with her gloved hand.
"Yes, my lady."
"It was a little bird, Dionetta."
"A little bird, my lady!" exclaimed Dionetta, her wonderment and
admiration growing fast into worship. The lady's graceful figure, her
pink and white face, her pearly teeth, her lovely laughing mouth, her
eyes, blue as the most beautiful summer's cloud--Dionetta had never
seen the like before.
"You," said the Advocate's wife, turning to the grandmother, "are
Mother Denise."
"Yes, my lady," said the old woman; "this is my husband, Martin. Come
forward, Martin, come forward. He is not as young as he was, my lady."
"I know, I know; my little bird was very communicative. You are
Fritz."
"The Fool," said the white-haired young man, approaching closer to the
lady, and consequently closer to Dionetta, "Fritz the Fool. But that
needn't tell against me, unless you please. I can be useful, if I care
to be, and faithful, too, if I care to be."
"It depends upon yourself, then," said the lady, accepting the
independent speech in good part, "not upon others."
"Mainly upon myself; but I have springs that can be set in motion, if
one can only find out how to play upon them. I was told you were
coming."
"Indeed!" with an air of pleasant surprise. "By whom, and when?"
"By whom? The white shadows. When? In my dreams."
"The white shadows! They exist then! Edward, do you hear?"
"It is not so, my lady," interposed Mother Denise, in ill-humour at
the turn the conversation was taking; "the shadows do not exist,
despite what people say. Fritz is over-fond of fooling."
"It is my trade," retorted Fritz. "I know what I know, grandmother."
"Is Fritz your grandson, then?" asked the Advocate's wife, of Mother
Denise.
"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Mother Denise.
"What is not," remarked Fritz sententiously, "may be. Bear that in
mind, grandmother; I may remind you of it one day."
The Advocate, upon whom not a word that had passed had been lost,
fixed his eyes upon Fritz, and said:
"A delusion can be turned to profit. You make use of these shadows."
"The saints forbid! They would burn me in brimstone. Yet," with a look
both sly and vacant, "it would be a pity to waste them."
"You like to be called a fool. It pleases you."
"Why not?"
"Why, rather?"
"I might answer in your own words, that it can be turned to profit.
But I am too great a fool to see in what way."
"You answer wisely. Why do you close your eyes?"
"I can see in the dark what I choose to see. When my eyes are open, I
am their slave. When they are closed, they are mine--unless I dream."
The Advocate gazed for a moment or two in silence upon the white face
with its closed eyes raised to his, and then said to his wife:
"Come, Adelaide, we will look at the house."
They passed into the grounds, accompanied by Mother Denise, Martin,
and Dionetta. Fritz remained outside the gate, with his eyes still
closed, and a smile upon his lips.
"Fritz," said the host of the inn of The Seven Liars, "do you know
anything of the great man?"
Fritz rubbed his brows softly and opened his eyes.
"Take the advice of a fool, Peter Schelt. Speak low when you speak of
him."
"You think he can hear us. Why, he is a hundred yards off by this
time!"
Fritz pointed with a waving finger to the air above him.
"There are magnetic lines, neighbours, connecting him with everything
he once sets eyes on. He can see without seeing, and hear without
hearing."
"You speak in riddles, Fritz."
"Put it down to your own dulness, Peter Schelt, that you cannot
understand me. Master Lamont, now--what would you say about him? That
he lacks brains?"
"A long way from it. Master Lamont is the cleverest man in the
valley."
"Not now," said Fritz, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder in
the direction taken by the Advocate; "his master has come. Master
Lamont is a great lawyer, but we have now a greater, one who is a more
skilful cobbler with his tongue than Hans here is with his awl; he can
so patch an old boot as to make it better than a new one, and look as
close as you may, you will not see the seams. Listen, Master Schelt.
When I stood there with my eyes shut I had a dream of a stranger who
was found murdered in your house. An awful dream, Peter. Gather round,
neighbours, gather round. There lay the stranger dead on his bed, and
over him stood you, Peter Schelt, with a bloody knife in your hand.
People say you murdered him for his money, and it really seemed so,
for a purse stuffed with gold and notes was found in your possession;
you had the stranger's silver watch, too. Suspicious, was it not? It
was looking so black against you that you begged the great man who has
come among us to plead for you at your trial. You were safe enough,
then. He told a rare tale. Forty years ago the stranger robbed your
father; suddenly he was struck with remorse, and seeking you out, gave
you back the money, and his silver watch in the bargain. He proved to
everybody's satisfaction that, though you committed the murder, it was
impossible you could be guilty. Don't be alarmed, Madame Schelt, it
was only a dream."
"But are you sure I did it?" asked Peter Schelt, in no way disturbed
by the bad light in which he was placed by Fritz's fancies.
"What matters? The great man got you off, and that is all you cared
for. Look here, neighbours; if any of you have black goats that you
wish changed into white, go to him; he can do it for you. Or an old
hen that cackles and won't lay, go to him; she will cackle less, and
lay you six eggs a day. He is, of all, the greatest."
"Ah," said a neighbour, "and what do you know of his lady wife?"
"What all of you should know, but cannot see, though it stares you in
the face."
"Let us have it, Fritz."
"She is too fair. Christine," to a stout young woman close to him,
"give thanks to the Virgin to-night that you were sent into the world
with a cast in your eye, and that your legs grow thicker and crookeder
every day. _You_ will never drive a man out of his senses with your
beauty."
Fritz was compelled to beat a swift retreat, for Christine's arms were
as thick as her legs, and they were raised to smite. Up the lane flew
the fool, and Christine after him, amid the laughter of the villagers.