THE MAN IN ARMOUR
Next day happened a thing which even still recurs to me in nightmare.
When I came down to breakfast, released from arrest by special
intervention of the Baron, Carl was not there. Gretel said he had caught
a cold from his wetting, and was confined to his room.
Late in the afternoon Eloise and I were in the great library. We had
watched the King depart, the Graf von Bismarck, cigar in mouth,
accompanying him. Carriage after carriage, containing guests, had driven
away; and Eloise and I were pressing our noses against the panes of the
window looking at the park, and speculating on Carl and the condition of
his cold, when the door opened, and Gretel looked in.
"Oh, there you are, children!" cried Gretel. "Well, and what are you
doing with yourselves?"
"Nothing," yawned Eloise, turning from the window. "We have played all
our games, haven't we, Toto?"
"Well you are sure to be getting into mischief if you are left to
yourselves," said the woman. "Come with me, and I will show you a fine
game. It is now a quarter to five. We will go up to the turret and see
the Man in Armour strike the hour."
"Hurrah!" cried I, and Eloise skipped. It was the desire of both our
hearts to see the mysterious Man in Armour close, and watch him strike
the bell.
"Fetch your hats, then, for it is windy in the tower," said Gretel. And
off we went to fetch them.
She led us through a door off the corridor, and up circular stone stairs
that seemed to have no end, till we reached the room where the machinery
was placed that drove the clock and struck the bell.
A ladder from here led us to the topmost chamber, where the iron man
with the iron hammer stood before the iron bell.
This chamber was open to the four winds, and gave a splendid view of the
mountains and the forest, and the lands lying towards Friedrichsdorff
and beyond.
But little cared I for the scenery. I was examining the Man in Armour.
He was taller than a real man, and his head was one huge mass of iron
cast in the form of a morion. Clauss of Innsbruck had made him, and he
struck me with a creepy sensation that was half fear. He stood with his
huge hammer half raised; and the knowledge that at the hour he would
wheel on his pivot and hit the bell vested him with an uncanny
suggestion of life, even though one knew he was dead and made of iron.
"He will not strike for ten minutes," said Gretel. "Gott! how cold it is
here, and how windy! Come, let us play a game of blind-man's buff to
keep ourselves warm."
My small handkerchief was brought into requisition, and Gretel blinded
me, pinning the handkerchief to my képi. "And now," said Gretel, "I will
bind Eloise, and you can try to catch me."
Then we played.
If you had been standing below you might have heard our laughter. I had
just missed Eloise, when I was myself seized from behind by the waist,
and Gretel's voice cried: "Now I've caught you!"
Even as she spoke a deep rumbling came from the machinery-room below.
"Now I've caught you. Now I've caught you!" cried Gretel's voice, that
seemed choking with laughter.
Something like a mighty bird swept past my forehead, tearing the képi
from my head and the handkerchief from my eyes, and flinging me on the
floor with the wind of its passage.
BOOM!
The great hammer of the Man in Armour had struck its first stroke, and
with a thunderous, heart-shattering sound. The great hammer had passed
my head so close that another half inch would have meant death.
BOOM!
I lay paralysed, looking up at the iron figure swinging to its work. He
had nearly killed me, and I knew it. Again the hammer flew towards the
bell.
BOOM!
The tower rocked, and the sound roared through the openings, and the
joints of the iron figure groaned and the arms upflew once more.
BOOM!
And once again, urged by the might of the hammer-man, tremendous,
apocalyptic, and sinister the voice of the great bell burst over the
woods.
BOOM!
The woodmen in the forests of the Taunus corded their bundles and
prepared for home, for five o'clock had struck from the Schloss
Lichtenberg.
At the first stroke, Eloise had sat down on the floor, screaming with
fright at the noise. She was sitting there still, with her eyes
bandaged, when the sound died away.
"What an escape!" cried Gretel, who was white and shaking. "Little boy,
had I not plucked you away, the hammer would have killed you! It would
have killed you had it not been for me!"
But in my heart I knew better than that.
* * * * *
That night I told Joubert of the thing. He said Gretel was a fool.
"Joubert," I said, "I am afraid of this house, and I am afraid of
Gretel; and I want to say my prayers again, please, for I was not
thinking when I said them just now."
I said them again; and Heaven knows I needed them more than any prince
trapped in the ogre's castle of a fairy tale.