THE DEATH OF VOGEL
"Joubert, what is father doing?"
"He is playing cards down below with the gentlemen."
I was undressing to go to bed that same night, and Joubert was
expediting my movements, anxious, most likely, to go downstairs and
drink with the house-steward.
"Joubert, I wish he were here."
"Why?"
"I don't know; but I am frightened."
"Of what?"
"I don't know."
Joubert blew out the light and left the room, and I lay looking at the
shadows the furniture made on the wall by the dim glimmer of the
nightlight.
The door leading to my father's room was open. This did not give me any
comfort--rather the reverse; for the next room was in darkness, and I
could not help imagining faces peeping at me from the darkness.
When frightened at night like this, I generally told myself fairy tales
to keep away the terrors.
I tried this to-night with a bad result, for the attempt instantly
brought up Vogel and the old woman who lived in the wood.
Now, there was something in this fairy tale that my heart knew to be
evil and malign. What this something was I could not tell, but it was
there, and the story did not bring me any peace.
The clock in the turret struck ten, and I saw vividly the Man in Armour
up there alone in the dark, wheeling to his work.
There was something terrific in this iron man. A live tiger was a thing
to me less fearful. Not for worlds would I have gone up alone to watch
him at his work, even at a safe distance. The fact that the hammer had
nearly killed me did not contribute much to this fear. I knew that was
not his fault. I was terrified by Him.
Then I fell thinking of my promise to little Carl to give him Marengo,
and, thinking of this, I fell asleep.
At least, I closed my eyes and entered a world of vague shapes. And then
I entered a wood. The cottage of the old woman who made the whistles was
before me. It had a window on either side of the door, and in one window
there were jars of sugar-sticks.
I knocked at the door. It flew open, and there stood Vogel, the jäger
with the hooked nose. He smilingly beckoned me in. I entered, and, hey
presto! his smile vanished with the closing of the door, and I was on a
bed, and he was smothering me with a pillow. And then I awoke, and I was
in bed and I was being smothered by a pillow.
Oh, horror! Oh, the horror of that waking! Someone was lying upon me; a
pillow was over my face, crushing it! I shrieked, and my shriek did not
go an inch beyond my mouth. My nose was crushed flat; my mouth, opening
to scream, could not close again. The pillow bulged in, and then, flung
away like a feather by the wind, went the form that was crushing me and
the pillow that was smothering me; and shriek upon shriek--the most
horrid, the most unearthly, the most soul-sickening--shriek after shriek
tore the air; and, jumping upon my feet, standing on the bed with arms
outspread, I gazed on the sight before me, adding my thin voice to the
outcries that were piercing the schloss from cellar to turret.
On the floor, lit for my view by the halfpenny nightlight calmly burning
in its little dish, Marengo and a man were at war--and the victory was
with Marengo. The great dog had got the man by the back of the neck. The
man, face down, was drumming on the floor with his fists and feet, just
as you see an angry child in a fit of passion.
The dog was dumb, and making mighty efforts to turn the man on his face.
He lifted him, he shifted him, he dragged him hither and thither. The
man, screaming, knew what the dog wanted, and clung to the floor.
Suddenly the dog sprang away, and, like a flash of lightning, sprang
back. He had got the throat-hold, and a deep gobbling, worrying sound
was the end of the man and his hunting for ever.
For the man was Vogel. I saw that, and then I saw nothing more.