Doctor Faustus (75 page)

Else and Clementine Schweigestill told me that Nepomuk was the best, most biddable, untroublesome child they had ever seen—which agreed with the stories of his earliest days. Actually I have known him to weep when he hurt himself, but never howl or roar or blubber as unruly children do. It would have been unthinkable. If he were forbidden, as for instance at an inconvenient time, to go with the stable-boy to the horses, or with Waltpurgis into the cow-stalls, he would assent to the verdict quite readily and even say: “In a little while, maybe tomorrow or next day,” in a tone meant to console the grown-ups who, certainly against their will, had denied the request. Yes, he would even pat the disappointed one as though to say: “Don’t take it to heart! Next time you won’t have to refuse, maybe you can let me.”

It was the same when he could not go to Adrian in the Abbot’s room. He was much drawn to his uncle, even in the first two weeks; by the time I got there it was plain that he clung especially to Adrian and wanted to be with him. Of course this was partly because it was the unusual, a treat, while the society of the women was a commonplace. Yet how could it have escaped him that this man, his mother’s brother, occupied among the rustics of Pfeiffering a unique, honoured, even rather intimidating place? And their respectful bearing must also make the boy eager to be with his uncle. But one cannot say that Adrian met the little boy halfway. Whole days might go by and he would not see him, would deny himself the undoubtedly beloved sight. Then again they would spend long hours together; taking walks hand in hand as far as the little one could go, strolling in friendly silence or chatting in Echo’s little language, through the countryside lush with the season in which he had come and sweet with scents of lilac, alder-bush, and jasmine. The light-footed lad would be before him in the narrow lanes between walls of corn already ripening yellow for the harvest, their blades, with nodding ears as high as himself, mounting out of the mould.

Out of the earth, I might better say, for the little one said it, expressing his joy that heaven gave the “firsty earff” a drink last night.

“A drink, Echo?” asked his uncle, letting pass the rest of the child’s metaphorical language. “You mean the rain?”

“Yes, the rain,” his little companion agreed more explicitly; but he would not go further into the matter.

“Imagine, he talks about the earth being thirsty, and uses a figure of speech like that,” Adrian related to me next time, in wonder. “Isn’t that a bit strange? Yes,” he nodded, with a certain amazed recognition, “he is pretty far along.”

When he was obliged to go into the city, Adrian brought the boy all sorts of presents: various animals, a jack-in-the-box, a toy railway with lights that switched on and off as it roared round the curves; a magic casket in which the greatest treasure was a glass filled with red wine which did not run out when the glass was turned upside down. Echo liked these things, of course, but when he had played with them he soon said: ” ‘Nuff,” and much preferred to have his uncle show and explain some object of grown-up use-always the same and always new, for a child’s persistence and appetite for repetition are great in matters of entertainment. The carved ivory paper-knife; the globe turning on its axis, with broken land-masses, deep bays, strange-shaped inland seas, and vast blue-dyed oceans; the clock on the chimney-piece that struck the hours, whose weights one could wind up with a crank out of the well into which they had sunk; those were some of the wonders which the little boy coveted to examine, when the slender figure stood at the door and the little voice inquired: “Are you look cross because I do come?”

“No, Echo, not very cross. But the weights are only halfway down.”

In this case it might be the music-box he asked for. It was my contribution, I had brought it to him: a small brown box to be wound up underneath. The roller, provided with metal tongues, turned along the tuned teeth of a comb and played, at first briskly and daintily, then slowly running down, three well-harmonized, demure little tinkling melodies, to which Echo listened always with the same rapt attention, the same unforgettable mixture of delight, surprise, and dreamy musing.

His uncle’s manuscripts too, those runes strewn over the staves, adorned with little stems and tails, connected by slurs and strokes, some blank, some filled in with black; he liked to look at them too and have it explained what all those marks were about—just between ourselves, they were about him, and I should like to know whether he divined that, whether it could be read in his eyes that he gathered it from the master’s explanations. This child, sooner than any of us, was privileged to get an “insight” into the drafts of the score of Ariel’s songs, on which Adrian was privately at work. He had combined the first, full of ghostly “dispersed” voices of nature, the “Come unto these yellow sands,” with the second, pure loveliness: “Where the bee sucks, there suck I,” into a single song for soprano, celeste, muted violin, an oboe, a bass clarinet, and the flageolet notes of the harp. And truly he who hears these “gently spiriting” sounds or even hears them by reading alone, with his spirit’s ear, may well ask with Ferdinand: “Where should this music be? F th’ air or th’ earth?” For he who made it has caught in its gossamer, whispering web not only the hovering childlike-pure, bewildering light swiftness of “my dainty Ariel,” but the whole elfin world from the hills, brooks, and groves which in Prospero’s description as weak masters and demi-puppets by moonshine for their pastime midnight mushrooms make and the green sour ringlets whereof the ewe not bites. Echo always asked to see once more the place in the notes where the dog says “Bow-wow” and chanticleer cries “Cock-a-diddle-dow.” And Adrian told him about the wicked witch Sycorax and her little slave, whom she, because he was a spirit too delicate to obey her earthy and abhorred commands, confined in a cloven pine, in which plight he spent a dozen painful years, until the good master of spells came and freed him. Nepomuk wanted to know how old the little spirit was when he was imprisoned and then how old when he was freed, after twelve years. But his uncle said that the spirit had no age, that he was the same after as before imprisonment, the same child of air—with which Echo seemed content.

The Master of the Abbot’s room told him other stories, as well as he could remember them: Rumpelstiltskin, Falada and Rapun-zel and the Singing, Soaring Lark; for the stories the little one had to sit on his uncle’s knee, sidewise, sometimes putting one arm round his neck. “Well, that does sound most nice,” he would say when a tale was done; but often he went to sleep with his head on the story-teller’s breast. Then his uncle sat without moving, his chin resting lightly on the hair of the sleeping child, until one of the women came and fetched him away.

As I said, for days they might keep the child from him, because he was busy, or perhaps a headache shut him away in silence and darkness.

But after such a day, when he had not seen Echo, he liked to go when the child was put to bed, softly, hardly seen, to his room to hear the evening prayer. The child said his prayers lying on his back, his hands folded on his chest, one or both of the women being present. They were very singular things he recited, the heavenly blue of his eyes cast up to the ceiling, and he had a whole range of them so that he hardly ever said the same ones two evenings running.

Whoso hedeth Goddes stevene

In hym is God and he in hevene.

The same commaunde myselfe would keepe,

And me insure my seemely slepe.

Amen.

Or:

A mannes misdeede, however grete,

On Goddes merci he may wait,

My sinne to Him a lytyl thynge is,

God doth but smile and pardon bringes.

Amen,

Or:

Whoso for this brief cesoun

Barters hevens blysse

Hath betrayed his resoun

His house the rainbow is;

Give me to build on the firme grounde

And Thy eternal joys to sound.

Amen.

Or, remarkable for its unmistakable coloration by the Protestant doctrine of predestination:

Through sin no let has been,

Save when some goode be seen.

Mannes good deede shall serve him wel,

Save that he were born for hell.

O that I may and mine I love

Be borne for blessedness above!

Amen.

Or sometimes:

The sun up-hon the divell shines

And parts as pure away

Keep me safe in the vale of earthe,

Till that I pay the debt of deathe.

Amen.

And lastly:

Mark, whoso for other pray

Himself he saves that waye.

Echo prayes for all gainst harms,

May God hold him too in His armes.

Amen.

This verse I myself heard him say, and was greatly touched; I think he did not know I was there.

Outside the door Adrian asked: “What do you say to this theological speculation? He prays for all creation, expressly in order that he himself may be included. Should a pious child know that he serves himself in that he prays for others? Surely the unselfishness is gone so soon as one sees that it is of use.”

“You are right that far,” I replied. “But he turns the thing into unselfishness so soon as he may not pray only for himself but does so for us all.”

“Yes, for us all,” Adrian said softly.

“Anyhow we are talking as though he had thought these things up himself. Have you ever asked him where he learned them, from his father or from whom?”

The answer was: “Oh, no, I would rather let the question rest and assume that he would not know.”

It seemed that the Schweigestills felt the same. So far as I know they never asked the child the source of his little evening prayers. From them I heard the ones which I had not listened to from outside. I had them recited to me at a time when Nepomuk Schneidewein was no longer with us.

CHAPTER XLV

H
e was taken from us, that strangely seraphic little being was taken from this earth—oh, my God, why should I seek soft words for the harshest, most incomprehensible cruelty I have ever witnessed? Even yet it tempts my heart to bitter murmur, yes, to rebellion. He was set on with frightful, savage fury and in a few days snatched away by an illness of which there had been for a long time no case in the vicinity. Our good Dr. Kurbis was greatly surprised by the violence of its recurrence; but he told us that children convalescing from measles or whooping-cough were susceptible to it.

The whole thing lasted scarcely two weeks, including the earliest signs that all was not quite well with the child; from those beginnings no one—I believe no one at all—even dreamed of the horror to come. It was the middle of August; the harvest was in full swing, with a considerable increase in the number of hands. For two months Nepomuk had been the joy of the house. Now a slight cold glazed the sweet clarity of his eyes; it was surely only this annoying affection that took away his appetite, made him fretful, and increased the drowsiness to which he had been subject ever since we knew him. He said ” ‘Nuff” to all that was offered him: food, play, picture-books, fairy-tales. ” ‘Nuff,” he said, his little face painfully drawn, and turned away. Soon there appeared an intolerance of light and sound, more disquieting still. He seemed to feel that the wagons driving into the yard made more noise than usual, that voices were louder. “Speak more low,” he begged, whispering to show them how. Not even the delicate tinkling of the music-box would he hear; at once uttered his tortured ” ‘Nuff, ‘nuff!” stopped the works himself, and then wept bitterly. He fled from the high-summer sunshine of yard and garden, went indoors and crouched there, rubbing his eyes. It was hard to watch him seeking comfort, going from one to another of his loving ones, putting his arms about their necks, only after a little to turn disconsolate away. Thus he clung to Mother Schweigestill, to Clementine, to Waltpurgis. The same impulse brought him to his uncle, to press himself against his breast, to look up at him, even to smile faintly and listen to his gentle words. But then the little head would droop lower and lower; he would murmur: “Night!” slip to his feet, and go away with unsteady tread.

The doctor came. He gave him some drops for his nose and prescribed a tonic, but did not conceal his fear that a more serious illness was setting in. In the Abbot’s room he expressed this concern to his patient of many years.

“You think so?” asked Adrian, going pale.

“The thing doesn’t look quite right to me,” the doctor said.

“Right?”

The words had been repeated in such a startled, almost startling tone that Kiirbis asked himself if he had not gone too far.

“Well, in the sense I mentioned,” he answered. “You yourself might look better too, sir. Your heart is set on the little lad?”