Kertch

“ Musti felt much as Kerttu did. He no longer growled for Kerttu had told him not to, but he drooped his tail between his legs and, pressing up close to Kerttu, he trembled with fright. And well he might, too, for the old hag was none other than Suyettar who had been waiting all these years just for this very chance to do further injury to Kerttu and her brothers.
Kerttu, poor child, was, alas! too good and innocent to suspect evil in others. ”

“ Whose own true mother is also mine!’
Then the little cake will start rolling and do you follow wherever it rolls. But, Kerttu, my child, you must not start out alone. You must have some friend or companion to go with you.”
Now it happened that Kerttu had a little dog, Musti, that she loved dearly.
“I’ll take Musti with me!” she said. “Musti will protect me!”
[Pg 105] So she called Musti and Musti wagged his tail and barked with joy at the prospect of going out into the world with his mistress.
Then Kerttu threw down the magic cake in front of her and sang:
“Roll, roll, my little cake! ”

“ A profound rumbling was heard, and the frown disappeared from Professor Keredec’s brow like the vanishing of the shadow of a little cloud from the dome of some great benevolent and scientific institute. He dropped a weighty hand on his young friend’s shoulder, and, in high good-humour, thundered:
“Then you are a critic! Knowing nothing of sunshine except that it warms you, and never having touched paint, you are going to tell about them to a man who spends his life studying them! You look up in the night and the truth you see is that the moon and stars are crossing the ocean. ”

“ You know, and Keredec knows, and Glouglou knows, and every mortal soul on earth knows—but I don’t know! Your life has taught you, and you know, but I don’t know. I haven’t HAD my life. It’s gone! All I have is words that Keredec has said to me, and it’s like a man with no eyes, out in the sunshine hunting for the light. Do you think words can teach you to resist such impulses as I had when I spoke to Madame d’Armand? Can life itself teach you to resist them? ”

“ The elder brother made strings of the fibre.
“I am in a hurry to fish,” said Keriha. “You are slow, my brother.”
“Go straight east beyond the sky,” said the other, “and get ash wood while I am making a net.”
Keriha brought the ash. Norwanchakus had the net made, and now he fixed the ash stick.
“My brother,” said Keriha, “we cannot see anything. How can we fish? There are people around us in the world, perhaps, but we have no good light to find them.”
There was a kind of dim light all the time. The two brothers started, came north as far as Nomlopi, opposite Pas Puisono, and sat down. ”

“ As I proceeded there rose up in my mind the stern face of my father, and in my ears rang his solemn words as he told me of the legendary curse of the House of Kralitz, the unknown secret that was imparted to the eldest son of each generation—at a certain time.
"When?" I had asked my father as he lay on his death-bed, fighting back the approach of dissolution.
"When you are able to understand," he had told me, watching my face intently from beneath his tufted white brows. "Some are told the secret sooner than others. ”

“ I answered honestly.
“I would burn my hand from my arm and my arm from my body,” he went on, with the same wild intensity, “rather than trouble her or frighten her, but I couldn’t help speaking to her any more than I can help wanting to see her again—the feeling that I MUST—whatever you say or do, whatever Keredec says or does, whatever the whole world may say or do. And I will! It isn’t a thing to choose to do, or not to do. I can’t help it any more than I can help being alive!” ”

“ Ketch?” demanded Stephen Bywater. “I’d advise you to get rid of that, before the next time you go on duty; it might be in your way, you know. Never was such a thing heard of, as for the chief toppler-off of the three kingdoms to be disabled in his limbs! What would you do? I’m afraid you’d be obliged to resign your post, and sink into private life.”
“Now I just vow to goodness, as I’ll do all I can to get these cloisters took from you boys,” shrieked old Ketch, clasping his hands together. “There’s insults as flesh and blood can’t stand; and, as sure as I’m living, I’ll pay you out for it.” ”

“ I wish you to know my young man,” Keredec went on. “You will like him—no man of feeling could keep himself from liking him—and he is your fellow-countryman. I hope you will be his friend. He should make friends, for he needs them.”
“I think he has a host of them,” said I, “in Professor Keredec.”
My visitor looked at me quizzically for a moment, shook his head and sighed. “That is only one small man in a big body, that Professor Keredec. And yet,” he went on sadly, “it is all the friends that poor boy has in this world. ”

“ Keredec was alone in his salon, extended at ease upon a long chair, an ottoman and a stool, when I burst in upon him; a portentous volume was in his lap, and a prolific pipe, smoking up from his great cloud of beard, gave the final reality to the likeness he thus presented of a range of hills ending in a volcano. But he rolled the book cavalierly to the floor, limbered up by sections to receive me, and offered me a hearty welcome.
“Ha, my dear sir,” he cried, “you take pity on the lonely Keredec; you make him a visit. I could not wish better for myself. ”

“ I was one with the rest of those dark warders, and I joined them in the saturnalia of horror until the scarred man spoke to us again.
"Our time grows short," he said, his scarred and bearded white face like a gargoyle's in the half-light. "We must depart soon. But you are a true Kralitz, Franz, and we shall meet again, and feast again, and make merry for longer than you think. One last pledge!"
I gave it to him. "To the House of Kralitz! May it never fall!"
And with an exultant shout we drained the pungent dregs of the liquor. ”

“ I am proud! But I wish to restore ALL that was good in his life; your Keredec is something of a poet.—You may put it: much the old fool! And for that greates’ restoration of all I have brought my boy back to France; since it was necessary. It was a madness, and I thank the good God I was mad enough to do it. I cannot tell you yet, my dear sir: but you shall see, you shall see what the folly of that old Keredec has done! You shall see, you shall—and I promise it—what a Paradise, when the good God helps, an old fool’s dream can make! ”

“ In regard to what he does remember, Professor Keredec has anxiously impressed upon him some very poignant necessity for reticence. What the necessity may be, or the nature of the professor’s anxieties, I do not know, but I think Keredec’s reasons must be good ones. That’s all, except that there’s something about the young man that draws one to him: I couldn’t tell you how much I like him, nor how sorry I am that he offended you. ”

“ I must be, don’t you think, for her sake?”
“Lose no time!” shouted Keredec. “You must be gone if you will reach that certain town for the five-o’clock train of the morning.” This was for the spy’s benefit; it indicated Lisieux and the train to Paris. Mr. Percy struggled; the professor knelt over him, pinioning his wrists in one great hand, and holding him easily to earth.
“Ha! my friend—” he addressed his captive—“you shall not have cause to say we do you any harm; there shall be no law, for you are not hurt, and you are not going to be. ”

“ And all the while, as I shuddered with fear and loathing, within me was this evil glee—this voice which whispered, "You know this place! You belong here! Is it not good to be home?"
I glanced behind me. The great door had swung silently shut, and escape was impossible. And then pride came to my aid. I was a Kralitz. And a Kralitz would not acknowledge fear in the face of the devil himself!
I stepped forward and confronted the warders, who were still seated regarding me intently from eyes in which a smoldering fire seemed to burn. ”

“ Growing old with age or with lumbago, he found early rest congenial to his bones, as he informed his friends: so he supped at seven, and retired betimes. Since the trick played him in the summer, he had taken to have his pint of ale brought to him; deeming it more prudent not to leave his lodge and the keys, to fetch it. This was known to the boys, and it rendered their plans a little more difficult.
Mr. Ketch, I say, sat in his lodge, having locked up the cloisters about an hour before, sneezing and wheezing, for he was suffering from a cold, caught the previous day in the wet. ”

“ He, too, had recognized from his window, as Kurt had done, the folly of resistance to so numerous a foe, but he was nevertheless about to go down to the court-yard when Kurt rushed into his room. "You were right, Herr von Poseneck," he said; "that villain Sorr has betrayed us! All is lost! There is nothing for us but to die with our brave fellows; our place is down there among them."
He spoke as quietly as though he were inviting Kurt to walk with him in the park; he awaited no reply, but was striding on to the head of the grand staircase when Karl detained him. ”

“ Her anxious eyes grew wider. “How have I made it deeper for him? Wasn’t it necessary that the poor woman should be told the truth?”
“Professor Keredec seemed to think it important that she shouldn’t.”
She turned to Keredec with a frightened gesture and an unintelligible word of appeal, as if entreating him to deny what George had said. The professor’s beard was trembling; he looked haggard; an almost pitiable apprehension hung upon his eyelids; but he came forward manfully.
“Madame,” he said, “you could never in your life do anything that would make harm. ”

“ Keturah was considerably relieved when the man, who had never ceased to howl at his horse, or to thwack him violently with a lashless whip, pulled up in safety beneath the solitary lamp of a lonely public-house, and sat gloomily waiting for Mr. Welsher to emerge. At sight of this worthy hirer of cabs poor Keturah felt a strange terror seize her. ”

“ Kurt stood in the doorway with Celia clinging to him. Clasped in each other's arms, for the moment the world about the happy pair was forgotten; the Freiherr's exclamation recalled Kurt to a sense of the present. He would have hurried out to the carriage, but Celia only clasped him the closer, crying, amid tears and laughter, 'No, no, Kurt, my dearest, I have you now, and you shall not go; papa is not so angry as he pretends. ”

“ Keredec was the master and “that other monsieur” the scholar—a pupil studying boys’ textbooks and receiving instruction in matters and manners that children are taught. And yet I could not believe him to be a simple case of arrested development. For the matter of that, I did not like to think of him as a “case” at all. There had been something about his bright youthfulness—perhaps it was his quick contrition for his rudeness, perhaps it was a certain wistful quality he had, perhaps it was his very “singularity”—which appealed as directly to my liking as it did urgently to my sympathy. ”

“ Kurtz—Kurtz—that means short in German—don’t it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life—and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding–sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. ”

“ Still, after that kiss of reconciliation Kurt had not felt perfectly comfortable as he walked home to Grünhagen; he was dissatisfied with himself. Cool reflection told him that he had been false to his resolve,--he, a man to whom life and its perils were familiar, should have conquered himself; he should have been a guide to Celia, who was half a child, and who had no idea that there could be any danger in her guileless familiarity. ”

“ And ha! my dear sir, if it SHOULD be, this big Keredec will not have lived in vain! It was a great task I undertake with my young man, and the glory to see it finish is almost here. Even if the danger should come, the THING is done, for all that is real and has true meaning is inside the soul!”
“It was in connection with the risk you have mentioned that I came to talk,” I returned with some emphasis, for I was convinced of the reality of Mr. Earl Percy and also very certain that he had no existence inside or outside a soul. ”

“ But the volume took its little revenge upon me, for it increased my curiosity about Professor Keredec and “that other monsieur.” Why were two grown men—one an eminent psychologist and the other a gray-haired youth with a singular air—carrying about on their walks a text-book for the instruction of boys of thirteen or fourteen?
The next day that curiosity of mine was piqued in earnest. It rained and I did not leave the inn, but sat under the great archway and took notes in colour of the shining road, bright drenched fields, and dripping sky. ”

“ Then you’ll know Getch?”
I gave him a look which had a meaning in it that he didn’t take.
“Yes!” I said.
“And may be you’ll know a friend—sort of partner of his—called Krevin?” he went on. “A fat man?”
“I know him!” I replied.
“Do you know where they are now?” he inquired. “I make it that Getch carried you out here, and I’ve no doubt Krevin was with him. Now where is Getch?” ”