Read Ebook: The Moth Decides: A Novel by Jewell Edward Alden

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Ebook has 978 lines and 61331 words, and 20 pages

She held a fresh towel in her hand, which he eyed with glancing suspicion.

"I got to thinking," explained his wife. "Perhaps she's used to having a clean towel every morning, too."

The minister compressed his lips almost imperceptibly as she went to her sister's door, the towel over her arm. Hilda, with the pitcher of water, arrived at the same moment, so that mother and daughter stood with their respective burdens on Aunt Marjie's threshold, and even spoke together, like rival hucksters proclaiming their wares.

"Gracious!" cried the favoured lady, opening her door and accepting the alms. "Such magnificent service! Anna," she added, "don't you let me put you out. I can easily live on the view. You really don't know what this means, after being cooped up in a place like Tahulamaji!"

Miss Whitcom was tall, and rather fine looking. She was a trifle taller, for instance, than her brother-in-law, and had a way, when any discussion with him was in progress, of standing up quite close to the minister, so that she created the illusion, a little, of towering over him. She was not, of course, actually a great deal taller, but how one could make the sly inch count at such times! Her sister looked almost dumpy beside her.

"I suppose," observed Mrs. Needham, "you do feel kind of cooped up in those foreign places." That phrase of hers "foreign places," was in the nature of a stock term. It was expansive, elastic, comprehensive. She spoke of foreign places a little as her husband spoke of the East or of "culture." Neither had travelled any to speak of. In a sort of whimsical way it seemed to Mrs. Needham that one might expect to find Bombay and Peking supporting much the same conditions of life. Or even Dublin and Rome, for that matter. "I don't suppose," she added, "there's anything like this where you've been."

"We go bathing nearly every afternoon, Aunt Marjie," Hilda announced.

"You do? Well, I'm with you!" She was just a trifle loud. "Do there happen to be any convenient islands one could swim out to?"

"Oh, no, Aunt Marjie, there aren't," replied the girl regretfully, almost with a touch of na?ve apology.

"Well, no matter. You can always swim round in a circle, of course. Only I do like having a definite goal."

Miss Whitcom sighed briefly and went on hooking herself up.

"Speaking of swimming," she continued. "I won a gold medal once. Yep. A very long time ago."

"A medal for swimming, Aunt Marjie?"

The aunt nodded. "I entered a five-mile endurance and time. Entered against thirteen men, and got there first!"

"Yes, it was wonderful," the other admitted; then frowned. "The only trouble was that I had my subsequent doubts of its being really fair."

Mrs. Needham, who had been standing in the doorway, a faint and musing smile on her lips, received the news of the swimming match with a hurried comment about having to go down and see how Eliza was getting on with breakfast. She was always, and especially with Alfred in mind, mildly shocked at the glib way in which her sister talked about men.

"How do you mean it wasn't fair, Aunt Marjie?" demanded little Hilda, sitting down eagerly on the edge of the bed.

"Came to suspect one of them."

"One of the men?"

"Um-hm."

"Um. Turning lazy at the finish."

"You mean he let you win?"

"Afraid so, Hilda."

"But I've heard papa say that women ought to be treated...."

"That men ought to go lazy at the finish and let you pull in ahead?"

"I daresay not, Hilda. Such things wouldn't conspicuously have entered into Alfred's training."

"What did you do when you found out about it, Aunt Marjie?"

"What do you mean--when I'd convinced myself he hadn't played fair?"

"Yes."

"Sent him the medal." She shrugged.

"Um. It belonged to him, not me. Yes, sir--it went right straight off to him, with a polite note. The note was terribly polite. I told him I hoped he'd get just lots of comfort out of it. Real, solid comfort." And she snorted with wrath.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Aunt Marjie! I didn't realize how many I was asking."

And she really was sorry. Nevertheless, her eyes continued to ithout head, sense, or proportion."

The Devil highly enjoyed the rage of Faustus and the downcast looks of the young senators; but they, who had never read Roman history, were not so high-spirited as to fling Faustus a declaration of war from beneath their closely-folded robes of office; on the contrary, they communicated the invitation to the mayor's festival in as unconcerned a tone as if nothing had happened,--a new proof of their expertness in negotiation. Had they, for example, replied to the insult, they would thereby have acknowledged that they felt the force of it; but when they let it fall flat upon the ground, as if it were nothing to any of them, it lost all its power, and assumed the colour of an unfair reproach. Genius alone is capable in such critical moments of like discrimination.

At the word "mayor," Faustus pricked up his ears, and the Devil gave him a significant side-glance. Faustus thereupon took the Bible from the casket, handed it over to the senators, and said, with some degree of complaisance,

"That, upon due consideration, he was determined to make the city a present of his Bible, on condition that they showed the sentence which he marked under, and of which he wrote a German translation on the margin, to the assembled magistrates; and, in remembrance of him, caused it to be written in letters of gold on the wall of the council-chamber."

The senators hastened back to their brethren, as delighted as envoys who, after a ruinous war, return with an advantageous peace. They were received with great joy, and, the Bible being opened at the appointed place, they read--

They swallowed this bitter pill, because the presumptive shadow of imperial majesty, in the form of the demon, prevented them from spitting it out. They comforted themselves with having been spared the four hundred gold guilders, and wished each other joy for having escaped so well out of this unpleasant affair. The envoys received a vote of thanks, and it is to be regretted that their names are not handed down to posterity. When at last they spoke of Faustus's well-filled money-chest, the glitter of gold darted like lightning through the souls of all, and each secretly determined to make the man his friend, in order to get possession of it. The alderman shouted, "We must make him a citizen, and give him a seat and voice in the council. Policy demands that we should overstep law and custom, if the advantage of the State depends upon it."

The clock sounded the hour of dinner; the Devil and Faustus, mounted upon noble horses, and attended by a numerous retinue, proceeded to the house of the mayor. They entered the hall of assembly, where all the magistrates awaited them, and, on their appearance, bowed before them even to the dust. The fat, bloated mayor, after a long speech, introduced them to the wives of the dignitaries of the corporation, whose figures, loaded with tawdry ornaments, seemed now to display a double portion of awkwardness and vulgarity. They stared like a flock of geese, and could not satiate themselves with looking at the dress and physiognomy of Leviathan; but the mayoress, a native of Saxony, towered above them all, like an Oriad. The expressive look of Faustus had attracted her attention, as well as his prepossessing figure, and his fine handsome face. She blushed when he saluted her, and could find no other answer to his eloquent address than a few broken words, which the ears of Faustus caught like enchanting music. The senators exerted their wits to the utmost in complimenting their guests, and all now sat down to the well-spread table. After dinner the Devil led the mayor by the hand to a private apartment,--a circumstance which flattered him extraordinarily, but which was a dagger-blow to all the other guests, especially to the alderman.

The mayor, heated with wine, and intoxicated with the honour which the supposed imperial envoy showed him, in a bending attitude and with staring eyes awaited the communication. The Devil assured him, in soft, silvery tones, how much he was flattered by the mayor's hospitable reception, and how very desirous he was to prove himself thankful; adding, that he carried with him a number of letters of nobility, signed by the emperor's own hand, and he would gladly bestow the first upon him, provided--

Joy, transport, and astonishment darted through the mayor's soul; he stood before the Devil with wide-gaping mouth, and at length stammered out, "Provided how--what--oh!" The Devil then murmured softly into his ear: "His friend Faustus was desperately in love with the beautiful mayoress, and that for his sake only he would do it; and if the mayoress would retire with Faustus for a few moments,--which would be entirely unobserved amid the noise and confusion of a festival,--he should deliver into her hand the patent of nobility."

Thereupon the Devil hastened to Faustus, informed him of what had happened, and gave him the letter of nobility, with certainty of success. Faustus doubted, and the Devil laughed at his doubts.

The mayor remained in his cabinet almost petrified. The sudden glitter of such unexpected happiness was at once so clouded by an odious and detestable condition, that he determined upon rejecting it. But all at once Ambition blew into his ear: "Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; to be dubbed a nobleman at once, and in such an off-hand manner, as the saying is, and thereby to be placed on a footing with the proudest of thy foes, and to raise thy voice in the council like a trumpet, and appear among those there like a man whom, on account of his services, his imperial majesty will exalt above the heads of all!"

Another feeling softly whispered--

"Uh! uh! with my own knowledge and consent to be thus disgraced! But then, again, who will know it? and what is there in the whole affair? I receive a certain good in lieu of what has long ceased to have any charms for me. The evil consists in the idea alone, and it will be a secret between me and my wife. But, stating the case fairly, can I arrive at so high a distinction at a cheaper rate? Will it not be a nail in the alderman's coffin; and what will the citizens not say when they see that his imperial majesty knows how to value me? Shall I not get every thing into my power, and revenge myself on those who have thwarted and contradicted me? Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; be no fool; seize fortune by the forelock. Man is only what he appears in the eyes of the world, and no one asks the nobleman how he became so. But there is my wife; she will set herself against my advancement, for I well know her Saxon prudery."

At that very moment she entered the room, eager to learn from her husband what the magnificent stranger had confided to him in private. He looked at her with a roguish leer, but still with some degree of bashfulness.

The company had in the mean while dispersed themselves in the garden; and his worship, getting behind Faustus, whispered softly in his ear that "his wife would esteem it an honour to receive the patent of nobility from his hand; and he had only to step up a back staircase, which he would show him, to an apartment where he would find her. That as for himself, he feared nothing from a man who had shown so much honour and conscience." He led him thereupon to the back staircase. Faustus glided up immediately, and entered a chamber, where he found the mayoress: he flew to her, and created the mayor a knight of the Holy Roman Empire. She then went and delivered to her spouse the letter of nobility; and they determined between them that it should be laid upon the supper-table in a covered golden dish, in order, by its unexpected appearance, to make the blow more painful to the guests. The Devil, to whom the mayor confided the plan, highly approved of it; but Faustus murmured in the ear of Leviathan, "I command thee to play this rascal, who has prostituted his wife for ambition's sake, a thorough knavish trick; and to revenge me, at the same time, on all these sheep-headed magistrates, who so long forced me to pay my court to them."

They sat down to supper, and the glasses went quickly round; when all at once the Devil commanded the dish, which had so long excited the Curiosity of the surrounders, to be uncovered; then, holding up the letter of nobility, he delivered it to the mayor with these words: "Worthy sir, his majesty the emperor, my master, is pleased by this patent letter of nobility to create you, on account of your fidelity and services, a knight of the Holy Roman Empire. I hope and trust that you will never grow lukewarm in your zeal for the high imperial house; and now, Sir Knight, I have the honour of first drinking your health."

These words rolled like thunder in the ears of the guests. The drunken became sober, and the sober drunk; the lips of the women turned blue with rage, and could scarcely stammer out a congratulation. The alderman was seized with an apoplectic fit, and his wife was near dying of her husky cough. Fear, in the mean time, obliged the rest to assume a joyous countenance; and they drank, with a loud huzza, the health of the new-made knight. While the tumult was at the highest pitch, a thin vapour suddenly filled the hall; the glasses began to dance about upon the tables; and the roasted geese, turkeys, and fowls cackled, gobbled, and crowed. The calves, sheep, and boars' heads cried, bleated, and grunted, bounced across the table, and snapped at the fingers of the guests. The wine issued in blue flames from out the flasks; and the patent of nobility caught fire, and was burnt to ashes in the hands of the trembling mayor. The whole assembly now sat like so many ridiculous characters in a mad masquerade. The mayor bore a stag's head upon his shoulders; and the rest, men and women, adorned with grotesque masks, spoke, cackled, crowed, neighed, or bellowed, according to the kind of mask which had been allotted to each individual. The alderman alone, in the dress of a harlequin, sat motionless; and Faustus avowed to the Devil that the ruse did great honour to his ingenuity. After Faustus had satiated himself by gazing at the spectacle, he gave the Devil the wink, and they both flew out of the window; the latter personage, according to custom, leaving behind him the sulphurous stench.

Faustus and Leviathan, in the mean time, passed over the city-walls; and when they were in the open field, the Devil despatched an attendant spirit to the hotel, in order to pay the reckoning, and to fetch away Faustus's baggage. Then turning to the young German, he asked him if he were contented with this first feat.

The spirit now returned with the baggage, and was sent forward to Mayence to bespeak a lodging in an hotel. Faustus, for secret reasons which the Devil guessed, proposed spending the night with a hermit who dwelt in the hill of Homburg, and who was renowned through the whole neighbourhood for his piety. They reached the hermitage about midnight, and knocked at the door. The solitary opened it; and Faustus, who had dressed himself in the richest clothes which the Devil had provided for him, begged pardon for disturbing the repose of the holy man, and said that the night had surprised him and his companion while hunting, and had separated them from their attendants, and that they should be obliged by his giving them house-room for a few hours. The hermit looked on the ground, and replied, with a deep sigh:

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