Over the Plum Pudding Part 12

"It is that," agreed the Mayor. "But cheer up, Hans. If there is an instant in every year when wishes are always granted by the fairies, why don't you wish the baby as he ought to be at the right moment?"

"That's the trouble," said Hans, sadly. "There are many instants in a year, and the lucky moment changes every twelve months. It is never the same. I wish, and _wish_, but never at the right moment. Sometimes I forget it; the instant comes and is gone, though I don't know it."

"Well," said the Mayor's wife, "there is but one thing you can do. That is, to devote a whole year to nothing else but that wish. I shall fix you up a chair in the kitchen, give you a pipe, and on New-Year's morning you may begin. You shall have no other duties but to wish for a restoration of things as they should be. You will be sure to hit the right moment if you are faithful to your work."

"As I always am," said Hans, drying his tears.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT WAS A WEARY VIGIL, BUT HE WAS TRUE"]

And so it was that Hans Pumpernickel began his long vigil. He sat in the kitchen, silent, smoking, gazing at the ceiling, wis.h.i.+ng. It was weary work indeed, but he was true, and last year, on the sixteenth day of July, at half-past one o'clock in the morning, his fidelity was rewarded, though he did not know it until the next morning, when the expressman brought him a message from his father to the following effect:

"_July 16, 1893._

"MY DEAR HANS,--Don't worry; everything is serene again. At half-past one o'clock this morning, just as the clock struck, your great-great-great-great-great-granduncle began to grow at a most rapid pace. I had hardly time to drop him when he was taller than I, and twice as stout as I am told you are. A beard sprouted on his face with equal rapidity, and, just as I thought to ask him what he was going to do next, he gave a deafening shout of laughter and disappeared entirely. The whole affair didn't last more than five seconds. The spell has been removed, and the perpetual baby is no more. Come over and see me, and we'll celebrate our emanc.i.p.ation.

"Affectionately your daddy, "RUPERT PUMPERNICKEL."

Hans read this letter with a joyful face, and rushed up-stairs to tell the Mayor and his faithful helpmate of his good fortune, and there was great rejoicing for several days. Then Hans visited his father, and the two happy creatures spent weeks and weeks rambling contentedly about the country together, at the end of which time Hans returned to Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, where, the Emperor having retired the Mayor on a liberal pension for his attentions and kind expressions of regard in the speech Hans did not write for him, he was chosen to succeed his former master.

The Affliction of Baron Humpfelhimmel

The Affliction of Baron Humpfelhimmel

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative E]

verybody said it was an extraordinary affair altogether, and for once everybody was right. Baron Humpfelhimmel himself would say nothing about it for two reasons. The first reason was that n.o.body dared ask him what he thought about it, and the second was that he was too proud to speak to anybody concerning any subject whatsoever, unless questioned. That he always laughed, no matter what happened, was the melancholy fact, and had been a melancholy fact from his childhood's earliest hour. He was born laughing. He laughed in church, he laughed at home. When his father spanked him he roared with laughter, and when he suffered from the measles he could not begin to restrain his mirth.

The situation seemed all the more singular when it was remembered that Rudolf von Pepperpotz, the previous Baron Humpfelhimmel, and father of the Laughing Baron, as he was called, was never known to smile from his childhood's earliest hour to his dying day, and, strangest of all, was a far more amiable person, despite his solemnity, than the present Baron for all his laughter.

"What does it mean, do you suppose?" Frau Ehrenbreitstein once asked of Hans Pumpernickel, her husband's private secretary, of whom you have already had some account.

"I cannot tell," Hans had answered, "and I have my reason for saying that I cannot tell," he added, significantly.

"What is that reason, Hans?" asked the good lady, her curiosity aroused by the boy's manner.

"It is this," said Hans, his voice sinking to a whisper. "I cannot tell, because--because I do not know!"

And this, let me say in pa.s.sing, was why Hans Pumpernickel was thought by all to be so wise. He had a reason always for what he did, and was ever willing to give it.

"They say," the good Lady Ehrenbreitstein went on--"they do say that when last winter the Baron while hunting boars was thrown from his horse, breaking his leg and two of his ribs, they could not be set because of his convulsions of laughter, though for my part I cannot see wherein having one's leg and ribs broken is provocative of merriment."

"Nor I," quoth Hans. "I have an eye for jokes. In most things I can see the fun, but in the breaking of one's bones I see more cause for tears than smiles."

And it was true. As Frau Ehrenbreitstein had heard, the Baron Humpfelhimmel had broken one leg and two ribs--only it was while hunting wolves and not in a boar chase--and when the Emperor's physician, who was one of the party, came to where the suffering man lay he found him roaring with laughter.

"Good!" cried the physician, leaning over his prostrate form. "I am glad to see that you are not hurt. I feared you were injured."

"I am injured," the Baron replied, with a loud laugh. "My left leg--ha-ha-ha!--is nearly killing me--hee-hee!--with p-pain, and if I mistake not, either my heart--ha-ha-ha-ha!--or my ribs--hee-hee-hee!--are broken in nineteen places."

Then he went off into such an explosion of mirth as not only appeared unseemly, but also deprived him of the power of speech for five or six minutes.

"I fail to see the joke," said the physician, as the Baron's laughter echoed and reechoed throughout the forest.

"Th-there--hee-hee!--there isn't a-any joke," the Baron answered, smiling. "Confound you--ha-ha-ha-ha!--oho-ho-ho!--can't you see I'm suffering?"

"I see you are laughing," the physician replied--"laughing as if you were reading a comic paper full of real jokes. What are you laughing at?"

"Ha-ha! I--I d-dud-don't know," stammered the Baron, vainly endeavoring to suppress his mirth. "I--I don't feel like laughing--hee-hee!--but I can't help it." And off he went into another gale. Nor did he stop there. The physician tried vainly to quiet him down so that he could set the fractured bones, but in spite of all he could do for him the Baron either would not or could not stop laughing. When he was able to move about again it was only with a limp, and even that appeared to have its humorous side, for whenever the Baron appeared on the public streets he was always smiling, and when the Mayor ventured to express his sympathy with him over his misfortune the Baron laughed again, and mirthfully requested him to mind his own business.

Then it was recalled how that ten years before, when the famous Von Pepperpotz Castle was destroyed by fire, the Baron was found writing in his study by the messenger who brought the news.

"Baron," the messenger cried--"Baron, the chateau is burning. The flames have already destroyed the armory, and are now eating their way through the corridors to the state banquet-hall."

The Baron looked the messenger in the eye for an instant, and then his face wreathed with smiles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MY CASTLE'S BURNING, EH? HA-HA!"]

"My castle's burning, eh? Ha-ha-ha!" was what he said; and then, rising hurriedly from his desk, he hastened, shouting with laughter, to the scene, where no one worked harder than he to stay the devastating course of the flames.

"You seem to be pleased," said one who noticed his merriment.

The Baron's answer was a blow which knocked the fellow down, and then, striking him across the shoulders with his staff, he walked away, muttering to himself:

"Pleased! Ha-ha-ha! Does ruin please anybody--tee-hee-hee! If the churls only--tee-hee!--only knew--ha-ha-ha-ha!"

That was it! If they only knew! And no one did know until after the Baron had died without children--for he had never married--and all his possessions and papers became the property of the state. Through these papers the secret of the Baron's laughter became known to the good people of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, and through them it became known to me. Hans Pumpernickel himself told me the tale, and as he has risen to the exalted position of Mayor of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, an honor conferred only on the truly good and worthy, I have no reason to doubt that the story is in every way truthful.

"When Baron Humpfelhimmel died," said Hans, as he and I walked together along the beautiful sylvan path that runs by the side of the Zugvitz River, "I am sorry to say there were few mourners. A man who laughs, as a rule, is popular, but the man who laughs always, without regard to circ.u.mstances, makes enemies. One learns to love a person who laughs at one's jests, but one who laughs at funerals, at conflagrations, at beggars, at the needy and the distressed, does not become universally beloved. Such was the habit of Fritz von Pepperpotz, last of the Barons Humpfelhimmel. If you were to go to him with a funny story, none would laugh more heartily than he; but equally loud would he laugh were you to say to him that you had a racking headache, and should it chance that you were to inform him you had been desperately ill, his mirth would know no bounds. Even in his greatest frenzies of rage he would smirk and laugh, and so it happened that the popularity which you would expect would go with a mirthful disposition was the last thing in the world he could hope for. I do not exaggerate when I say that Baron Humpfelhimmel could not have been elected office-boy to the Mayor on a popular vote, even if there were no opposing candidate. Now that it is all over, however, and we know the truth, we have changed our minds about it, and already several hundred of our citizens have raised a fund of twenty marks to go towards putting up a monument to the memory of the Laughing Baron.

"Fritz von Pepperpotz, my friend," said Hans to me, in explanation of the situation, "laughed because he could not help it, as a statement found among his papers after he died showed. The statement contained the whole story, and in some of its details it is a sad one. It was all the fault of the grandfather of the late Baron that he could do nothing but laugh all his days, that he died unmarried, and that the name of Von Pepperpotz has died off the face of the earth forever, unless some one else chooses to a.s.sume that name, which, I imagine, no one is crazy enough to do. The only thing that could reconcile me to such a name would be the estates that formerly went with it, but now that they have become the property of the government the house has lost all of its attractions, retaining, however, every bit of its homeliness.

Pumpernickel is bad enough, but it is beautiful beside Von Pepperpotz."

Here Hans sighed, and to comfort him, rather than to say anything I really meant, I observed that I thought Pumpernickel was a good strong name.

"Yes," Hans said, with a pleased smile. "It certainly is strong. I have had mine twenty-five years now, and it doesn't show the slightest sign of wear. It's as good as the day it was made. But to return to the Von Pepperpotz family and its mysterious affliction.

"According to the Baron's statement, while he himself could not restrain his mirth, no matter how badly he felt, his father, Rupert von Pepperpotz, could never smile, although he was a man of most genial disposition. Just as Fritz was ushered into the world, grinning like a Ches.h.i.+re cheese--"

"Cat," I suggested, noting Hans's error.

"Cat, is it?" he said. "Well, now, do you know I am glad to hear that?

I always supposed the term used was cheese, and positively I have lain awake night after night trying to comprehend how a cheese could grin, and finally I gave it up, setting it down as one of the peculiarities of the English language. If it's Ches.h.i.+re cat, and not Ches.h.i.+re cheese, why, it's all clear as a pikestaff. But, as I was saying, just as Fritz was born grinning like a Ches.h.i.+re cat, his father Rupert was born frowning apparently with rage. He was the most ill-natured-looking baby you ever saw, according to the chronicles. Nothing seemed to please him.