Tales of the Wonder Club Volume I Part 22

"Where did he find the gold?" I asked myself. "Could it really be a great philosopher who stood before me, who despised the yellow metal, or was it an idiot who did not know the value of it?"

These reflections of mine were silent. Nevertheless, the cripple gave me to understand with a nod of his head and an unmistakable look in his eye, that he very well understood what they were worth to such men as myself; but with another gesture he expressed that for himself he was above it.

"Indeed," said I, "then what would you of me, if not gold?"

He gave me a malicious smile, and nodded his head slightly, but I understood not the gesture.

I was impatient, and wanted to put an end to our mummery, so I said, "Come, lead on; I am hungry. Since you despise gold, I suppose you will do so much for me as an act of friends.h.i.+p?"

He grinned from ear to ear and nodded.

"It is well," said I, and I followed my guide.

We began slowly to descend the mountain, my guide running nimbly on in front, then standing still at intervals and beckoning to me. This he continued to do until we arrived at the foot of the mountain, and I remember feeling an irresistible and unaccountable impulse to follow my guide more quickly than before.

As the steel is attracted to the magnet, so I felt irresistibly attracted towards the monster. It was as if he possessed some strange magnetic power over me, for whenever he lifted up his finger to beckon to me I felt it impossible to resist following him.

I thought the feeling might be fancy at first, and I attributed my quickened pace against my own will to the impetus given by the steep declivity of the mountain, but afterwards I found that it was exactly the same on level ground.

We walked on further, till we found ourselves at the foot of a glacier, where stood the chalet which I sought.

I knocked and entered, and was welcomed by the owner of the hut, a middle-aged and portly dame with a goitre that hung over her breast, and some young children with incipient goitres.

I told the hostess that I was a hungry traveller, and asked her to give me the best that she had in the house.

Whilst waiting for my supper I warmed myself by the fire and scrutinised the inmates of the cottage. The children seemed very healthy, and not bad looking, if they had not been all disfigured with the family goitre, which they all inherited in a greater or less degree. They seemed to be great friends with my guide, gambolling around him and buffeting him unmercifully.

At length my supper arrived, consisting of poached eggs, cold sausage and ham, Swiss cheese, stale bread, and some sort of spirit drunk in the mountains. Having concluded my repast, I lit a pipe, and, drawing up my chair to the fire, entered into conversation with mine hostess.

"This is your son, I presume?" asked I of the landlady, pointing to my guide.

"No, sir," she replied; "he is only a poor cretin that I have taken in out of charity, as the children are fond of him. They say in these parts that it is lucky to have an idiot in the house, so, having none in my family, I took in this poor afflicted being; though, as to being lucky, all the luck which I've known since----"

The hostess suddenly stopped in her conversation, and her face became locked and rigid without any apparent reason.

I looked in the direction of the cripple, and observed his glance fixed on the hostess. It was a glance which nearly took my breath away. No wonder the landlady paused in her conversation. It was as if he possessed the gift of the evil eye. The magnetic influence he had over her completely closed her mouth.

Curious to know whether the landlady was really under a spell, I resumed.

"And this unfortunate, besides being idiotic, is he also deaf and dumb?"

The landlady seemed to awake suddenly, as from a dream, and replied, "Alas! yes, sir; no one has ever heard him utter a sound, or even----"

Here she paused again, and again I noticed the creature's glance fixed upon her.

"It is very strange," I observed, following up the conversation, "for I myself this evening have discoursed with him by signs, and so far from being idiotic, I must say that I found him very intelligent."

"Ah, yes, sir," she rejoined; "and if you should want a guide to-morrow, you could not do better than take him. No one knows the mountains here better than he."

"Indeed," I replied; "then he cannot be altogether an idiot."

"Well, as to that, sir, I fancy at times he is more knave than fool.

Indeed, I cannot quite make him out. He is an odd being. No one hereabouts knows who his parents were, or how he came in these parts."

Again the landlady ceased suddenly, as before, and I noticed again that the creature's eye was fixed upon her.

"What a very mysterious personage," I resumed, affecting not to notice the magnetic spell the worthy dame appeared to be under. "I am interested in this odd creature. Tell me more of him."

Mine hostess was unable to reply.

"Why do you pause?" I asked. "Why do you not answer?"

The creature's eye was upon me now, and I experienced a curious sensation, as if my voice was suddenly taken away from me, that I had no power to move a limb; in fact, that I was completely in the power of this horrible imp; but rousing myself, I determined to combat against this spell, and I succeeded in stammering a few words with the utmost difficulty. But that fearful eye was again upon me, and my tongue was completely tied; my limbs grew stiff and paralysed, and so I remained for some minutes, till the eye was removed.

"What can this strange feeling be which has just come over me?" I asked.

"I never felt so in all my life before."

The cretin's eye vacillated between me and the dame, as if to forbid further conversation. Feeling tired, and not caring for further discourse, as well as glad of an excuse to escape from my friend, whose mysterious power over myself I had already experienced and therefore could not deny, I thought I would take rest until the morning, so I asked for a candle, and was shown into a small chamber with a heap of straw in one corner of it. I partly undressed, and fell asleep.

Thus I reposed till an early hour in the morning, though still dark, when I was suddenly awakened by a terrific snore. I started up, and remained in a sitting position. A pause, then again there was a long, deep-drawn, unmistakable repet.i.tion of the same. I fixed my eyes on the spot whence the sound proceeded, and perceived, as well as the darkness would permit, a heap upon the floor in the opposite corner of the apartment.

Who could it be? I was about to strike a light to satisfy my curiosity, though I had but little doubt it was my friend of the previous evening, when the sleeper, to my surprise, began talking in his sleep; and my ill-favoured friend, it seemed, was dumb.

My hand was arrested in the act of striking a light, as the speaker began talking loud and fast and in a very peculiar strain. I was curious to hear more of his conversation; accordingly I refrained at present from striking a light, as the sound might awaken him, and listened attentively.

I wondered much what could be the subject of the sleeper's dream. I grew more and more puzzled at his words. It is impossible for me to give you one hundredth part of his conversation here, even if time permitted; for his utterance was so rapid that he would have outstripped any shorthand writer.

Some part of his strange colloquy, however, I have retained, as I fancied that in it I found reference to myself.

"Fools!" he cried with vehemence; "I tell you the prize is sure. I have him in my power, he _cannot_ escape me. Ye who prize blood rather than gold, make ready the chasm to receive him. He is one of those fools who delight in danger, and he will follow me. What think ye? He seeks chasms and grottoes for the insane pleasure of burdening himself with the dross which we beings of a higher order tread under foot. Crystals, fossils, s.h.i.+ning stones, the ore of different metals, especially gold and such trumpery, are trifles that his mind (if such it may be called) revels in.

"Do you not believe me, my friends? Ha! ha! I wonder not at your disbelief; ye whose sublime philosophy is nourished in the peaceful bowels of the earth, and who are therefore unable to comprehend how there can exist an order of beings so totally degraded and so approaching the brute, nay, so far surpa.s.sing even the brutes themselves in the grossness of its appet.i.tes, as to yearn for the very stones which form the pavement and the walls of our subterranean palaces.

"Ye, my friends, who never issue from your cells to visit that outer world, because, forsooth, your eyesight is not formed by nature to endure the glare which illumines the surface of this globe, how is it possible that ye should believe that there exist without intelligences so stunted and depraved? But I tell you, my brothers in philosophy, that this fool belongs to a race of maniacs, who have long attempted to invade our peaceful sh.o.r.es, and even succeeded so far as to penetrate nearly to the roofs of our dwellings--let us be thankful that their frames are not suited to endure our genial element below--with much labour, and for the sole purpose of obtaining metal or some such rubbish out of which they form----

"Tus.h.!.+ I do but waste time in attempting to enumerate the countless uses to which these madmen turn our paving stones. When ye are more at leisure, if ye are content, I will relate to you some of the incredible absurdities of those insects which crawl upon the outward surface of our globe.

"At present, my brother gnomes, we have a great work before us; our wants must be satisfied, and we must adopt the means to satisfy them. We thirst for blood, and we must have it. This fool loves to feast his eyes upon gold, and gold he shall see by the stratum. He but barters his blood for gold, after the fas.h.i.+on of his own vile race. What else can he expect from us?

"It is not often, my friends, that we have a feast of blood. Only now and then when some stray traveller falls into a crevice or impudently approaches too near to the craters of Vesuvius and Etna, till he gets suffocated by the fumes and falls senseless into our maws.

"Happily for us, we are not so const.i.tuted as to need sustenance to the extent of those gross gormandisers of the upper world who, would you believe it, my comrades, find it necessary to devour food three or four times a day.

"Ah! well you may open your august eyes at the mention of a vice so brutally preposterous. Thus it is to be sons of clay. We, who are more finely organised beings, of an essence more ethereal, are content to allow ages to pa.s.s before we indulge our appet.i.tes with a full meal; yet we, too, my brethren, need sustenance sometimes.

"Again we are suffering from the pangs of hunger, and we must be satisfied. Patience, my fellow sages and students of those sublime and abstruse sciences ignored by the gross intellects of our reptile neighbours, patience, for to-morrow I bring you a feast of blood. I have brought you blood before, and I will do so again. It is for this that I have taken upon me the base form of one of the vilest among their own vile race.

"My own comely shape by which I am known here below is ill-suited to brook the atmosphere of the surface world; therefore, partly to excite compa.s.sion, and consequently disarm suspicion, I have adopted a loathsome disguise, through which even ye, my friends, would fail to recognise me. At this moment, while I am speaking, the filthy clay that for your sakes I shall don to-morrow lies in the chamber of the victim.