Part 11

When on a time as they sat in a sunset on a headland overlooking a fiord, and far away from Upsala, the Wolf-man said:

‘Master, wilt thou take from me the spell which forces me when the moon is full to don this skin and raven as a wolf? For, anon, I shall begin to feel fierce convulsions throbbing, and wild commotion in all my blood, and raging madness for murder in my whole soul, the time for it being nearly come, and then I spare neither beast nor human being. Now, if thou dost not care to work the charm, there lives near this place, a-down in yonder dale, a Finn who is a famed sorcerer, and to him will I go for relief.’

Flaxius replied musingly, more to himself than to his follower:

‘Yes, it is true. Long, long ago in Greece, I made research into the _Lycanthropia_, which is one of the oldest mysteries of mad humanity. And it was in happy, sunny Arcady--_et in Arcadia ego_--where all was like a proverb of sweet peace, that it first showed itself to the world.

‘In that land, my son, was a wicked king named _Lycaon_. Once it happened that the great god, who was as the Odin and Frey of your faith in one, whose name was Zeus or Jupiter, and in Etruscan, Tinia, came in disguise to this Lycaon, who, to test the divinity or magic of his visitor, set before him human flesh cooked as mutton.’

‘But that was a _great_ sin!’ exclaimed the Wolf-man, who was listening with round eyes and full belief. ‘To treat a _guest_, who should be sacred to the vilest of the vile, in such wise was _nidering_.’

‘It was _très_ low-flung, my son,’ said Flaxius, who had a habit of prophetically borrowing phrases from vocabularies of the future. ‘Yes, _niederträchtig_, scandalous, ribald, scrubby, pitiful, vile, infamous conduct--_infra dignitatem regis_. And it was promptly punished, for Zeus, on the spot, turned the king and his sons, who had had a hand in the little game, all into wolves--the first wolves ever seen--and they ran howling away through the door into the darkness, like mad.’

‘’Tis a fine tale,’ said the Wolf-man. ‘And so the first of us was a _king_, and if he was wicked, he was bold to dare such a deed.’

‘But whence came this _mania_,’ continued Flaxius, talking to himself, ‘since there is a scientific cause for all things? _H’m-h’m!_ the Arcadians were of the primæval race of the Pelasgi, who dwelt secluded from the mob of Asiatics, Egyptians, Levantines, and God knows what all, who fused into Greeks in time. In lonely valleys, deep in mountain dales, they pastured flocks, fought with the beasts of prey, and kept unchanged a mass of the wildest tales of sorcery and witchcraft in freshest faith. So they knew _fear_ in its strangest form--the _panicus terror_--which seizes on mobs of men or beasts, and the _deliria_ of spectres, as no other Greeks knew them. Out of such fear grew the bewildering _insania zoanthropica_, and the awful _insania metamorphosis_ of which Nebuchadnezzar was the prototype. Finally we get to the _dementia lycanthropia_, so interestingly exemplified in thee--O my son!’ he exclaimed, turning to the other, who had sat open-mouthed with wonder and admiration at the speech, of which he had not understood one word. ‘By the way, what is thy name, my son?’ he continued.

‘Ranulf, the mad wolf, is what men call me,’ said the other proudly.

‘_Mon fils, ce n’est pas l’instant pour la vanité humaine_,’ rejoined Flaxius mildly; ‘but as regards removing this disorder of thine, I would fain see how thy Finn will work it. I promise thee a cure in any case.’

They went down and on, till they came to a large, low cottage, buried amid birch-trees and willows. At the door sat an old man weaving baskets, droning to himself an ancient lay, while by him crouched an immense cat of some wild kind. The Finn was dressed in furs and woven bast, or softened willow wood in strips; his face was withered, but his eye was keen as an eagle’s, and as his glance met Flaxius, the two understood one another,

‘The curse of Ilmarin, or of Fenris, lies heavily on him,’ said the Finn, indicating Ranulf.

‘He hath a double curse,’ replied Flaxius, ‘with him it is _at leysa or laedingi eda at drepa or droma_,--the wolf hath two fetters to break--for he is firstly mad, and secondly outlawed, so that he must be mentally cured, and then disguised so as to escape the law. And I would fain see, my brother, how thou workest thy spell.’

‘By the Great Oak!’ exclaimed the sorcerer with a shrewd twinkle of his eye, ‘I doubt not that our methods are much alike. But if it please you, O wise lord from the far Out-gard, to see my simple work, I will most willingly do my best.’

Saying this he took them into a room which was closed and windowless, but in which burned a large, rude Lapland lamp; and having made Ranulf drink of a certain potion, he rubbed him over with an ointment, in the smell of which Flaxius detected certain ingredients which were to him far from being unknown.

‘Ahem!’ he reflected, ‘extract of mandragora, opium, henbane (order _solanaceæ_), sulphur, bitumen, verbena, _amico mio, dove diavolo avete pigliato tutte queste coglionerie_--where the devil didst rake up all this stuff? Yea, from the very ends of the earth do these Voodoos and conjurors correspond, and the Shaman of Kamtschatka sends the _Ammanita muscaria_ unto Timbuctoo for sorceries. Proceed, O friend, I pray thee with thy work!’

The Finn laid the patient on a bed, lighted a pan, in which were strange fumigants, and bade the Were-wolf look him long and steadily in the eyes; which he did with ten owl-power till he began to blink like a judge after luncheon, and finally went into a deep sleep. Then the shaman, taking a kind of large, oval-shaped tambourine, covered with reindeer skin, on which were drawn many mysterious, rude figures, began to beat it gently, while he sang in strange and evidently carefully measured and elaborately trained tones, the following:

‘By the soul of him the father! By the mighty Wainamoinen! By the sun and moon and planets, And their light upon the water! And the water all surrounding, And the forest by the seashore, And the bear within the forest! And the runic mystery written On his paw, and by the letters, Which the lightning writes in darkness, Only read by Ilmarinen! By the One, Three, Five and Seven, And the Four which causes growing, Ever giving, life-begetting: Wolf, I charge thee leave this mortal!

Fly along the running river, Fly across the ferny mountains, Fly into the pine-tree forest! Flee across the birch-edged meadows! Hasten to the oak-bound valley, Or where slopes are dense with beeches, Wade in haste through shallow water, Where the fishes dart in terror! By the rock on which the warriors Cut of yore their strongest record, With the mesh of interlaces, Which avert the witches’ glances: Wolf, I charge thee, leave this mortal! Leave him so that when awaking, He shall never more remember, That he ever wore the wolf hide!’

Thereupon was heard near by the sound of a wolf howling, and, as one would think, praying and expostulating with the shaman, who was, however, very firm, and when the Wolf was over bold, began to sing again:

‘Fly along the running river!’

Till at last the Wolf was heard at some distance, and then still further away; his voice ever less audible, until it seem to disappear amid rustling leaves, and mingle with the wind.

‘Admirably played, my brother,’ exclaimed Flaxius; ‘Apollo never did the trick better. Hypnotized to perfection and cured--like a ham! Yes, the wolf will be no longer at his door. And, my dear doctor, I like your _mise en scène_, your drum and your poetry and perfumery. By the way I can give you a hint or two as to improving the narcotics in your ointment, and yet, who knows? perhaps for your rough folk you have the best _fiat lotio Cras mane sumendus_.’

‘And if Ranulf would like to go a-Viking,’ said the shaman, ‘there is a rich man hard by who has a fine ship to sell cheap, with forty men all armed, and well.’

‘Just like your provident kindness,’ responded Flaxius. ‘Always the same thoughtful old chap. And now for your fee--you won’t take it--ah yes, _inter doctores_, among us members of the Faculty, of course. But permit me,’ he said, producing from his pocket a second flask of the mystic alchemical, spagirical essence, ‘to present to you a medicine which is as yet unknown in the North. Taste it and try its virtue on yourself! _Jameson, Dublin._’

Saying this he uncorked the bottle, presented it, and the Finnic sorcerer, as the saying is, ‘took a sight’; that is to say, the bottle ascended at an angle of forty-five degrees from his mouth, so that his vision glanced exactly in a line with the side, as if it were a pistol. He took very deliberate aim, was in no hurry, being evidently determined to make a line-shot, hit the bull’s eye and bring down the game, and then _clucked_. The shot had been fired. Then turning to Flaxius he spoke no word, but uttered a _wink_, and such a wink as Flaxius had never seen before in all his mighty experience. The charge had gone home, and he had brought down his racoon, killing him dead at a shot.[6]

There was a Finnish shaman sorcerer who had a wondrous interview with Hibernian spirits all that night, and who was found next morning buried in a magic trance. And far out at sea there was a solitary Viking sail bearing southward, and from the oarsmen came the chorus of a song in Icelandic:

‘Sing hey! sing ho! for the land of flowers!’

* * * * *

Ages had come and gone, and the cobwebs and dust had gathered three inches deep in crust on many an old bottle of wine in many an ancient cellar, when Flaxius found himself of a bright, crisp, autumn day in the city of New York, presenting a letter of introduction to a retired stockbroker, whose home was situated up the river, in the Catskills. This gentleman was named Randolph, and Flaxius was much pleased with him. He was a genial, jovial, merry-go-tumble man in a general way, with a quaint American _mot_ for every circumstance, and quick at filling the kettle whenever there was any fun to be boiled; but he had withal evidently a tremendous hard pan, or substratum, of what is called _horse-sense_, which is a sixth sense supplied by nature to her Western children. He was immensely powerful, in fact a perfect picture of excessive ruddy health, being one of those enviable muscular beasts who can bend a horse-shoe, or tear in two a pack of cards; and he had a tremendous shock of red hair.

This ‘powerful party’ took a great liking in turn to Flaxius, forcing him to come at once, ‘to stay his time and plenty of it,’ at his villa on the Hudson; where, what between reed-bird, venison, soft shell crab, terrapin and snapper soup, Spanish mackerel and blue-fish banquets, pretty faces, festivities, drives, and gaieties, the guest drew comparisons with the pleasures of ancient Rome and Paris, not in all respects favourable to the latter.

It is an invariable rule in life, that however powerful and reticent a nature like that of Randolph’s may be, it inevitably runs into intimate confidence when it meets with another of the kind of Flaxius. Mercury does not melt more surely into lead than the strong animal soul combines with a stronger intellectual power. And the end of it was, to abridge the tale, that one day Mr. Randolph told to his guest the story of his life.

‘I was the son,’ he said, ‘of a farmer who lived in one of the eastern counties of Massachusetts, and who, being favoured by fortune, accumulated about one hundred thousand dollars. I was an only son; was sent to Harvard, graduated, and went to practise law in New York.

‘Now with all these advantages, and some plain, hard-working common sense to boot, I still fell into the teeth and claws of a rascal. All that I can say in my own defence was that he took in and ruined many a far shrewder and more experienced man than I was. He was eminently pious, having what we here call ‘New Jersey piety,’ the kind which forms a part of every-day life, even as the skin does of the body. It is never laid aside, even by the thief in prison or by the keeper of the lowest den of iniquity, as was shown in the case of the Wickedest Man in New York, who was withal perfectly sincere in his piety and neither a Pharisee nor a hypocrite.

‘This man was a stockbroker, and he induced me by a series of marvellously ingenious tricks and devices to intrust to him the whole of my property. He was one of those great ‘operators’ who are technically said to live by slaughtering sheep or lambs.’

‘Ahem!’ interrupted Flaxius, ‘you said _lambs_, I think. So he got all your flock?’

‘Every handful of wool, and left me as bare as the back of your hand. It was by a very simple swindle. He invested my money, or that of others, in stocks, which were manipulated or depreciated by tricks to far below their value. If a man is a thorough rascal it is easy in the immense range of insecurities to find something which can be thus run down, or up. So my broker, when they were _down_ bought them in for himself--it did not take him long to use up my hundred thousand. When all was gone, one of his clerks told me the whole story.

‘I calmly and deliberately determined that I would devote my life and all its energies, without one qualm of conscience, to revenge. I swore I would hunt him, as a wolf.’

‘Ah! I beg your pardon,’ exclaimed Flaxius. ‘But this is becoming extremely interesting.’

‘As a wolf hunts a deer. So I went into Wall Street and worked as few have ever done to learn all its tricks and devices, and I had a great advantage, for while others worked for money, I only sought to learn how to work.

‘Well, it came to pass in time that I knew that my enemy had invested a very large part of his means in a certain manufactory, which was in a remote district, several days away from New York, with which it had only a partial railroad communication. I managed long and well, till I contrived to have it telegraphed that the entire town had been utterly destroyed by fire, and then we cut the telegraph wire, and tore up the rail. For three days we had that stock down to nothing, and bought it right and left.’

‘The wolf was loose,’ remarked Flaxius.

‘You bet! And the best of it was that we ran it all over town that mine enemy had got up the whole thing himself to bear the stock! So be sure he was tee-totally ruined, but then he had _mis-cal-cu--lated_!’

Mr. Randolph uttered this with an expression which was distinctly lupine, showing his teeth in a style which recalled to Flaxius an ancient witch-tower in Upsala, and corpses hanging on the walls in the evening sunlight, and a story about certain sheep and lambs, _et cetera_.

‘Yes, it was a glorious, a noble operation,’ continued Mr. Randolph, ‘and perfectly successful. I got my hundred thousand back again with interest, every _plunker_ of it. “Plunker” is Cambridge College for a dollar.’

‘_Palanco_,’ interpolated Flaxius. ‘The Florentine for a two soldi piece. The same size.’

‘And that was only the beginning of my luck,’ continued Mr. Randolph. ‘For of course the truth oozed out, and it gave me a magnificent reputation, in Wall Street.’

‘Truly enviable,’ remarked Flaxius. ‘Were there many, think you, among your--colleagues--who would have done the same?’

‘No,’ replied Randolph proudly, ‘not a beggar of them. They hadn’t the nerve for it.’

‘It seems to me,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘that the ideas of mankind as to honesty are somewhat conventional. _Où, diable, va l’orgueil se nicher?_’

A few days after, Mr. Randolph invited Flaxius to take a sail in his yacht. And as they went along before the breeze, the host said:

‘I don’t know why it is, but the being on board my craft and hearing the waves, makes me feel as if I were an old Norse _vikingir_. Strange, isn’t it? By the way, my family was of Swedish origin, and yet the name Randolph is _Virginian_.’

‘H’m!’ replied Flaxius, ‘Ranolf is Norse enough. It means a raging wolf.’

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius on the blank end of the revise, ‘this fable teaches, that life is very much the same old dish over again: the solid beef or game of the dinner in the olden time re-cooked a little and laid lightly on toast for a more refined modern breakfast. And whether it was Thou and I indeed, or the Elements and Forces which make us, this much is certain, that _somehow_ and _somewhere_ we ever were, and as _something_ ever shall be still acting. This is as much of immortality as a wise man requires, and a deal more than most of us deserve. Let us pass on to another story.’

[6] Mr. A. Savage Landor, in his very interesting book of travels among the Ainus makes mention of the marvellous power of expressive winking with which these northern savages are gifted, and I have observed the same among Red Indians. They learn it from their pow-wows or shamans.

FLAXIUS AND BREITMANN

‘It is told in ancient story how to the Flemish court, There came a knightly minstrel who made them royal sport, That was as brave a Recké as ever yet was seen, At fighting or at singing he won the prize I ween! So stately in the festal hall, he caught each lady’s eye. And when it came to revelling he drank the cellar dry.’

WHILE swimming onwards down the stream of Time, it chanced all in the merry, golden hours of spring, when rivulets dance, and birds are on the wing:

‘And a starry silver glory Is at daybreak over all, When the dews, like gems in story On the queen like blossoms fall,’

that Flaxius, when in Innspruck, sat one afternoon in a shady beer-garden by the rushing river, listening to two nightingales in a cage, which were singing duets or holding talk in nightingale tongue, with two wild ones outside. The latter were complaining bitterly of the hard time they had of it to pick up a living; while the imprisoned ones bewailed that their engagements to sing to select audiences did not allow them the least liberty, though they lived in luxury, being taken in whenever it rained and fed on ants’ eggs, _ad libitum_; which are the same to nightingales as Whitby oysters, caviare and _pâté aux truffes_ are to us.

Flaxius observed that a broad-shouldered, big-bearded, tall, and knightly man, who seemed to be half soldier and as much minstrel, sitting at the next table, also listened to the bird-songs with a smile, as if he partly understood them. On a closer examination, Flaxius recognised in him the Ritter Hans Breitmann, whom he had met in earlier times,--the same Breitmann, having in a small and very quiet way a humble little sixpenny immortality, just as the odd fish in nature have been preserved from the earliest types, while better kinds, which shone more brightly in their day, have vanished.

The sage bowed to the minstrel, the Breitmann waved his beer-mug to Flaxius, and the two drank politely, one to the other, and to old times.

‘You seem to understand bird-language,’ remarked the other.

‘_Nun_, yoost a liddle,’ replied the bard, who spoke all tongues in a curious patois. ‘Enough to get hints or dips for songs. All poets know someding of it, most of dem a crate deal petter as I. Yoost so de Gypsy Zigeuners play bird-songs--de whole orchestra--nefer twice alike, _ach ja! alles sehr schön_, peaudiful!’

‘Could you sing me a song learned from the nightingales?’ asked Flaxius.

‘Cerdainly,’ replied Breitmann, ‘mit bleasure,’ and, draining off his beer, he unslung the lute from his back, tuned two chords, hemmed, and then sang of--

LONG, LONG AGO

‘When de nightingale was singing, All in de cool of eve, To de pleasant breeze, And de birds were flingin’ Perfume from de trees, _Hei da, ri dé! Hei da, ri do!_

I sat by my love so fair and gay, As we had sat for many a day, And _ach! wir warn so frô_, Loving--as dere we lay!

Dame Nightingale, de wood bird small, Sang to us a melody, How love outliveth all Whate’er on earth may pe; _Hei da, ri dé! Hei da, ri do!_ “Love passeth all both great and small, So now sing afder me!”

We sang old songs togedder, Songs of de merry time, And light ash any fedder, We maked full many a Rhyme, _Hei da, ri dé! Hei da, ri da He da ri da Laun!_ Unto a lute we sang dis lay, And so we passed de live-long day Until de Sun went down.

We sang old songs togedder Of loves long passed away, All in de pleasant wedder Ash in de grass we lay. _Hei da, ri da Hei da, ri dá!_ No more can I rememper, yet What I recall I’ll ne’er forget So long as life is gay!’

And as the Breitmann sang and tinkled his lute, the nightingales who were present joined in--’twas like Jenny Lind and Parepa Rosa in a duet. I mention this, because in a later age the souls of the two caged nightingales did actually reappear in human form as J. L. and P. R.; even as vultures whom I could mention have reappeared on the Stock Exchange; and black-beetles as clergymen about town; and butterflies as professional beauties; and divers ducks as doctors; and an old owl as Premier. But to return.

As they sat there at twilight tide, talking over old times when they had met at the court of brave King Roosevelt in Holland, there came the sound of a far-off bell ringing vespers, and Flaxius said:

‘Ever since the earliest times men have believed that there was a holy influence in the sound of a bell. The old Etruscans and their children, the Romans, made them of bronze, and sometimes of silver, all to keep away witches and evil spirits. In fact, from the immense number which are found, it would seem as if there had been, at least, one to every human being.

‘And dot was kept up py de Christians,’ added Breitmann, ‘who peliefed a great deal still more in dem, and to dis tay it is said dot witches are afraid of bells, witch is de reason de priests keep a ringing dem all the while. As you see py de woonderful story of der bell of Kaltern, here in Tyrol.’

‘Tell it,’ replied Flaxius.

‘I can sing it if you would care to hear it,’ answered Herr Breitmann. ‘Dot comes easier to me.’

‘All the better,’ quoth the sage.

And Breitmann chanted:

THE BELL OF KALTERN

‘Oh the church bells at even, How sweetly they ring! Like angels in heaven, They murmur and sing! Where music can travel Their echoes are found: And naught that is evil Can list to the sound: So softly, so quaintly they chime in their play, So gently, so faintly, then dying away, Fading out, with the day.

Now no witch can hold out where the church _Glocke_ hang, For the bells being blest they’re afraid of the clang: At the very first sound when ’tis heard _they_ are lost, And shrivel like roses when touched by a frost; And the devil himself would be off on the wing When the great bell of Kaltern began with its ring, Ha, that “busted up” as a terror to see In grand scatteration the whole company: And good Christians, like us, aren’t more frightened of hell Than the witches were scared by the sound of that bell. Until at the last, when their patience was past, And the very end-thread of the skein being spun, They swore there must certainly something be done. And something they did too at once in the cause: And you soon will surmise what the handiwork was.