The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  The old man could not finish the sentence. He staggered back before the fiendish look of his pupil, and covered his face with his hands.

  Franz was breathing heavily, and his eyes had an expression that reminded Klaus of those of a hyena. His pallor was cadaverous. For some time he could not speak, but only gasped for breath. At last he slowly muttered, “Are you in earnest?”

  “I am, as I hope to help you.”

  “And…and do you really believe that had I only the means of obtaining human intestines for strings, I could rival Paganini?” asked Franz, after a moment’s pause, and casting down his eyes.

  The old German unveiled his face, and, with a strange look of determination upon it, softly answered:

  “Human intestines alone are not sufficient for our purpose; they must have belonged to someone who had loved us well, with an unselfish, holy love. Tartini endowed his violin with the life of a virgin; but that virgin had died of unrequited love for him. The fiendish artist had prepared beforehand a tube, in which he managed to catch her last breath as she expired, pronouncing his beloved name, and he then transferred this breath to his violin. As to Paganini, I have just told you his tale. It was with the consent of his victim, though, that he murdered him to get possession of his intestines.

  “Oh, for the power of the human voice!” Samuel went on, after a brief pause. “What can equal the eloquence, the magic spell of the human voice? Do you think, my poor boy, I would not have taught you this great, this final secret, were it not that it throws one right into the clutches of him…who must remain unnamed at night?” he added, with a sudden return to the superstitions of his youth.

  Franz did not answer; but with a calmness awful to behold, he left his place, took down his violin from the wall where it was hanging, and, with one powerful grasp of the chords, he tore them out and flung them into the fire.

  Samuel suppressed a cry of horror. The chords were hissing upon the coals, where, among the blazing logs, they wriggled and curled like so many living snakes.

  “By the witches of Thessaly and the dark arts of Circe!” he exclaimed, with foaming mouth and his eyes burning like coals; “by the Furies of Hell and Pluto himself, I now swear, in thy presence, O Samuel, my master, never to touch a violin again until I can string it with four human chords. May I be accursed for ever and ever if I do!” He fell senseless on the floor, with a deep sob, that ended like a funeral wail; old Samuel lifted him up as he would have lifted a child, and carried him to his bed. Then he sallied forth in search of a physician.

  IV

  For several days after this painful scene Franz was very ill, ill almost beyond recovery. The physician declared him to be suffering from brain fever and said that the worst was to be feared. For nine long days the patient remained delirious; and Klaus, who was nursing him night and day with the solicitude of the tenderest mother, was horrified at the work of his own hands. For the first time since their acquaintance began, the old teacher, owing to the wild ravings of his pupil, was able to penetrate into the darkest corners of that weird, superstitious, cold, and, at the same time, passionate nature; and—he trembled at what he discovered. For he saw that which he had failed to perceive before—Franz as he was in reality, and not as he seemed to superficial observers. Music was the life of the young man, and adulation was the air he breathed, without which that life became a burden; from the chords of his violin alone, Stenio drew his life and being, but the applause of men and even of Gods was necessary to its support. He saw unveiled before his eyes a genuine, artistic, earthly soul, with its divine counterpart totally absent, a son of the Muses, all fancy and brain poetry, but without a heart. While listening to the ravings of that delirious and unhinged fancy Klaus felt as if he were for the first time in his long life exploring a marvelous and untraveled region, a human nature not of this world but of some incomplete planet. He saw all this, and shuddered. More than once he asked himself whether it would not be doing a kindness to his “boy” to let him die before he returned to consciousness.

  But he loved his pupil too well to dwell for long on such an idea. Franz had bewitched his truly artistic nature, and now old Klaus felt as though their two lives were inseparably linked together. That he could thus feel was a revelation to the old man; so he decided to save Franz, even at the expense of his own old and, as he thought, useless life.

  The seventh day of the illness brought on a most terrible crisis. For twenty-four hours the patient never closed his eyes, nor remained for a moment silent; he raved continuously during the whole time. His visions were peculiar, and he minutely described each. Fantastic, ghastly figures kept slowly swimming out of the penumbra of his small, dark room, in regular and uninterrupted procession, and he greeted each by name as he might greet old acquaintances. He referred to himself as Prometheus, bound to the rock by four bands made of human intestines. At the foot of the Caucasian Mount the black waters of the river Styx were running….They had deserted Arcadia, and were now endeavoring to encircle within a seven-fold embrace the rock upon which he was suffering….

  “Wouldst thou know the name of the Promethean rock, old man?” he roared into his adopted father’s ear….“Listen then,…its name is…called Samuel Klaus…

  “Yes, yes!…” the German murmured disconsolately. “It is I who killed him, while seeking to console. The news of Paganini’s magic arts struck his fancy too vividly….Oh, my poor, poor boy!”

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha!” The patient broke into a loud and discordant laugh. “Aye, poor old man, sayest thou?…So, so, thou art of poor stuff, anyhow, and wouldst look well only when stretched upon a fine Cremona violin!…”

  Klaus shuddered, but said nothing. He only bent over the poor maniac, and with a kiss upon his brow, a caress as tender and as gentle as that of a doting mother, he left the sickroom for a few instants to seek relief in his own garret. When he returned, the ravings were following another channel. Franz was singing, trying to imitate the sounds of a violin.

  Toward the evening of that day, the delirium of the sick man became perfectly ghastly. He saw spirits of fire clutching at his violin. Their skeleton hands, from each finger of which grew a flaming claw, beckoned to old Samuel….They approached and surrounded the old master, and were preparing to rip him open…him, “the only man on this earth who loves me with an unselfish, holy love, and…whose intestines can be of any good at all!” he went on whispering, with glaring eyes and demon laugh….

  By the next morning, however, the fever had disappeared, and by the end of the ninth day Stenio had left his bed, having no recollection of his illness, and no suspicion that he had allowed Klaus to read his inner thought. Nay; had he himself any knowledge that such a horrible idea as the sacrifice of his old master to his ambition had ever entered his mind? Hardly. The only immediate result of his fatal illness was, that as, by reason of his vow, his artistic passion could find no issue, another passion awoke, which might avail to feed his ambition and his insatiable fancy. He plunged headlong into the study of the Occult Arts, of Alchemy and of Magic. In the practice of Magic the young dreamer sought to stifle the voice of his passionate longing for his, as he thought, forever lost violin….

  Weeks and months passed away, and the conversation about Paganini was never resumed between the master and the pupil. But a profound melancholy had taken possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a word, the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its habitual place. It was as the presence of a soulless corpse between them.

  The young man had become gloomy and sarcastic, even avoiding the mention of music. Once, as his old professor, after long hesitation, took out his own violin from its dust-covered case and prepared to play, Franz gave a convulsive shudder, but said nothing. At the first notes of the bow, however, he glared like a madman, and rushing out of the house, remained for hours, wandering in the streets. Then old Samuel in his turn threw his instrument down, an
d locked himself up in his room till the following morning.

  One night as Franz sat, looking particularly pale and gloomy, old Samuel suddenly jumped from his seat, and after hopping about the room in a magpie fashion, approached his pupil, imprinted a fond kiss upon the young man’s brow, and squeaked at the top of his shrill voice:

  “Is it not time to put an end to all this?”…

  Whereupon, starting from his usual lethargy, Franz echoed, as in a dream:

  “Yes, it is time to put an end to this.”

  Upon which the two separated, and went to bed.

  On the following morning, when Franz awoke, he was astonished not to see his old teacher in his usual place to greet him. But he had greatly altered during the last few months, and he at first paid no attention to his absence, unusual as it was. He dressed and went into the adjoining room, a little parlor where they had their meals, and which separated their two bedrooms. The fire had not been lighted since the embers had died out on the previous night, and no sign was anywhere visible of the professor’s busy hand in his usual housekeeping duties. Greatly puzzled, but in no way dismayed, Franz took his usual place at the corner of the now cold fireplace, and fell into an aimless reverie. As he stretched himself in his old armchair, raising both his hands to clasp them behind his head in a favorite posture of his, his hand came into contact with something on a shelf at his back; he knocked against a case, and brought it violently on the ground.

  It was old Klaus’s violin case that came down to the floor with such a sudden crash that the case opened and the violin fell out of it, rolling to the feet of Franz. And then the chords striking against the brass fender emitted a sound, prolonged, sad and mournful as the sigh of an unrestful soul; it seemed to fill the whole room, and reverberated in the head and the very heart of the young man. The effect of that broken violin string was magical.

  “Samuel!” cried Stenio, with his eyes starting from their sockets, and an unknown terror suddenly taking possession of his whole being. “Samuel! what has happened?…My good, my dear old master!” he called out, hastening to the professor’s little room, and throwing the door violently open. No one answered, all was silent within.

  He staggered back, frightened at the sound of his own voice, so changed and hoarse it seemed to him at this moment. No reply came in response to his call. Naught followed but a dead silence…that stillness which in the domain of sounds, usually denotes death. In the presence of a corpse, as in the lugubrious stillness of a tomb, such silence acquires a mysterious power, which strikes the sensitive soul with a nameless terror….The little room was dark, and Franz hastened to open the shutters.

  Samuel was lying on his bed, cold, stiff, and lifeless….At the sight of the corpse of him who had loved him so well, and had been to him more than a father, Franz experienced a dreadful revulsion of feeling a terrible shock. But the ambition of the fanatical artist got the better of the despair of the man, and smothered the feelings of the latter in a few seconds.

  A note bearing his own name was conspicuously placed upon a table near the corpse. With trembling hand, the violinist tore open the envelope, and read the following:

  MY BELOVED SON, FRANZ,

  When you read this, I shall have made the greatest sacrifice, that your best and only friend and teacher could have accomplished for your fame. He, who loved you most, is now but an inanimate lump of clay. Of your old teacher there now remains but a clod of cold organic matter. I need not prompt you as to what you have to do with it. Fear not stupid prejudices. It is for your future fame that I have made an offering of my body, and you would be guilty of the blackest ingratitude were you now to render useless this sacrifice. When you shall have replaced the chords upon your violin, and these chords a portion of my own self, under your touch it will acquire the power of that accursed sorcerer, all the magic voices of Paganini’s instrument. You will find therein my voice, my sighs and groans, my song of welcome, the prayerful sobs of my infinite and sorrowful sympathy, my love for you. And now, my Franz, fear nobody! Take your instrument with you, and dog the steps of him who filled our lives with bitterness and despair!…Appear in every arena, where, hitherto, he has reigned without a rival, and bravely throw the gauntlet of defiance in his face. O Franz! then only wilt thou hear with what a magic power the full notes of unselfish love will issue forth from thy violin. Perchance, with a last caressing touch of its chords, thou wilt remember that they once formed a portion of thine old teacher, who now embraces and blesses thee for the last time.

  SAMUEL.

  Two burning tears sparkled in the eyes of Franz, but they dried up instantly. Under the fiery rush of passionate hope and pride, the two orbs of the future magician-artist, riveted to the ghastly face of the dead man, shone like the eyes of a demon.

  Our pen refuses to describe that which took place on that day, after the legal inquiry was over. As another note, written with a view of satisfying the authorities, had been prudently provided by the loving care of the old teacher, the verdict was, “Suicide from causes unknown”; after this the coroner and the police retired, leaving the bereaved heir alone in the death room, with the remains of that which had once been a living man.

  * * *

  —

  Scarcely a fortnight had elapsed from that day, ere the violin had been dusted, and four new, stout strings had been stretched upon it. Franz dared not look at them. He tried to play, but the bow trembled in his hand like a dagger in the grasp of a novice brigand. He then determined not to try again, until the portentous night should arrive, when he should have a chance of rivaling, nay, of surpassing, Paganini.

  The famous violinist had meanwhile left Paris, and was giving a series of triumphant concerts at an old Flemish town in Belgium.

  V

  One night, as Paganini, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, was sitting in the dining room of the hotel at which he was staying, a visiting card, with a few words written on it in pencil, was handed to him by a young man with wild and staring eyes.

  Fixing upon the intruder a look, which few persons could bear, but receiving back a glance as calm and determined as his own, Paganini slightly bowed, and then dryly said:

  “Sir, it shall be as you desire. Name the night. I am at your service.”

  On the following morning the whole town was startled by the appearance of bills posted at the corner of every street, and bearing the strange notice:

  On the night of…, at the Grand Theatre of…and for the first time, will appear before the public, Franz Stenio, a German violinist, arrived purposely to throw down the gauntlet to the world-famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel—upon their violins. He purposes to compete with the great “virtuoso” in the execution of the most difficult of his compositions. The famous Paganini has accepted the challenge. Franz Stenio will play, in competition with the unrivaled violinist, the celebrated “Fantaisie Caprice” of the latter, known as “The Witches.”

  The effect of the notice was magical. Paganini, who, amid his greatest triumphs, never lost sight of a profitable speculation, doubled the usual price of admission, but still the theater could not hold the crowds that flocked to secure tickets for that memorable performance.

  * * *

  —

  At last the morning of the concert day dawned, and the “duel” was in everyone’s mouth. Franz Stenio, who, instead of sleeping, had passed the whole long hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and down his room like an encaged panther, had, toward morning, fallen on his bed from mere physical exhaustion. Gradually he passed into a deathlike and dreamless slumber. At the gloomy winter dawn he awoke, but finding it too early to rise he fell asleep again. And then he had a vivid dream—so vivid indeed, so lifelike, that from its terrible realism he felt sure that it was a vision rather than a dream.

  He had left his violin on a table by his bedside, locked in its
case, the key of which never left him. Since he had strung it with those terrible chords he never let it out of his sight for a moment. In accordance with his resolution he had not touched it since his first trial, and his bow had never but once touched the human strings, for he had since always practiced on another instrument. But now in his sleep he saw himself looking at the locked case. Something in it was attracting his attention, and he found himself incapable of detaching his eyes from it. Suddenly he saw the upper part of the case slowly rising, and, within the chink thus produced, he perceived two small, phosphorescent green eyes—eyes but too familiar to him—fixing themselves on his, lovingly, almost beseechingly. Then a thin, shrill voice, as if issuing from these ghastly orbs—the voice and orbs of Samuel Klaus himself—resounded in Stenio’s horrified ear, and he heard it say:

  “Franz, my beloved boy….Franz, I cannot, no I cannot separate myself from…them!”

  And “they” twanged piteously inside the case.

  Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his blood actually freezing, and his hair moving and standing erect on his head.

  “It’s but a dream, an empty dream!” he attempted to formulate in his mind.

  “I have tried my best, Franzchen….I have tried my best to sever myself from these accursed strings, without pulling them to pieces….” pleaded the same shrill, familiar voice. “Wilt thou help me to do so?”

  Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded within the case, now dragged about the table in every direction, by some interior power, like some living, wriggling thing, the twangs becoming sharper and more jerky with every new pull.