After these annoying circumstances, the Professor returned homeward. At the “Rising Sun” he was stopped by a friend.
“Ah, good morning, Professor,” said he, “anything new?”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” said Winderhans, “except that one of my old relations has been kind enough to leave me a tolerable sum of money—so, so, that is.”
“Let me congratulate you. Now if you do not sit up so late in the Capitol pouring over musty parchments—if you do not labor so much as heretofore”—
“Well, I think of resigning soon.”
“Indeed! Bye-the-bye, what a fine dog you have there.”
“Cursed dog,” muttered Winderhans.
But the Black Dog stuck to the Professor like his shadow, and what annoyed him most of all, was apparently ever under the invisible eye of the Dark Gentleman. Often, too, in dense clouds Winderhans imagined he saw a Gentleman in Black on the alert, but who always disappeared on finding himself observed.
“May the foul fiend seize him,” he muttered one day, as the dark figure caught his eye then disappeared in a public meeting. “Does he think, perchance, that the presence of this vicious imp will compel me to sign his bond? Fool!”
But fool as he was, the Professor was ere long compelled to acknowledge his devilish ingenuity. Everywhere the Black Dog, like his shadow, followed at his heels, and continually by some vexatious accident he was made to feel the brute’s malicious character.
One morning he lounged into Fitzwhylson’s bookstore, and glanced over the new books which had just been issued.
The Black Dog stretched himself at ease on the floor.
Tho Professor’s attention was attracted from the book he was reading, by the entrance of a lady, and this lady proved to be a widow fair, fat and forty, with the addition of a tolerable fortune, for whom the Professor had long felt a tender interest.
She carried a white lap-dog about the size of an orange, her gait was languishing and graceful, and she asked for “Angelina Courtenay,” a novel of the die-away school then very popular.
The Professor assumed his best smile, and was engaged in a most agreeable and flattering conversation, when a dreadful howl was heard from the lap-dog, which had escaped from the lady’s fair hand to the floor.
What was the Professor’s horror, on turning round, to find that Fido had ventured too near the Black Fiend, as he now considered him, and had consequently received a stroke of his paw which dislocated nearly every bone in his diminutive body.
The lady shrieked, took up her pet and, casting a reproachful glance at Winderhans, went out muttering an imprecation on that “‘dreadful animal!”
Winderhans was about to hurl the book he held at the dog, when his eye caught the title. It was Irving’s story of the “Devil and Tom Walker.”
His eye was glued to the page and he only stopped reading to take out his purse, pay for the book and return with it home. The dog who had watched him with sleepless eyes arose and followed him. Winderhans had made up his mind what course to follow.
CHAPTER V.
WINDERHANS AND THE BLACK DOG.
The dog followed him, and even before arriving at his master’s residence had managed to make his presence felt in a way which would have driven an individual of ordinary patience almost mad.
But Winderhans was affectionate and gracious to his black guardian.
The Professor stopped to chat a moment with his Excellency, the Governor, at the old Coffee House. The Black Dog in the very midst of the conversation ran between the Governor’s legs and very nearly made him lose his balance.
“Whose dog is that!” he cried, much exasperated.
The dog showed his teeth while watching to avoid a kick from both quarters—his master and the Governor.
“Mine,” said Winderhans with a smile, “he is sometimes a little rough, sir, but it is only playfulness, mere fun. It is an excellent and most faithful animal—follows me everywhere—in fact his affection for me is so great that he will never leave me—ha! ha!”
This “ha! ha!” was distinctly echoed by another “ha! ha!” but so strangely accented, that every one looked round. It was a laugh in which much astonishment was discernible.
“Who laughed?” said his Excellency.
No one answered.
“It must have been my dog Nero,” said Winderhans, smiling; “he is a very facetious animal. But really I must hurry home—business, you know, Excellency. Come Nero!”
The Black Dog followed sullenly.
Thereafter the Professor’s treatment of his dog much changed. He supplied him with tit-bits of meat, a magnificent kennel was ordered home, and he was decorated with a silver collar on which was inscribed “Professor Julius Winderhans, from his great uncle, Isaac Von Winderhans.” The whole citv was ringing with the luck of the Professor, who in his old age had been suddenly declared the only heir of the opulent Mynheer Winderhans of Amsterdam.
What the animal thought of the change is, I imagine, at this late day, wholly undiscoverable. His vicious conduct, however, rather increased. He became the torture and the curse of Winderhans’ life—still Winderhans was gracious.
A month had now elapsed, and the Professor had not yet resigned his place, when one night in his office under the Capitol, he thus addressed himself to the dog.
“Nero,” said Winderhans, “I make bold to say that I have treated you well. I have given you to eat all that a reasonable dog could desire, and if I have not been able to administer to that intellectual and poetic temperament which I perceive in you, I am sorry and I ask your pardon!”
Here the Professor took a pinch of snuff.
The Dog growled approvingly.
“Your name of Nero was not given you for the purpose of inducing invidious comparisons between you and that monster of blood—not at all!”
Nero laid a paw upon his heart.
“Had I called you Morgan, like the black horse of my friend, your master, or even Captain Kyd, the bold buccaneer, I should mean nothing—I would not on my soul!’
Nero positively grinned.
“I feel,” continued the Professor, “each day for you a stronger and stronger affection, and though as a dog of candor you must confess that you are occasionally slightly, very slightly mischievous, I can pardon that.”
Nero made a grateful acknowledgment with his fore-paw.
“It was to assure you of these friendly feelings towards you,” continued Winderhans, smiling in an affectionate manner, “that I have entered on this discourse. To prove at once my attention to your comforts, I would say that at a considerable outlay of trouble and expense, I have provided for your entertainment three small cats, which, when you desire it, I will let loose.”
Nero’s eyes glistened.
“I will bring them hither,” said the Professor, going out carelessly and easily.
Nero arose suspiciously, then lay down with a look which almost pierced the Professor’s heart. That look said, “I rely implicitly on your honor, Winderhans.”
The Professor, we have said, went out carelessly and slowly;—when a few yards from the door, he increased his pace and looked round suspiciously; he commenced running then along the echoing passages. Suddenly another noise was heard. The Black Dog, who had watched him through a crack, had bounded through the door and was pursuing him. Winderhans felt his blood run cold; his hair stood on end, and his body trembled as he pushed his short legs to their best speed. Behind came the Dog almost catching, in his furious jaws, the flying coat-tail—he heard his footsteps and his panting.
Suddenly Winderhans struck his foot against the sill of the iron door. He darted through, closed it with a clang and turned the key.
Nero threw himself, uttering a sound like laughter, on the heavy iron grate.
He recoiled, yelling.
Winderhans had replaced the circular lock with a long, powerful bolt of his own invention. This bolt bore the form of the cross.
In vain the Black Dog howl
ed in tones of menace, entreaty and reproach. Winderhans was immovably fixed in his resolution. He wrapped his cloak around him, returned home, and the next day resigned his office.
Three months after he married the fair widow and played on his Cremona happily, and without disturbance, to the end of his days; never thinking, it is said, of the Black Dog, but with an inward chuckle, and never repenting of the bargain he had made.
There are those who say that the Professor fell asleep in his chair one night and dreamed all that is here narrated. But this, besides robbing the tradition of much of its interest, is much more improbable than that the whole occurred precisely as is here set down.
There are those again who say that the whole is a fable, and that Professor Winderhans in reality never existed.
To sceptics such as these, we have nothing to say.
M——, Va., Aug., 1851.
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFO
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE GRAY LADY, by Mary E. Lee
THE EBONY FRAME, by Edith Nesbit
THE DOOM, by Benedict
THE CURSE OF THE CATAFALQUES, by F. Anstey
THE STRIDING PLACE, by Gertrude Atherton
SISTER SERAPHINE, by Edna W. Underwood
EXTRAORDINARY INDIAN FEATS OF LEGERDEMAIN, by David Dawson Mitchell
LAZARUS, by Leonid Andreyev
THE TRANSFIGURED, by Heinrich Zschokke
THE UNCANNY BAIRN, by Mrs. Alfred (Louisa) Baldwin
UNCLE ABRAHAM’S ROMANCE, by Edith Nesbit
MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE, by Edith Nesbit
THE SECRET OF THE STRADIVARIUS, by Hugh Conway
MR. LINDSAY’S MANUSCRIPT, by T. H. E.
ROSAURA AND HER RELATIONS, by Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué
THE ENCHANTED GIFTS, by Mrs. Jane L. Swift
THE GALLOWS MAN, by Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué
THE ROCK OF HANS HEILING, by Theodor Koerner
THE VISION OF AGIB, by Anonymous
WINDERHANS AND THE GENTLEMAN IN BLACK, by Anonymous
The Second Macabre Megapack Page 47