“Across the way live a few students, one of them this Johann Tring who accompanied us. Those seeking us would never think of looking for us here; the change in name is also a protection. Here we may stay in comfort until such time as we may communicate with the King.”
He intended to say more, but was interrupted by a curious sound that came from outside as if a heavy body were dragging itself along. The mother uttered a little cry of fear; Pan Andrew reached for the handle of his short sword, but Joseph broke into a laugh.
“It is my dog rubbing against the door,” he said. “He is tired and hungry, and no doubt wants a little water. There is a well in the court below from which I will draw it, and he can sleep then in the shelter of the wall. To-morrow I must procure a chain or rope to fasten him with, for he is nearly wild and might cause trouble if he ran about.” With this Joseph searched in a basket for a bit of meat and a piece of bread, and finding them, descended to the court below. It was dark there but his mother held the lantern above him so that he could see to draw water and settle the dog in a corner of the wall.
When they returned his father was preparing for bed. The valuable package had been disposed of somewhere; with curious eyes Joseph scanned every inch of the large room and came to the conclusion that the only hiding place in the quarters was that afforded by the bed, either in the shadowy place beneath it, or somewhere in the bedding or folded clothes beneath the headrests.
He ceased to wonder very long about it, however, for his eyelids were heavy, despite his sleep of the afternoon. The whole world drifted off into oblivion, it seemed, the minute that he laid his head on the stuffed bag that served for a pillow.
The next day all were astir early. The mother was at work polishing the woodwork, and the father was driving nails to strengthen the cheap chairs, or covering cracks in the wall, and later inspecting the old staircase outside the building to see if he might mend it. The daylight inspection brought with it some satisfaction, for while it confirmed his belief that the staircase was shaky, yet it revealed that the underpinnings were firmer than might be supposed. The staircase might last for some years if it did not have rough usage, and certainly there was no immediate danger as Pan Andrew had feared the night before.
Joseph took an early opportunity, after he had eaten the breakfast brought by the old woman who lived below, to run forth into the Street of the Pigeons with the dog, whom he named at once Wolf. In the daytime the street wore little of the sinister aspect that it carried at night; the little oval windows that had seemed then like wicked eyes peering down, now were more like the eyes of merry gnomes or pixies. The buildings which in the twilight, or even in the night time when lights fell upon them, seemed grotesque or terrible, in the light of day seemed only curiously twisted out of shape and hung out and bent inward in every conceivable fashion. All the lower windows bore heavy iron bars; doors carried great metal hinges that spread like trees over the surface of the hard wood, and chains dangled and rattled when the house occupants went in or out. From some windows hung clothes—women’s clothing, long hose worn by men, jackets, and here and there, a student’s black gown. The novelty of the street attracted the boy, and for a long time he wandered through it curiously.
At the upper end, where it met a cross street that ran toward the Rynek, the Street of the Pigeons curved quite sharply. Joseph finally ran with the dog clear to this cross street, which bore the name Bracka, and then, retracing his steps, bore back to the house which had now become his home. Mounting the steps rather breathlessly, he threw open the door to the outer room and was about to shout a merry greeting as was his usual custom, but checked himself at sight of a stranger who stood talking with his father. The newcomer, who had a pleasant face, was dressed in leathers somewhat like those of the night watch when the outer chain armor is removed. On the table in front of the men lay a long brass trumpet, made cunningly and polished until it resembled gold.
By the side of the trumpet lay two parchment scripts, one of them evidently a copy of a long piece of writing, the other—as Joseph could see—a set of musical notes worked carefully in red and black.
“This,” said the stranger, pointing first to the script containing the writing, “is a copy of the oath that you have already sworn. This other is the music of the Heynal, the hymn which you must play from the church tower every hour of the night. The trumpeter whom you relieve to-night will give you the key to the tower room, and what information you may need. It is a noble piece of work, this sounding of the Heynal, and I am much pleased that Father Jan has been able to find so good a Pole as you to carry out the night duties. With this he kissed Pan Andrew upon the right cheek and departed.”
Joseph stared in frank amazement. The Heynal! The church tower. And his father!
“I will tell you everything,” said the father as they sat down to the noonday meal. “This oath which I have sworn is the customary oath taken by the watchman-trumpeter of the tower of the Church of Our Lady Mary. You may read it at your leisure. The music is the hymn with the broken note of which I have promised to tell you the story soon. It is played each hour from the windows in the octagon room at the top of the higher tower.”
“And you are to be the trumpeter?” asked Joseph.
“I am, thanks to the good Jan Kanty,” the father answered. “The trumpeter and the watchman as well, for it is from this tower that fires throughout the city are sighted and the alarm given with the big bell. For the present it must be for our own safety that we are known as the Kovalski family, a name which Father Jan has given us. As plain Andrew Kovalski I shall be a mere city dweller of Krakow. I shall be trumpeter, succeeding the man—God rest his soul!—who died but a week ago, since which time there has been a substitute who can play but badly.”
“But the man said each hour of the night,” exclaimed the boy. “Will you be there all night?”
“Yes,” answered Pan Andrew. “It is for my own safety to be abroad in the city only after nightfall. None will recognize me then—and as for you, my son, the good father has arranged that you shall attend the Collegium Minus here, to complete your studies which I and your tutors have already begun with you. But there must be caution employed even by you, for there are people who seek nothing better than to find us and despoil us of our treasure. You may take your exercises with the other boys very soon, however, and go abroad with discretion, for in the clothes which I shall buy you there will be no danger, I think, that you may be recognized. A close mouth is necessary nevertheless. Tell no one of our adventures and be content for the time with the plain name Joseph Kovalski.”
Thus at the direction of the good Jan Kanty, Pan Andrew became Pan Kovalski—Joseph was to be sent to school—and the watchtower of the Church of Our Lady Mary was to see a new trumpeter.
At the moment that the father had ceased speaking, there came running into the room from the staircase the girl Elzbietka Kreutz, who made straight for Joseph’s mother and was caught into her arms. “We shall be happy here,” the woman exclaimed, “that I know, and here is one that needs a mother’s love.” The girl turned to smile at Pan Andrew whose face grew gentle at the sight of her eyes, and he picked up her slim, dainty hand and kissed it—it was indeed a picture, that fragile white hand lying in his huge brown palm.
“Uncle has told me,” she said, “that you are to play the trumpet at the church. Often at night, when I lie awake lonely and have strange fears, I listen for the music from the steeple. And now when I know that it is Joseph’s father that is playing I shall go to sleep again and fear nothing.”
“It is as if I had two children,” said Pan Andrew, slipping one arm about the child and the other about his son. “It truly seems as if God has once more smiled upon us.”
One of the great sights of Central Europe, even in those far-away days, which men came from all parts of the world to see, was the Church of Our Lady Mary in Krakow. Now though this church rose majestically over the medieval city, its towers visible from afar, and its red-brick walls as substantial and as solid as the very rock base of the Wawel Hill itself, it was not from the outside such an imposing sight as was its more aristocratic sister, the Wawel Cathedral. It lacked flying buttresses and distinct Gothic ornamentation such as huge gargoyles and flowers and saints carved in stone, though its graceful form indicated a solid and magnificent strength. It was not a church such as one might gaze upon in sunny France where the mild breezes and sweet sunshine permit delicate carvings and pinnacles upon the outside walls, but it was built like a solid fortress to withstand the mighty storms that sometimes sweep over Poland from the wild steppes or from the Baltic Sea. It was the interior of this church, however, that drew men to it, for within, it was a very miracle of beauty, a crystal hidden in a shapely stone.
It was to this church, then, that Pan Andrew and Joseph wended their way after darkness fell on their first day in the new dwelling. Pan Andrew carried the trumpet under his right arm. Near the base of the higher tower a watchman spied them as they approached, and unlocked a small, heavy door that led to the tower stairs. They went up a narrow staircase, winding about in the darkness, until it reached a platform where the interior of the tower loomed suddenly above them. Just at the right, as they began their ascent in the main body of the tower, was a door that led to a little chapel in which, as Joseph learned afterward, prisoners condemned to death spent their last hours on earth.
A man carrying a lantern shouted to them from above; they waited then until he had descended—he was the day watchman whom Pan Andrew relieved. He paused to kiss Pan Andrew upon the cheek in welcome, and to speak a few words in explanation of his duties above. Then he placed in his hand the lantern and a key to the room which the trumpeter was to occupy in the high tower. He wished them luck on their first night and then descended by the side staircase to the ground where the watchman let him out. Joseph and his father in the meantime began to climb the steps of the scaffolding that led up into the tower. This scaffolding was held in place by cross beams, and at its edge ran the steps, so built that as a man ascended he passed constantly from one of the four sides of the tower to another side. The staircase was steep and narrow, but very solid, so solid that the stairs did not creak as they ascended.
They climbed and climbed, past five levels of windows, glassed in with small white globes of solid crystal. Up and up went father and son until they reached the level where there was a room for the watchman. This octagonal room was divided into two sections, one being the room where the trumpeter might keep warm between watches, the other being the open space around it from which the turret windows looked out over the city. Here hung extra trumpets, here were the ropes which connected with the great bell hanging in the lower tower, and here were the red flags and the lanterns which were hung out when a fire was perceived from the tower.
For it was the duty of the trumpeter to watch constantly for fires. He was to watch also for troops approaching the city, for tumults or disturbances of any kind, but he was especially the guardian against fires. Conflagrations had done the city much harm in the past; many of the older buildings were of wood, although fronted with stone, and roofs were often of thatch or soft wood that easily caught fire from sparks. When a fire was discovered, the trumpeter or watchman, for he was both, hung a red flag from the window which faced the direction in which the blaze lay. At night he would hang out a lantern with a red-glass front instead of the flag.
It was his duty also to sound the alarm bell if any danger whatever came to threaten the lives of citizens. In the very month previous to the coming of Pan Andrew and his family to Krakow, the watchman had rung loud and long upon the bell to alarm the watch and the city when the riot against the Tenczynski family took place. In the coming year the bell was to be tolled at the execution, in the town square just below the tower, of the four men charged with causing the riot. The tower was indeed the very center of Krakow activity.
Pan Andrew fitted his key to the lock of the door leading into the inner room and threw back the bolt. Entering after his father, Joseph found himself in a small, comfortable room, containing a table, a bed, a small stove, and a lighted lantern hanging on the wall. About the table were three chairs, wedged rather tightly because of the lack of space, and upon the table was a huge hourglass, one of the largest that Joseph had even seen. The sand pouring through it in a fine stream had filled the lower section almost to a level graded on the glass with a Latin “X” to designate the tenth hour. The glass was in reality a twelve-hour glass, and lines and Latin numerals had been marked upon it just after the maker had blown it into shape, when the material was still soft. This was the trumpeter’s official clock. There was on the south side of the nave roof, where the sun touched at all hours of the day, a large sundial which was read each noon, and on the north wall of the tower was a clock with one hand. This hand, which indicated the hours, was in truth a hand—a piece of metal shaped like a doubled fist—with fingers curled and the index pointing out to the hours.
When the sand had reached the level of the glass at which the “X” was cut, Pan Andrew hastened out to the open section of the tower and released a coil of rope that hung on a pillar in the center of the space. This rope ran down through a hole in the flooring until it reached the level of the lower tower, when it swung about over a piece of round wood that served as a pulley and leaped from there to the lower tower through an aperture that was originally designed as a narrow window through which to shoot arrows in time of defense. In the lower tower the rope was connected with one end of an iron hammer that was suspended above the great bell. When the rope was pulled the hammer descended, but it sprang quickly back to its original position when the rope was loosed, a spring of twisted metal and leather serving to draw it back. Pan Andrew pulled once—the hammer descended—boom—the stroke of the bell sounded over the whole city. He pulled again and again until the full quota of ten strokes was made.
Next he went to the side of the tower nearest the entrance to the little room, and swung back a small glass window. Through this space he thrust the trumpet and began to play. It was on the west side, the side toward the Cloth Hall, with the university in the distance. Then he moved to another window but one and began to play toward the south. Likewise he played toward the east, and finally toward the north, according to the instructions which he had received. Lights were twinkling now all over the city below him, the air was soft and smelled of the freshly cut grass which the peasants gather into piles. In the direction of the university a group of men were chanting a hymn. A clashing of iron hoofs on the stones of Grodzka Street betokened the presence of some armed men, perhaps the servitors of some nobles’ houses at the castle, or perhaps members of the royal guard. Men of the night watch could be heard banging at doors of shops with the butts of their spears to be sure that no careless apprentice or servant had left the door ajar. Down below in the graveyard the white stones were just perceptible, dim and gray in the dusk, and over the way the lamplighter was enkindling the huge wicks of the lamps that hung under the Cloth Hall roof. The stars were coming out, one after another, in the sky where a touch of blue still lingered—across this world rang the notes of the hymn which Pan Andrew had just played exquisitely, the Heynal or Hymn to the Holy Mother.
“It is wondrous sweet,” said Joseph.
“It is so, my son,” replied the father. Thereupon he told the boy of the morning, years before, when the square below them had been full of hostile Tartars; of the lad who had kept his oath, even with the last breath of life itself; and of the honor paid him from that day to this by the tower trumpeters who end the Heynal at the broken note.
And Joseph, listening, with eyes shining and heart throbbing, realized more at that moment than ever before how dear to him was his native land and all the customs that had been bequeathed by brave men and women who had made it great forever among all nations; it seemed as if tears were forcing themselves to his eyes as he thought of the sacrifice of that young life so many years before, but a thrill of pride drove back the tears when he thought of the nobility of the deed, as he stood silently gazing out of the little tower window.
They reëntered the inner room.
“I have brought you here to-night,” Pan Andrew explained when he had closed the door and hung the trumpet on the wall, “in order to instruct you in the duties of the trumpeter of this church. For there might come a time when I should be ill, or perhaps even wounded—who knows, since I have so many enemies? I have taken the oath that I will play this trumpet each hour, and that it is no vain oath you have learned from the story which I have just told you. The trumpet must be played, happen what will. Therefore”—he drew out a piece of parchment and sketched on it with a bit of charcoal a series of lines—“you are to learn by heart the notes which I sketch here.”
“Here are the notes of the Heynal,” he continued after he had worked silently some minutes upon his composition, “the tune goes like this.” He hummed the melody and indicated on the parchment how each symbol represented a note.
“This,” he said, “it is necessary to learn. Work upon it during the coming week, and at this time next week be able to write it out. Do not let it interfere with your work at the collegium but glance at it in spare time. Also, if you can, sing to yourself beneath your breath the melody of the Heynal. When you have learned the melody, I will teach you to play it upon the trumpet. It is not a hard task, although perfection comes only after much effort. I will teach you single tongue and double tongue, and triple tongue which is the queen of the trumpeter’s music, just as grammar is king of the scholastic kingdom.”
Joseph slipped the parchment inside his coat.
“And now,” directed the father, “go down the stairs quickly and run with dispatch to our house. As you descend leave the lantern against the wall on the lowest tower level; be sure that you extinguish it. The mother is waiting and may be already lonely.”
“Nay, I left her with Elzbietka.”
“Bless the child. But, just the same, go with all speed, for city streets are dangerous at night. Keep close to the watchmen where possible and if asked why you are out so late, reply that your father is trumpeter in the tower and that you are returning home with a message from him.”
Joseph descended; he left the extinguished lantern at the place where the steps begin to mount the scaffolding, and felt his way down the stone steps to the tower door. There he rapped, until the watchman let him out. Once in the street he was off like the wind until he found himself in the Street of the Pigeons.
Much to his surprise the entrance door was opened, not by the old woman who saw to the care of the building, but by her son who up to this time had kept himself well out of sight. As the light from the lantern fell upon his face, Joseph drew back in alarm; when his father had mentioned the fact that the old woman was living with her son, Joseph had imagined that the son was a youth, or perhaps a boy—he did not expect to see a man who had the face of one of middle age. Yet the term “man” was less applicable to the son than was the word “creature,” for he was lank and thin and bowed over uncannily; long wisps of hair fell about his eyes; his fingers were bony and clawlike; his cheeks were sunken, and his eyes peered out of hollow caverns as if they feared the light. As he moved ahead of Joseph, with the lantern in his hand, he clung to the wall as does a cat, shunning open spaces and skulking as if always needing a rear defense.
At the foot of the stairs he stopped.
Joseph was about to pass him and begin the ascent when the creature raised one of his hands and passed it over the boy’s shoulder. Joseph heard the long nails scraping on his coat—in a horrible second it seemed as if he could feel them on his skin. The perspiration broke out on his forehead.
“What do you want?”
“A little—little coin,” whispered the man.
Joseph handed him a piece of copper gladly.
“Good boy—good boy,” the other mumbled, “bless thee, bless thee. And when you have much that jingles remember Stas. Stas I am, and here I sleep.” He pointed at the door standing open on the lower floor, but Joseph’s eyes did not follow him. His attention was taken suddenly from Stas by a burst of flame that leaped like a live thing from the tiny window of the loft of the alchemist on the fourth floor. It was just a little flare—a small flame that issued through the opened shutter which the alchemist usually kept closed—it died down in a second or even less, but for that instant it lighted up the whole court and the surrounding buildings.
“Hey,” said the man, pointing upward—“there they have magic that takes a soul away from a body. . . . See”—there was another flash brighter than the first and longer continued—“there be devils that come to earth with the fire of hell upon them. . . . Their servant is the alchemist, Kreutz, and they have one among us here on earth that is more like them than like us. . . . You know whom I mean?” He swung the lantern close to Joseph’s face, the boy recoiling fearfully. “The student Tring! He it is that would deal with the devil and give him his soul. Have I not heard him at night as he lay awake in his room on the farther side of the court, mumbling and calling and singing? He it is who is the curse of this house. . . . Well, I must sleep. A good night to you.” And he went in through the open door.
Joseph found himself too sleepy when he was inside his tiny bedroom to give any further attention either to the flashes of light from the loft above or to the mysterious grumblings of Stas. And the beginning of his studies at the Collegium Minus on the following day, drove, for the time being, all matters of lesser importance from his mind. There was an evening a week or more later, however, when the incident recurred to him. He had accompanied his father as was his custom to the tower, and, returning early, had paused for a moment on the landing outside his door before entering the house. The night was fine and he peered contentedly about over the star-lit roofs, the red chimneys, and the black walls. Down below him Wolf started uneasily in his sleep as if he were dreaming of evil things. From the little window of the room beside the door of his own dwelling there was thrown upon the darkness a faint glimmer from a lamp which signified that his mother was sitting up, perhaps with Elzbietka, who had said earlier in the day that she would come down that evening.
He fell to musing in the sweet calm of the night as young people will do, and in his musing wondered mightily what might be the importance which his father had attached to the treasure which he had brought to Krakow. It might be a gem worth thousands and thousands of gold zloty—it might be merely a fashioned piece of glass of value only to the tradesmen who worked in glass. But then why had it made the impression that it had upon Jan Kanty, and why was the bold stranger so eager to gain possession of it? And why in such a peaceful world must names be changed and goings and comings veiled in a mantle of night? Why——
Flash I Into the night suddenly leaped the same brilliance that had startled him on that earlier evening when he had been alone in the court with Stas. Only, immediately following it now, here came a cry of someone in fright or pain.
The door at the landing above him was thrown open and a figure in white emerged. It began to descend the stairs hurriedly, and, as it came near, Joseph saw that it was Elzbietka in her night clothes, over which she had thrown a white cover-lid from her bed.
He spoke quickly in order that his presence might not alarm her.
“Elzbietka,” he said, “it is I, Joseph. What has happened?”
“My uncle,” she cried, “Joseph, I know not what they are doing.”
“I thought you were with my mother,” he exclaimed.
“I was, but I became sleepy, and she told me to go up and sleep. I did sleep, for some time, too. But then this loud talking and noise began. Joseph,” she came close up to him, “Joseph, I am frightened. Something is going on upstairs that is not good. The student Tring is with my uncle always now. He came early in the evening, and they have been there together ever since. Uncle never used to go up there at night before—he stayed with me. Joseph, I fear that student Tring.”
“I know what you feel,” he said.
“I believe that he has some power over people that is not of this earth,” she continued. “You do not know how much my uncle has changed since he first knew him. And I am all alone.”
“What did you hear to-night?” asked the boy.
“I was wakened by a loud tramping on the floor. Then my uncle said, ‘No, that will kill.’ Then the student laughed a terrible laugh. After that there was a long, long silence. I was almost asleep again when I heard another voice—it was like to no one that I had ever heard before. There was something about it that made me think it was my uncle speaking, but it was in such a tone that it made my blood run cold. And now there are those flashes of light. Joseph, if you would serve me, climb the stairway and look through the casement. Do not let them see you, and do not stay long. Come down as soon as you can and tell me that my uncle is alive and well.”
“I will. But first you go in and stay with mother. You can sleep here to-night if you wish, and to-morrow I will ask my father what can be done.”
He knocked at the door, but without waiting for his mother to come, ran up the second flight of stairs and reached out for the first board of the rude staircase. When he had found it he managed the ascent by clinging to the rail at the side, for the steps here were much steeper than those below; indeed in the dark it seemed to him a dizzy bit of a climb, but he managed it nimbly and found when he reached the landing that he could just peep in through one corner of the opened window shutter. Had the shutter been closed, as it usually was, he could have seen nothing, for the glass, consisting of little round uneven blocks, was unglazed and set into a network of lead. Through the opening he peered, clinging to the railing of the stairs for support, and keeping one foot close to the top step, in order to descend in haste at the first hint that the occupants of the room were aware of the presence of a third person.
What he saw at first glance startled him, for the loft was literally blazing with light coming from oils burning in four copper braziers which hung from the ceiling. Above these braziers, to protect the roof from the heat, were layers of metal, one separated from the other so that an air current played between them and cooled them. A fifth brazier, not now alight, hung close to the window where Joseph was peering, and it was from this brazier that the flame had sprung that had lighted up the whole court—as a matter of fact, the light had come from the rapid combustion of a handful of powder which the alchemist had thrown on the brazier’s charcoal.
The loft itself was higher than the boy had realized—there was but one large room in it, for on the farther side could be seen the shutters of the building’s outer wall. In the middle of the room at the back was a closet—for Pan Kreutz’s most valuable substances, Joseph decided, since it was fastened with chains as well as with a huge lock and key. The beams of the roof, sloping but slightly, were well above the height of a tall man, and were not of bare wood as is common in lofts and attics, but were plastered over with some thick white substance.
In the center of the room stood a tripod supporting an iron basin and in it was burning some substance that gave a peculiar, pungent odor.
The alchemist in his black robe and the student Tring in his leather jacket sat elbow to elbow before this basin. They were watching something that was burning there in flames of many colors.
“It takes away my strength,” Joseph heard the alchemist tell Tring, “to experiment in the fashion which you have suggested. It has interested me, and I know that it has its fascination, but it is not, after all, in my sphere. I am an alchemist, one who seeks the truth above all things in the actions and reactions of material substances. I mix vinegar and sugar and soda, and there is immediately a bubbling and a change. Something new is created. I melt lead and silver and copper, and they form together some metal that is new.”
“But are not these changes influenced also by the position of the stars in heaven?” asked Tring.
“Yes, and no. The sea, I admit, seems to follow the pull of the moon. Harvests depend upon seasons and seasons sometimes seem to be servants of the movements of the heavenly bodies. But as to other things I know not. Besides, I am not an astrologer. I am an alchemist. The powers of the sky may be found by those who search the skies.”
“But is not the conduct and life of man governed by the stars?”
“That I leave to magicians and necromancers, as likewise I leave to them that hideous magic which makes compounds of cats’ paws, and owls’ eyes, and dead men’s fingers.”
“But,” persisted the student, “you seek the Elixir of Life, do you not?”
“No,” answered the alchemist, “although in regard to it I admit that I have much curiosity. If it is true that all things are subject to change, then one might change from old to young as well as from young to old if one could but find the laws to reverse the process of life. And as to this I do not doubt that a restorer of youth can be found. Yet I am not interested as are those who have lived vain lives and hope to do better it life may be relived.”
“The Philosopher’s Stone, what think you of that?” Joseph noticed a distinct change in the student’s voice as he said this; his eyes shone with a greedy light, and his fingers seemed to curl perceptibly.
“Well,” answered the alchemist, “that is indeed much sought. To the superstitious and ignorant the Philosopher’s Stone means only some substance which by magical power can transform all things it touches into gold, like King Midas of ancient days. But to us who study and work, it is apparent that only a process and not a substance can bring this to pass.”
“How—how?” demanded the student, leaning forward.
“Well, it is commonly known that each substance in the world such as brass, or paper, or glass, has certain properties in itself. Did not Archimedes, father of all our learning, establish this truth by the proof that different substances thrown separately into water each displace a different amount of water? Gold is a substance, brass is a substance, both susceptible to change in the elementals, fire, water, air, and earth. Fire melts, water changes the color or disintegrates, air hardens, and earth darkens. To make brass of gold, or gold of brass is not impossible if one might know what would break down the dissimilarity between them.”
“Then why do you not keep trying until you find the secret?”
The alchemist drew a long breath. “There are things that interest me more. Though I am an alchemist I am much concerned with the spirit which is behind material things. I would learn if life itself is a matter of substance, if there is not the same difference between man and man that there is between metal and metal. I would learn the secrets of the earth, the messages of the sky, and I would know as well the secret of the soul, and how one might seek to help and save the souls of men whose bodies are from birth misshapen. I would learn, if I might, the composition of the earth, the reasons for the spring and summer and such phenomena—I would learn what makes the stars to shine and the sea to be tempestuous. God has given me a mind that searches ever for the light, and I feel that I am doing His will when I seek the truths that lie about us on every hand.”
Tring came close and spoke very low, though his voice carried to Joseph at the casement.
“You are a fool, you, Pan Kreutz,” he said. “Here are you, the most gifted scholar and alchemist of our time, fretting away your hours in such pursuits with a much greater object to be gained at your very elbow.”
“You mean——”
“You know what I mean. You and I have begun to experiment in things that men know but little of.”
“I know, and I am of two minds about it. There is something in what you persuade me into that I like not. But upon such matters you are indeed the teacher and I the student. This I do know, and that is that when I am in a trance such as you sent me into a short time ago I can see things and hear things and even know things that I am not familiar with in my everyday mind. But such experiments, though they enthrall the soul, are perhaps dangerous to men. They are tried in Nuremberg, I believe, and in other lonely places in the Black Forest. But here in Krakow we have ever been wary of them.”
The alchemist was looking into the fire. Tring, sitting beside him, cast at him at these words such a malicious look and leer that Joseph shuddered. There flashed into Joseph’s mind the word “demon”—a veritable demon from the darkness Tring seemed, striving to exert some influence over his victim.
The look passed. “Pan Kreutz,” began Tring again, “I know from my teachers in the old town of Nuremberg that man has in reality two brains. One of these brains is wise and powerful and dominant, and yet one knows nothing of it except when one is asleep in such a trance as I put you in but a short while ago. The other is the brain of daily life; by it we know when to eat, work, and rest. It is the lesser brain.”
“Something of this you have proven to me,” said the alchemist.
“Then use your higher brain,” commanded Tring.
“To what end?” asked Kreutz.
“To the end that all men would reach. Gold!”
He said the word with an intensity that sent a cold thrill through Joseph.
“Gold matters not so much to me,” answered the alchemist.
“It does—it does—it does,” insisted Tring. “You do not know what you could do with it. With this secret, you and I could become the very kings of the earth. We could live in the finest palace in the world—we could have diamonds and rubies and emeralds—we could travel about the lands of Europe like the mightiest of merchant princes—armies would be at our disposal, and we could make every human being perform our will.”
For a moment he forgot the alchemist as he reveled in this dream made out of fancy and desire, but as a glance at Kreutz’s face found no response there, he went on more cunningly:
“Think what you could do as an alchemist I Is this attic a fitting place for your experiments? Are these poor tools sufficient for the concoctions that you would devise, and for the laws which you would prove? You could become the greatest alchemist in Poland—in the world! You could work in a room that would contain this poor attic a dozen times. In it would be every instrument that has ever been invented for the study of alchemy. No precious substance that comes out of the East, no priceless gem nor precious stone would be beyond the means that you would possess. Does this not tempt you?”
He had touched him this time. “It would tempt any poor scholar,” Kreutz replied, in the voice of one who had seen a sudden vision. Then more keenly, “But do you think that I possess in myself, my greater self as you call it, this secret of changing base metals into gold?”
“I am sure of it”—Tring was almost dancing about his chair in eager enthusiasm—“if you will cease being a plodding scholar and a fool, and set yourself night and day to conquer this problem of the universe. Gold—gold—gold—that is what every man wants. Success always means gold, and those who work all their lives professing none but unselfish motives are but deceiving others in order to make themselves reverenced some of them perhaps are deceiving themselves. Why, with gold—think what you could do for your niece, think what you could do for the students of the university—you could make this school and, ay, the whole kingdom of Poland the greatest and most desired place in all the world.”
Kreutz thought deeply for some minutes. It was quite evident even to Joseph, young and inexperienced as he was, that Tring had utterly poisoned the alchemist’s mind. Indeed now Kreutz looking at life through the philosophy of Tring saw that his own life was the life of a dusty plodder; it was the life not only of a poor man, but of a foolish man who might be better off if he wished, who now had the opportunity to do a great deal for those whom he loved, if he would but set himself to it. His thoughts had been on a plane too high for practicality. He had idealized mankind and he had tried to learn things which had seemed to him to be the very jewels of knowledge in the crown of wisdom—yes, that was what he had been, a dusty old plodder.
And with these thoughts he surrendered utterly to Tring. “You are right, I truly believe,” he said with a sigh—“perhaps then we can possess this secret which will make us kings of the earth, as you say. With gold we can do these things, we can accomplish what we wish in the world, we can help the struggling, cure the sick, and do away with poverty entirely in this kingdom. Yes, it is, after all, a noble task—shall we repeat the experiment again to-night? Shall I enter into a trance again?”
“Nay,” Tring had gained his end, “it is getting late and I would not repeat the experiment so shortly after the first trial, for fear perhaps that it would not be so successful as before. To-morrow evening we shall try it when we are both fresh again. . . . It was curious that to-night when you were in the deepest part of the trance, you called out that which every astrologer, alchemist, and magician had sought for centuries was within a few yards of the place where you sat. I had begun to think that we were upon the eve of a great discovery.”
“Ay, it was then that something awoke me,” said the alchemist.
“Yes, the worse for us all,” said Tring sourly. “It was a cry that brought you to your senses, upon the eve of so great a revelation. It was the cry of your niece from the room below.”
“Elzbietka,” exclaimed the alchemist with concern. “And why did she cry?”
“You were not silent in your trance. You shouted that there were some demons near by ready to kill you—you almost screamed in your fear—and then you talked as if your tongue were a pendulum.”
“And I did not answer the child?”
“No. You sank back in your chair again, asleep, and this time it was a natural sleep, for when I questioned you again, you said nothing.”
The alchemist rubbed his eyes. “I am sleepy now, in faith.” Then, wondering, “What could have been the revelation? I know of no prize that could be near by. On the ground floor is the old woman and her half-wit son whom I frighten with fire—then on the second floor but the three poor refugees installed recently. Across the court, only you and two poor students. No, it can be nothing in the possession of any one of these. Well, as you say, this for to-night is enough—” And at these words Joseph scampered down the stairway.
Summer burned itself into fall. The Vistula which had been growing ever lower and lower with the heat was now but a narrow ribbon of water and the banks along it were parched and dried and yellow. Leaves were changing from green to brown and the birds were making ready to leave for southern lands as soon as the first suggestion of cold should appear. Across the meadows now the horses and wagons were marching daily and the dry hay was filling barn and shelter in all the country about. The fruits of the autumn were already appearing in the market, the apples of the first bearing, the golden squashes, and the late cabbage. And over the city and country hung a sky of deep, exquisite blue, for in all the world there is no sky so blue as is the Krakow sky, and no sun is so golden as is the sun of early autumn.
When the Month of the Heather had passed by and the Month of Hemp Beating was at hand, Joseph had learned all the notes of the Heynal and could play the little hymn upon his father’s trumpet. Once even he had played it in the tower; on that night his father had played it toward the west, south, and east, and then had allowed the boy to play it at the north window. The girl, Elzbietka, a little quicker of ear than Joseph, had long since mastered the air and quickly memorized Joseph’s notes, so that she could not only hum the music, but reproduce it in writing upon a wall or piece of parchment.
One evening when Elzbietka was visiting Joseph’s mother—and she came more and more frequently now since the alchemist had begun to carry on new experiments with Tring—Joseph exclaimed suddenly:
“Before long I shall play all four Heynals.”
She let her chin rest upon one hand as she did often when she thought and when she spoke seriously. “I shall listen,” she said. “It comforts me more than ever now when I hear the hymn played in the night time—since there is seldom any one in our rooms when I awake. Joseph,” she spoke in a very low tone, “do you know I think that my uncle is possessed?”
He gave a great start. “Possessed—and by whom?”
“I don’t know. But he isn’t himself. It isn’t that he is out of his wits—no, not that at all. He is just as intelligent and just as kind as he ever was, but he has become so interested in something that he is doing in the loft that he thinks but little of me or of his friends in the world. There is that student, Johann Tring——”
“Yes, I know,” he answered quickly.
“He and my uncle are together in the loft every night. Sometimes they stay there until it is light. They say queer things, and sometimes my uncle cries out as if he were in pain. You heard them the night that I told you to go up the staircase. It is always like that.”
“I told father what I heard that night,” said Joseph, “and he only said that it was none of our affair, that your uncle is a man who has been very kind to us, and who knows what he is about. Also he forbade me ever to spy upon your uncle again. Father said that your uncle is a great scholar and that he is now probably working upon something that will win him fame.”
“Ay—perhaps,” she meditated—“but I loved him better as he was.”
From that time on Elzbietka became more and more a part of Pan Andrew’s family. In the afternoons she used to bring her sewing downstairs into the front room and sit there for hours working and chatting or humming little tunes under her breath. When Joseph returned from his studies in the afternoon the two were accustomed to walk out into the city and see its changing wonders, its new caravans, its pageants, its companies of knights and soldiers, its processions of guilds. Often they walked out through the gates into the country where there was rich black earth, and behind them or alongside or ahead ran the great Tartar dog. The walks took them to the old Jewish city of the Kazimierz, across the fortified bridge on the west arm of the Vistula, to the old church on the Skalka, where the holy Stanislas was murdered at his altar, to the high mound above the city where it was said that old King Krakus was buried; to these and to many other places had they wandered while the sun was bright and the air not too cool.
Once they went to visit the towers of the Church of Our Lady Mary in the late afternoon. The watchman let them in at the little gate at the base of the tower and they climbed up to the room where the day trumpeter was on duty. He was the man that Pan Andrew relieved at night, and he thought it a great honor to have a visit from such a little lady as Elzbietka, and he told her many of the legends which have come down from old days when the church tower was being built.
Joseph picked up his father’s trumpet from the table. “When I first play all the four Heynals you must listen and see if you hear a single note played wrong.”