The Hound of Florence (4 page)

This time Lucas wandered about the woods on the snow-clad hills, in country that was quite strange to him. He made no attempt to return to Vienna, for it was clear that the city must now be too far away, and that it would be impossible for him to reach it from this hilly country in a day's march. Moreover, he was beginning to see the futility of trying to escape. He set to work carefully to recapitulate all that had happened, and reach some decision which would enable him to face with greater confidence whatever the future held in store. But his fears constantly got the better of him. Twice he had scoured the countryside as a dog, and he knew by now, with all his senses fully awake, that it had been no dream. He had been lured away, over hill and down dale, away from the city to which it was impossible for him now to return. And he must perforce continue the journey. There had been a time when this had been the darling wish of his heart. In fact it was only three days ago, but now it seemed to be ages back, lost in the mists of time. And lo! his wish had been fulfilled so that it seemed nothing but a bitter mockery; it had been granted in such an unmerciful way as to debase him. He was harnessed to the life of a dog, forced to follow its tracks, and shivering with cold and trembling with hunger, was compelled to creep along whatever road the dog chose to take.

Toward nightfall Lucas was standing on the top of the hill looking on the lights beginning to twinkle in the little town far down below at his feet. Utterly exhausted, he remained rooted to the spot. It grew darker and darker. Presently, sitting down in the snow, he counted the chimes as they rang out from the church towers in the valley, and with resigned but breathless curiosity, awaited the transformation. It took place at midnight. He only just had time to hear the first stroke of the hour, when he felt a sudden shock, similar to the one he had experienced before, when he had been standing at his attic window. It fell on him before he could draw a single breath; he thought the ground was opening beneath his feet. Just as he imagined he was taking leave of his senses, he felt himself being violently whisked away. And the next moment he was once more lying in warm straw, his sharpened olfactory nerves became aware of the scent of hay about him, and the smell of sweating horses in the stable, while a church clock close by rang out the hour of midnight—eleven strokes! But it was a different chime from the one that had struck the first stroke he had heard. It sounded deeper.

The following morning Caspar, the young groom, shook him gently to wake him, and, after feeding him, took him at once to the Archduke's Groom-to-the-Chamber.

“Well, Cambyses, where have you been again?” Caspar enquired, laughing good-naturedly as he led him along. “Where have you been, Cambyses?” he repeated again and again. They crossed the courtyard of a Palace, ascended a flight of stately marble steps, and entered a dark paneled hall full of servants busy making all manner of preparations, while the Groom-of-the-Chamber stood by issuing his orders to them and picking his teeth.

“Master Pointner,” cried Caspar from the doorway, “Cambyses has come back all right.”

Pointner ceased giving orders and picking his teeth. He looked sullenly at the dog who had leaped into the room and at the groom who had remained standing at the door.

“Just come back?” he enquired.

“No,” replied Caspar, “he was lying in the stable and had slept there all night.”

The Archduke, wearing a loose fur cloak, was warming himself by the fire in a luxurious apartment. Count Waltersburg was standing in front of him. As soon as the latter caught sight of the Groom-of-the-Chamber coming in with the dog he went into fits of laughter. “There's that rascal back again after all, and your Imperial Highness thought it impossible for the dog to run all that way over the hills.”

The Archduke looked down at Cambyses, who had quietly stretched himself in front of the fire. “Yes indeed! And he seems all right. Well, I'm very glad. I was afraid he might have been frozen to death.” He gave the dog a sly dig in the ribs with the point of his shoe.

Count Waltersburg shook his head. “A good thrashing would be the best thing,” he observed thoughtfully. “Otherwise the brute will think he can run away and come back again just as he pleases.”

The Archduke cast an enquiring glance up at Pointner, who shrugged his shoulders peevishly. “It might be just as well,” he said.

“Well then,” commanded the Archduke, “go ahead with it.” At these words the dog sprang to his feet looking in alarm from one to the other.

“Amazing!” laughed Waltersburg. “Anyone would think he understood every word.” The dog gave him a penetrating, imploring look, but Waltersburg only laughed the louder. “Yes, dear friend, it's no good looking like that. You've got to be punished.”

“Cambyses!” called Pointner sternly, turning toward the door.

“Where are you going?” the Archduke enquired.

“I thought it would be better to do it outside,” stammered Pointner.

“No, here!” was the Archduke's cold and curt command.

Pointner still hesitated and then began slowly and reluctantly to unfasten the belt about his portly belly.

“Are you going to do it today or tomorrow,” cried the Archduke.

The first blow crashed down. The dog fell flat on the floor and howled. The second blow was a miss, but in his terror the dog howled more loudly than ever. The third and fourth blows did not strike him square, but were very painful notwithstanding.

“Give it to me, Dietrich!” exclaimed the Archduke. “You're no good! You hit too fast and too irregularly. Give it to me, Dietrich!” He spoke in short gasps, and his hollow cheeks were slightly flushed. Seizing the belt impatiently and leaning forward in his armchair, he raised his arm and slowly let blow after blow fall. His aim was sure and he hit hard. The dog writhed frantically under the blows, his howl rising to a shriek of despair, a heart-rending wail. But the belt whizzed down on him faster and faster, whistling as it cleaved the air. The dog made one faint attempt to get up and escape, but collapsed all of a heap under the hail of blows, and his howling died down as if drowned in tears. The Archduke was in a frenzy, and took no notice of Pointner.

“Your Grace, please!” exclaimed the man anxiously. But the Archduke might have been drunk as he continued swinging the belt and panting with ever-increasing fury.

“There! There! There!” he cried in hoarse, almost inaudible tones, wellnigh beside himself with rage. Suddenly his arm dropped and he fell back in his chair. His head drooped forward; he was white as death and choked and gasped for breath; his eyes rolled.

Clumsy and fat as he was, Pointner darted like lightning to a ewer of water, plunged a cloth into it and bathed the Archduke's brow.

“Run across the road for the doctor!” he growled in fierce fury at Waltersburg, who was standing by horri­fied, not knowing what to do. “Could you think of nothing better to do than persuade him to thrash that dog? What? Have you forgotten how dangerous it is to put him up to such pranks, or are you an absolute fool? Quick! Run for the doctor! At least do as you are bid!”

Waltersburg fled from the room.

The dog lay motionless on the floor.

• • •

Lucas stood in the middle of the highway. In the distance, on a little hill beyond which a wall of mountains towered like snow-clad battlements, the castle in which he had been thrashed the day before shimmered faintly in the first rays of dawn. On the human body, to which he had returned once more, he could feel the wounds the dog had received, while his memory still smarted with a sensation of burning resentment against the fright, the pain and the bloody disgrace to which he had been subjected.

“What has happened to me?” he groaned aloud. “What has happened to me?” he repeated wildly again and again, with a faint sigh of despair.

How could he guess that the spell which lay upon him every other day obliterated alternately the form of Lucas and that of the dog? How could he possibly know that all that had been left to him was his human mind, that intangible basic entity which is able to say “I,” but that nevertheless he was forced every other day to adopt all the physical attributes and habits of the dog, and that this was bound to go on until the spell was broken? As long as the Archduke and his retinue remained in Florence, the lives of the young man Lucas and of the dog Cambyses had to be merged in one, and could not be on earth together at the same time. The “I” of Cambyses had been whisked away to some obscure corner of the universe, where it hung invisibly suspended, sunk in the deepest slumber and possibly seeing in its dreams vague far-away reflections of the experiences its absent body was undergoing. In uttering his wish Lucas had declared that he would not mind being a dog every other day; and so the body of a dog had been given him. But as soon as the Archduke left Florence for the north, whither Lucas felt no yearning to go, the latter would be free and the real Cambyses would once more be running beside the traveling coach drawn by its six white horses.

But for the time being Lucas, overcome with horror and despair, knew nothing of all this.

One by one the snow-clad peaks became suffused with a soft roseate glow. Broad red-gold rays poured down into the valley, cutting through the mist like giant swords, while the castle battlements gleamed in tongues of flame as the sun rose on the horizon.

As if the light of day had brought home to him more acute than ever his solitary, unhappy plight, Lucas suddenly flung himself violently on the cold ground and, burying his head in his arms, sobbed aloud.

“Who's that crying there like a little child . . . ?”

The words were spoken in a deep gruff voice just above Lucas's head, and a hand shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Who is it, crying like that?” The gruff voice spoke more gently. “There . . . there . . .” it said kindly. “Hush . . . hush!”

Lucas slowly arose.

Before him stood an old man with a wild gray beard, hollow cheeks, ruddy from the chill morning air, and a pair of lively, laughing little eyes. He was a dear old fellow, not very tall, but sturdily built and youthful in his bearing.

He pulled his little knapsack around and began fumbling with it, while his sharp, inquisitive eyes scrutinized Lucas's features intently.

Then he averted his gaze and observed quite simply, as though he had just been interrupted in a long conversation, “Hadn't we better sit down? . . . I think that would be the best thing to do . . .”

So saying, he sat down on the bank by the side of the road, resting his knapsack on his knees. As Lucas still hesitated, he smiled and beckoned to him, till at last he persuaded him to take a seat beside him. And thus they sat side by side for a while. The old man dived into his knapsack and produced a piece of bread and some bacon rind, together with a bottle of liquor. He drank, cut the bread and the bacon and handed Lucas some of it from time to time, though he avoided looking at him as he did so.

Lucas accepted the food and ate it. The old man then handed him the bottle over his shoulder. This too Lucas took, and a strong pull of brandy sent a glow all through his body.

“Yes,” observed the old man, as though he were talking to himself, “it's a fine world . . . a great big world. . . . How glorious it is over there . . . beautiful mountains and a lovely valley. . . . But can one stop rooted to one spot? . . . No, a call comes to us all . . . a call that rings ceaselessly in our ears!”

He was silent for a while.

“I have remained rooted to one spot long enough,” he continued, “my whole life, in fact. More than once I heard the call in the distance. But I thought to myself . . . call on, call on! . . . there's plenty of time. . . . And I stayed where I was . . . always in the same spot until I grew old and gray . . . that was surely long enough!”

The words were uttered with eager animation, as though he were in the middle of a long and exciting discussion, instead of having only just opened his mouth to say all he had to say. His active mind worked quickly, and his tone of voice made it plain that he was firmly convinced he was right.

“People came in and out of my place,” he continued, “people I knew and people I didn't know. They came across the Wenzel bridge, from the Altstadt over to the Kleinseite . . . and they came to me. . . . Yes, and it was never too far for them to come . . . when they wanted clothes, a doublet at once, or a pair of breeches by the morning . . . or a new coat for Easter Sunday . . . then they came fast enough . . . yes, and they went swaggering round the town in the fine clothes I made for them, or danced about in their luxurious homes . . . or else they went and rolled themselves in mud and shame somewhere. God knows where they all paraded themselves in their finery! Many of them went out into the wide, wide world. . . . Many of them drove up in their coaches to my house and waited, stamping and cursing, while the last stitches were being put in. Then they would snatch the coat out of my hands, fling the money in my face, and get back to their carriages in a flash . . . and away! And up and away . . . into the wide, wide world!”

He laughed, spat and drank.

“People tell you all sorts of things,” he went on. “They say that where the land ends the sea begins. Yes! You stand on the beach and look out, and there is nothing but water. Only sky and water! And that is the sea . . . the sea. . . .” He almost chanted the word.

“Yes and then . . .” and he wrenched himself from the subject of the sea with a sort of jerk. “Yes, and then they say there is a country where it is never cold, where it never snows, and there is no winter. Only spring and summer. Always sunshine . . . always sunshine. . . .”

“Yes!” cried Lucas.

The old man turned toward him. His expression, at once quizzical and encouraging, warmed Lucas's heart.

“Yes?” repeated the old fellow with a note of enquiry. “No winter . . . always spring and summer? And what about the sea? Always water and sky? The sea . . .” he chanted. “Well, He has done some strange things,” he added, pointing up to the sky. “What a jumble of a world He has made!”