Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (266 page)

Was Christina fooling him? The thought was impossible. Never once had she pleaded for herself, never once for Jan. The evil thought was the creature of Dame Toelast’s evil mind. Christina loved him. Her face brightened at his coming. The fear of him had gone out of her; a pretty tyranny had replaced it. But was it the love that he sought? Jan’s soul in old Nick’s body was young and ardent. It desired Christina not as a daughter, but as a wife. Could it win her in spite of old Nick’s body? The soul of Jan was an impatient soul. Better to know than to doubt.

“Do not light the candles; let us talk a little by the light of the fire only,” said Nicholas. And Christina, smiling, drew her chair towards the blaze. But Nicholas sat in the shadow.

“You grow more beautiful every day, Christina,” said Nicholas-”sweeter and more womanly. He will be a happy man who calls you wife.”

The smile passed from Christina’s face. “I shall never marry,” she answered. “Never is a long word, little one.”

“A true woman does not marry the man she does not love.”

“But may she not marry the man she does?” smiled Nicholas.

“Sometimes she may not,” Christina explained.

“And when is that?”

Christina’s face was turned away. “When he has ceased to love her.”

The soul in old Nick’s body leapt with joy. “He is not worthy of you, Christina. His new fortune has changed him. Is it not so? He thinks only of money. It is as though the soul of a miser had entered into him. He would marry even Dame Toelast for the sake of her gold-bags and her broad lands and her many mills, if only she would have him. Cannot you forget him?”

“I shall never forget him. I shall never love another man. I try to hide it; and often I am content to find there is so much in the world that I can do. But my heart is breaking.” She rose and, kneeling beside him, clasped her hands around him. “I am glad you have let me tell you,” she said. “But for you I could not have borne it. You are so good to me.”

For answer he stroked with his withered hand the golden hair that fell disordered about his withered knees. She raised her eyes to him; they were filled with tears, but smiling.

“I cannot understand,” she said. “I think sometimes that you and he must have changed souls. He is hard and mean and cruel, as you used to be.” She laughed, and the arms around him tightened for a moment. “And now you are kind and tender and great, as once he was. It is as if the good God had taken away my lover from me to give to me a father.”

“Listen to me, Christina,” he said. “It is the soul that is the man, not the body. Could you not love me for my new soul?”

“But I do love you,” answered Christina, smiling through her tears.

“Could you as a husband?” The firelight fell upon her face. Nicholas, holding it between his withered hands, looked into it long and hard; and reading what he read there, laid it back against his breast and soothed it with his withered hand.

“I was jesting, little one,” he said. “Girls for boys, and old women for old men. And so, in spite of all, you still love Jan?”

“I love him,” answered Christina. “I cannot help it.”

“And if he would, you would marry him, let his soul be what it may?”

“I love him,” answered Christina. “I cannot help it.”

Old Nicholas sat alone before the dying fire. Is it the soul or the body that is the real man? The answer was not so simple as he had thought it.

“Christina loved Jan” — so Nicholas mumbled to the dying fire—”when he had the soul of Jan. She loves him still, though he has the soul of Nicholas Snyders. When I asked her if she could love me, it was terror I read in her eyes, though Jan’s soul is now in me; she divined it. It must be the body that is the real Jan, the real Nicholas. If the soul of Christina entered into the body of Dame Toelast, should I turn from Christina, from her golden hair, her fathomless eyes, her asking lips, to desire the shrivelled carcass of Dame Toelast? No; I should still shudder at the thought of her. Yet when I had the soul of Nicholas Snyders, I did not loathe her, while Christina was naught to me. It must be with the soul that we love, else Jan would still love Christina and I should be Miser Nick. Yet here am I loving Christina, using Nicholas Snyders’ brain and gold to thwart Nicholas Snyders’ every scheme, doing everything that I know will make him mad when he comes back into his own body; while Jan cares no longer for Christina, would marry Dame Toelast for her broad lands, her many mills. Clearly it is the soul that is the real man. Then ought I not to be glad, thinking I am going back into my own body, knowing that I shall wed Christina? But I am not glad; I am very miserable. I shall not go with Jan’s soul, I feel it; my own soul will come back to me. I shall be again the hard, cruel, mean old man I was before, only now I shall be poor and helpless. The folks will laugh at me, and I shall curse them, powerless to do them evil. Even Dame Toelast will not want me when she learns all. And yet I must do this thing. So long as Jan’s soul is in me, I love Christina better than myself. I must do this for her sake. I love her — I cannot help it.”

Old Nicholas rose, took from the place, where a month before he had hidden it, the silver flask of cunning workmanship.

“Just two more glassfuls left,” mused Nicholas, as he gently shook the flask against his ear. He laid it on the desk before him, then opened once again the old green ledger, for there still remained work to be done.

He woke Christina early. “Take these letters, Christina,” he commanded. “When you have delivered them all, but not before, go to Jan; tell him I am waiting here to see him on a matter of business.” He kissed her and seemed loth to let her go.

“I shall only be a little while,” smiled Christina.

“All partings take but a little while,” he answered.

Old Nicholas had foreseen the trouble he would have. Jan was content, had no desire to be again a sentimental young fool, eager to saddle himself with a penniless wife. Jan had other dreams.

“Drink, man, drink!” cried Nicholas impatiently, “before I am tempted to change my mind. Christina, provided you marry her, is the richest bride in Zandam. There is the deed; read it; and read quickly.”

Then Jan consented, and the two men drank. And there passed a breath between them as before; and Jan with his hands covered his eyes a moment.

It was a pity, perhaps, that he did so, for in that moment Nicholas snatched at the deed that lay beside Jan on the desk. The next instant it was blazing in the fire.

“Not so poor as you thought!” came the croaking voice of Nicholas. “Not so poor as you thought! I can build again, I can build again!” And the creature, laughing hideously, danced with its withered arms spread out before the blaze, lest Jan should seek to rescue Christina’s burning dowry before it was destroyed.

Jan did not tell Christina. In spite of all Jan could say, she would go back. Nicholas Snyders drove her from the door with curses. She could not understand. The only thing clear was that Jan had come back to her.

“’Twas a strange madness that seized upon me,” Jan explained. “Let the good sea breezes bring us health.”

So from the deck of Jan’s ship they watched old Zandam till it vanished into air.

Christina cried a little at the thought of never seeing it again; but Jan comforted her and later new faces hid the old.

And old Nicholas married Dame Toelast, but, happily, lived to do evil only for a few years longer.

Long after, Jan told Christina the whole story, but it sounded very improbable, and Christina — though, of course, she did not say so — did not quite believe it, but thought Jan was trying to explain away that strange month of his life during which he had wooed Dame Toelast. Yet it certainly was strange that Nicholas, for the same short month, had been so different from his usual self.

“Perhaps,” thought Christina, “if I had not told him I loved Jan, he would not have gone back to his old ways. Poor old gentleman! No doubt it was despair.”

MRS. KORNER SINS HER MERCIES

“I do mean it,” declared Mrs. Korner, “I like a man to be a man.”

“But you would not like Christopher — I mean Mr. Korner — to be that sort of man,” suggested her bosom friend.

“I don’t mean that I should like it if he did it often. But I should like to feel that he was able to be that sort of man. — Have you told your master that breakfast is ready?” demanded Mrs. Korner of the domestic staff, entering at the moment with three boiled eggs and a teapot.

“Yus, I’ve told ‘im,” replied the staff indignantly.

The domestic staff at Acacia Villa, Ravenscourt Park, lived in a state of indignation. It could be heard of mornings and evenings saying its prayers indignantly.

“What did he say?”

“Said ‘e’11 be down the moment ‘e’s dressed.”

“Nobody wants him to come before,” commented Mrs. Korner. “Answered me that he was putting on his collar when I called up to him five minutes ago.”

“Answer yer the same thing now, if yer called up to ‘im agen, I ‘spect,” was the opinion of the staff. “Was on ‘is ‘ands and knees when I looked in, scooping round under the bed for ‘is collar stud.”

Mrs. Korner paused with the teapot in her hand. “Was he talking?”

“Talkin’? Nobody there to talk to; I ‘adn’t got no time to stop and chatter.”

“I mean to himself,” explained Mrs. Korner. “He — he wasn’t swearing?” There was a note of eagerness, almost of hope, in Mrs. Korner’s voice.

“Swearin’! ‘E! Why, ‘e don’t know any.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Korner. “That will do, Harriet; you may go.”

Mrs Korner put down the teapot with a bang. “The very girl,” said Mrs. Korner bitterly, “the very girl despises him.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Greene, “he had been swearing and had finished.”

But Mrs. Korner was not to be comforted. “Finished! Any other man would have been swearing all the time.”

“Perhaps,” suggested the kindly bosom friend, ever the one to plead the cause of the transgressor, “perhaps he was swearing, and she did not hear him. You see, if he had his head well underneath the bed—”

The door opened.

“Sorry I am late,” said Mr. Korner, bursting cheerfully into the room. It was a point with Mr. Korner always to be cheerful in the morning. “Greet the day with a smile and it will leave you with a blessing,” was the motto Mrs. Korner, this day a married woman of six months and three weeks standing had heard her husband murmur before getting out of bed on precisely two hundred and two occasions. The Motto entered largely into the scheme of Mr. Korner’s life. Written in fine copperplate upon cards all of the same size, a choice selection counselled him each morning from the rim of his shaving-glass.

“Did you find it?” asked Mrs. Korner.

“It is most extraordinary,” replied Mr. Korner, as he seated himself at the breakfast-table. “I saw it go under the bed with my own eyes. Perhaps—”

“Don’t ask me to look for it,” interrupted Mrs. Korner. “Crawling about on their hands and knees, knocking their heads against iron bedsteads, would be enough to make some people swear.” The emphasis was on the “some.”

“It is not bad training for the character,” hinted Mr. Korner, “occasionally to force oneself to perform patiently tasks calculated—”

“If you get tied up in one of those long sentences of yours, you will never get out in time to eat your breakfast,” was the fear of Mrs. Korner.

“I should be sorry for anything to happen to it,” remarked Mr. Korner, “its intrinsic value may perhaps—”

“I will look for it after breakfast,” volunteered the amiable Miss Greene. “I am good at finding things.”

“I can well believe it,” the gallant Mr. Korner assured her, as with the handle of his spoon he peeled his egg. “From such bright eyes as yours, few—”

“You’ve only got ten minutes,” his wife reminded him. “Do get on with your breakfast.”

“I should like,” said Mr. Korner, “to finish a speech occasionally.”

“You never would,” asserted Mrs. Korner.

“I should like to try,” sighed Mr. Korner, “one of these days—”

“How did you sleep, dear? I forgot to ask you,” questioned Mrs. Korner of the bosom friend.

“I am always restless in a strange bed the first night,” explained Miss Greene. “I daresay, too, I was a little excited.”

“I could have wished,” said Mr. Korner, “it had been a better example of the delightful art of the dramatist. When one goes but seldom to the theatre—”

“One wants to enjoy oneself” interrupted Mrs. Korner.

“I really do not think,” said the bosom friend, “that I have ever laughed so much in all my life.”

“It was amusing. I laughed myself,” admitted Mr. Korner. “At the same time I cannot help thinking that to treat drunkenness as a theme—”

“He wasn’t drunk,” argued Mrs. Korner, “he was just jovial.”

“My dear!” Mr. Korner Corrected her, “he simply couldn’t stand.”

“He was much more amusing than some people who can,” retorted Mrs. Korner.

“It is possible, my dear Aimee,” her husband pointed out to her, “for a man to be amusing without being drunk; also for a man to be drunk without—”

“Oh, a man is all the better,” declared Mrs. Korner, “for letting himself go occasionally.”

“My dear—”

“You, Christopher, would be all the better for letting yourself go — occasionally.”

“I wish,” said Mr. Korner, as he passed his empty cup, “you would not say things you do not mean. Anyone hearing you—”

“If there’s one thing makes me more angry than another,” said Mrs. Korner, “it is being told I say things that I do not mean.”

“Why say them then?” suggested Mr. Korner.

“I don’t. I do — I mean I do mean them,” explained Mrs. Korner.

“You can hardly mean, my dear,” persisted her husband, “that you really think I should be all the better for getting drunk — even occasionally.”

“I didn’t say drunk; I said ‘going it.’”

“But I do ‘go it’ in moderation,” pleaded Mr. Korner, “‘Moderation in all things,’ that is my motto.”

“I know it,” returned Mrs. Korner.

“A little of everything and nothing—” this time Mr. Korner interrupted himself. “I fear,” said Mr. Korner, rising, “we must postpone the further discussion of this interesting topic. If you would not mind stepping out with me into the passage, dear, there are one or two little matters connected with the house—”