"May my soul pass from me and enter into Nicholas Snyders!" answered Jan, replacing his empty glass upon the table. And the two stood looking for a moment into one another's eyes.
And the high candles on the littered desk flickered and went out, as though a breath had blown them, first one and then the other.
"I must be getting home," came the voice of Jan from the darkness.
"Why did you blow out the candles?"
"We can light them again from the fire," answered Nicholas. He did not add that he had meant to ask that same question of Jan. He thrust them among the glowing logs, first one and then the other; and the shadows crept back into their corners.
"You will not stop and see Christina?" asked Nicholas.
"Not to-night," answered Jan.
"The paper that I signed," Nicholas reminded him--"you have it?""I had forgotten it," Jan answered.
The old man took it from the desk and handed it to him. Jan thrust it into his pocket and went out. Nicholas bolted the door behind him and returned to his desk; sat long there, his elbow resting on the open ledger.
Nicholas pushed the ledger aside and laughed. "What foolery! As if such things could be! The fellow must have bewitched me."Nicholas crossed to the fire and warmed his hands before the blaze.
"Still, I am glad he is going to marry the little lass. A good lad, a good lad."Nicholas must have fallen asleep before the fire. When he opened his eyes, it was to meet the grey dawn. He felt cold, stiff, hungry, and decidedly cross. Why had not Christina woke him up and given him his supper. Did she think he had intended to pass the night on a wooden chair? The girl was an idiot. He would go upstairs and tell her through the door just what he thought of her.
His way upstairs led through the kitchen. To his astonishment, there sat Christina, asleep before the burnt-out grate.
"Upon my word," muttered Nicholas to himself, "people in this house don't seem to know what beds are for!"But it was not Christina, so Nicholas told himself. Christina had the look of a frightened rabbit: it had always irritated him. This girl, even in her sleep, wore an impertinent expression--a delightfully impertinent expression. Besides, this girl was pretty--marvellously pretty. Indeed, so pretty a girl Nicholas had never seen in all his life before. Why had the girls, when Nicholas was young, been so entirely different! A sudden bitterness seized Nicholas: it was as though he had just learnt that long ago, without knowing it, he had been robbed.
The child must be cold. Nicholas fetched his fur-lined cloak and wrapped it about her.
There was something else he ought to do. The idea came to him while drawing the cloak around her shoulders, very gently, not to disturb her--something he wanted to do, if only he could think what it was.
The girl's lips were parted. She appeared to be speaking to him, asking him to do this thing--or telling him not to do it. Nicholas could not be sure which. Half a dozen times he turned away, and half a dozen times stole back to where she sat sleeping with that delightfully impertinent expression on her face, her lips parted. But what she wanted, or what it was he wanted, Nicholas could not think.
Perhaps Christina would know. Perhaps Christina would know who she was and how she got there. Nicholas climbed the stairs, swearing at them for creaking.
Christina's door was open. No one was in the room; the bed had not been slept upon. Nicholas descended the creaking stairs.
The girl was still asleep. Could it be Christina herself? Nicholas examined the delicious features one by one. Never before, so far as he could recollect, had he seen the girl; yet around her neck--Nicholas had not noticed it before--lay Christina's locket, rising and falling as she breathed. Nicholas knew it well; the one thing belonging to her mother Christina had insisted on keeping. The one thing about which she had ever defied him. She would never have parted with that locket. It must be Christina herself. But what had happened to her? Or to himself. Remembrance rushed in upon him. The odd pedlar! The scene with Jan! But surely all that had been a dream? Yet there upon the littered desk still stood the pedlar's silver flask, together with the twin stained glasses.
Nicholas tried to think, but his brain was in a whirl. A ray of sunshine streaming through the window fell across the dusty room.
Nicholas had never seen the sun, that he could recollect.
Involuntarily he stretched his hands towards it, felt a pang of grief when it vanished, leaving only the grey light. He drew the rusty bolts, flung open the great door. A strange world lay before him, a new world of lights and shadows, that wooed him with their beauty--a world of low, soft voices that called to him. There came to him again that bitter sense of having been robbed.
"I could have been so happy all these years," murmured old Nicholas to himself. "It is just the little town I could have loved--so quaint, so quiet, so homelike. I might have had friends, old cronies, children of my own maybe--"A vision of the sleeping Christina flashed before his eyes. She had come to him a child, feeling only gratitude towards him. Had he had eyes with which to see her, all things might have been different.
Was it too late? He is not so old--not so very old. New life is in his veins. She still loves Jan, but that was the Jan of yesterday.
In the future, Jan's every word and deed will be prompted by the evil soul that was once the soul of Nicholas Snyders--that Nicholas Snyders remembers well. Can any woman love that, let the case be as handsome as you will?
Ought he, as an honest man, to keep the soul he had won from Jan by what might be called a trick? Yes, it had been a fair bargain, and Jan had taken his price. Besides, it was not as if Jan had fashioned his own soul; these things are chance. Why should one man be given gold, and another be given parched peas? He has as much right to Jan's soul as Jan ever had. He is wiser, he can do more good with it.