Famous Modern Ghost Stories

FAMOUS MODERN GHOST STORIES

Selected, with an Introduction by

DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH, PH.D.

Lecturer in English, Columbia University

Author of _The Supernatural In Modern English Fiction_, _Fugitive

Verses_, _From A Southern Porch_, etc. Compiler of _Humorous Ghost

Stories_

G.P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

The Knickerbocker Press

1921

To

ASHLEY HORACE THORNDIKE, LITT. D.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

WHO GUIDED MY EARLIER STUDIES IN THE SUPERNATURAL

The Imperishable Ghost

INTRODUCTION

Ghosts are the true immortals, and the dead grow more alive all the

time. Wraiths have a greater vitality to-day than ever before. They are

far more numerous than at any time in the past, and people are more

interested in them. There are persons that claim to be acquainted with

specific spirits, to speak with them, to carry on correspondence with

them, and even some who insist that they are private secretaries to the

dead. Others of us mortals, more reserved, are content to keep such

distance as we may from even the shadow of a shade. But there's no

getting away from ghosts nowadays, for even if you shut your eyes to

them in actual life, you stumble over them in the books you read, you

see them on the stage and on the screen, and you hear them on the

lecture platform. Even a Lodge in any vast wilderness would have the

company of spirits. Man's love for the supernatural, which is one of the

most natural things about him, was never more marked than at present.

You may go a-ghosting in any company to-day, and all aspects of

literature, novels, short stories, poetry, and drama alike, reflect the

shadeless spirit. The latest census of the haunting world shows a vast

increase in population, which might be explained on various grounds.

Life is so inconveniently complex nowadays, what with income taxes and

other visitations of government, that it is hard for us to have the

added risk of wraiths, but there's no escaping. Many persons of to-day

are in the same mental state as one Mr. Boggs, told of in a magazine

story, a rural gentleman who was agitated over spectral visitants. He

had once talked at a seance with a speaker who claimed to be the spirit

of his brother, Wesley Boggs, but who conversed only on blue suspenders,

a subject not of vital interest to Wesley in the flesh. "Still," Mr.

Boggs reflected, "I'm not so darn sure!" In answer to a suggestion

regarding subliminal consciousness and dual personality as explanation

of the strange things that come bolting into life, he said, "It's crawly

any way you look at it. Ghosts inside you are as bad as ghosts outside

you." There are others to-day who are "not so darn sure!"

One may conjecture divers reasons for this multitude of ghosts in late

literature. Perhaps spooks are like small boys that rush to fires,

unwilling to miss anything, and craving new sensations. And we mortals

read about them to get vicarious thrills through the safe _medium_ of

fiction. The war made sensationalists of us all, and the drab

everydayness of mortal life bores us. Man's imagination, always bigger

than his environment, overleaps the barriers of time and space and

claims all worlds as eminent domain, so that literature, which he has

the power to create, as he cannot create his material surroundings,

possesses a dramatic intensity, an epic sweep, unknown in actuality. In

the last analysis, man is as great as his daydreams--or his nightmares!

Ghosts have always haunted literature, and doubtless always will.

Specters seem never to wear out or to die, but renew their tissue both

of person and of raiment, in marvelous fashion, so that their number

increases with a Malthusian relentlessness. We of to-day have the ghosts

that haunted our ancestors, as well as our own modern revenants, and

there's no earthly use trying to banish or exorcise them by such a

simple thing as disbelief in them. Schopenhauer asserts that a belief in

ghosts is born with man, that it is found in all ages and in all lands,

and that no one is free from it. Since accounts vary, and our earliest

antecedents were poor diarists, it is difficult to establish the

apostolic succession of spooks in actual life, but in literature, the

line reaches back as far as the primeval picture writing. A study of

animism in primitive culture shows many interesting links between the

past and the present in this matter. And anyhow, since man knows that

whether or not he has seen a ghost, presently he'll be one, he's

fascinated with the subject. And he creates ghosts, not merely in his

own image, but according to his dreams of power.

The more man knows of natural laws, the keener he is about the

supernatural. He may claim to have laid aside superstition, but he isn't

to be believed in that. Though he has discarded witchcraft and alchemy,

it is only that he may have more time for psychical research; true, he

no longer dabbles with ancient magic, but that is because the modern

types, as the ouija board, entertain him more. He dearly loves to

traffic with that other world of which he knows so little and concerning

which he is so curious.

Perhaps the war, or possibly an increase in class consciousness, or

unionization of spirits, or whatever, has greatly energized the ghost in

our day and given him both ambition and strength to do more things than

ever. Maybe "pep tablets" have been discovered on the other side as

well! No longer is the ghost content to be seen and not heard, to slink

around in shadowy corners as apologetically as poor relations. Wraiths

now have a rambunctious vitality and self-assurance that are

astonishing. Even the ghosts of folks dead so long they have forgotten

about themselves are yawning, stretching their skeletons, and starting

out to do a little haunting. Spooky creatures in such a wide diversity

are abroad to-day that one is sometimes at a loss to know what to do

"gin a body meet a body." Ghosts are entering all sorts of activities

now, so that mortals had better look alive, else they'll be crowded out

of their place in the shade. The dead are too much with us!

Modern ghosts are less simple and primitive than their ancestors, and

are developing complexes of various kinds. They are more democratic than

of old, and have more of a diversity of interests, so that mortals have

scarcely the ghost of a chance with them. They employ all the agencies

and mechanisms known to mortals, and have in addition their own methods

of transit and communication. Whereas in the past a ghost had to stalk

or glide to his haunts, now he limousines or airplanes, so that

naturally he can get in more work than before. He uses the wireless to

send his messages, and is expert in all manner of scientific lines.

In fact, his infernal efficiency and knowledge of science constitute the

worst terror of the current specter. Who can combat a ghost that knows

all about a chemical laboratory, that can add electricity to his other

shocks, and can employ all mortal and immortal agencies as his own?

Science itself is supernatural, as we see when we look at it properly.

Modern literature, especially the most recent, shows a revival of old

types of ghosts, together with the innovations of the new. There are

specters that take a real part in the plot complication, and those that

merely cast threatening looks at the living, or at least, are content to

speak a piece and depart. Some spirits are dumb, while others are highly

elocutionary.

Ghosts vary in many respects. Some are like the pallid shades of the

past, altogether unlike the living and with an unmistakable spectral

form--or lack of it. They sweep like mist through the air, or flutter

like dead leaves in the gale--a gale always accompanying them as part of

the stock furnishings. On the other hand, some revenants are so

successfully made up that one doesn't believe them when they pridefully

announce that they are wraiths. Some of them are, in fact, so alive that

they don't themselves know they're dead. It's going to be a great shock

to some of them one of these days to wake up and find out they're

demised!

Ghosts are more gregarious than in the past. Formerly a shade slunk off

by himself, as if ashamed of his profession, as if aware of the lack of

cordiality with which he would be received, knowing that mortals shunned

and feared him, and chary even of associating with his fellow-shades. He

wraithed all by himself. The specters of the past--save in scenes of the

lower world,--were usually solitary creatures, driven to haunt mortals

from very lonesomeness. Now we have a chance to study the mob psychology

of ghosts, for they come in madding crowds whenever they like.

Ghosts at present are showing an active interest not only in public

affairs, but in the arts as well. At least, we now have pictures and

writing attributed to them. Perhaps annoyed by some of the inaccuracies

published concerning them--for authors have in the past taken advantage

of the belief that ghosts couldn't write back--they have recently

developed itching pens. They use all manner of utensils for expression

now. There's the magic typewriter that spooks for John Kendrick Bangs,

the boardwalk that Patience Worth executes for Mrs. Curran, and

innumerable other specters that commandeer fountain pens and pencils and

brushes to give their versions of infinity. There's a passion on the

part of ghosts for being interviewed just now. At present

book-reviewers, for instance, had better be careful, lest the wraiths

take their own method of answering criticism. It isn't safe to speak or

write with anything but respect of ghosts now. _De mortuis nil nisi

bonum_, indeed! One should never make light of a shade.

Modern ghosts have a more pronounced personality than the specters of

the past. They have more strength, of mind as well as of body, than the

colorless revenants of earlier literature, and they produce a more vivid

effect on the beholder and the reader. They know more surely what they

wish to do, and they advance relentlessly and with economy of effort to

the effecting of their purpose, whether it be of pure horror, of beauty,

or pathos of humor. We have now many spirits in fiction that are

pathetic without frightfulness, many that move us with a sense of poetic

beauty rather than of curdling horror, who touch the heart as well as

the spine of the reader. And the humorous ghost is a distinctive shade

of to-day, with his quips and pranks and haunting grin. Whatever a

modern ghost wishes to do or to be, he is or does, with confidence and

success.

The spirit of to-day is terrifyingly visible or invisible at will. The

dreadful presence of a ghost that one cannot see is more unbearable than

the specter that one can locate and attempt to escape from. The

invisible haunting is represented in this volume by Fitz-James O'Brien's

_What Was It?_ one of the very best of the type, and one that has

strongly influenced others. O'Brien's story preceded Guy de Maupassant's

_Le Horla_ by several years, and must surely have suggested to

Maupassant as to Bierce, in his _The Damned Thing_, the power of evil

that can be felt but not seen.

The wraith of the present carries with him more vital energy than his

predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights

he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of

hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with more emphasis and

authority, as well as with more human naturalness, than the earlier

ghosts. He has not only all the force he possessed in life, but in many

instances has an access of power, which makes man a poor protagonist for

him. Algernon Blackwood's spirits of evil, for example, have a more

awful potentiality than any living person could have, and their will to

harm has been increased immeasurably by the accident of death. If the

facts bear out the fear that such is the case in life as in fiction,

some of our social customs will be reversed. A man will strive by all

means to keep his deadly enemy alive, lest death may endow him with

tenfold power to hurt. Dark discarnate passions, disembodied hates, work

evil where a simple ghost might be helpless and abashed. Algernon

Blackwood has command over the spirits of air and fire and wave, so that

his pages thrill with beauty and terror. He has handled almost all known

aspects of the supernatural, and from his many stories he has selected

for this volume _The Willows_ as the best example of his ghostly art.

Apparitions are more readily recognizable at present than in the past,

for they carry into eternity all the disfigurements or physical

peculiarities that the living bodies possessed--a fact discouraging to

all persons not conspicuous for good looks. Freckles and warts, long

noses and missing limbs distinguish the ghosts and aid in crucial

identification. The thrill of horror in Ambrose Bierce's story, _The

Middle Toe of the Right Foot_, is intensified by the fact that the dead

woman who comes back in revenge to haunt her murderer, has one toe

lacking as in life. And in a recent story a surgeon whose desire to

experiment has caused him needlessly to sacrifice a man's life on the

operating table, is haunted to death by the dismembered arm. Fiction

shows us various ghosts with half faces, and at least one notable spook

that comes in half. Such ability, it will be granted, must necessarily

increase the haunting power, for if a ghost may send a foot or an arm or

a leg to harry one person, he can dispatch his back-bone or his liver or

his heart to upset other human beings simultaneously in a sectional

haunting at once economically efficient and terrifying.

_The Beast with Five Fingers_, for instance, has a loathsome horror that

a complete skeleton or conventionally equipped wraith could not achieve.

Who can doubt that a bodiless hand leaping around on its errands of evil

has a menace that a complete six-foot frame could not duplicate? Yet, in

Quiller-Couch's _A Pair of Hands_, what pathos and beauty in the thought

of the child hands coming back to serve others in homely tasks! Surely

no housewife in these helpless days would object to being haunted in

such delicate fashion.

Ghosts of to-day have an originality that antique specters lacked. For

instance, what story of the past has the awful thrill in Andreyev's

_Lazarus_, that story of the man who came back from the grave, living,

yet dead, with the horror of the unknown so manifest in his face that

those who looked into his deep eyes met their doom? Present-day writers

skillfully combine various elements of awe with the supernatural, as

madness with the ghostly, adding to the chill of fear which each concept

gives. Wilbur Daniel Steele's _The Woman at Seven Brothers_ is an

instance of that method.

Poe's _Ligeia_, one of the best stories in any language, reveals the

unrelenting will of the dead to effect its desire,--the dead wife

triumphantly coming back to life through the second wife's body. Olivia

Howard Dunbar's _The Shell of Sense_ is another instance of jealousy

reaching beyond the grave. _The Messenger_, one of Robert W. Chambers's

early stories and an admirable example of the supernatural, has various

thrills, with its river of blood, its death's head moth, and the ancient

but very active skull of the Black Priest who was shot as a traitor to

his country, but lived on as an energetic and curseful ghost.

_The Shadows on the Wall_, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,--which one

prominent librarian considers the best ghost story ever written,--is

original in the method of its horrific manifestation. Isn't it more

devastating to one's sanity to see the shadow of a revenge ghost cast on

the wall,--to know that a vindictive spirit is beside one but

invisible--than to see the specter himself? Under such circumstances,

the sight of a skeleton or a sheeted phantom would be downright

comforting.

_The Mass of Shadows_, by Anatole France, is an example of the modern

tendency to show phantoms in groups, as contrasted with the solitary

habits of ancient specters. Here the spirits of those who had sinned for

love could meet and celebrate mass together in one evening of the year.

The delicate beauty of many of the modern ghostly stories is apparent in

_The Haunted Orchard_, by Richard Le Gallienne, for this prose poem has

an appeal of tenderness rather than of terror. And everybody who has

had affection for a dog will appreciate the pathos of the little sketch,

by Myla J. Closser, _At the Gate_. The dog appears more frequently as a

ghost than does any other animal, perhaps because man feels that he is

nearer the human,--though the horse is as intelligent and as much

beloved. There is an innate pathos about a dog somehow, that makes his

appearance in ghostly form more credible and sympathetic, while the

ghost of any other animal would tend to have a comic connotation. Other

animals in fiction have power of magic--notably the cat--but they don't

appear as spirits. But the dog is seen as a pathetic symbol of

faithfulness, as a tragic sufferer, or as a terrible revenge ghost. Dogs

may come singly or in groups--Edith Wharton has five of different sorts

in _Kerfol_--or in packs, as in Eden Phillpotts's _Another Little Heath

Hound_.

An illuminating instance of the power of fiction over human faith is

furnished by the case of Arthur Machen's _The Bowmen_, included here.

This story it is which started the whole tissue of legendry concerning

supernatural aid given the allied armies during the war. This purely

fictitious account of an angel army that saved the day at Mons was so

vivid that its readers accepted it as truth and obstinately clung to

that idea in the face of Mr. Machen's persistent and bewildered

explanations that he had invented the whole thing. Editors wrote leading

articles about it, ministers preached sermons on it, and the general

public preferred to believe in the Mons angels rather than in Arthur

Machen. Mr. Machen has shown himself an artist in the supernatural, one

whom his generation has not been discerning enough to appreciate. Some

of his material is painfully morbid, but his pen is magic and his

inkwell holds many dark secrets.

In this collection I have attempted to include specimens of a few of the

distinctive types of modern ghosts, as well as to show the art of

individual stories. Examples of the humorous ghosts are omitted here, as

a number of them will be brought together in _Humorous Ghost Stories_,

the companion volume to this. The ghost lover who reads these pages will

think of others that he would like to see included--for I believe that

readers are more passionately attached to their own favorite ghost tales

than to any other form of literature. But critics will admit the

manifest impossibility of bringing together in one volume all the famous

examples of the art. Some of the well-known tales, particularly the

older ones on which copyright has expired, have been reprinted so often

as to be almost hackneyed, while others have been of necessity omitted

because of the limitations of space.

D.S.

NEW YORK,

March, 1921.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: THE IMPERISHABLE GHOST

THE WILLOWS

BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

THE SHADOWS ON THE WALL

BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN

THE MESSENGER

BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

LAZARUS

BY LEONID ANDREYEV

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS

BY W. F. HARVEY

THE MASS OF SHADOWS

BY ANATOLE FRANCE

WHAT WAS IT?

BY FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN

THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT

BY AMBROSE BIERCE

THE SHELL OF SENSE

BY OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR

THE WOMAN AT SEVEN BROTHERS

BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

AT THE GATE

BY MYLA JO CLOSSER

LIGEIA

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

THE HAUNTED ORCHARD

BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

THE BOWMEN

BY ARTHUR MACHEN

A GHOST

BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

The Willows

BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

From _The Listener_, by Algernon Blackwood. Published in America by

E.P. Dutton, and in England by Everleigh Nash, Ltd. By permission

of the publishers and Algernon Blackwood.

I

After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Buda-Pesth, the Danube

enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters

spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country

becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low

willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy

blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may

be seen in large straggling letters the word _Suempfe_, meaning marshes.

In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown

islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes

bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the

sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows

never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they

remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on

slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as

grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the

impression that the entire plain is moving and _alive_. For the wind

sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves

instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the

branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their under-side turns

to the sun.

Happy to slip beyond the control of stern banks, the Danube here wanders

about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the

islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a

shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing

at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and

forming new islands innumerable which shift daily in size and shape and

possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates

their very existence.

Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon

after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent

and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about

mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before

sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving

it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills

of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend

under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on

the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman

Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of

Theben on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly

from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.

Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into

Hungary, and the muddy waters--sure sign of flood--sent us aground on

many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching

whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed

against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew

at top speed under the gray walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of

the Fliegende Bruecke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and

plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands, sand-banks, and

swamp-land beyond--the land of the willows.

The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps

down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the

scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings,

and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor

red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization

within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of human kind, the

utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows,

winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we

allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held

some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat

audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of

wonder and magic--a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who

had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for

those who had the imagination to discover them.

Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most

tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about

for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering

character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood

carried us in-shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches

tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a

yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a great

sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach the

bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after our

exertions on hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full

blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense

army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides,

shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to

applaud the success of our efforts.

"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had

traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how we had often been

obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.

"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a

little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a

nap.

I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the

elements--water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun--thinking of

the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us

to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and

charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.

We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than

any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its

_aliveness_. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the

pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to

play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps,

unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the growth

of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent

desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some

huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our

little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes,

yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come

inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.

How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its

secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our

tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be

caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is

its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools,

suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its

shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere

surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the

banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its

face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew upstream and

tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its

tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges;

that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the

affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns,

far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when

the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till

the steam rose.

It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world

knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian

forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it,

where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear

again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new

river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed

that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of

shallows!

And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth,

was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent

tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge

them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well

marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to

recognize the new-comer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this

particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power

impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river that

there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that follows,

and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs, and

forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro in

order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped

down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life among

the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson, and

after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.

This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know

other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain

of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we

could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while below there

moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of Undines,

passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very leisurely too,

lest they be discovered.

Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and

animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely

places in rows like short black palings; gray crows crowded the

shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that

opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all

sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. It

was impossible to feel annoyed with the river's vagaries after seeing a

deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and swim past the bows

of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush,

or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt

round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too,

everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and

disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they managed

it.

But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the

Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was halfway to the

Black Sea, within scenting distance almost of other, stranger countries

where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly

grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into

three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers

farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was

intended to be followed.

"If you take a side channel," said the Hungarian officer we met in the

Pressburg shop while buying provisions, "you may find yourselves, when

the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may

easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you

not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will

increase."

The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being

left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious,

and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the

rest, the officer's prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a

perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a

westerly gale.

It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or

two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot

sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The

island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank

standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far

end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the

tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was

triangular in shape, with the apex upstream.

I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood

bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as

though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming

streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and

rush while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind poured

over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually

moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending

upon me: it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill, white with

foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.

The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make

walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end

the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only

the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and

pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from

behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the

islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which

closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding

down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like growths that

sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from

sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.

Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its

bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular

emotion began stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight

of the wild beauty, there crept unbidden and unexplained, a curious

feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.

A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous: many

of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept

away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched

the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than

the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it

directly to do with the power of the driving wind--this shouting

hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air

and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind was

simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape to

stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of

pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with

the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that

it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it

accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my

realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power

of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to do with

it too--a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with these

great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of the

day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at play

together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.

But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself

more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of

willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye

could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing

in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting,

listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected

themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously

somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or

other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power,

moreover, not altogether friendly to us.

Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way

or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains

overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises

a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another,

somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They

stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole

to exalt.

With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different,

I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense

of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror.

Their serried ranks growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows

deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the

curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the

borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world

where we were not wanted or invited to remain--where we ran grave risks

perhaps!

The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to

analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it

never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting

up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot.

It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most

delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my

companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid

of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained to him

what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if

I had.

There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we

pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.

"A poor camp," observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent

stood upright; "no stones and precious little firewood. I'm for moving

on early to-morrow--eh? This sand won't hold anything."

But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many

devices, and we made the cosy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then

set about collecting a store of wood to last till bedtime. Willow bushes

drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted

the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the

rising flood tore at them and carried away great portions with a splash

and a gurgle.

"The island's much smaller than when we landed," said the accurate

Swede. "It won't last long at this rate. We'd better drag the canoe

close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment's notice. _I_ shall

sleep in my clothes."

He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his

rather jolly laugh as he spoke.

"By Jove!" I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had

caused his exclamation; but for the moment he was hidden by the willows,

and I could not find him.

"What in the world's this?" I heard him cry again, and this time his

voice had become serious.

I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the

river, pointing at something in the water.

"Good Heavens, it's a man's body!" he cried excitedly. "Look!"

A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly

past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was

about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where

we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes

reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned

over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a

flash.

"An otter, by gad!" we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.

It _was_ an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly

like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far

below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet

and shining in the sunlight.

Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another

thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a

man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube

was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and

at flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We

stood and stared.

Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the

wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I

found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying

apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort

of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down

the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking

across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light

too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he was about. It

seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice

came across the water to us shouting something furiously but the wind

drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something

curious about the whole appearance--man, boat, signs, voice--that made

an impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.

"He's crossing himself!" I cried. "Look, he's making the sign of the

cross!"

"I believe you're right," the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand

and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a moment,

melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught

them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall

of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to rise, so that the air was hazy.

"But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?"

I said, half to myself. "Where is he going at such a time, and what did

he mean by his signs and shouting? D'you think he wished to warn us

about something?"

"He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably," laughed my

companion. "These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish: you

remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed

here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world! I

suppose they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons too.

That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in

his life," he added, after a slight pause, "and it scared him, that's

all." The Swede's tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner

lacked something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly

while he talked, though without being able to label it precisely.

"If they had enough imagination," I laughed loudly--I remember trying to

make as much _noise_ as I could--"they might well people a place like

this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all

this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and

elemental deities."

The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was

not given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I

remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his

stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting.

It was an admirable temperament, I felt: he could steer down rapids like

a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any

white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an

adventurous trip, a tower of strength when untoward things happened. I

looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along

under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I experienced

a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then that the Swede

was--what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more

than they said.

"The river's still rising, though," he added, as if following out some

thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. "This island

will be under water in two days if it goes on."

"I wish the _wind_ would go down," I said. "I don't care a fig for the

river."

The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten

minutes' notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an

increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds

that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.

Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It

seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the

willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes,

like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the

island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the

sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through

space.

But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full

moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of shouting

willows with a light like the day.

We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the

noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had

already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of

the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we

lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was

enough to smoke and see each other's faces by, and the sparks flew about

overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled and

hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling away

of further portions of the bank.

Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the far-away scenes and incidents of

our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether

remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual

moment more than was necessary--almost as though we had agreed tacitly

to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter nor

the boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention,

though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater

part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a

place.

The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the

wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the

same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make foraging

expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back

always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for

the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it

always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble

along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with

wind and water--such wind and such water!--had tired us both, and an

early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for

the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in desultory fashion,

peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the

thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place had entered our

very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our

voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the

fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always

rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it

something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church,

or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not quite _safe_, to

be overheard.

The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept

by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both,

I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath

the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world,

an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of

willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make

use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as

I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the

stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.

"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my

companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding

shadows.

For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that

night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too

was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not

altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him,

and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far

point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be seen

to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon me;

my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me I

wished to face and probe to the bottom.

When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell

of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere "scenery"

could have produced such an effect. There was something more here,

something to alarm.

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering

willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one

and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange

distress. But the _willows_ especially: for ever they went on chattering

and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out,

sometimes sighing--but what it was they made so much to-do about

belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it

was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet

kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another

plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a

mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily together,

oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even

when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive,

and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the

_horrible_.

There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our

camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all

ready for an attack.

The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid;

for the wanderer, especially, camps have their "note" either of welcome

or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy

preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first

pause--after supper usually--it comes and announces itself. And the note

of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me: we were

interlopers, trespassers, we were not welcomed. The sense of

unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the

frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night's

lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and

inquisitive stay--No! by all the gods of the trees and the wilderness,

no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not

wanted. _The willows were against us_.

Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence,

found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if,

after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they

should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods

whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps,

booming overhead in the night--and then _settle down_! As I looked it

was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a

little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind

that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their

aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more

closely together.

The melancholy shrill cry of a night bird sounded overhead, and suddenly

I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon fell with a

great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back

just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at

the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and cast their

spell upon me. I recall the Swede's remark about moving on next day, and

I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I turned with a

start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing immediately in front

of me. He was quite close. The roar of the elements had covered his

approach.

"You've been gone so long," he shouted above the wind, "I thought

something must have happened to you."

But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well,

that conveyed to me more than his actual words, and in a flash I

understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of

the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.

"River still rising," he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight,

"and the wind's simply awful."

He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship

that gave the real importance to his words.

"Lucky," I cried back, "our tent's in the hollow. I think it'll hold all

right." I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in order

to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung them

across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me through

the branches, nodding his head.

"Lucky if we get away without disaster!" he shouted, or words to that

effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the

thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was

disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay

unpleasantly upon me.

We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our

feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have

been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my

friend's reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the

ordinary July weather, than this "diabolical wind."

Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside

the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack

hanging from a willow stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe

distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.

We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The

flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and

the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the

wind against our taut little house were the last things I remembered as

sleep came down and covered all with its soft and delicious

forgetfulness.

II

Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress

through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the

canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve

o'clock--the threshold of a new day--and I had therefore slept a couple

of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me; the wind howled as

before something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There was

a sense of disturbance in my immediate neighborhood.

I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and

fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay

snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting

enough resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not

pass however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our

belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion.

A curious excitement was on me.

I was halfway out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that

the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves,

made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It

was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were

shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches

swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes,

forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the

moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things.

My first instinct was to waken my companion that he too might see them,

but something made me hesitate--the sudden realization, probably, that I

should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring

in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to

myself that I was _not_ dreaming.

They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the

tops of the bushes--immense bronze-colored, moving, and wholly

independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and

noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much

larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance

proclaimed them to be _not human_ at all. Certainly they were not merely

the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted

independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to

sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They

were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their

limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this

serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the

contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes,

passing up the bushes, _within_ the leaves almost--rising up in a living

column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they

poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull

bronze upon their skins.

I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long

time I thought they _must_ every moment disappear and resolve themselves

into the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion.

I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I

understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed. For the

longer I looked the more certain I became that these figures were real

and living, though perhaps not according to the standards that the

camera and the biologist would insist upon.

Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder

such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified

elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had

stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the

cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories

and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been

acknowledged and worshiped by men in all ages of the world's history.

But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something

impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on to the sand and

stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind

tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears

with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my

senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to

heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength

that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I

felt that I must fall down and worship--absolutely worship.

Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind

swept against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly

stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At

least it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still

remained, still ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but my

reason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective

experience, I argued--none the less real for that, but still subjective.

The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these pictures upon

the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them

outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the case,

of course. I was the subject of a vivid and interesting hallucination. I

took courage, and began to move forward across the open patches of sand.

By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did

not my reason argue in the old futile way from the little standard of

the known?

I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky

for what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete

measure of reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then

suddenly they were gone!

And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great

presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The

esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up

within me and I began to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look

round--a look of horror that came near to panic--calculating vainly ways

of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything

really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down again

upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut out the

sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as

deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the

terrifying wind.

III

As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I

remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and

restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and

underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but

lay alert and on the watch.

But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was

neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of

something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and

smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting

bolt upright--listening.

Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had

been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had

first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had

not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with

difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my

body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered.

Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and

weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was this

the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown from

the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a

dozen things.

Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the

poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind.

Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next

gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the

tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised the loose flap and rushed

out, calling to the Swede to follow.

But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There

was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.

A cold, gray light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the

faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead,

and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any

glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several

hours must have passed since I stood there before, watching the

ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly,

like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging

wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my

nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless

apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river

I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray

made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.

Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidences of anything to cause

alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly

unaccounted for.

My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to

waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything: the

turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles--two of them, I'm certain; the

provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree;

and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those

endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string

of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand

whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.

I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so

that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same

profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I

saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking

ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and

there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of

that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It _must_ have been the

wind, I reflected--the wind beating upon the loose, hot sand, driving

the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas--the wind dropping

heavily upon our fragile roof.

Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast line had

altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I

dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead.

Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite

freshness of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the

very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air,

and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense

of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Some

one passed me, as sure as ever man did....

It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward

again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror

diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember

saying to myself; for the winds often move like great presences under

the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an

unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt

before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to

counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the

middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river,

crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so

overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought

a cry up into the throat.

But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain

beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden

among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to

which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.

For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of

the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different

view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the

relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent.

Surely the bushes now crowded much closer--unnecessarily, unpleasantly

close. _They had moved nearer_.

Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly

nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during

the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves?

I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon

the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake in terror. I

swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it hard to keep my

upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a suggestion here of

personal agency, of deliberate intention, of aggressive hostility, and

it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.

Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd,

that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily

than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such

dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through

our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would

come, and was coming.

The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up

over the horizon, for it was after four o'clock, and I must have stood

on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down

at close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the

tent, first taking another exhaustive look round and--yes, I confess

it--making a few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the

distances between the willows and the tent, making a note of the

shortest distance particularly.

I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances,

still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my

experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny

them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade myself that it was all

a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the

excited imagination.

Nothing further came to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once,

utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound

of multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart

that had made it difficult to breathe.

IV

The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy

sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just

time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent

door.

"River still rising," he said, "and several islands out in midstream

have disappeared altogether. Our own island's much smaller."

"Any wood left?" I asked sleepily.

"The wood and the island will finish to-morrow in a dead heat," he

laughed, "but there's enough to last us till then."

I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a

lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment

to the landing place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks

flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such

conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night

seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The

sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind,

however, had not abated one little jot.

Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede's words flashed

across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave posthaste, and had

changed his mind. "Enough to last till to-morrow"--he assumed we should

stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before

he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy

splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our

frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the

difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in

flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more

than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had

changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different--a

trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice

and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but at

the time I remember being quite certain of one thing, viz., that he had

become frightened!

He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He

had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.

"We'd better get off sharp in an hour," I said presently, feeling for an

opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any

rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let

us."

"Who'll let us? The elements?" I asked quickly, with affected

indifference.

"The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping

his eyes on the map. "The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in

the world."

"The elements are always the true immortals," I replied, laughing as

naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face

reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke

across the smoke:

"We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster."

This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the

point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist

to extract the tooth; it _had_ to come anyhow in the long run, and the

rest was all pretense.

"Further disaster! Why, what's happened?"

"For one thing--the steering paddle's gone," he said quietly.

"The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was

our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. "But

what----"

"And there's a tear in the bottom of the canoe," he added, with a

genuine little tremor in his voice.

I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face

somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning

sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up

to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way

towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The

canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs

uppermost, the paddles, or rather, _the_ paddle, on the sand beside her.

"There's only one," he said, stooping to pick it up. "And here's the

rent in the base-board."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed

_two_ paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think

better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a

little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if

the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and

investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in

her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the

water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once

out in midstream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never

more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very

rapidly.

"There, you see, an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice," I

heard him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims rather," he

added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.

I began to whistle--a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly

nonplused--and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was

determined to consider them foolish.

"It wasn't there last night," he said presently, straightening up from

his examination and looking anywhere but at me.

"We must have scratched her in landing, of course," I stopped whistling

to say, "The stones are very sharp----"

I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye

squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation

was. There were no stones, to begin with.

"And then there's this to explain too," he added quietly, handing me the

paddle and pointing to the blade.

A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and

examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped,

as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that

the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.

"One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing," I said feebly,

"or--or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown

against it by the wind, perhaps."

"Ah," said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, "you can explain

everything!"

"The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the

bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out

after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything

he showed me.

"I see," he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before

disappearing among the willow bushes.

Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think

my first thought took the form of "One of us must have done this thing,

and it certainly was not I." But my second thought decided how

impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either

of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen

similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a

suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed the

explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature had

suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.

Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear

actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the

clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his

_mind_--that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he

did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto

unmentionable events--waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected,

and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind

intuitively--I hardly knew how.

I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the

measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows

formed in the sand, I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and

of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a teacup to a large

bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters,

just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water.

The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable;

and, after all, it _was_ conceivable that a sharp point had caught it

when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this

theory, but all the same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of

my intelligence which I called my "reason." An explanation of some kind

was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the

universe is necessary--however absurd--to the happiness of every

individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems

of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.

I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at

the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could

not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention

casually to the hollows in the sand.

"Yes," he said, "I know. They're all over the island. But _you_ can

explain them, no doubt!"

"Wind, of course," I answered without hesitation. "Have you never

watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl

everything into a circle? This sand's loose enough to yield, that's

all."

He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him

surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He

seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not

hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept

turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out

across the water where it was visible through the openings among the

willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for

several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked

no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill

and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the

work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the

changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed _that_, my

imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.

At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.

"Queer thing," he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted

to say something and get it over. "Queer thing, I mean, about that otter

last night."

I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with

surprise, and I looked up sharply.

"Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things--"

"I don't mean that, of course," he interrupted. "I mean--do you

think--did you think it really was an otter?"

"What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?"

"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed--so _much_

bigger than an otter."

"The sunset as you looked upstream magnified it, or something," I

replied.

He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with

other thoughts.

"It had such extraordinary yellow eyes," he went on half to himself.

"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose

you'll wonder next if that fellow in the boat----"

I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again

of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the

expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on

with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence.

Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the

smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.

"I _did_ rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that

thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man.

The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water."

I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was

impatience and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.

"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without

going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,

and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going

downstream as fast as they could lick. And that otter _was_ an otter, so

don't let's play the fool about it!"

He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in

the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.

"And for heaven's sake," I went on, "don't keep pretending you hear

things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's nothing to hear

but the river and this cursed old thundering wind."

"You _fool_!" he answered in a low, shocked voice, "you utter fool.

That's just the way all victims talk. As if you didn't understand just

as well as I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of

resignation. "The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold

your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at self-deception

only makes the truth harder when you're forced to meet it."

My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew

quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not _he_. Up to

a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think

I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less

sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half

ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. _He knew_

from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed

the point of his words about the necessity of there being a victim, and

that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I dropped all

pretense thenceforward, but thenceforward likewise my fear increased

steadily to the climax.

"But you're quite right about one thing," he added, before the subject

passed, "and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to

think about it, because what one _thinks_ finds expression in words, and

what one _says_, happens."

That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to

fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood

of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes,

and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew

perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps and

splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four o'clock, and

then for the first time for three days the wind showed signs of abating.

Clouds began to gather in the southwest, spreading thence slowly over

the sky.

This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant

roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the

silence that came about five o'clock with its sudden cessation was in a

manner quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything its

own way then: it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the

wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes,

rising, falling, always beating out some sort of great elemental tune;

whereas the river's song lay between three notes at most--dull pedal

notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow

seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the

music of doom.

It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright

sunlight took everything out of the landscape that made for

cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed to

convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course was

all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the darkening

outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself more than

once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would get up in the

east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly interfere with her

lighting of the little island.

With this general hush of the wind--though it still indulged in

occasional brief gusts--the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the

willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort

of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no

wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common

objects in this way become charged with the suggestion of horror, they

stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance;

and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the

darkness a bizarre _grotesquerie_ of appearance that lent to them

somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very

ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The

forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were

focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For

thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really

indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present themselves.

I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered

somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served

apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing

spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as

absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet,

in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I

dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach of

darkness.

The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the

day, and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to

the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five

o'clock onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for

dinner, it being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions,

bits of bacon fat to add flavour, and a general thick residue from

former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into

it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of plums

with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood

lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy. My

companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between

cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice--an admitted privilege of

the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in

re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for

driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had

passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the

gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was now fully a

third smaller than when we first landed.

The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me

from the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.

"Come and listen," he said, "and see what you make of it." He held his

hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.

"_Now_ do you hear anything?" he asked, watching me curiously.

We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only

the deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent

surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound

began to reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound--something like the

humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the

darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated

at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell

nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much

as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky,

repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as

it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.

"I've heard it all day," said my companion. "While you slept this

afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could

never get near enough to see--to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was

overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I

could have sworn it was not outside at all, but _within myself_--you

know--the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come."

I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened

carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I

could think of, but without success. It changed in direction, too,

coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I

cannot say that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed

distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling

that made me wish I had never heard it.

"The wind blowing in those sand-funnels," I said, determined to find an

explanation, "or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps."

"It comes off the whole swamp," my friend answered. "It comes from

everywhere at once." He ignored my explanations. "It comes from the

willow bushes somehow----"

"But now the wind has dropped," I objected "The willows can hardly make

a noise by themselves, can they?"

His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly,

because I knew intuitively it was true.

"It is _because_ the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned

before. It is the cry, I believe of the----"

I dashed back to my fire, warned by a sound of bubbling that the stew

was in danger, but determined at the same time to escape from further

conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of

views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin again about the gods, or the

elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep

myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another night

to be faced before we escaped from this distressing place, and there was

no knowing yet what it might bring forth.

"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously

stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both,

and the thought made me laugh.

He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling

in its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the

ground-sheet at his feet.

"Hurry up!" I cried; "it's boiling."

The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was

forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.

"There's nothing here!" he shouted, holding his sides.

"Bread, I mean."

"It's gone. There is no bread. They've taken it!"

I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained

lay upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.

The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then

I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of

my own laughter also made me understand his. The strain of psychical

pressure caused it--this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us;

it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary

safety valve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.

"How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be

consistent and find an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at

Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I

must have left it lying on the counter or----"

"The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning," the Swede

interrupted.

Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.

"There's enough for to-morrow," I said, stirring vigorously, "and we can

get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles

from here."

"I hope so--to God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack,

"unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added

with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's

sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling on to himself, but so

indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.

Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in

silence, avoiding one another's eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then

we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds

unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day

long became more and more acute. It was not then active fear, I think,

but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more than if I

had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have

likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled

the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than

a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and at another

time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our

left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More often it hovered

directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere

at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely

surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within

my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the

deserted world of swamps and willows.

We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute

greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not

know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by

way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the

sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly

unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to me that some

kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it

or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in

the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer

without the support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was

imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this little

climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he

flung into the emptiness.

Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me,

coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself:

corroboration, too--which made it so much more convincing--from a

totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and

hurled them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his

main line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were the

bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering

them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.

"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder,

disintegration, destruction, _our_ destruction," he said once, while the

fire blazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."

And another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much

louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said, as though

talking to himself:

"I don't think a phonograph would show any record of that. The sound

doesn't come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in

another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely

how a fourth dimension sound might be supposed to make itself heard."

I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the

fire and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all

over the sky and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too,

everything was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their own

way.

"It has that about it," he went on, "which is utterly out of common

experience. It is _unknown_. Only one thing describes it really: it is a

non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity."

Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time;

but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to

have the thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words

from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.

The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The

feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran

incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my

soul, as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had

passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces,

peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a

ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the

tourists would have been welcome.

Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely

greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of

terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed

of. We had "strayed," as the Swede put it, into some region or some set

of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us;

where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a

spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peephole whence

they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil

between had worn a little thin. As the final result of too long a

sojourn here, we should be carried over the border and deprived of what

we called "our lives," yet by mental, not physical, processes. In that

sense, as he said, we should be the victims of our adventure--a

sacrifice.

It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his

sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a

personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with

the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our

audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw

it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient

shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the

emotional forces of former worshipers still clung, and the ancestral

portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.

At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds

from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were

within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so

attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region," of another

scheme of life, another evolution not parallel to the human. And in the

end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we

should be drawn across the frontier into _their_ world.

Small things testified to this amazing influence of the place, and now

in the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the

mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to

distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying

boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed

of its natural character, and revealed in something of its other

aspect--as it existed across the border in that other region. And this

changed aspect I felt was new not merely to me, but to the race. The

whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at all.

It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word

_unearthly_.

"It's the deliberate, calculating purpose that; reduces one's courage to

zero," the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my

thoughts. "Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle,

the canoe, the lessening food----"

"Haven't I explained all that once?" I interrupted viciously.

"You have," he answered dryly; "you have indeed."

He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the "plain

determination to provide a victim"; but, having now arranged my thoughts

better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul

against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and

that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a

courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and

I have never before been so clearly conscious of two persons in me--the

one that explained everything, and the other that laughed at such

foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.

Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the woodpile grew

small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness

consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the

circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind

set the billows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome

sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling

of the river and the humming in the air overhead.

We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.

At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the

wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation,

the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain

speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that

must have been far worse in its effect upon both of us. I kicked the

fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up

with a start.

"I can't disguise it any longer," I said; "I don't like this place, and

the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There's

something here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, and that's the

plain truth. If the other shore was--different, I swear I'd be inclined

to swim for it!"

The Swede's face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind.

He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed

his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any

rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one

thing.

"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away," he

replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; "we must

sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd

of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our

only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may

save us."

I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words.

It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease

whose symptoms had puzzled me.

"I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they

have not _found_ us--not 'located' us, as the Americans say," he went

on. "They're blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The

paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they _feel_ us, but

cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet--it's our minds

they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it's all up with us."

"Death you mean?" I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.

"Worse--by far," he said. "Death, according to one's belief, means

either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but

it involves no change of character. _You_ don't suddenly alter just

because the body's gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete

change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution--far worse than

death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot

where their region touches ours where the veil between has worn

thin"--horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual words--"so

that they are aware of our being in their neighborhood."

"But _who_ are aware?" I asked.

I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming

overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I

dreaded more than I can possibly explain.

He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the

fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and

look down upon the ground.

"All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of

another region--not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet

wholly different in kind--where great things go on unceasingly, where

immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes

compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the

destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust

in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul,

and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul--"

"I suggest just now--" I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I

was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his

torrent that _had_ to come.

"You think," he said, "it is the spirits of the elements, and I thought

perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is--_neither_. These

would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men,

depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who

are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is

mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our

own."

The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I

listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set

me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my

movements.

"And what do you propose?" I began again.

"A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could

get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and

give the sleigh another start. But--I see no chance of any other victim

now."

I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eyes was dreadful. Presently

he continued.

"It's the willows, of course. The willows _mask_ the others, but the

others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear,

we're lost, lost utterly." He looked at me with an expression so calm,

so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his

sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. "If we can hold out through

the night," he added, "we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or

rather, _undiscovered_."

"But you really think a sacrifice would----"

That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke,

but it was my friend's scared face that really stopped my mouth.

"Hush!" he whispered, holding up his hand. "Do not mention them more

than you can help. Do not refer to them _by name_. To name is to reveal:

it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in

order that they may ignore us."

"Even in thought?" He was extraordinarily agitated.

"Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We

must keep them _out of our minds_ at all costs if possible."

I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its

own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful

blackness of that summer night.

"Were you awake all last night?" he went on suddenly.

"I slept badly a little after dawn," I replied evasively, trying to

follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, "but the

wind, of course--"

"I know. But the wind won't account for all the noises."

"Then you heard it too?"

"The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard," he said, adding,

after a moment's hesitation, "and that other sound--"

"You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something

tremendous, gigantic?"

He nodded significantly.

"It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?" I said.

"Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been

altered--had increased enormously, so that we should be crushed."

"And _that_," I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards

where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like

wind. "What do you make of that?"

"It's _their_ sound," he whispered gravely. "It's the sound of their

world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it

leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's

not above so much as around us. It's in the willows. It's the willows

themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of

the forces that are against us."

I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and

idea in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I

realized what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It

was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination

of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust

his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak

in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his

apparent control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed

unimaginative, stolid!

"Now listen," he said. "The only thing for us to do is to go on as

though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so

forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question

wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our

chance of escape. Above all, don't _think_, for what you think happens!"

"All right," I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and

the strangeness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one thing

more first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all

about us, those sand-funnels?"

"No!" he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. "I dare not,

simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I

am glad. Don't try to. _They_ have put it into my mind; try your hardest

to prevent their putting it into yours."

He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not

press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me

as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our

pipes busily in silence.

Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is

when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small

thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I

chanced to look down at my sand-shoe--the sort we used for the

canoe--and something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled

to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man

had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical

operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the

modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of

roast beef and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen

other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The

effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I

suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of

living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must

seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily

lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a

minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend

opposite.

"You damned old pagan!" I cried, laughing aloud in his face. "You

imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolator! You----"

I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to

smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of

course, heard it too--that strange cry overhead in the darkness--and

that sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.

He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front

of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.

"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go!

We can't stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on--down

the river."

He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject

terror--the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at

last.

"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical

outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. "Sheer

madness! The river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle.

Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There's nothing ahead for

fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!"

He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of

those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and

the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last

had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.

"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered, with the

awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.

I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,

kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.

"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the

night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself

together a bit, and remember your own advice about _not thinking

fear_!"

He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some

measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion

into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost

touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. The humming

overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow louder as we increased

our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!

We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where

some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches,

when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand.

It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for

support. I heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.

"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my

experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice.

He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the

direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.

There, in front of the dim glow, _something was moving_.

I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze

drop-curtain used at the back of a theater--hazily a little. It was

neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange

impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like

horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar

result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped

and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving

all over upon its surface--"coiling upon itself like smoke," he said

afterwards.

"I watched it settle downwards through the bushes," he sobbed at me.

"Look, by God! It's coming this way! Oh, oh!"--he gave a kind of

whistling cry. "_They've found us_."

I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the

shadowy form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I

collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of

course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on the top of me we

fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was

happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy

fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them

this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were tightly

shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my consciousness

was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to another

feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.

An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede

had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way

he caught at me in falling.

But it was this pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me: it caused

me to _forget them_ and think of something else at the very instant when

they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment

of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He

himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what

saved him.

I only know that at a later time, how long or short is impossible to

say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow

branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a

hand to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he

had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to say, somehow.

"I lost consciousness for a moment or two," I heard him say. "That's

what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them."

"You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connected

thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.

"That's what saved _you_!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set

them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's

gone--for the moment at any rate!"

A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to

my friend too--great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a

tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the

fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the

tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.

We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and

caught our feet in sand.

"It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up

again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us.

"And look at the size of them!"

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving

shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly

similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far

bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances

to admit the whole of my foot and leg.

Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing

we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay,

having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and

the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a

way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least

motion would disturb and wake us.

In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready

for a sudden start.

V

It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the

exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while

came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my

companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and

constantly sat up, asking me if I "heard this" or "heard that." He

tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the

river had risen over the point of the island; but each time I went out

to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he

grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular

and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring--the first and only time in

my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence.

This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.

A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face.

But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my

first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my

own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it

came to me that the tent was _surrounded_. That sound of multitudinous

soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the night with horror.

I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I

missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the

tent door was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the

darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I

realized positively that the Swede was not there. He had gone.

I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the

moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that

surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at

once. It was that same familiar humming--gone mad! A swarm of great

invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to

thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with

difficulty.

But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.

The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread

upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind

stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale

sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the

island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first

words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and

the humming muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet round

me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots,

and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the preventing

branches.

Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island's point and saw a

dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede.

And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would

have taken the plunge.

I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging

him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously,

making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the

most outlandish phrases in his anger about "going _inside_ to Them," and

"taking the way of the water and the wind," and God only knows what more

besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me

sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed

to get him into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him

breathless and cursing upon the mattress, where I held him until the fit

had passed.

I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm,

coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming

and pattering outside--I think this was almost the strangest part of the

whole business perhaps. For he just opened his eyes and turned his tired

face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the

doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:

"My life, old man--it's my life I owe you. But it's all over now anyhow.

They've found a victim in our place!"

Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under

my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as

though nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life

as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours

later--hours of ceaseless vigil for me--it became so clear to me that he

remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I

deemed it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.

He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already

high in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the

preparation of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at

bathing, but he did not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head

and making some remark about the extra coldness of the water.

"River's falling at last," he said, "and I'm glad of it."

"The humming has stopped too," I said.

He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he

remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.

"Everything has stopped," he said, "because----"

He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just

before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.

"Because 'They've found another victim'?" I said, forcing a little

laugh.

"Exactly," he answered, "exactly! I feel as positive of it as though--as

though--I feel quite safe again, I mean," he finished.

He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches

on the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly

rose to feet.

"Come," he said; "I think if we look, we shall find it."

He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks,

poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little

back-waters, myself always close on his heels.

"Ah!" he exclaimed presently, "ah!"

The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the

horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He

was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the

water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted

willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours

before the spot must have been under water.

"See," he said quietly, "the victim that made our escape possible!"

And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the

body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and

the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned but a

few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island

somewhere about the hour of the dawn--_at the very time the fit had

passed_.

"We must give it a decent burial, you know."

"I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for

there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that

turned me cold.

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, and began clambering down the bank.

I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away

much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck and part of the

chest lay bare.

Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand

in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much

momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and

sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled

together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water.

And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily

against the corpse.

The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.

At the moment we touched the body there arose from its surface the loud

sound of humming--the sound of several hummings--which passed with a

vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared

upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally

ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some

living yet invisible creatures at work.

My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either

of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw

that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it

became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had

turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It

lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept

away.

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch

about a "proper burial" and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the

sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an

instant.

I saw what he had seen.

For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed

chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh

were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly

similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over

the island.

"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful

mark!"

And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the

current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into

midstream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight,

turning over and over on the waves like an otter.

The Shadows on the Wall

BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN

From _The Wind in the Rose-bush_, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

Copyright by Harper and Brothers. By permission of the publishers

and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

"Henry had words with Edward in the study the night before Edward died,"

said Caroline Glynn.

She spoke not with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca Ann Glynn

gasped by way of assent. She sat in a wide flounce of black silk in the

corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified eyes from her sister Caroline

to her sister Mrs. Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one

beauty of the family. The latter was beautiful still, with a large,

splendid, full-blown beauty, she filled a great rocking-chair with her

superb bulk of femininity, and swayed gently back and forth, her black

silks whispering and her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of

death--for her brother Edward lay dead in the house--could not disturb

her outward serenity of demeanor.

But even her expression of masterly placidity changed before her sister

Caroline's announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann's gasp of terror and

distress in response.

"I think Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward was so

near his end," she said with an asperity which disturbed slightly the

roseate curves of her beautiful mouth.

"Of course he did not _know_," murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone.

"Of course he did not know it," said Caroline quickly. She turned on her

sister with a strange, sharp look of suspicion. Then she shrank as if

from the other's possible answer.

Rebecca gasped again. The married sister, Mrs. Emma Brigham, was now

sitting up straight in her chair; she had ceased rocking, and was eyeing

them both intently with a sudden accentuation of family likeness in her

face.

"What do you mean?" said she impartially to them both. Then she, too,

seemed to shrink before a possible answer. She even laughed an evasive

sort of laugh.

"Nobody means anything," said Caroline firmly. She rose and crossed the

room toward the door with grim decisiveness.

"Where are you going?" asked Mrs. Brigham.

"I have something to see to," replied Caroline, and the others at once

knew by her tone that she had some solemn and sad duty to perform in the

chamber of death.

"Oh," said Mrs. Brigham.

After the door had closed behind Caroline, she turned to Rebecca.

"Did Henry have many words with him?" she asked.

"They were talking very loud," replied Rebecca evasively.

Mrs. Brigham looked at her. She had not resumed rocking. She still sat

up straight, with a slight knitting of intensity on her fair forehead,

between the pretty rippling curves of her auburn hair.

"Did you--ever hear anything?" she asked in a low voice with a glance

toward the door.

"I was just across the hall in the south parlor, and that door was open

and this door ajar," replied Rebecca with a slight flush.

"Then you must have----"

"I couldn't help it."

"Everything?"

"Most of it."

"What was it?"

"The old story."

"I suppose Henry was mad, as he always was, because Edward was living on

here for nothing, when he had wasted all the money father left him."

Rebecca nodded, with a fearful glance at the door.

When Emma spoke again her voice was still more hushed. "I know how he

felt," said she. "It must have looked to him as if Edward was living at

his expense, but he wasn't."

"No, he wasn't."

"And Edward had a right here according to the terms of father's will,

and Henry ought to have remembered it."

"Yes, he ought."

"Did he say hard things?"

"Pretty hard, from what I heard."

"What?"

"I heard him tell Edward that he had no business here at all, and he

thought he had better go away."

"What did Edward say?"

"That he would stay here as long as he lived and afterward, too, if he

was a mind to, and he would like to see Henry get him out; and then----"

"What?"

"Then he laughed."

"What did Henry say?"

"I didn't hear him say anything, but----"

"But what?"

"I saw him when he came out of this room."

"He looked mad?"

"You've seen him when he looked so."

Emma nodded. The expression of horror on her face had deepened.

"Do you remember that time he killed the cat because she had scratched

him?"

"Yes. Don't!"

Then Caroline reentered the room; she went up to the stove, in which a

wood fire was burning--it was a cold, gloomy day of fall--and she warmed

her hands, which were reddened from recent washing in cold water.

Mrs. Brigham looked at her and hesitated. She glanced at the door, which

was still ajar; it did not easily shut, being still swollen with the

damp weather of the summer. She rose and pushed it together with a sharp

thud, which jarred the house. Rebecca started painfully with a

half-exclamation. Caroline looked at her disapprovingly.

"It is time you controlled your nerves, Rebecca," she said.

Mrs. Brigham, returning from the closed door, said imperiously that it

ought to be fixed, it shut so hard.

"It will shrink enough after we have had the fire a few days," replied

Caroline.

"I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did to

Edward," said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible voice.

"Hush," said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed door.

"Nobody can hear with the door shut. I say again I think Henry ought to

be ashamed of himself. I shouldn't think he'd ever get over it, having

words with poor Edward the very night before he died. Edward was enough

sight better disposition than Henry, with all his faults."

"I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to Henry

that last night. I don't know but he did from what Rebecca overheard."

"Not so much cross, as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating,"

sniffed Rebecca.

"What do you really think ailed Edward?" asked Emma in hardly more than

a whisper. She did not look at her sister.

"I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had

spasms, but what do you think made him have them?"

"Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had

dyspepsia."

Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. "Was there any talk of

an--examination?" said she.

Then Caroline turned on her fiercely.

"No," said she in a terrible voice. "No."

The three sisters' souls seemed to meet on one common ground of

terrified understanding through their eyes.

The old-fashioned latch of the door was heard to rattle, and a push from

without made the door shake ineffectually. "It's Henry," Rebecca sighed

rather than whispered. Mrs. Brigham settled herself, after a noiseless

rush across the floor, into her rocking-chair again, and was swaying

back and forth with her head comfortably leaning back, when the door at

last yielded and Henry Glynn entered. He cast a covertly sharp,

comprehensive glance at Mrs. Brigham with her elaborate calm; at Rebecca

quietly huddled in the corner of the sofa with her handkerchief to her

face and only one small uncovered reddened ear as attentive as a dog's,

and at Caroline sitting with a strained composure in her armchair by the

stove. She met his eyes quite firmly with a look of inscrutable fear,

and defiance of the fear and of him.

Henry Glynn looked more like this sister than the others. Both had the

same hard delicacy of form and aquilinity of feature. They confronted

each other with the pitiless immovability of two statues in whose

marble lineaments emotions were fixed for all eternity.

Then Henry Glynn smiled and the smile transformed his face. He looked

suddenly years younger, and an almost boyish recklessness appeared in

his face. He flung himself into a chair with a gesture which was

bewildering from its incongruity with his general appearance. He leaned

his head back, flung one leg over the other, and looked laughingly at

Mrs. Brigham.

"I declare, Emma, you grow younger every year," he said.

She flushed a little, and her placid mouth widened at the corners. She

was susceptible to praise.

"Our thoughts to-day ought to belong to the one of us who will _never_

grow older," said Caroline in a hard voice.

Henry looked at her, still smiling. "Of course, we none of us forget

that," said he, in a deep, gentle voice; "but we have to speak to the

living, Caroline, and I have not seen Emma for a long time, and the

living are as dear as the dead."

"Not to me," said Caroline.

She rose and went abruptly out of the room again. Rebecca also rose and

hurried after her, sobbing loudly.

Henry looked slowly after them.

"Caroline is completely unstrung," said he.

Mrs. Brigham rocked. A confidence in him inspired by his manner was

stealing over her. Out of that confidence she spoke quite easily and

naturally.

"His death was very sudden," said she.

Henry's eyelids quivered slightly but his gaze was unswerving.

"Yes," said he, "it was very sudden. He was sick only a few hours."

"What did you call it?"

"Gastric."

"You did not think of an examination?"

"There was no need. I am perfectly certain as to the cause of his

death."

Suddenly Mrs. Brigham felt a creep as of some live horror over her very

soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice.

She rose, tottering on weak knees.

"Where are you going?" asked Henry in a strange, breathless voice.

Mrs. Brigham said something incoherent about some sewing which she had

to do--some black for the funeral--and was out of the room. She went up

to the front chamber which she occupied. Caroline was there. She went

close to her and took her hands, and the two sisters looked at each

other.

"Don't speak, don't, I won't have it!" said Caroline finally in an awful

whisper.

"I won't," replied Emma.

That afternoon the three sisters were in the study.

Mrs. Brigham was hemming some black material. At last she laid her work

on her lap.

"It's no use, I cannot see to sew another stitch until we have a light,"

said she.

Caroline, who was writing some letters at the table, turned to Rebecca,

in her usual place on the sofa.

"Rebecca, you had better get a lamp," she said.

Rebecca started up; even in the dusk her face showed her agitation.

"It doesn't seem to me that we need a lamp quite yet," she said in a

piteous, pleading voice like a child's.

"Yes, we do," returned Mrs. Brigham peremptorily. "I can't see to sew

another stitch."

Rebecca rose and left the room. Presently she entered with a lamp. She

set it on the table, an old-fashioned card-table which was placed

against the opposite wall from the window. That opposite wall was taken

up with three doors; the one small space was occupied by the table.

"What have you put that lamp over there for?" asked Mrs. Brigham, with

more of impatience than her voice usually revealed. "Why didn't you set

it in the hall, and have done with it? Neither Caroline nor I can see if

it is on that table."

"I thought perhaps you would move," replied Rebecca hoarsely.

"If I do move, we can't both sit at that table. Caroline has her paper

all spread around. Why don't you set the lamp on the study table in the

middle of the room, then we can both see?"

Rebecca hesitated. Her face was very pale. She looked with an appeal

that was fairly agonizing at her sister Caroline.

"Why don't you put the lamp on this table, as she says?" asked Caroline,

almost fiercely. "Why do you act so, Rebecca?"

Rebecca took the lamp and set it on the table in the middle of the room

without another word. Then she seated herself on the sofa and placed a

hand over her eyes as if to shade them, and remained so.

"Does the light hurt your eyes, and is that the reason why you didn't

want the lamp?" asked Mrs. Brigham kindly.

"I always like to sit in the dark," replied Rebecca chokingly. Then she

snatched her handkerchief hastily from her pocket and began to weep.

Caroline continued to write, Mrs. Brigham to sew.

Suddenly Mrs. Brigham as she sewed glanced at the opposite wall. The

glance became a steady stare. She looked intently, her work suspended in

her hands. Then she looked away again and took a few more stitches, then

she looked again, and again turned to her task. At last she laid her

work in her lap and stared concentratedly. She looked from the wall

round the room, taking note of the various objects. Then she turned to

her sisters.

"What _is_ that?" said she.

"What?" asked Caroline harshly.

"That strange shadow on the wall," replied Mrs. Brigham.

Rebecca sat with her face hidden; Caroline dipped her pen in the

inkstand.

"Why don't you turn around and look?" asked Mrs. Brigham in a wondering

and somewhat aggrieved way.

"I am in a hurry to finish this letter," replied Caroline shortly.

Mrs. Brigham rose, her work slipping to the floor, and began walking

round the room, moving various articles of furniture, with her eyes on

the shadow.

Then suddenly she shrieked out:

"Look at this awful shadow! What is it? Caroline, look, look! Rebecca,

look! What is it?"

All Mrs. Brigham's triumphant placidity was gone. Her handsome face was

livid with horror. She stood stiffly pointing at the shadow.

Then after a shuddering glance at the wall Rebecca burst out in a wild

wail.

"Oh, Caroline, there it is again, there it is again!"

"Caroline Glynn, you look!" said Mrs. Brigham. "Look! What is that

dreadful shadow?"

Caroline rose, turned, and stood confronting the wall.

"How should I know?" she said.

"It has been there every night since he died!" cried Rebecca.

"Every night?"

"Yes; he died Thursday and this is Saturday; that makes three nights,"

said Caroline rigidly. She stood as if holding her calm with a vise of

concentrated will.

"It--it looks like--like--" stammered Mrs. Brigham in a tone of intense

horror.

"I know what it looks like well enough," said Caroline. "I've got eyes

in my head."

"It looks like Edward," burst out Rebecca in a sort of frenzy of fear.

"Only----"

"Yes, it does," assented Mrs. Brigham, whose horror-stricken tone

matched her sisters', "only--Oh, it is awful! What is it, Caroline?"

"I ask you again, how should I know?" replied Caroline. "I see it there

like you. How should I know any more than you?"

"It _must_ be something in the room," said Mrs. Brigham, staring wildly

around.

"We moved everything in the room the first night it came," said Rebecca;

"it is not anything in the room."

Caroline turned upon her with a sort of fury. "Of course it is something

in the room," said she. "How you act! What do you mean talking so? Of

course it is something in the room."

"Of course it is," agreed Mrs. Brigham, looking at Caroline

suspiciously. "It must be something in the room."

"It is not anything in the room," repeated Rebecca with obstinate

horror.

The door opened suddenly and Henry Glynn entered. He began to speak,

then his eyes followed the direction of the others. He stood staring at

the shadow on the wall.

"What is that?" he demanded in a strange voice.

"It must be due to something in the room," Mrs. Brigham said faintly.

Henry Glynn stood and stared a moment longer. His face showed a gamut of

emotions. Horror, conviction, then furious incredulity. Suddenly he

began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the

furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the

shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered.

"It must be something in the room!" he declared in a voice which seemed

to snap like a lash.

His face changed, the inmost secrecy of his nature seemed evident upon

his face, until one almost lost sight of his lineaments. Rebecca stood

close to her sofa, regarding him with woeful, fascinated eyes. Mrs.

Brigham clutched Caroline's hand. They both stood in a corner out of his

way. For a few moments he raged about the room like a caged wild animal.

He moved every piece of furniture; when the moving of a piece did not

affect the shadow he flung it to the floor.

Then suddenly he desisted. He laughed.

"What an absurdity," he said easily. "Such a to-do about a shadow."

"That's so," assented Mrs. Brigham, in a scared voice which she tried to

make natural. As she spoke she lifted a chair near her.

"I think you have broken the chair that Edward was fond of," said

Caroline.

Terror and wrath were struggling for expression on her face. Her mouth

was set, her eyes shrinking. Henry lifted the chair with a show of

anxiety.

"Just as good as ever," he said pleasantly. He laughed again, looking at

his sisters. "Did I scare you?" he said. "I should think you might be

used to me by this time. You know my way of wanting to leap to the

bottom of a mystery, and that shadow does look--queer, like--and I

thought if there was any way of accounting for it I would like to

without any delay."

"You don't seem to have succeeded," remarked Caroline dryly, with a

slight glance at the wall.

Henry's eyes followed hers and he quivered perceptibly.

"Oh, there is no accounting for shadows," he said, and he laughed again.

"A man is a fool to try to account for shadows."

Then the supper bell rang, and they all left the room, but Henry kept

his back to the wall--as did, indeed, the others.

Henry led the way with an alert motion like a boy; Rebecca brought up

the rear. She could scarcely walk, her knees trembled so.

"I can't sit in that room again this evening," she whispered to Caroline

after supper.

"Very well; we will sit in the south room," replied Caroline. "I think

we will sit in the south parlor," she said aloud; "it isn't as damp as

the study, and I have a cold."

So they all sat in the south room with their sewing. Henry read the

newspaper, his chair drawn close to the lamp on the table. About nine

o'clock he rose abruptly and crossed the hall to the study. The three

sisters looked at one another. Mrs. Brigham rose, folded her rustling

skirts compactly round her, and began tiptoeing toward the door.

"What are you going to do?" inquired Rebecca agitatedly.

"I am going to see what he is about," replied Mrs. Brigham cautiously.

As she spoke she pointed to the study door across the hall; it was ajar.

Henry had striven to pull it together behind him, but it had somehow

swollen beyond the limit with curious speed. It was still ajar and a

streak of light showed from top to bottom.

Mrs. Brigham folded her skirts so tightly that her bulk with its

swelling curves was revealed in a black silk sheath, and she went with a

slow toddle across the hall to the study door. She stood there, her eye

at the crack.

In the south room Rebecca stopped sewing and sat watching with dilated

eyes. Caroline sewed steadily. What Mrs. Brigham, standing at the crack

in the study door, saw was this:

Henry Glynn, evidently reasoning that the source of the strange shadow

must be between the table on which the lamp stood and the wall, was

making systematic passes and thrusts with an old sword which had

belonged to his father all over and through the intervening space. Not

an inch was left unpierced. He seemed to have divided the space into

mathematical sections. He brandished the sword with a sort of cold fury

and calculation; the blade gave out flashes of light, the shadow

remained unmoved. Mrs. Brigham, watching, felt herself cold with horror.

Finally Henry ceased and stood with the sword in hand and raised as if

to strike, surveying the shadow on the wall threateningly. Mrs. Brigham

toddled back across the hall and shut the south room door behind her

before she related what she had seen.

"He looked like a demon," she said again. "Have you got any of that old

wine in the house, Caroline? I don't feel as if I could stand much

more."

"Yes, there's plenty," said Caroline; "you can have some when you go to

bed."

"I think we had all better take some," said Mrs. Brigham. "Oh, Caroline,

what----"

"Don't ask; don't speak," said Caroline.

"No, I'm not going to," replied Mrs. Brigham; "but----"

Soon the three sisters went to their chambers and the south parlor was

deserted. Caroline called to Henry in the study to put out the light

before he came upstairs. They had been gone about an hour when he came

into the room bringing the lamp which had stood in the study. He set it

on the table, and waited a few minutes, pacing up and down. His face was

terrible, his fair complexion showed livid, and his blue eyes seemed

dark blanks of awful reflections.

Then he took up the lamp and returned to the library. He set the lamp on

the center table and the shadow sprang out on the wall. Again he studied

the furniture and moved it about, but deliberately, with none of his

former frenzy. Nothing affected the shadow. Then he returned to the

south room with the lamp and again waited. Again he returned to the

study and placed the lamp on the table, and the shadow sprang out upon

the wall. It was midnight before he went upstairs. Mrs. Brigham and the

other sisters, who could not sleep, heard him.

The next day was the funeral. That evening the family sat in the south

room. Some relatives were with them. Nobody entered the study until

Henry carried a lamp in there after the others had retired for the

night. He saw again the shadow on the wall leap to an awful life before

the light.

The next morning at breakfast Henry Glynn announced that he had to go to

the city for three days. The sisters looked at him with surprise. He

very seldom left home, and just now his practice had been neglected on

account of Edward's death.

"How can you leave your patients now?" asked Mrs. Brigham wonderingly.

"I don't know how to, but there is no other way," replied Henry easily.

"I have had a telegram from Dr. Mitford."

"Consultation?" inquired Mrs. Brigham.

"I have business," replied Henry.

Doctor Mitford was an old classmate of his who lived in a neighboring

city and who occasionally called upon him in the case of a consultation.

After he had gone, Mrs. Brigham said to Caroline that, after all, Henry

had not said that he was going to consult with Doctor Mitford, and she

thought it very strange.

"Everything is very strange," said Rebecca with a shudder.

"What do you mean?" inquired Caroline.

"Nothing," replied Rebecca.

Nobody entered the study that day, nor the next. The third day Henry was

expected home, but he did not arrive and the last train from the city

had come.

"I call it pretty queer work," said Mrs. Brigham. "The idea of a doctor

leaving his patients at such a time as this, and the idea of a

consultation lasting three days! There is no sense in it, and _now_ he

has not come. I don't understand it, for my part."

"I don't either," said Rebecca.

They were all in the south parlor. There was no light in the study; the

door was ajar.

Presently Mrs. Brigham rose--she could not have told why; something

seemed to impel her--some will outside her own. She went out of the

room, again wrapping her rustling skirts round that she might pass

noiselessly, and began pushing at the swollen door of the study.

"She has not got any lamp," said Rebecca in a shaking voice.

Caroline, who was writing letters, rose again, took the only remaining

lamp in the room, and followed her sister. Rebecca had risen, but she

stood trembling, not venturing to follow.

The doorbell rang, but the others did not hear it; it was on the south

door on the other side of the house from the study. Rebecca, after

hesitating until the bell rang the second time, went to the door; she

remembered that the servant was out.

Caroline and her sister Emma entered the study. Caroline set the lamp on

the table. They looked at the wall, and there were two shadows. The

sisters stood clutching each other, staring at the awful things on the

wall. Then Rebecca came in, staggering, with a telegram in her hand.

"Here is--a telegram," she gasped. "Henry is--dead."

The Messenger

BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

Little gray messenger,

Robed like painted Death,

Your robe is dust.

Whom do you seek

Among lilies and closed buds

At dusk?

Among lilies and closed buds

At dusk,

Whom do you seek,

Little gray messenger,

Robed in the awful panoply

Of painted Death?

R.W.C.

From _The Mystery of Choice_, by Robert W. Chambers. Published,

1897, by D. Appleton and Company. Copyright by Robert W. Chambers.

By permission of Robert W. Chambers.

All-wise,

Hast thou seen all there is to see with thy two eyes?

Dost thou know all there is to know, and so,

Omniscient,

Darest thou still to say thy brother lies?

R.W.C.

I

"The bullet entered here," said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle

finger over a smooth hole exactly in the center of the forehead.

I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece.

The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first

with his middle finger, and then with his thumb.

"Let me see the skull again," said I.

Max Fortin picked it up from the sod.

"It's like all the others," he repeated, wiping his glasses on his

handkerchief. "I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so I

brought this over from the gravel pit. The men from Bannalec are digging

yet. They ought to stop."

"How many skulls are there altogether?" I inquired.

"They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the

list. They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan's

wheat field. The men are at work yet. Le Bihan is going to stop them."

"Let's go over," said I; and I picked up my gun and started across the

cliffs, Portin on one side, Mome on the other.

"Who has the list?" I asked, lighting my pipe. "You say there is a

list?"

"The list was found rolled up in a brass cylinder," said the chemist. He

added: "You should not smoke here. You know that if a single spark

drifted into the wheat--"

"Ah, but I have a cover to my pipe," said I, smiling.

Fortin watched me as I closed the pepper-box arrangement over the

glowing bowl of the pipe. Then he continued:

"The list was made out on thick yellow paper; the brass tube has

preserved it. It is as fresh to-day as it was in 1760. You shall see

it."

"Is that the date?"

"The list is dated 'April, 1760.' The Brigadier Durand has it. It is not

written in French."

"Not written in French!" I exclaimed.

"No," replied Fortin solemnly, "it is written in Breton."

"But," I protested, "the Breton language was never written or printed in

1760."

"Except by priests," said the chemist.

"I have heard of but one priest who ever wrote the Breton language," I

began.

Fortin stole a glance at my face.

"You mean--the Black Priest?" he asked.

I nodded.

Fortin opened his mouth to speak again, hesitated, and finally shut his

teeth obstinately over the wheat stem that he was chewing.

"And the Black Priest?" I suggested encouragingly. But I knew it was

useless; for it is easier to move the stars from their courses than to

make an obstinate Breton talk. We walked on for a minute or two in

silence.

"Where is the Brigadier Durand?" I asked, motioning Mome to come out of

the wheat, which he was trampling as though it were heather. As I spoke

we came in sight of the farther edge of the wheat field and the dark,

wet mass of cliffs beyond.

"Durand is down there--you can see him; he stands just behind the mayor

of St. Gildas."

"I see," said I; and we struck straight down, following a sun-baked

cattle path across the heather.

When we reached the edge of the wheat field, Le Bihan, the mayor of St.

Gildas, called to me, and I tucked my gun under my arm and skirted the

wheat to where he stood.

"Thirty-eight skulls," he said in his thin, high-pitched voice; "there

is but one more, and I am opposed to further search. I suppose Fortin

told you?"

I shook hands with him, and returned the salute of the Brigadier Durand.

"I am opposed to further search," repeated Le Bihan, nervously picking

at the mass of silver buttons which covered the front of his velvet and

broadcloth jacket like a breastplate of scale armor.

Durand pursed up his lips, twisted his tremendous mustache, and hooked

his thumbs in his saber belt.

"As for me," he said, "I am in favor of further search."

"Further search for what--for the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked.

Le Bihan nodded. Durand frowned at the sunlit sea, rocking like a bowl

of molten gold from the cliffs to the horizon. I followed his eyes. On

the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea,

sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward

heaven.

"Where is that list, Durand?" I asked.

The gendarme rummaged in his despatch pouch and produced a brass

cylinder about a foot long. Very gravely he unscrewed the head and

dumped out a scroll of thick yellow paper closely covered with writing

on both sides. At a nod from Le Bihan he handed me the scroll. But I

could make nothing of the coarse writing, now faded to a dull brown.

"Come, come, Le Bihan," I said impatiently, "translate it, won't you?

You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems."

Le Bihan went to the edge of the pit where the three Bannalec men were

digging, gave an order or two in Breton, and turned to me.

As I came to the edge of the pit the Bannalec men were removing a square

piece of sailcloth from what appeared to be a pile of cobblestones.

"Look!" said Le Bihan shrilly. I looked. The pile below was a heap of

skulls. After a moment I clambered down the gravel sides of the pit and

walked over to the men of Bannalec. They saluted me gravely, leaning on

their picks and shovels, and wiping their sweating faces with sunburned

hands.

"How many?" said I in Breton.

"Thirty-eight," they replied.

I glanced around. Beyond the heap of skulls lay two piles of human

bones. Beside these was a mound of broken, rusted bits of iron and

steel. Looking closer, I saw that this mound was composed of rusty

bayonets, saber blades, scythe blades, with here and there a tarnished

buckle attached to a bit of leather hard as iron.

I picked up a couple of buttons and a belt plate. The buttons bore the

royal arms of England; the belt plate was emblazoned with the English

arms and also with the number "27."

"I have heard my grandfather speak of the terrible English regiment, the

27th Foot, which landed and stormed the fort up there," said one of the

Bannalec men.

"Oh!" said I; "then these are the bones of English soldiers?"

"Yes," said the men of Bannalec.

Le Bihan was calling to me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed

the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the

excavation.

"Well," said I, trying to prevent Mome from leaping up and licking my

face as I emerged from the pit, "I suppose you know what these bones

are. What are you going to do with them?"

"There was a man," said Le Bihan angrily, "an Englishman, who passed

here in a dog-cart on his way to Quimper about an hour ago, and what do

you suppose he wished to do?"

"Buy the relics?" I asked, smiling.

"Exactly--the pig!" piped the mayor of St. Gildas. "Jean Marie Tregunc,

who found the bones, was standing there where Max Fortin stands, and do

you know what he answered? He spat upon the ground, and said: 'Pig of an

Englishman, do you take me for a desecrator of graves?'"

I knew Tregunc, a sober, blue-eyed Breton, who lived from one year's end

to the other without being able to afford a single bit of meat for a

meal.

"How much did the Englishman offer Tregunc?" I asked.

"Two hundred francs for the skulls alone."

I thought of the relic hunters and the relic buyers on the battlefields

of our civil war.

"Seventeen hundred and sixty is long ago," I said.

"Respect for the dead can never die," said Fortin.

"And the English soldiers came here to kill your fathers and burn your

homes," I continued.

"They were murderers and thieves, but--they are dead," said Tregunc,

coming up from the beach below, his long sea rake balanced on his

dripping jersey.

"How much do you earn every year, Jean Marie?" I asked, turning to shake

hands with him.

"Two hundred and twenty francs, monsieur."

"Forty-five dollars a year," I said. "Bah! you are worth more, Jean.

Will you take care of my garden for me? My wife wished me to ask you. I

think it would be worth one hundred francs a month to you and to me.

Come on, Le Bihan--come along, Fortin--and you, Durand. I want somebody

to translate that list into French for me."

Tregunc stood gazing at me, his blue eyes dilated.

"You may begin at once," I said, smiling, "if the salary suits you?"

"It suits," said Tregunc, fumbling for his pipe in a silly way that

annoyed Le Bihan.

"Then go and begin your work," cried the mayor impatiently; and Tregunc

started across the moors toward St. Gildas, taking off his

velvet-ribboned cap to me and gripping his sea rake very hard.

"You offer him more than my salary," said the mayor, after a moment's

contemplation of his silver buttons.

"Pooh!" said I, "what do you do for your salary except play dominoes

with Max Portin at the Groix Inn?"

Le Bihan turned red, but Durand rattled his saber and winked at Max

Fortin, and I slipped my arm through the arm of the sulky magistrate,

laughing.

"There's a shady spot under the cliff," I said; "come on, Le Bihan, and

read me what is in the scroll."

In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself

upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.

The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his mustache into

needlelike points. Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his

glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan,

the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and

tucking it under his arm.

"First of all," he began in a shrill voice, "I am going to light my

pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about the

attack on the fort yonder. My father told me; his father told him."

He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square

stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls. Then

he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a

long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay. To

fill such a pipe requires ten minutes' close attention. To smoke it to a

finish takes but four puffs. It is very Breton, this Breton pipe. It is

the crystallization of everything Breton.

"Go on," said I, lighting a cigarette.

"The fort," said the mayor, "was built by Louis XIV, and was dismantled

twice by the English. Louis XV restored it in 1730. In 1760 it was

carried by assault by the English. They came across from the island of

Groix--three shiploads, and they stormed the fort and sacked St. Julien

yonder, and they started to burn St. Gildas--you can see the marks of

their bullets on my house yet; but the men of Bannalec and the men of

Lorient fell upon them with pike and scythe and blunderbuss, and those

who did not run away lie there below in the gravel pit now--thirty-eight

of them."

"And the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked, finishing my cigarette.

The mayor had succeeded in filling his pipe, and now he began to put his

tobacco pouch away.

"The thirty-ninth skull," he mumbled, holding the pipe stem between his

defective teeth--"the thirty-ninth skull is no business of mine. I have

told the Bannalec men to cease digging."

"But what is--whose is the missing skull?" I persisted curiously.

The mayor was busy trying to strike a spark to his tinder. Presently he

set it aglow, applied it to his pipe, took the prescribed four puffs,

knocked the ashes out of the bowl, and gravely replaced the pipe in his

pocket.

"The missing skull?" he asked.

"Yes," said I, impatiently.

The mayor slowly unrolled the scroll and began to read, translating from

the Breton into French. And this is what he read:

"ON THE CLIFFS OF ST. GILDAS,

APRIL 13, 1760.

"On this day, by order of the Count of Soisic, general in chief of the

Breton forces now lying in Kerselec Forest, the bodies of thirty-eight

English soldiers of the 27th, 50th, and 72d regiments of Foot were

buried in this spot, together with their arms and equipments."

The mayor paused and glanced at me reflectively.

"Go on, Le Bihan," I said.

"With them," continued the mayor, turning the scroll and reading on the

other side, "was buried the body of that vile traitor who betrayed the

fort to the English. The manner of his death was as follows: By order of

the most noble Count of Soisic, the traitor was first branded upon the

forehead with the brand of an arrowhead. The iron burned through the

flesh and was pressed heavily so that the brand should even burn into

the bone of the skull. The traitor was then led out and bidden to

kneel. He admitted having guided the English from the island of Groix.

Although a priest and a Frenchman, he had violated his priestly office

to aid him in discovering the password to the fort. This password he

extorted during confession from a young Breton girl who was in the habit

of rowing across from the island of Groix to visit her husband in the

fort. When the fort fell, this young girl, crazed by the death of her

husband, sought the Count of Soisic and told how the priest had forced

her to confess to him all she knew about the fort. The priest was

arrested at St. Gildas as he was about to cross the river to Lorient.

When arrested he cursed the girl, Marie Trevec----"

"What!" I exclaimed, "Marie Trevec!"

"Marie Trevec," repeated Le Bihan; "the priest cursed Marie Trevec, and

all her family and descendants. He was shot as he knelt, having a mask

of leather over his face, because the Bretons who composed the squad of

execution refused to fire at a priest unless his face was concealed. The

priest was l'Abbe Sorgue, commonly known as the Black Priest on account

of his dark face and swarthy eyebrows. He was buried with a stake

through his heart."

Le Bihan paused, hesitated, looked at me, and handed the manuscript back

to Durand. The gendarme took it and slipped it into the brass cylinder.

"So," said I, "the thirty-ninth skull is the skull of the Black

Priest."

"Yes," said Fortin. "I hope they won't find it."

"I have forbidden them to proceed," said the mayor querulously. "You

heard me, Max Fortin."

I rose and picked up my gun. Mome came and pushed his head into my hand.

"That's a fine dog," observed Durand, also rising.

"Why don't you wish to find his skull?" I asked Le Bihan. "It would be

curious to see whether the arrow brand really burned into the bone."

"There is something in that scroll that I didn't read to you," said the

mayor grimly. "Do you wish to know what it is?"

"Of course," I replied in surprise.

"Give me the scroll again, Durand," he said; then he read from the

bottom: "I, l'Abbe Sorgue, forced to write the above by my executioners,

have written it in my own blood; and with it I leave my curse. My curse

on St. Gildas, on Marie Trevec, and on her descendants. I will come back

to St. Gildas when my remains are disturbed. Woe to that Englishman whom

my branded skull shall touch!"

"What rot!" I said. "Do you believe it was really written in his own

blood?"

"I am going to test it," said Fortin, "at the request of Monsieur le

Maire. I am not anxious for the job, however."

"See," said Le Bihan, holding out the scroll to me, "it is signed,

'L'Abbe Sorgue.'"

I glanced curiously over the paper.

"It must be the Black Priest," I said. "He was the only man who wrote in

the Breton language. This is a wonderfully interesting discovery, for

now, at last, the mystery of the Black Priest's disappearance is cleared

up. You will, of course, send this scroll to Paris, Le Bihan?"

"No," said the mayor obstinately, "it shall be buried in the pit below

where the rest of the Black Priest lies."

I looked at him and recognized that argument would be useless. But still

I said, "It will be a loss to history, Monsieur Le Bihan."

"All the worse for history, then," said the enlightened Mayor of St.

Gildas.

We had sauntered back to the gravel pit while speaking. The men of

Bannalec were carrying the bones of the English soldiers toward the St.

Gildas cemetery, on the cliffs to the east, where already a knot of

white-coiffed women stood in attitudes of prayer; and I saw the somber

robe of a priest among the crosses of the little graveyard.

"They were thieves and assassins; they are dead now," muttered Max

Fortin.

"Respect the dead," repeated the Mayor of St. Gildas, looking after the

Bannalec men.

"It was written in that scroll that Marie Trevec, of Groix Island, was

cursed by the priest--she and her descendants," I said, touching Le

Bihan on the arm. "There was a Marie Trevec who married an Yves Trevec

of St. Gildas----"

"It is the same," said Le Bihan, looking at me obliquely.

"Oh!" said I; "then they were ancestors of my wife."

"Do you fear the curse?" asked Le Bihan.

"What?" I laughed.

"There was the case of the Purple Emperor," said Max Fortin timidly.

Startled for a moment, I faced him, then shrugged my shoulders and

kicked at a smooth bit of rock which lay near the edge of the pit,

almost embedded in gravel.

"Do you suppose the Purple-Emperor drank himself crazy because he was

descended from Marie Trevec?" I asked contemptuously.

"Of course not," said Max Fortin hastily.

"Of course not," piped the mayor. "I only--Hellow! what's that you're

kicking?"

"What?" said I, glancing down, at the same time involuntarily giving

another kick. The smooth bit of rock dislodged itself and rolled out of

the loosened gravel at my feet.

"The thirty-ninth skull!" I exclaimed. "By jingo, it's the noddle of the

Black Priest! See! there is the arrowhead branded on the front!"

The mayor stepped back. Max Fortin also retreated. There was a pause,

during which I looked at them, and they looked anywhere but at me.

"I don't like it," said the mayor at last, in a husky, high voice. "I

don't like it! The scroll says he will come back to St. Gildas when his

remains are disturbed. I--I don't like it, Monsieur Darrel--"

"Bosh!" said I; "the poor wicked devil is where he can't get out. For

Heaven's sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the year

of grace 1896?"

The mayor gave me a look.

"And he says 'Englishman.' You are an Englishman, Monsieur Darrel," he

announced.

"You know better. You know I'm an American."

"It's all the same," said the Mayor of St. Gildas, obstinately.

"No, it isn't!" I answered, much exasperated, and deliberately pushed

the skull till it rolled into the bottom of the gravel pit below.

"Cover it up," said I; "bury the scroll with it too, if you insist, but

I think you ought to send it to Paris. Don't look so gloomy, Fortin,

unless you believe in werewolves and ghosts. Hey! what the--what the

devil's the matter with you, anyway? What are you staring at, Le Bihan?"

"Come, come," muttered the mayor in a low, tremulous voice, "it's time

we got out of this. Did you see? Did you see, Fortin?"

"I saw," whispered Max Fortin, pallid with fright.

The two men were almost running across the sunny pasture now, and I

hastened after them, demanding to know what was the matter.

"Matter!" chattered the mayor, gasping with exasperation and terror.

"The skull is rolling up hill again," and he burst into a terrified

gallop, Max Fortin followed close behind.

I watched them stampeding across the pasture, then turned toward the

gravel pit, mystified, incredulous. The skull was lying on the edge of

the pit, exactly where it had been before I pushed it over the edge. For

a second I stared at it; a singular chilly feeling crept up my spinal

column, and I turned and walked away, sweat starting from the root of

every hair on my head. Before I had gone twenty paces the absurdity of

the whole thing struck me. I halted, hot with shame and annoyance, and

retraced my steps.

There lay the skull.

"I rolled a stone down instead of the skull," I muttered to myself. Then

with the butt of my gun I pushed the skull over the edge of the pit and

watched it roll to the bottom; and as it struck the bottom of the pit,

Mome, my dog, suddenly whipped his tail between his legs, whimpered, and

made off across the moor.

"Mome!" I shouted, angry and astonished; but the dog only fled the

faster, and I ceased calling from sheer surprise.

"What the mischief is the matter with that dog!" I thought. He had never

before played me such a trick.

Mechanically I glanced into the pit, but I could not see the skull. I

looked down. The skull lay at my feet again, touching them.

"Good heavens!" I stammered, and struck at it blindly with my gunstock.

The ghastly thing flew into the air, whirling over and over, and rolled

again down the sides of the pit to the bottom. Breathlessly I stared at

it, then, confused and scarcely comprehending, I stepped back from the

pit, still facing it, one, ten, twenty paces, my eyes almost starting

from my head, as though I expected to see the thing roll up from the

bottom of the pit under my very gaze. At last I turned my back to the

pit and strode out across the gorse-covered moorland toward my home. As

I reached the road that winds from St. Gildas to St. Julien I gave one

hasty glance at the pit over my shoulder. The sun shone hot on the sod

about the excavation. There was something white and bare and round on

the turf at the edge of the pit. It might have been a stone; there were

plenty of them lying about.

II

When I entered my garden I saw Mome sprawling on the stone doorstep. He

eyed me sideways and flopped his tail.

"Are you not mortified, you idiot dog?" I said, looking about the upper

windows for Lys.

Mome rolled over on his back and raised one deprecating forepaw, as

though to ward off calamity.

"Don't act as though I was in the habit of beating you to death," I

said, disgusted. I had never in my life raised whip to the brute. "But

you are a fool dog," I continued. "No, you needn't come to be babied and

wept over; Lys can do that, if she insists, but I am ashamed of you, and

you can go to the devil."

Mome slunk off into the house, and I followed, mounting directly to my

wife's boudoir. It was empty.

"Where has she gone?" I said, looking hard at Mome, who had followed me.

"Oh! I see you don't know. Don't pretend you do. Come off that lounge!

Do you think Lys wants tan-colored hairs all over her lounge?"

I rang the bell for Catherine and Fine, but they didn't know where

"madame" had gone; so I went into my room, bathed, exchanged my somewhat

grimy shooting clothes for a suit of warm, soft knickerbockers, and,

after lingering some extra moments over my toilet--for I was particular,

now that I had married Lys--I went down to the garden and took a chair

out under the fig-trees.

"Where can she be?" I wondered, Mome came sneaking out to be comforted,

and I forgave him for Lys's sake, whereupon he frisked.

"You bounding cur," said I, "now what on earth started you off across

the moor? If you do it again I'll push you along with a charge of dust

shot."

As yet I had scarcely dared think about the ghastly hallucination of

which I had been a victim, but now I faced it squarely, flushing a

little with mortification at the thought of my hasty retreat from the

gravel pit.

"To think," I said aloud, "that those old woman's tales of Max Fortin

and Le Bihan should have actually made me see what didn't exist at all!

I lost my nerve like a schoolboy in a dark bedroom." For I knew now that

I had mistaken a round stone for a skull each time, and had pushed a

couple of big pebbles into the pit instead of the skull itself.

"By jingo!" said I, "I'm nervous; my liver must be in a devil of a

condition if I see such things when I'm awake! Lys will know what to

give me."

I felt mortified and irritated and sulky, and thought disgustedly of Le

Bihan and Max Fortin.

But after a while I ceased speculating, dismissed the mayor, the

chemist, and the skull from my mind, and smoked pensively, watching the

sun low dipping in the western ocean. As the twilight fell for a moment

over ocean and moorland, a wistful, restless happiness filled my heart,

the happiness that all men know--all men who have loved.

Slowly the purple mist crept out over the sea; the cliffs darkened; the

forest was shrouded.

Suddenly the sky above burned with the afterglow, and the world was

alight again.

Cloud after cloud caught the rose dye; the cliffs were tinted with it;

moor and pasture, heather and forest burned and pulsated with the

gentle flush. I saw the gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar,

their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering the

surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm

reflections of the clouds. The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out

in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining side above tidewater.

The interminable monotone of the ocean intensified the silence. I sat

motionless, holding my breath as one who listens to the first low rumor

of an organ. All at once the pure whistle of a nightingale cut the

silence, and the first moonbeam silvered the wastes of mist-hung waters.

I raised my head.

Lys stood before me in the garden.

When we had kissed each other, we linked arms and moved up and down the

gravel walks, watching the moonbeams sparkle on the sand bar as the tide

ebbed and ebbed. The broad beds of white pinks about us were atremble

with hovering white moths; the October roses hung all abloom, perfuming

the salt wind.

"Sweetheart," I said, "where is Yvonne? Has she promised to spend

Christmas with us?"

"Yes, Dick; she drove me down from Plougat this afternoon. She sent her

love to you. I am not jealous. What did you shoot?"

"A hare and four partridges. They are in the gun room. I told Catherine

not to touch them until you had seen them."

Now I suppose I knew that Lys could not be particularly enthusiastic

over game or guns; but she pretended she was, and always scornfully

denied that it was for my sake and not for the pure love of sport. So

she dragged me off to inspect the rather meager game bag, and she paid

me pretty compliments, and gave a little cry of delight and pity as I

lifted the enormous hare out of the sack by his ears.

"He'll eat no more of our lettuce," I said attempting to justify the

assassination.

"Unhappy little bunny--and what a beauty! O Dick, you are a splendid

shot, are you not?"

I evaded the question and hauled out a partridge.

"Poor little dead things'" said Lys in a whisper; "it seems a

pity--doesn't it, Dick? But then you are so clever----"

"We'll have them broiled," I said guardedly, "tell Catherine."

Catherine came in to take away the game, and presently 'Fine Lelocard,

Lys's maid, announced dinner, and Lys tripped away to her boudoir.

I stood an instant contemplating her blissfully, thinking, "My boy,

you're the happiest fellow in the world--you're in love with your wife'"

I walked into the dining-room, beamed at the plates, walked out again;

met Tregunc in the hallway, beamed on him; glanced into the kitchen,

beamed at Catherine, and went up stairs, still beaming.

Before I could knock at Lys's door it opened, and Lys came hastily out.

When she saw me she gave a little cry of relief, and nestled close to my

breast.

"There is something peering in at my window," she said.

"What!" I cried angrily.

"A man, I think, disguised as a priest, and he has a mask on. He must

have climbed up by the bay tree."

I was down the stairs and out of doors in no time. The moonlit garden

was absolutely deserted. Tregunc came up, and together we searched the

hedge and shrubbery around the house and out to the road.

"Jean Marie," said I at length, "loose my bulldog--he knows you--and

take your supper on the porch where you can watch. My wife says the

fellow is disguised as a priest, and wears a mask."

Tregunc showed his white teeth in a smile. "He will not care to venture

in here again, I think, Monsieur Darrel."

I went back and found Lys seated quietly at the table.

"The soup is ready, dear," she said. "Don't worry; it was only some

foolish lout from Bannalec. No one in St. Gildas or St. Julien would do

such a thing."

I was too much exasperated to reply at first, but Lys treated it as a

stupid joke, and after a while I began to look at it in that light.

Lys told me about Yvonne, and reminded me of my promise to have Herbert

Stuart down to meet her.

"You wicked diplomat!" I protested. "Herbert is in Paris, and hard at

work for the Salon."

"Don't you think he might spare a week to flirt with the prettiest girl

in Finistere?" inquired Lys innocently.

"Prettiest girl! Not much!" I said.

"Who is, then?" urged Lys.

I laughed a trifle sheepishly.

"I suppose you mean me, Dick," said Lys, coloring up.

"Now I bore you, don't I?"

"Bore me? Ah, no, Dick."

After coffee and cigarettes were served I spoke about Tregunc, and Lys

approved.

"Poor Jean! He will be glad, won't he? What a dear fellow you are!"

"Nonsense," said I; "we need a gardener; you said so yourself, Lys."

But Lys leaned over and kissed me, and then bent down and hugged

Mome--who whistled through his nose in sentimental appreciation.

"I am a very happy woman," said Lys.

"Mome was a very bad dog to-day," I observed.

"Poor Mome!" said Lys, smiling.

When dinner was over and Mome lay snoring before the blaze--for the

October nights are often chilly in Finistere--Lys curled up in the

chimney corner with her embroidery, and gave me a swift glance from

under her dropping lashes.

"You look like a schoolgirl, Lys," I said teasingly. "I don't believe

you are sixteen yet."

She pushed back her heavy burnished hair thoughtfully. Her wrist was as

white as surf foam.

"Have we been married four years? I don't believe it," I said.

She gave me another swift glance and touched the embroidery on her knee,

smiling faintly.

"I see," said I, also smiling at the embroidered garment. "Do you think

it will fit?"

"Fit?" repeated Lys. Then she laughed

"And," I persisted, "are you perfectly sure that you--er--we shall need

it?"

"Perfectly," said Lys. A delicate color touched her cheeks and neck. She

held up the little garment, all fluffy with misty lace and wrought with

quaint embroidery.

"It is very gorgeous," said I; "don't use your eyes too much, dearest.

May I smoke a pipe?"

"Of course," she said selecting a skein of pale blue silk.

For a while I sat and smoked in silence, watching her slender fingers

among the tinted silks and thread of gold.

Presently she spoke: "What did you say your crest is, Dick?"

"My crest? Oh, something or other rampant on a something or other----"

"Dick!"

"Dearest?"

"Don't be flippant."

"But I really forget. It's an ordinary crest; everybody in New York has

them. No family should be without 'em."

"You are disagreeable, Dick. Send Josephine upstairs for my album."

"Are you going to put that crest on the--the--whatever it is?"

"I am; and my own crest, too."

I thought of the Purple Emperor and wondered a little.

"You didn't know I had one, did you?" she smiled.

"What is it?" I replied evasively.

"You shall see. Ring for Josephine."

I rang, and, when 'Fine appeared, Lys gave her some orders in a low

voice, and Josephine trotted away, bobbing her white-coiffed head with a

"Bien, Madame!"

After a few minutes she returned, bearing a tattered, musty volume, from

which the gold and blue had mostly disappeared.

I took the book in my hands and examined the ancient emblazoned covers.

"Lilies!" I exclaimed.

"Fleur-de-lis," said my wife demurely.

"Oh!" said I, astonished, and opened the book.

"You have never before seen this book?" asked Lys, with a touch of

malice in her eyes.

"You know I haven't. Hello! What's this? Oho! So there should be a de

before Trevec? Lys de Trevec? Then why in the world did the Purple

Emperor----"

"Dick!" cried Lys.

"All right," said I. "Shall I read about the Sieur de Trevec who rode to

Saladin's tent alone to seek for medicine for St. Louise? Or shall I

read about--what is it? Oh, here it is, all down in black and

white--about the Marquis de Trevec who drowned himself before Alva's

eyes rather than surrender the banner of the fleur-de-lis to Spain? It's

all written here. But, dear, how about that soldier named Trevec who was

killed in the old fort on the cliff yonder?"

"He dropped the de, and the Trevecs since then have been Republicans,"

said Lys--"all except me."

"That's quite right," said I; "it is time that we Republicans should

agree upon some feudal system. My dear, I drink to the king!" and I

raised my wine glass and looked at Lys.

"To the king," said Lys, flushing. She smoothed out the tiny garment on

her knees; she touched the glass with her lips; her eyes were very

sweet. I drained the glass to the king.

After a silence I said: "I will tell the king stories. His majesty shall

be amused."

"His majesty," repeated Lys softly.

"Or hers," I laughed. "Who knows?"

"Who knows?" murmured Lys; with a gentle sigh.

"I know some stories about Jack the Giant-Killer," I announced. "Do

you, Lys?"

"I? No, not about a giant-killer, but I know all about the werewolf, and

Jeanne-la-Flamme, and the Man in Purple Tatters, and--O dear me, I know

lots more."

"You are very wise," said I. "I shall teach his majesty, English."

"And I Breton," cried Lys jealously.

"I shall bring playthings to the king," said I--"big green lizards from

the gorse, little gray mullets to swim in glass globes, baby rabbits

from the forest of Kerselec----"

"And I," said Lys, "will bring the first primrose, the first branch of

aubepine, the first jonquil, to the king--my king."

"Our king," said I; and there was peace in Finistere.

I lay back, idly turning the leaves of the curious old volume.

"I am looking," said I, "for the crest."

"The crest, dear? It is a priest's head with an arrow-shaped mark on the

forehead, on a field----"

I sat up and stared at my wife.

"Dick, whatever is the matter?" she smiled. "The story is there in that

book. Do you care to read it? No? Shall I tell it to you? Well, then: It

happened in the third crusade. There was a monk whom men called the

Black Priest. He turned apostate, and sold himself to the enemies of

Christ. A Sieur de Trevec burst into the Saracen camp, at the head of

only one hundred lances, and carried the Black Priest away out of the

very midst of their army."

"So that is how you come by the crest," I said quietly; but I thought of

the branded skull in the gravel pit, and wondered.

"Yes," said Lys. "The Sieur de Trevec cut the Black Priest's head off,

but first he branded him with an arrow mark on the forehead. The book

says it was a pious action, and the Sieur de Trevec got great merit by

it. But I think it was cruel, the branding," she sighed.

"Did you ever hear of any other Black Priest?"

"Yes. There was one in the last century, here in St. Gildas. He cast a

white shadow in the sun. He wrote in the Breton language. Chronicles,

too, I believe. I never saw them. His name was the same as that of the

old chronicler, and of the other priest, Jacques Sorgue. Some said he

was a lineal descendant of the traitor. Of course the first Black Priest

was bad enough for anything. But if he did have a child, it need not

have been the ancestor of the last Jacques Sorgue. They say he was so

good he was not allowed to die, but was caught up to heaven one day,"

added Lys, with believing eyes.

I smiled.

"But he disappeared," persisted Lys.

"I'm afraid his journey was in another direction," I said jestingly, and

thoughtlessly told her the story of the morning. I had utterly

forgotten the masked man at her window, but before I finished I

remembered him fast enough, and realized what I had done as I saw her

face whiten.

"Lys," I urged tenderly, "that was only some clumsy clown's trick. You

said so yourself. You are not superstitious, my dear?"

Her eyes were on mine. She slowly drew the little gold cross from her

bosom and kissed it. But her lips trembled as they pressed the symbol of

faith.

III

About nine o'clock the next morning I walked into the Groix Inn and sat

down at the long discolored oaken table, nodding good-day to Marianne

Bruyere, who in turn bobbed her white coiffe at me.

"My clever Bannalec maid," said I, "what is good for a stirrup-cup at

the Groix Inn?"

"Schist?" she inquired in Breton.

"With a dash of red wine, then," I replied.

She brought the delicious Quimperle cider, and I poured a little

Bordeaux into it. Marianne watched me with laughing black eyes.

"What makes your cheeks so red, Marianne?" I asked. "Has Jean Marie been

here?"

"We are to be married, Monsieur Darrel," she laughed.

"Ah! Since when has Jean Marie Tregunc lost his head?"

"His head? Oh, Monsieur Darrel--his heart, you mean!"

"So I do," said I. "Jean Marie is a practical fellow."

"It is all due to your kindness--" began the girl, but I raised my hand

and held up the glass.

"It's due to himself. To your happiness, Marianne"; and I took a hearty

draught of the schist. "Now," said I, "tell me where I can find Le Bihan

and Max Fortin."

"Monsieur Le Bihan and Monsieur Fortin are above in the broad room. I

believe they are examining the Red Admiral's effects."

"To send them to Paris? Oh, I know. May I go up, Marianne?"

"And God go with you," smiled the girl.

When I knocked at the door of the broad room above little Max Fortin

opened it. Dust covered his spectacles and nose; his hat, with the tiny

velvet ribbons fluttering, was all awry.

"Come in, Monsieur Darrel," he said; "the mayor and I are packing up the

effects of the Purple Emperor and of the poor Red Admiral."

"The collections?" I asked, entering the room. "You must be very careful

in packing those butterfly cases; the slightest jar might break wings

and antennas, you know."

Le Bihan shook hands with me and pointed to the great pile of boxes.

"They're all cork lined," he said, "but Fortin and I are putting felt

around each box. The Entomological Society of Paris pays the freight."

The combined collection of the Red Admiral and the Purple Emperor made a

magnificent display.

I lifted and inspected case after case set with gorgeous butterflies and

moths, each specimen carefully labelled with the name in Latin. There

were cases filled with crimson tiger moths all aflame with color; cases

devoted to the common yellow butterflies; symphonies in orange and pale

yellow; cases of soft gray and dun-colored sphinx moths; and cases of

grayish nettle-bed butterflies of the numerous family of Vanessa.

All alone in a great case by itself was pinned the purple emperor, the

Apatura Iris, that fatal specimen that had given the Purple Emperor his

name and quietus.

I remembered the butterfly, and stood looking at it with bent eyebrows.

Le Bihan glanced up from the floor where he was nailing down the lid of

a box full of cases.

"It is settled, then," said he, "that madame, your wife, gives the

Purple Emperor's entire Collection to the city of Paris?"

I nodded.

"Without accepting anything for it?"

"It is a gift," I said.

"Including the purple emperor there in the case? That butterfly is

worth a great deal of money," persisted Le Bihan.

"You don't suppose that we would wish to sell that specimen, do you?" I

answered a trifle sharply.

"If I were you I should destroy it," said the mayor in his high-pitched

voice.

"That would be nonsense," said I, "like your burying the brass cylinder

and scroll yesterday."

"It was not nonsense," said Le Bihan doggedly, "and I should prefer not

to discuss the subject of the scroll."

I looked at Max Portin, who immediately avoided my eyes.

"You are a pair of superstitious old women," said I, digging my hands

into my pockets; "you swallow every nursery tale that is invented."

"What of it?" said Le Bihan sulkily; "there's more truth than lies in

most of 'em."

"Oh!" I sneered, "does the Mayor of St. Gildas and St. Julien believe in

the loup-garou?"

"No, not in the loup-garou."

"In what, then--Jeanne-la-Flamme?"

"That," said Le Bihan with conviction, "is history."

"The devil it is!" said I; "and perhaps, Monsieur the mayor, your faith

in giants is unimpaired?"

"There were giants--everybody knows it," growled Max Fortin.

"And you a chemist!" I observed scornfully.

"Listen, Monsieur Darrel," squeaked Le Bihan; "you know yourself that

the Purple Emperor was a scientific man. Now suppose I should tell you

that he always refused to include in his collection a Death's

Messenger?"

"A what?" I exclaimed.

"You know what I mean--that moth that flies by night; some call it the

Death's Head, but in St. Gildas we call it 'Death's Messenger.'"

"Oh!" said I, "you mean that big sphinx moth that is commonly known as

the 'death's-head moth.' Why the mischief should the people here call it

death's messenger?"

"For hundreds of years it has been known as death's messenger in St.

Gildas," said Max Fortin. "Even Froissart speaks of it in his

commentaries on Jacques Sorgue's _Chronicles_. The book is in your

library."

"Sorgue? And who was Jacques Sorgue? I never read his book."

"Jacques Sorgue [Transcriber's note: the original reads "Sorque"] was the

son of some unfrocked priest--I forget. It was during the crusades."

"Good Heavens!" I burst out, "I've been hearing of nothing but crusades

and priests and death and sorcery ever since I kicked that skull into

the gravel pit, and I am tired of it, I tell you frankly. One would

think we lived in the dark ages. Do you know what year of our Lord it

is, Le Bihan?"

"Eighteen hundred and ninety-six," replied the mayor.

"And yet you two hulking men are afraid of a death's-head moth."

"I don't care to have one fly into the window," said Max Fortin; "it

means evil to the house and the people in it."

"God alone knows why he marked one of his creatures with a yellow

death's head on the back," observed Le Bihan piously, "but I take it

that he meant it as a warning; and I propose to profit by it," he added

triumphantly.

"See here, Le Bihan," I said; "by a stretch of imagination one can make

out a skull on the thorax of a certain big sphinx moth. What of it?"

"It is a bad thing to touch," said the mayor wagging his head.

"It squeaks when handled," added Max Fortin.

"Some creatures squeak all the time," I observed, looking hard at Le

Bihan.

"Pigs," added the mayor.

"Yes, and asses," I replied. "Listen, Le Bihan: do you mean to tell me

that you saw that skull roll uphill yesterday?"

The mayor shut his mouth tightly and picked up his hammer.

"Don't be obstinate," I said; "I asked you a question."

"And I refuse to answer," snapped Le Bihan. "Fortin saw what I saw; let

him talk about it."

I looked searchingly at the little chemist.

"I don't say that I saw it actually roll up out of the pit, all by

itself," said Fortin with a shiver, "but--but then, how did it come up

out of the pit, if it didn't roll up all by itself?"

"It didn't come up at all; that was a yellow cobblestone that you

mistook for the skull again," I replied. "You were nervous, Max."

"A--a very curious cobblestone, Monsieur Darrel," said Fortin.

"I also was a victim to the same hallucination," I continued, "and I

regret to say that I took the trouble to roll two innocent cobblestones

into the gravel pit, imagining each time that it was the skull I was

rolling."

"It was," observed Le Bihan with a morose shrug.

"It just shows," said I, ignoring the mayor's remark, "how easy it is to

fix up a train of coincidences so that the result seems to savor of the

supernatural. Now, last night my wife imagined that she saw a priest in

a mask peer in at her window----"

Fortin and Le Bihan scrambled hastily from their knees, dropping hammer

and nails.

"W-h-a-t--what's that?" demanded the mayor.

I repeated what I had said. Max Fortin turned livid.

"My God!" muttered Le Bihan, "the Black Priest is in St. Gildas!"

"D-don't you--you know the old prophecy?" stammered Fortin; "Froissart

quotes it from Jacques Sorgue:

"'When the Black Priest rises from the dead,

St. Gildas folk shall shriek in bed;

When the Black Priest rises from his grave,

May the good God St. Gildas save!'"

"Aristide Le Bihan," I said angrily, "and you, Max Fortin, I've got

enough of this nonsense! Some foolish lout from Bannalec has been in St.

Gildas playing tricks to frighten old fools like you. If you have

nothing better to talk about than nursery legends I'll wait until you

come to your senses. Good-morning." And I walked out, more disturbed

than I cared to acknowledge to myself.

The day had become misty and overcast. Heavy, wet clouds hung in the

east. I heard the surf thundering against the cliffs, and the gray gulls

squealed as they tossed and turned high in the sky. The tide was

creeping across the river sands, higher, higher, and I saw the seaweed

floating on the beach, and the lancons springing from the foam, silvery

threadlike flashes in the gloom. Curlew were flying up the river in twos

and threes; the timid sea swallows skimmed across the moors toward some

quiet, lonely pool, safe from the coming tempest. In every hedge field

birds were gathering, huddling together, twittering restlessly.

When I reached the cliffs I sat down, resting my chin on my clenched

hands. Already a vast curtain of rain, sweeping across the ocean miles

away, hid the island of Groix. To the east, behind the white semaphore

on the hills, black clouds crowded up over the horizon. After a little

the thunder boomed, dull, distant, and slender skeins of lightning

unraveled across the crest of the coming storm. Under the cliff at my

feet the surf rushed foaming over the shore, and the lancons jumped and

skipped and quivered until they seemed to be but the reflections of the

meshed lightning.

I turned to the east. It was raining over Groix, it was raining at

Sainte Barbe, it was raining now at the semaphore. High in the storm

whirl a few gulls pitched; a nearer cloud trailed veils of rain in its

wake; the sky was spattered with lightning; the thunder boomed.

As I rose to go, a cold raindrop fell upon the back of my hand, and

another, and yet another on my face. I gave a last glance at the sea,

where the waves were bursting into strange white shapes that seemed to

fling out menacing arms toward me. Then something moved on the cliff,

something black as the black rock it clutched--a filthy cormorant,

craning its hideous head at the sky.

Slowly I plodded homeward across the somber moorland, where the gorse

stems glimmered with a dull metallic green, and the heather, no longer

violet and purple, hung drenched and dun-colored among the dreary rocks.

The wet turf creaked under my heavy boots, the black-thorn scraped and

grated against knee and elbow. Over all lay a strange light, pallid,

ghastly, where the sea spray whirled across the landscape and drove into

my face until it grew numb with the cold. In broad bands, rank after

rank, billow on billow, the rain burst out across the endless moors, and

yet there was no wind to drive it at such a pace.

Lys stood at the door as I turned into the garden, motioning me to

hasten; and then for the first time I became conscious that I was soaked

to the skin.

"However in the world did you come to stay out when such a storm

threatened?" she said. "Oh, you are dripping! Go quickly and change; I

have laid your warm underwear on the bed, Dick."

I kissed my wife, and went upstairs to change my dripping clothes for

something more comfortable.

When I returned to the morning room there was a driftwood fire on the

hearth, and Lys sat in the chimney corner embroidering.

"Catherine tells me that the fishing fleet from Lorient is out. Do you

think they are in danger, dear?" asked Lys, raising her blue eyes to

mine as I entered.

"There is no wind, and there will be no sea," said I, looking out of the

window. Far across the moor I could see the black cliffs looming in the

mist.

"How it rains!" murmured Lys; "come to the fire, Dick."

I threw myself on the fur rug, my hands in my pockets, my head on Lys's

knees.

"Tell me a story," I said. "I feel like a boy of ten."

Lys raised a finger to her scarlet lips. I always waited for her to do

that.

"Will you be very still, then?" she said.

"Still as death."

"Death," echoed a voice, very softly.

"Did you speak, Lys?" I asked, turning so that I could see her face.

"No; did you, Dick?"

"Who said 'death'?" I asked, startled.

"Death," echoed a voice, softly.

I sprang up and looked about. Lys rose too, her needles and embroidery

falling to the floor. She seemed about to faint, leaning heavily on me,

and I led her to the window and opened it a little way to give her air.

As I did so the chain lightning split the zenith, the thunder crashed,

and a sheet of rain swept into the room, driving with it something that

fluttered--something that flapped, and squeaked, and beat upon the rug

with soft, moist wings.

We bent over it together, Lys clinging to me, and we saw that it was a

death's-head moth drenched with rain.

The dark day passed slowly as we sat beside the fire, hand in hand, her

head against my breast, speaking of sorrow and mystery and death. For

Lys believed that there were things on earth that none might understand,

things that must be nameless forever and ever, until God rolls up the

scroll of life and all is ended. We spoke of hope and fear and faith,

and the mystery of the saints; we spoke of the beginning and the end, of

the shadow of sin, of omens, and of love. The moth still lay on the

floor quivering its somber wings in the warmth of the fire, the skull

and ribs clearly etched upon its neck and body.

"If it is a messenger of death to this house," I said, "why should we

fear, Lys?"

"Death should be welcome to those who love God," murmured Lys, and she

drew the cross from her breast and kissed it.

"The moth might die if I threw it out into the storm," I said after a

silence.

"Let it remain," sighed Lys.

Late that night my wife lay sleeping, and I sat beside her bed and read

in the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue. I shaded the candle, but Lys grew

restless, and finally I took the book down into the morning room, where

the ashes of the fire rustled and whitened on the hearth.

The death's-head moth lay on the rug before the fire where I had left

it. At first I thought it was dead, but when I looked closer I saw a

lambent fire in its amber eyes. The straight white shadow it cast across

the floor wavered as the candle flickered.

The pages of the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue were damp and sticky; the

illuminated gold and blue initials left flakes of azure and gilt where

my hand brushed them.

"It is not paper at all; it is thin parchment," I said to myself; and I

held the discolored page close to the candle flame and read, translating

laboriously:

"I, Jacques Sorgue, saw all these things. And I saw the Black Mass

celebrated in the chapel of St. Gildas-on-the-Cliff. And it was said by

the Abbe Sorgue, my kinsman: for which deadly sin the apostate priest

was seized by the most noble Marquis of Plougastel and by him condemned

to be burned with hot irons, until his seared soul quit its body and fly

to its master the devil. But when the Black Priest lay in the crypt of

Plougastel, his master Satan came at night and set him free, and carried

him across land and sea to Mahmoud, which is Soldan or Saladin. And I,

Jacques Sorgue, traveling afterward by sea, beheld with my own eyes my

kinsman, the Black Priest of St. Gildas, borne along in the air upon a

vast black wing, which was the wing of his master Satan. And this was

seen also by two men of the crew."

I turned the page. The wings of the moth on the floor began to quiver. I

read on and on, my eyes blurring under the shifting candle flame. I read

of battles and of saints, and I learned how the Great Soldan made his

pact with Satan, and then I came to the Sieur de Trevec, and read how he

seized the Black Priest in the midst of Saladin's tents and carried him

away and cut off his head first branding him on the forehead. "And

before he suffered," said the Chronicle, "he cursed the Sieur de Trevec

and his descendants, and he said he would surely return to St. Gildas.

'For the violence you do to me, I will do violence to you. For the evil

I suffer at your hands, I will work evil on you and your descendants.

Woe to your children, Sieur de Trevec!'" There was a whirr, a beating of

strong wings, and my candle flashed up as in a sudden breeze. A humming

filled the room; the great moth darted hither and thither, beating,

buzzing, on ceiling and wall. I flung down my book and stepped forward.

Now it lay fluttering upon the window sill, and for a moment I had it

under my hand, but the thing squeaked and I shrank back. Then suddenly

it darted across the candle flame; the light flared and went out, and at

the same moment a shadow moved in the darkness outside. I raised my eyes

to the window. A masked face was peering in at me.

Quick as thought I whipped out my revolver and fired every cartridge,

but the face advanced beyond the window, the glass melting away before

it like mist, and through the smoke of my revolver I saw something creep

swiftly into the room. Then I tried to cry out, but the thing was at my

throat, and I fell backward among the ashes of the hearth.

*       *       *       *       *

When my eyes unclosed I was lying on the hearth, my head among the cold

ashes. Slowly I got on my knees, rose painfully, and groped my way to a

chair. On the floor lay my revolver, shining in the pale light of early

morning. My mind clearing by degrees, I looked, shuddering, at the

window. The glass was unbroken. I stooped stiffly, picked up my revolver

and opened the cylinder. Every cartridge had been fired. Mechanically I

closed the cylinder and placed the revolver in my pocket. The book, the

Chronicles of Jacques Sorgue, lay on the table beside me, and as I

started to close it I glanced at the page. It was all splashed with

rain, and the lettering had run, so that the page was merely a confused

blur of gold and red and black. As I stumbled toward the door I cast a

fearful glance over my shoulder. The death's-head moth crawled shivering

on the rug.

IV

The sun was about three hours high. I must have slept, for I was aroused

by the sudden gallop of horses under our window. People were shouting

and calling in the road. I sprang up and opened the sash. Le Bihan was

there, an image of helplessness, and Max Fortin stood beside him

polishing his glasses. Some gendarmes had just arrived from Quimperle,

and I could hear them around the corner of the house, stamping, and

rattling their sabres and carbines, as they led their horses into my

stable.

Lys sat up, murmuring half-sleepy, half-anxious questions.

"I don't know," I answered. "I am going out to see what it means."

"It is like the day they came to arrest you," Lys said, giving me a

troubled look. But I kissed her and laughed at her until she smiled too.

Then I flung on coat and cap and hurried down the stairs.

The first person I saw standing in the road was the Brigadier Durand.

"Hello!" said I, "have you come to arrest me again? What the devil is

all this fuss about, anyway?"

"We were telegraphed for an hour ago," said Durand briskly, "and for a

sufficient reason, I think. Look there, Monsieur Darrel!"

He pointed to the ground almost under my feet.

"Good heavens!" I cried, "where did that puddle of blood come from?"

"That's what I want to know, Monsieur Darrel. Max Fortin found it at

daybreak. See, it's splashed all over the grass, too. A trail of it

leads into your garden, across the flower beds to your very window, the

one that opens from the morning room. There is another trail leading

from this spot across the road to the cliffs, then to the gravel pit,

and thence across the moor to the forest of Kerselec. We are going to

mount in a minute and search the bosquets. Will you join us? Bon Dieu!

but the fellow bled like an ox. Max Fortin says it's human blood, or I

should not have believed it."

The little chemist of Quimperle came up at that moment, rubbing his

glasses with a colored handkerchief.

"Yes, it is human blood," he said, "but one thing puzzles me: the

corpuscles are yellow. I never saw any human blood before with yellow

corpuscles. But your English Doctor Thompson asserts that he has----"

"Well, it's human blood, anyway--isn't it?" insisted Durand,

impatiently.

"Ye-es," admitted Max Fortin.

"Then it's my business to trail it," said the big gendarme, and he

called his men and gave the order to mount.

"Did you hear anything last night?" asked Durand of me.

"I heard the rain. I wonder the rain did not wash away these traces."

"They must have come after the rain ceased. See this thick splash, how

it lies over and weighs down the wet grass blades. Pah!"

It was a heavy, evil-looking clot, and I stepped back from it, my throat

closing in disgust.

"My theory," said the brigadier, "is this: Some of those Biribi

fishermen, probably the Icelanders, got an extra glass of cognac into

their hides and quarreled on the road. Some of them were slashed, and

staggered to your house. But there is only one trail, and yet--and yet,

how could all that blood come from only one person? Well, the wounded

man, let us say, staggered first to your house and then back here, and

he wandered off, drunk and dying, God knows where. That's my theory."

"A very good one," said I calmly. "And you are going to trail him?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"At once. Will you come?"

"Not now. I'll gallop over by-and-bye. You are going to the edge of the

Kerselec forest?"

"Yes; you will hear us calling. Are you coming, Max Fortin? And you, Le

Bihan? Good; take the dog-cart."

The big gendarme tramped around the corner to the stable and presently

returned mounted on a strong gray horse, his sabre shone on his saddle;

his pale yellow and white facings were spotless. The little crowd of

white-coiffed women with their children fell back as Durand touched

spurs and clattered away followed by his two troopers. Soon after Le

Bihan and Max Fortin also departed in the mayor's dingy dog-cart.

"Are you coming?" piped Le Bihan shrilly.

"In a quarter of an hour," I replied, and went back to the house.

When I opened the door of the morning room the death's-head moth was

beating its strong wings against the window. For a second I hesitated,

then walked over and opened the sash. The creature fluttered out,

whirred over the flower beds a moment, then darted across the moorland

toward the sea. I called the servants together and questioned them.

Josephine, Catherine, Jean Marie Tregunc, not one of them had heard the

slightest disturbance during the night. Then I told Jean Marie to saddle

my horse, and while I was speaking Lys came down.

"Dearest," I began, going to her.

"You must tell me everything you know, Dick," she interrupted, looking

me earnestly in the face.

"But there is nothing to tell--only a drunken brawl, and some one

wounded."

"And you are going to ride--where, Dick?"

"Well, over to the edge of Kerselec forest. Durand and the mayor, and

Max Fortin, have gone on, following a--a trail."

"What trail?"

"Some blood."

"Where did they find it?"

"Out in the road there." Lys crossed herself.

"Does it come near our house?"

"Yes."

"How near?"

"It comes up to the morning room window," said I, giving in.

Her hand on my arm grew heavy. "I dreamed last night----"

"So did I--" but I thought of the empty cartridges in my revolver, and

stopped.

"I dreamed that you were in great danger, and I could not move hand or

foot to save you; but you had your revolver, and I called out to you to

fire----"

"I did fire!" I cried excitedly.

"You--you fired?"

I took her in my arms. "My darling," I said "something strange has

happened--something that I cannot understand as yet. But, of course,

there is an explanation. Last night I thought I fired at the Black

Priest."

"Ah!" gasped Lys.

"Is that what you dreamed?"

"Yes, yes, that was it! I begged you to fire----"

"And I did."

Her heart was beating against my breast. I held her close in silence.

"Dick," she said at length, "perhaps you killed the--the thing."

"If it was human I did not miss," I answered grimly. "And it was human,"

I went on, pulling myself together, ashamed of having so nearly gone to

pieces. "Of course it was human! The whole affair is plain enough. Not a

drunken brawl, as Durand thinks; it was a drunken lout's practical joke,

for which he has suffered. I suppose I must have filled him pretty full

of bullets, and he has crawled away to die in Kerselec forest. It's a

terrible affair; I'm sorry I fired so hastily; but that idiot Le Bihan

and Max Fortin have been working on my nerves till I am as hysterical as

a schoolgirl," I ended angrily.

"You fired--but the window glass was not shattered," said Lys in a low

voice.

"Well, the window was open, then. And as for the--the rest--I've got

nervous indigestion, and a doctor will settle the Black Priest for me,

Lys."

I glanced out of the window at Tregunc waiting with my horse at the

gate.

"Dearest, I think I had better go to join Durand and the others."

"I will go, too."

"Oh, no!"

"Yes, Dick."

"Don't, Lys."

"I shall suffer every moment you are away."

"The ride is too fatiguing, and we can't tell what unpleasant sight you

may come upon. Lys, you don't really think there is anything

supernatural in this affair?"

"Dick," she answered gently, "I am a Bretonne." With both arms around my

neck, my wife said, "Death is the gift of God. I do not fear it when we

are together. But alone--oh, my husband, I should fear a God who could

take you away from me!"

We kissed each other soberly, simply, like two children. Then Lys

hurried away to change her gown, and I paced up and down the garden

waiting for her.

She came, drawing on her slender gauntlets. I swung her into the saddle,

gave a hasty order to Jean Marie, and mounted.

Now, to quail under thoughts of terror on a morning like this, with Lys

in the saddle beside me, no matter what had happened or might happen

was impossible. Moreover, Mome came sneaking after us. I asked Tregunc

to catch him, for I was afraid he might be brained by our horses' hoofs

if he followed, but the wily puppy dodged and bolted after Lys, who was

trotting along the highroad. "Never mind," I thought; "if he's hit he'll

live, for he has no brains to lose."

Lys was waiting for me in the road beside the Shrine of Our Lady of St.

Gildas when I joined her. She crossed herself, I doffed my cap, then we

shook out our bridles and galloped toward the forest of Kerselec.

We said very little as we rode. I always loved to watch Lys in the

saddle. Her exquisite figure and lovely face were the incarnation of

youth and grace; her curling hair glistened like threaded gold.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the spoiled puppy Mome come bounding

cheerfully alongside, oblivious of our horses' heels. Our road swung

close to the cliffs. A filthy cormorant rose from the black rocks and

flapped heavily across our path. Lys's horse reared, but she pulled him

down, and pointed at the bird with her riding crop.

"I see," said I; "it seems to be going our way. Curious to see a

cormorant in a forest, isn't it?"

"It is a bad sign," said Lys. "You know the Morbihan proverb: 'When the

cormorant turns from the sea, Death laughs in the forest, and wise

woodsmen build boats.'"

"I wish," said I sincerely, "that there were fewer proverbs in

Brittany."

We were in sight of the forest now; across the gorse I could see the

sparkle of gendarmes' trappings, and the glitter of Le Bihan's

silver-buttoned jacket. The hedge was low and we took it without

difficulty, and trotted across the moor to where Le Bihan and Durand

stood gesticulating.

They bowed ceremoniously to Lys as we rode up.

"The trail is horrible--it is a river," said the mayor in his squeaky

voice. "Monsieur Darrel, I think perhaps madame would scarcely care to

come any nearer."

Lys drew bridle and looked at me.

"It is horrible!" said Durand, walking up beside me; "it looks as though

a bleeding regiment had passed this way. The trail winds and winds about

here in the thickets; we lose it at times, but we always find it again.

I can't understand how one man--no, nor twenty--could bleed like that!"

A halloo, answered by another, sounded from the depths of the forest.

"It's my men; they are following the trail," muttered the brigadier.

"God alone knows what is at the end!"

"Shall we gallop back, Lys?" I asked.

"No; let us ride along the western edge of the woods and dismount. The

sun is so hot now, and I should like to rest for a moment," she said.

"The western forest is clear of anything disagreeable," said Durand.

"Very well," I answered; "call me, Le Bihan, if you find anything."

Lys wheeled her mare, and I followed across the springy heather, Mome

trotting cheerfully in the rear.

We entered the sunny woods about a quarter of a kilometer from where we

left Durand. I took Lys from her horse, flung both bridles over a limb,

and, giving my wife my arm, aided her to a flat mossy rock which

overhung a shallow brook gurgling among the beech trees. Lys sat down

and drew off her gauntlets. Mome pushed his head into her lap, received

an undeserved caress, and came doubtfully toward me. I was weak enough

to condone his offense, but I made him lie down at my feet, greatly to

his disgust.

I rested my head on Lys's knees, looking up at the sky through the

crossed branches of the trees.

"I suppose I have killed him," I said. "It shocks me terribly, Lys."

"You could not have known, dear. He may have been a robber,

and--if--not--did--have you ever fired your revolver since that day four

years ago when the Red Admiral's son tried to kill you? But I know you

have not."

"No," said I, wondering. "It's a fact, I have not. Why?"

"And don't you remember that I asked you to let me load it for you the

day when Yves went off, swearing to kill you and his father?"

"Yes, I do remember. Well?"

"Well, I--I took the cartridges first to St. Gildas chapel and dipped

them in holy water. You must not laugh, Dick," said Lys gently, laying

her cool hands on my lips.

"Laugh, my darling!"

Overhead the October sky was pale amethyst, and the sunlight burned like

orange flame through the yellow leaves of beech and oak. Gnats and

midges danced and wavered overhead; a spider dropped from a twig halfway

to the ground and hung suspended on the end of his gossamer thread.

"Are you sleepy, dear?" asked Lys, bending over me.

"I am--a little; I scarcely slept two hours last night," I answered.

"You may sleep, if you wish," said Lys, and touched my eyes caressingly.

"Is my head heavy on your knees?"

"No, Dick."

I was already in a half doze; still I heard the brook babbling under the

beeches and the humming of forest flies overhead. Presently even these

were stilled.

The next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright, my ears ringing with a

scream, and I saw Lys cowering beside me, covering her white face with

both hands.

As I sprang to my feet she cried again and clung to my knees. I saw my

dog rush growling into a thicket, then I heard him whimper, and he came

backing out, whining, ears flat, tail down. I stooped and disengaged

Lys's hand.

"Don't go, Dick!" she cried. "O God, it's the Black Priest!"

In a moment I had leaped across the brook and pushed my way into the

thicket. It was empty. I stared about me; I scanned every tree trunk,

every bush. Suddenly I saw him. He was seated on a fallen log, his head

resting in his hands, his rusty black robe gathered around him. For a

moment my hair stirred under my cap; sweat started on forehead and cheek

bone; then I recovered my reason, and understood that the man was human

and was probably wounded to death. Ay, to death; for there at my feet,

lay the wet trail of blood, over leaves and stones, down into the little

hollow, across to the figure in black resting silently under the trees.

I saw that he could not escape even if he had the strength, for before

him, almost at his very feet, lay a deep, shining swamp.

As I stepped forward my foot broke a twig. At the sound the figure

started a little, then its head fell forward again. Its face was masked.

Walking up to the man, I bade him tell where he was wounded. Durand and

the others broke through the thicket at the same moment and hurried to

my side.

"Who are you who hide a masked face in a priest's robe?" said the

gendarme loudly.

There was no answer.

"See--see the stiff blood all over his robe," muttered Le Bihan to

Fortin.

"He will not speak," said I.

"He may be too badly wounded," whispered Le Bihan.

"I saw him raise his head," I said, "my wife saw him creep up here."

Durand stepped forward and touched the figure.

"Speak!" he said.

"Speak!" quavered Fortin.

Durand waited a moment, then with a sudden upward movement he stripped

off the mask and threw back the man's head. We were looking into the eye

sockets of a skull. Durand stood rigid; the mayor shrieked. The skeleton

burst out from its rotting robes and collapsed on the ground before us.

From between the staring ribs and the grinning teeth spurted a torrent

of black blood, showering the shrinking grasses; then the thing

shuddered, and fell over into the black ooze of the bog. Little bubbles

of iridescent air appeared from the mud; the bones were slowly engulfed,

and, as the last fragments sank out of sight, up from the depths and

along the bank crept a creature, shiny, shivering, quivering its wings.

It was a death's-head moth.

*       *       *       *       *

I wish I had time to tell you how Lys outgrew superstitions--for she

never knew the truth about the affair, and she never will know, since

she has promised not to read this book. I wish I might tell you about

the king and his coronation, and how the coronation robe fitted. I wish

that I were able to write how Yvonne and Herbert Stuart rode to a boar

hunt in Quimperle, and how the hounds raced the quarry right through the

town, overturning three gendarmes, the notary, and an old woman. But I

am becoming garrulous and Lys is calling me to come and hear the king

say that he is sleepy. And his highness shall not be kept waiting.

THE KING'S CRADLE SONG

Seal with a seal of gold

The scroll of a life unrolled;

Swathe him deep in his purple stole;

Ashes of diamonds, crystalled coal,

Drops of gold in each scented fold.

Crimson wings of the Little Death,

Stir his hair with your silken breath;

Flaming wings of sins to be,

Splendid pinions of prophecy,

Smother his eyes with hues and dyes,

While the white moon spins and the winds arise,

And the stars drip through the skies.

Wave, O wings of the Little Death!

Seal his sight and stifle his breath,

Cover his breast with the gemmed shroud pressed;

From north to north, from west to west,

Wave, O wings of the Little Death!

Till the white moon reels in the cracking skies,

And the ghosts of God arise.

Lazarus

BY LEONID ANDREYEV

TRANSLATED BY ABRAHAM YARMOLINSKY

From _Lazarus and the Gentleman from San Francisco_. Published by

The Stratford Company. By permission of the publishers.

I

When Lazarus left the grave, where, for three days and three nights he

had been under the enigmatical sway of death, and returned alive to his

dwelling, for a long time no one noticed in him those sinister oddities,

which, as time went on, made his very name a terror. Gladdened

unspeakably by the sight of him who had been returned to life, those

near to him caressed him unceasingly, and satiated their burning desire

to serve him, in solicitude for his food and drink and garments. And

they dressed him gorgeously, in bright colors of hope and laughter, and

when, like to a bridegroom in his bridal vestures, he sat again among

them at the table, and again ate and drank, they wept, overwhelmed with

tenderness. And they summoned the neighbors to look at him who had risen

miraculously from the dead. These came and shared the serene joy of the

hosts. Strangers from far-off towns and hamlets came and adored the

miracle in tempestuous words. Like to a beehive was the house of Mary

and Martha.

Whatever was found new in Lazarus' face and gestures was thought to be

some trace of a grave illness and of the shocks recently experienced.

Evidently, the destruction wrought by death on the corpse was only

arrested by the miraculous power, but its effects were still apparent;

and what death had succeeded in doing with Lazarus' face and body, was

like an artist's unfinished sketch seen under thin glass. On Lazarus'

temples, under his eyes, and in the hollows of his cheeks, lay a deep

and cadaverous blueness; cadaverously blue also were his long fingers,

and around his fingernails, grown long in the grave, the blue had become

purple and dark. On his lips the skin, swollen in the grave, had burst

in places, and thin, reddish cracks were formed, shining as though

covered with transparent mica. And he had grown stout. His body, puffed

up in the grave, retained its monstrous size and showed those frightful

swellings, in which one sensed the presence of the rank liquid of

decomposition. But the heavy corpse-like odor which penetrated Lazarus'

graveclothes and, it seemed, his very body, soon entirely disappeared,

the blue spots on his face and hands grew paler, and the reddish cracks

closed up, although they never disappeared altogether. That is how

Lazarus looked when he appeared before people, in his second life, but

his face looked natural to those who had seen him in the coffin.

In addition to the changes in his appearance, Lazarus' temper seemed to

have undergone a transformation, but this circumstance startled no one

and attracted no attention. Before his death Lazarus had always been

cheerful and carefree, fond of laughter and a merry joke. It was because

of this brightness and cheerfulness, with not a touch of malice and

darkness, that the Master had grown so fond of him. But now Lazarus had

grown grave and taciturn, he never jested, himself, nor responded with

laughter to other people's jokes; and the words which he uttered, very

infrequently, were the plainest, most ordinary, and necessary words, as

deprived of depth and significance, as those sounds with which animals

express pain and pleasure, thirst and hunger. They were the words that

one can say all one's life, and yet they give no indication of what

pains and gladdens the depths of the soul.

Thus, with the face of a corpse which for three days had been under the

heavy sway of death, dark and taciturn, already appallingly transformed,

but still unrecognized by anyone in his new self, he was sitting at the

feasting table, among friends and relatives, and his gorgeous nuptial

garments glittered with yellow gold and bloody scarlet. Broad waves of

jubilation, now soft, now tempestuously sonorous surged around him; warm

glances of love were reaching out for his face, still cold with the

coldness of the grave; and a friend's warm palm caressed his blue, heavy

hand. And music played the tympanum and the pipe, the cithara and the

harp. It was as though bees hummed, grasshoppers chirped and birds

warbled over the happy house of Mary and Martha.

II

One of the guests incautiously lifted the veil. By a thoughtless word he

broke the serene charm and uncovered the truth in all its naked

ugliness. Ere the thought formed itself in his mind, his lips uttered

with a smile:

"Why dost thou not tell us what happened yonder?"

And all grew silent, startled by the question. It was as if it occurred

to them only now that for three days Lazarus had been dead, and they

looked at him, anxiously awaiting his answer. But Lazarus kept silence.

"Thou dost not wish to tell us,"--wondered the man, "is it so terrible

yonder?"

And again his thought came after his words. Had it been otherwise, he

would not have asked this question, which at that very moment oppressed

his heart with its insufferable horror. Uneasiness seized all present,

and with a feeling of heavy weariness they awaited Lazarus' words, but

he was silent, sternly and coldly, and his eyes were lowered. And as if

for the first time, they noticed the frightful blueness of his face and

his repulsive obesity. On the table, as though forgotten by Lazarus,

rested his bluish-purple wrist, and to this all eyes turned, as if it

were from it that the awaited answer was to come. The musicians were

still playing, but now the silence reached them too, and even as water

extinguishes scattered embers, so were their merry tunes extinguished in

the silence. The pipe grew silent; the voices of the sonorous tympanum

and the murmuring harp died away; and as if the strings had burst, the

cithara answered with a tremulous, broken note. Silence.

"Thou dost not wish to say?" repeated the guest, unable to check his

chattering tongue. But the stillness remained unbroken, and the

bluish-purple hand rested motionless. And then he stirred slightly and

everyone felt relieved. He lifted up his eyes, and lo! straightway

embracing everything in one heavy glance, fraught with weariness and

horror, he looked at them,--Lazarus who had arisen from the dead.

It was the third day since Lazarus had left the grave. Ever since then

many had experienced the pernicious power of his eye, but neither those

who were crushed by it forever, nor those who found the strength to

resist in it the primordial sources of life,--which is as mysterious as

death,--never could they explain the horror which lay motionless in the

depth of his black pupils. Lazarus looked calmly and simply with no

desire to conceal anything, but also with no intention to say anything;

he looked coldly, as he who is infinitely indifferent to those alive.

Many carefree people came close to him without noticing him, and only

later did they learn with astonishment and fear who that calm stout man

was, that walked slowly by, almost touching them with his gorgeous and

dazzling garments. The sun did not cease shining, when he was looking,

nor did the fountain hush its murmur, and the sky overhead remained

cloudless and blue. But the man under the spell of his enigmatical look

heard no more the fountain and saw not the sky overhead. Sometimes, he

wept bitterly, sometimes he tore his hair and in frenzy called for help;

but more often it came to pass that apathetically and quietly he began

to die, and so he languished many years, before everybody's very eyes,

wasted away, colorless, flabby, dull, like a tree, silently drying up in

a stony soil. And of those who gazed at him, the ones who wept madly,

sometimes felt again the stir of life; the others never.

"So thou dost not wish to tell us what thou hast seen yonder?" repeated

the man. But now his voice was impassive and dull, and deadly gray

weariness showed in Lazarus' eyes. And deadly gray weariness covered

like dust all the faces, and with dull amazement the guests stared at

each other and did not understand wherefore they had gathered here and

sat at the rich table. The talk ceased. They thought it was time to go

home, but could not overcome the flaccid lazy weariness which glued

their muscles, and they kept on sitting there, yet apart and torn away

from each other, like pale fires scattered over a dark field.

But the musicians were paid to play and again they took their

instruments and again tunes full of studied mirth and studied sorrow

began to flow and to rise. They unfolded the customary melody but the

guests hearkened in dull amazement. Already they knew not wherefore is

it necessary, and why is it well, that people should pluck strings,

inflate their cheeks, blow in thin pipes, and produce a bizarre,

many-voiced noise.

"What bad music," said someone.

The musicians took offense and left. Following them, the guests left one

after another, for night was already come. And when placid darkness

encircled them and they began to breathe with more ease, suddenly

Lazarus' image loomed up before each one in formidable radiance: the

blue face of a corpse, grave-clothes gorgeous and resplendent, a cold

look, in the depths of which lay motionless an unknown horror. As though

petrified, they were standing far apart, and darkness enveloped them,

but in the darkness blazed brighter and brighter the supernatural vision

of him who for three days had been under the enigmatical sway of death.

For three days had he been dead: thrice had the sun risen and set, but

he had been dead; children had played, streams murmured over pebbles,

the wayfarer had lifted up hot dust in the highroad,--but he had been

dead. And now he is again among them,--touches them,--looks at

them,--looks at them! and through the black discs of his pupils, as

through darkened glass, stares the unknowable Yonder.

III

No one was taking care of Lazarus, for no friends no relatives were left

to him, and the great desert which encircled the holy city, came near

the very threshold of his dwelling. And the desert entered his house,

and stretched on his couch, like a wife and extinguished the fires. No

one was taking care of Lazarus. One after the other, his sisters--Mary

and Martha--forsook him. For a long while Martha was loath to abandon

him, for she knew not who would feed him and pity him, she wept and

prayed. But one night, when the wind was roaming in the desert and with

a hissing sound the cypresses were bending over the roof, she dressed

noiselessly and secretly left the house. Lazarus probably heard the door

slam; it banged against the side-post under the gusts of the desert

wind, but he did not rise to go out and to look at her that was

abandoning him. All the night long the cypresses hissed over his head

and plaintively thumped the door, letting in the cold, greedy desert.

Like a leper he was shunned by everyone, and it was proposed to tie a

bell to his neck, as is done with lepers, to warn people against sudden

meetings. But someone remarked, growing frightfully pale, that it would

be too horrible if by night the moaning of Lazarus' bell were suddenly

heard under the windows,--and so the project was abandoned.

And since he did not take care of himself, he would probably have

starved to death, had not the neighbors brought him food in fear of

something that they sensed but vaguely. The food was brought to him by

children; they were not afraid of Lazarus, nor did they mock him with

naive cruelty, as children are wont to do with the wretched and

miserable. They were indifferent to him, and Lazarus answered them with

the same coldness; he had no desire to caress the black little curls,

and to look into their innocent shining eyes. Given to Time and to the

Desert, his house was crumbling down, and long since had his famishing,

lowing goats wandered away to the neighboring pastures. And his bridal

garments became threadbare. Ever since that happy day, when the

musicians played, he had worn them unaware of the difference of the new

and the worn. The bright colors grew dull and faded; vicious dogs and

the sharp thorn of the Desert turned the tender fabric into rags.

By day, when the merciless sun slew all things alive, and even scorpions

sought shelter under stones and writhed there in a mad desire to sting,

he sat motionless under the sunrays, his blue face and the uncouth,

bushy beared lifted up, bathing in the fiery flood.

When people still talked to him, he was once asked:

"Poor Lazarus, does it please thee to sit thus and to stare at the

sun?"

And he had answered:

"Yes, it does."

So strong, it seemed, was the cold of his three days' grave, so deep the

darkness, that there was no heat on earth to warm Lazarus, nor a

splendor that could brighten the darkness of his eyes. That is what came

to the mind of those who spoke to Lazarus, and with a sigh they left

him.

And when the scarlet, flattened globe would lower, Lazarus would set out

for the desert and walk straight toward the sun, as though striving to

reach it. He always walked straight toward the sun and those who tried

to follow him and to spy upon what he was doing at night in the desert,

retained in their memory the black silhouette of a tall stout man

against the red background of an enormous flattened disc. Night pursued

them with her horrors, and so they did not learn of Lazarus' doings in

the desert, but the vision of the black on red was forever branded on

their brain. Just as a beast with a splinter in its eye furiously rubs

its muzzle with its paws, so they too foolishly rubbed their eyes, but

what Lazarus had given was indelible, and Death alone could efface it.

But there were people who lived far away, who never saw Lazarus and knew

of him only by report. With daring curiosity, which is stronger than

fear and feeds upon it, with hidden mockery, they would come to Lazarus

who was sitting in the sun and enter into conversation with him. By

this time Lazarus' appearance had changed for the better and was not so

terrible. The first minute they snapped their fingers and thought of how

stupid the inhabitants of the holy city were; but when the short talk

was over and they started homeward, their looks were such that the

inhabitants of the holy city recognized them at once and said:

"Look, there is one more fool on whom Lazarus has set his eye,"--and

they shook their heads regretfully, and lifted up their arms.

There came brave, intrepid warriors, with tinkling weapons; happy youths

came with laughter and song; busy tradesmen, jingling their money, ran

in for a moment, and haughty priests leaned their crosiers against

Lazarus' door, and they were all strangely changed, as they came back.

The same terrible shadow swooped down upon their souls and gave a new

appearance to the old familiar world.

Those who still had the desire to speak, expressed their feelings thus:

"All things tangible and visible grew hollow, light, and

transparent,--similar to lightsome shadows in the darkness of night;

"for, that great darkness, which holds the whole cosmos, was dispersed

neither by the sun or by the moon and the stars, but like an immense

black shroud enveloped the earth and, like a mother, embraced it;

"it penetrated all the bodies, iron and stone,--and the particles of

the bodies, having lost their ties, grew lonely; and it penetrated into

the depth of the particles, and the particles of particles became

lonely;

"for that great void, which encircles the cosmos, was not filled by

things visible: neither by the sun, nor by the moon and the stars, but

reigned unrestrained, penetrating everywhere, severing body from body,

particle from particle;

"in the void hollow trees spread hollow roots threatening a fantastic

fall; temples, palaces, and horses loomed up and they were hollow; and

in the void men moved about restlessly but they were light and hollow

like shadows;

"for, Time was no more, and the beginning of all things came near their

end: the building was still being built, and builders were still

hammering away, and its ruins were already seen and the void in its

place; the man was still being born, but already funeral candles were

burning at his head, and now they were extinguished, and there was the

void in place of the man and of the funeral candles.

"and wrapped by void and darkness the man in despair trembled in the

face of the Horror of the Infinite."

Thus spake the men who had still a desire to speak. But, surely, much

more could have told those who wished not to speak, and died in

silence.

IV

At that time there lived in Rome a renowned sculptor. In clay, marble,

and bronze he wrought bodies of gods and men, and such was their beauty,

that people called them immortal. But he himself was discontented and

asserted that there was something even more beautiful, that he could not

embody either in marble or in bronze. "I have not yet gathered the

glimmers of the moon, nor have I my fill of sunshine," he was wont to

say, "and there is no soul in my marble, no life in my beautiful

bronze." And when on moonlight nights he slowly walked along the road,

crossing the black shadows of cypresses, his white tunic glittering in

the moonshine, those who met him would laugh in a friendly way and say:

"Art thou going to gather moonshine, Aurelius? Why then didst thou not

fetch baskets?"

And he would answer, laughing and pointing to his eyes:

"Here are the baskets wherein I gather the sheen of the moon and the

glimmer of the sun."

And so it was: the moon glimmered in his eyes and the sun sparkled

therein. But he could not translate them into marble and therein lay the

serene tragedy of his life.

He was descended from an ancient patrician race, had a good wife and

children, and suffered from no want.

When the obscure rumor about Lazarus reached him, he consulted his wife

and friends and undertook the far journey to Judea to see him who had

miraculously risen from the dead. He was somewhat weary in those days

and he hoped that the road would sharpen his blunted senses. What was

said of Lazarus did not frighten him: he had pondered much over Death,

did not like it, but he disliked also those who confused it with life.

"In this life,--life and beauty;

beyond,--Death, the enigmatical"--

thought he, and there is no better thing for a man to do than to delight

in life and in the beauty of all things living. He had even a

vainglorious desire to convince Lazarus of the truth of his own view and

restore his soul to life, as his body had been restored. This seemed so

much easier because the rumors, shy and strange, did not render the

whole truth about Lazarus and but vaguely warned against something

frightful.

Lazarus had just risen from the stone in order to follow the sun which

was setting in the desert, when a rich Roman attended by an armed slave,

approached him and addressed him in a sonorous tone of voice:

"Lazarus!"

And Lazarus beheld a superb face, lit with glory, and arrayed in fine

clothes, and precious stones sparkling in the sun. The red light lent to

the Roman's face and head the appearance of gleaming bronze--that also

Lazarus noticed. He resumed obediently his place and lowered his weary

eyes.

"Yes, thou art ugly, my poor Lazarus,"--quietly said the Roman, playing

with his golden chain; "thou art even horrible, my poor friend; and

Death was not lazy that day when thou didst fall so heedlessly into his

hands. But thou art stout, and, as the great Caesar used to say, fat

people are not ill-tempered; to tell the truth, I don't understand why

men fear thee. Permit me to spend the night in thy house; the hour is

late, and I have no shelter."

Never had anyone asked Lazarus' hospitality.

"I have no bed," said he.

"I am somewhat of a soldier and I can sleep sitting," the Roman

answered. "We shall build a fire."

"I have no fire."

"Then we shall have our talk in the darkness, like two friends. I think

thou wilt find a bottle of wine."

"I have no wine."

The Roman laughed.

"Now I see why thou art so somber and dislikest thy second life. No

wine! Why, then we shall do without it: there are words that make the

head go round better than the Falernian."

By a sign he dismissed the slave, and they remained all alone. And again

the sculptor started speaking, but it was as if, together with the

setting sun, life had left his words; and they grew pale and hollow, as

if they staggered on unsteady feet, as if they slipped and fell down,

drunk with the heavy lees of weariness and despair. And black chasms

grew up between the words--like far-off hints of the great void and the

great darkness.

"Now I am thy guest, and thou wilt not be unkind to me, Lazarus!"--said

he. "Hospitality is the duty even of those who for three days were dead.

Three days, I was told, thou didst rest in the grave. There it must be

cold ... and that is whence comes thy ill habit of going without fire

and wine. As to me, I like fire; it grows dark here so rapidly.... The

lines of thy eyebrows and forehead are quite, quite interesting: they

are like ruins of strange palaces, buried in ashes after an earthquake.

But why dost thou wear such ugly and queer garments? I have seen

bridegrooms in thy country, and they wear such clothes--are they not

funny--and terrible.... But art thou a bridegroom?"

The sun had already disappeared, a monstrous black shadow came running

from the east--it was as if gigantic bare feet began rumbling on the

sand, and the wind sent a cold wave along the backbone.

"In the darkness thou seemest still larger, Lazarus, as if thou hast

grown stouter in these moments. Dost thou feed on darkness, Lazarus? I

would fain have a little fire--at least a little fire, a little fire. I

feel somewhat chilly, your nights are so barbarously cold.... Were it

not so dark, I should say that thou wert looking at me, Lazarus. Yes, it

seems to me, thou art looking.... Why, thou art looking at me, I feel

it,--but there thou art smiling."

Night came, and filled the air with heavy blackness.

"How well it will be, when the sun will rise to-morrow anew.... I am a

great sculptor, thou knowest; that is how my friends call me. I create.

Yes, that is the word ... but I need daylight. I give life to the cold

marble, I melt sonorous bronze in fire, in bright hot fire.... Why didst

thou touch me with thy hand?"

"Come"--said Lazarus--"Thou art my guest."

And they went to the house. And a long night enveloped the earth.

The slave, seeing that his master did not come, went to seek him, when

the sun was already high in the sky. And he beheld his master side by

side with Lazarus: in profound silence were they sitting right under the

dazzling and scorching sunrays and looking upward. The slave began to

weep and cried out:

"My master, what has befallen thee, master?"

The very same day the sculptor left for Rome. On the way Aurelius was

pensive and taciturn, staring attentively at everything--the men, the

ship, the sea, as though trying to retain something. On the high sea a

storm burst upon them, and all through it Aurelius stayed on the deck

and eagerly scanned the seas looming near and sinking with a thud.

At home his friends were frightened at the change which had taken place

in Aurelius, but he calmed them, saying meaningly:

"I have found it."

And without changing the dusty clothes he wore on his journey, he fell

to work, and the marble obediently resounded under his sonorous hammer.

Long and eagerly worked he, admitting no one, until one morning he

announced that the work was ready and ordered his friends to be

summoned, severe critics and connoisseurs of art. And to meet them he

put on bright and gorgeous garments, that glittered with yellow

gold--and--scarlet byssus.

"Here is my work," said he thoughtfully.

His friends glanced and a shadow of profound sorrow covered their faces.

It was something monstrous, deprived of all the lines and shapes

familiar to the eye, but not without a hint at some new, strange image.

On a thin, crooked twig, or rather on an ugly likeness of a twig rested

askew a blind, ugly, shapeless, outspread mass of something utterly and

inconceivably distorted, a mad leap of wild and bizarre fragments, all

feebly and vainly striving to part from one another. And, as if by

chance, beneath one of the wildly-rent salients a butterfly was chiseled

with divine skill, all airy loveliness, delicacy, and beauty, with

transparent wings, which seemed to tremble with an impotent desire to

take flight.

"Wherefore this wonderful butterfly, Aurelius?" said somebody

falteringly.

"I know not"--was the sculptor's answer.

But it was necessary to tell the truth, and one of his friends who loved

him best said firmly:

"This is ugly, my poor friend. It must be destroyed. Give me the

hammer."

And with two strokes he broke the monstrous man into pieces, leaving

only the infinitely delicate butterfly untouched.

From that time on Aurelius created nothing. With profound indifference

he looked at marble and bronze, and on his former divine works, where

everlasting beauty rested. With the purpose of arousing his former

fervent passion for work and, awakening his deadened soul, his friends

took him to see other artists' beautiful works,--but he remained

indifferent as before, and the smile did not warm up his tightened lips.

And only after listening to lengthy talks about beauty, he would retort

wearily and indolently:

"But all this is a lie."

And by the day, when the sun was shining, he went into his magnificent,

skilfully built garden and having found a place without shadow, he

exposed his bare head to the glare and heat. Red and white butterflies

fluttered around; from the crooked lips of a drunken satyr, water

streamed down with a splash into a marble cistern, but he sat

motionless and silent,--like a pallid reflection of him who, in the

far-off distance, at the very gates of the stony desert, sat under the

fiery sun.

V

And now it came to pass that the great, deified Augustus himself

summoned Lazarus. The imperial messengers dressed him gorgeously, in

solemn nuptial clothes, as if Time had legalized them, and he was to

remain until his very death the bridegroom of an unknown bride. It was

as though an old, rotting coffin had been gilt and furnished with new,

gay tassels. And men, all in trim and bright attire, rode after him, as

if in bridal procession indeed, and those foremost trumpeted loudly,

bidding people to clear the way for the emperor's messengers. But

Lazarus' way was deserted: his native land cursed the hateful name of

him who had miraculously risen from the dead, and people scattered at

the very news of his appalling approach. The solitary voice of the brass

trumpets sounded in the motionless air, and the wilderness alone

responded with its languid echo.

Then Lazarus went by sea. And his was the most magnificently arrayed and

the most mournful ship that ever mirrored itself in the azure waves of

the Mediterranean Sea. Many were the travelers aboard, but like a tomb

was the ship, all silence and stillness, and the despairing water sobbed

at the steep, proudly curved prow. All alone sat Lazarus exposing his

head to the blaze of the sun, silently listening to the murmur and

splash of the wavelets, and afar seamen and messengers were sitting, a

vague group of weary shadows. Had the thunder burst and the wind

attacked the red sails, the ships would probably have perished, for none

of those aboard had either the will or the strength to struggle for

life. With a supreme effort some mariners would reach the board and

eagerly scan the blue, transparent deep, hoping to see a naiad's pink

shoulder flash in the hollow of an azure wave, or a drunken gay centaur

dash along and in frenzy splash the wave with his hoof. But the sea was

like a wilderness, and the deep was dumb and deserted.

With utter indifference did Lazarus set his feet on the street of the

eternal city. As though all her wealth, all the magnificence of her

palaces built by giants, all the resplendence, beauty, and music of her

refined life were but the echo of the wind in the wilderness, the

reflection of the desert quicksand. Chariots were dashing, and along the

streets were moving crowds of strong, fair, proud builders of the

eternal city and haughty participants in her life; a song sounded;

fountains and women laughed a pearly laughter; drunken philosophers

harangued, and the sober listened to them with a smile; hoofs struck the

stone pavements. And surrounded by cheerful noise, a stout, heavy man

was moving, a cold spot of silence and despair, and on his way he sowed

disgust, anger, and vague, gnawing weariness. Who dares to be sad in

Rome, wondered indignantly the citizens, and frowned. In two days the

entire city already knew all about him who had miraculously risen from

the dead, and shunned him shyly.

But some daring people there were, who wanted to test their strength,

and Lazarus obeyed their imprudent summons. Kept busy by state affairs,

the emperor constantly delayed the reception, and seven days did he who

had risen from the dead go about visiting others.

And Lazarus came to a cheerful Epicurean, and the host met him with

laughter on his lips:

"Drink, Lazarus, drink!"--shouted he. "Would not Augustus laugh to see

thee drunk!"

And half-naked drunken women laughed, and rose petals fell on Lazarus'

blue hands. But then the Epicurean looked into Lazarus' eyes, and his

gaiety ended forever. Drunkard remained he for the rest of his life;

never did he drink, yet forever was he drunk. But instead of the gay

reverie which wine brings with it, frightful dreams began to haunt him,

the sole food of his stricken spirit. Day and night he lived in the

poisonous vapors of his nightmares, and death itself was not more

frightful than her raving, monstrous forerunners.

And Lazarus came to a youth and his beloved, who loved each other and

were most beautiful in their passions. Proudly and strongly embracing

his love, the youth said with serene regret:

"Look at us, Lazarus, and share our joy. Is there anything stronger

than love?"

And Lazarus looked. And for the rest of their life they kept on loving

each other, but their passion grew gloomy and joyless, like those

funeral cypresses whose roots feed on the decay of the graves and whose

black summits in a still evening hour seek in vain to reach the sky.

Thrown by the unknown forces of life into each other's embraces, they

mingled tears with kisses, voluptuous pleasures with pain, and they felt

themselves doubly slaves, obedient slaves to life, and patient servants

of the silent Nothingness. Ever united, ever severed, they blazed like

sparks and like sparks lost themselves in the boundless Dark.

And Lazarus came to a haughty sage, and the sage said to him:

"I know all the horrors thou canst reveal to me. Is there anything thou

canst frighten me with?"

But before long the sage felt that the knowledge of horror was far from

being the horror itself, and that the vision of Death, was not Death.

And he felt that wisdom and folly are equal before the face of Infinity,

for Infinity knows them not. And it vanished, the dividing-line between

knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, top and bottom, and the

shapeless thought hung suspended in the void. Then the sage clutched his

gray head and cried out frantically:

"I cannot think! I cannot think!"

Thus under the indifferent glance for him, who miraculously had risen

from the dead, perished everything that asserts life, its significance

and joys. And it was suggested that it was dangerous to let him see the

emperor, that it was better to kill him and, having buried him secretly,

to tell the emperor that he had disappeared no one knew whither. Already

swords were being whetted and youths devoted to the public welfare

prepared for the murder, when Augustus ordered Lazarus to be brought

before him next morning, thus destroying the cruel plans.

If there was no way of getting rid of Lazarus, at least it was possible

to soften the terrible impression his face produced. With this in view,

skillful painters, barbers, and artists were summoned, and all night

long they were busy over Lazarus' head. They cropped his beard, curled

it, and gave it a tidy, agreeable appearance. By means of paints they

concealed the corpse-like blueness of his hands and face. Repulsive were

the wrinkles of suffering that furrowed his old face, and they were

puttied, painted, and smoothed; then, over the smooth background,

wrinkles of good-tempered laughter and pleasant, carefree mirth were

skillfully painted with fine brushes.

Lazarus submitted indifferently to everything that was done to him. Soon

he was turned into a becomingly stout, venerable old man, into a quiet

and kind grandfather of numerous offspring. It seemed that the smile,

with which only a while ago he was spinning funny yarns, was still

lingering on his lips, and that in the corner of his eye serene

tenderness was hiding, the companion of old age. But people did not dare

change his nuptial garments, and they could not change his eyes, two

dark and frightful glasses through which looked at men, the unknowable

Yonder.

VI

Lazarus was not moved by the magnificence of the imperial palace. It was

as though he saw no difference between the crumbling house, closely

pressed by the desert, and the stone palace, solid and fair, and

indifferently he passed into it. And the hard marble of the floors under

his feet grew similar to the quicksand of the desert, and the multitude

of richly dressed and haughty men became like void air under his glance.

No one looked into his face, as Lazarus passed by, fearing to fall under

the appalling influence of his eyes; but when the sound of his heavy

footsteps had sufficiently died down, the courtiers raised their heads

and with fearful curiosity examined the figure of a stout, tall,

slightly bent old man, who was slowly penetrating into the very heart of

the imperial palace. Were Death itself passing, it would be faced with

no greater fear: for until then the dead alone knew Death, and those

alive knew Life only--and there was no bridge between them. But this

extraordinary man, although alive, knew Death, and enigmatical,

appalling, was his cursed knowledge. "Woe," people thought, "he will

take the life of our great, deified Augustus," and they sent curses

after Lazarus, who meanwhile kept on advancing into the interior of the

palace.

Already did the emperor know who Lazarus was, and prepared to meet him.

But the monarch was a brave man, and felt his own tremendous,

unconquerable power, and in his fatal duel with him who had miraculously

risen from the dead he wanted not to invoke human help. And so he met

Lazarus face to face:

"Lift not thine eyes upon me, Lazarus," he ordered. "I heard thy face is

like that of Medusa and turns into stone whomsoever thou lookest at.

Now, I wish to see thee and to have a talk with thee, before I turn into

stone,"--added he in a tone of kingly jesting, not devoid of fear.

Coming close to him, he carefully examined Lazarus' face and his strange

festal garments. And although he had a keen eye, he was deceived by his

appearance.

"So. Thou dost not appear terrible, my venerable old man. But the worse

for us, if horror assumes such a respectable and pleasant air. Now let

us have a talk."

Augustus sat, and questioning Lazarus with his eye as much as with

words, started the conversation:

"Why didst thou not greet me as thou enteredst?"

Lazarus answered indifferent:

"I knew not it was necessary."

"Art thou a Christian?"

"No."

Augustus approvingly shook his head.

"That is good. I do not like Christians. They shake the tree of life

before it is covered with fruit, and disperse its odorous bloom to the

winds. But who art thou?"

With a visible effort Lazarus answered:

"I was dead."

"I had heard that. But who art thou now?"

Lazarus was silent, but at last repeated in a tone of weary apathy:

"I was dead."

"Listen to me, stranger," said the emperor, distinctly and severely

giving utterance to the thought that had come to him at the beginning,

"my realm is the realm of Life, my people are of the living, not of the

dead. Thou art here one too many. I know not who thou art and what thou

sawest there; but, if thou liest, I hate thy lies, and if thou tellst

the truth, I hate thy truth. In my bosom I feel the throb of life; I

feel strength in my arm, and my proud thoughts, like eagles, pierce the

space. And yonder in the shelter of my rule, under the protection of

laws created by me, people live and toil and rejoice. Dost thou hear the

battle-cry, the challenge men throw into the face of the future?"

Augustus, as in prayer, stretched forth his arms and exclaimed

solemnly:

"Be blessed, O great and divine Life!"

Lazarus was silent, and with growing sternness the emperor went on:

"Thou art not wanted here, miserable remnant, snatched from under

Death's teeth, thou inspirest weariness and disgust with life; like a

caterpillar in the fields, thou gloatest on the rich ear of joy and

belchest out the drivel of despair and sorrow. Thy truth is like a rusty

sword in the hands of a nightly murderer,--and as a murderer thou shalt

be executed. But before that, let me look into thine eyes. Perchance,

only cowards are afraid of them, but in the brave they awake the thirst

for strife and victory; then thou shalt be rewarded, not executed....

Now, look at me, Lazarus."

At first it appeared to the deified Augustus that a friend was looking

at him,--so soft, so tenderly fascinating was Lazarus' glance. It

promised not horror, but sweet rest and the Infinite seemed to him a

tender mistress, a compassionate sister, a mother. But stronger and

stronger grew its embraces, and already the mouth, greedy of hissing

kisses, interfered with the monarch's breathing, and already to the

surface of the soft tissues of the body came the iron of the bones and

tightened its merciless circle,--and unknown fangs, blunt and cold,

touched his heart and sank into it with slow indolence.

"It pains," said the deified Augustus, growing pale. "But look at me,

Lazarus, look."

It was as though some heavy gates, ever closed, were slowly moving

apart, and through the growing interstice the appalling horror of the

Infinite poured in slowly and steadily. Like two shadows there entered

the shoreless void and the unfathomable darkness; they extinguished the

sun, ravished the earth from under the feet, and the roof from over the

head. No more did the frozen heart ache.

"Look, look, Lazarus," ordered Augustus tottering.

Time stood still, and the beginning of each thing grew frightfully near

to its end. Augustus' throne just erected, crumbled down, and the void

was already in the place of the throne and of Augustus. Noiselessly did

Rome crumble down, and a new city stood on its site and it too was

swallowed by the void. Like fantastic giants, cities, states, and

countries fell down and vanished in the void darkness--and with

uttermost indifference did the insatiable black womb of the Infinite

swallow them.

"Halt!"--ordered the emperor.

In his voice sounded already a note of indifference, his hands dropped

in languor, and in the vain struggle with the onrushing darkness his

fiery eyes now blazed up, and now went out.

"My life thou hast taken from me, Lazarus,"--said he in a spiritless,

feeble voice.

And these words of hopelessness saved him. He remembered his people,

whose shield he was destined to be, and keen salutary pain pierced his

deadened heart. "They are doomed to death," he thought wearily. "Serene

shadows in the darkness of the Infinite," thought he, and horror grew

upon him. "Frail vessels with living seething blood with a heart that

knows sorrow and also great joy," said he in his heart, and tenderness

pervaded it.

Thus pondering and oscillating between the poles of Life and Death, he

slowly came back to life, to find in its suffering and in its joys a

shield against the darkness of the void and the horror of the Infinite.

"No, thou hast not murdered me, Lazarus," said he firmly, "but I will

take thy life. Be gone."

That evening the deified Augustus partook of his meats and drinks with

particular joy. Now and then his lifted hand remained suspended in the

air, and a dull glimmer replaced the bright sheen of his fiery eye. It

was the cold wave of Horror that surged at his feet. Defeated, but not

undone, ever awaiting its hour, that Horror stood at the emperor's

bedside, like a black shadow all through his life; it swayed his nights,

but yielded the days to the sorrows and joys of life.

The following day, the hangman with a hot iron burned out Lazarus' eyes.

Then he was sent home. The deified Augustus dared not kill him.

*       *       *       *       *

Lazarus returned to the desert, and the wilderness met him with hissing

gusts of wind and the heat of the blazing sun. Again he was sitting on a

stone, his rough, bushy beard lifted up; and the two black holes in

place of his eyes looked at the sky with an expression of dull terror.

Afar-off the holy city stirred noisily and restlessly, but around him

everything was deserted and dumb. No one approached the place where

lived he who had miraculously risen from the dead, and long since his

neighbors had forsaken their houses. Driven by the hot iron into the

depth of his skull, his cursed knowledge hid there in an ambush. As

though leaping out from an ambush it plunged its thousand invisible eyes

into the man,--and no one dared look at Lazarus.

And in the evening, when the sun, reddening and growing wider, would

come nearer and nearer the western horizon, the blind Lazarus would

slowly follow it. He would stumble against stones and fall, stout and

weak as he was; would rise heavily to his feet and walk on again; and on

the red screen of the sunset his black body and outspread hands would

form a monstrous likeness of a cross.

And it came to pass that once he went out and did not come back. Thus

seemingly ended the second life of him who for three days had been under

the enigmatical sway of death, and rose miraculously from the dead.

The Beast with Five Fingers

BY W.F. HARVEY

From _The New Decameron_, by Various Hands. Copyright, 1919, by

Robert M. McBride and Company. By permission of the publishers.

When I was a little boy I once went with my father to call on Adrian

Borlsover. I played on the floor with a black spaniel while my father

appealed for a subscription. Just before we left my father said, "Mr.

Borlsover, may my son here shake hands with you? It will be a thing to

look back upon with pride when he grows to be a man."

I came up to the bed on which the old man was lying and put my hand in

his, awed by the still beauty of his face. He spoke to me kindly, and

hoped that I should always try to please my father. Then he placed his

right hand on my head and asked for a blessing to rest upon me. "Amen!"

said my father, and I followed him out of the room, feeling as if I

wanted to cry. But my father was in excellent spirits.

"That old gentleman, Jim," said he, "is the most wonderful man in the

whole town. For ten years he has been quite blind."

"But I saw his eyes," I said. "They were ever so black and shiny; they

weren't shut up like Nora's puppies. Can't he see at all?"

And so I learnt for the first time that a man might have eyes that

looked dark and beautiful and shining without being able to see.

"Just like Mrs. Tomlinson has big ears," I said, "and can't hear at all

except when Mr. Tomlinson shouts."

"Jim," said my father, "it's not right to talk about a lady's ears.

Remember what Mr. Borlsover said about pleasing me and being a good

boy."

That was the only time I saw Adrian Borlsover. I soon forgot about him

and the hand which he laid in blessing on my head. But for a week I

prayed that those dark tender eyes might see.

"His spaniel may have puppies," I said in my prayers, "and he will never

be able to know how funny they look with their eyes all closed up.

Please let old Mr. Borlsover see."

*       *       *       *       *

Adrian Borlsover, as my father had said, was a wonderful man. He came of

an eccentric family. Borlsovers' sons, for some reason, always seemed to

marry very ordinary women, which perhaps accounted for the fact that no

Borlsover had been a genius, and only one Borlsover had been mad. But

they were great champions of little causes, generous patrons of odd

sciences, founders of querulous sects, trustworthy guides to the bypath

meadows of erudition.

Adrian was an authority on the fertilization of orchids. He had held at

one time the family living at Borlsover Conyers, until a congenital

weakness of the lungs obliged him to seek a less rigorous climate in the

sunny south coast watering-place where I had seen him. Occasionally he

would relieve one or other of the local clergy. My father described him

as a fine preacher, who gave long and inspiring sermons from what many

men would have considered unprofitable texts. "An excellent proof," he

would add, "of the truth of the doctrine of direct verbal inspiration."

Adrian Borlsover was exceedingly clever with his hands. His penmanship

was exquisite. He illustrated all his scientific papers, made his own

woodcuts, and carved the reredos that is at present the chief feature of

interest in the church at Borlsover Conyers. He had an exceedingly

clever knack in cutting silhouettes for young ladies and paper pigs and

cows for little children, and made more than one complicated wind

instrument of his own devising.

When he was fifty years old Adrian Borlsover lost his sight. In a

wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of

life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvelous indeed was his

sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in

botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was

sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would

use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's

correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was

afflicted with blindness and this in spite of the fact that he exercised

undue economy in the spacing of lines. Towards the close of his life the

old man was credited with powers of touch that seemed almost uncanny: it

has been said that he could tell at once the color of a ribbon placed

between his fingers. My father would neither confirm nor deny the story.

I

Adrian Borlsover was a bachelor. His elder brother George had married

late in life, leaving one son, Eustace, who lived in the gloomy Georgian

mansion at Borlsover Conyers, where he could work undisturbed in

collecting material for his great book on heredity.

Like his uncle, he was a remarkable man. The Borlsovers had always been

born naturalists, but Eustace possessed in a special degree the power of

systematizing his knowledge. He had received his university education in

Germany, and then, after post-graduate work in Vienna and Naples, had

traveled for four years in South America and the East, getting together

a huge store of material for a new study into the processes of

variation.

He lived alone at Borlsover Conyers with Saunders his secretary, a man

who bore a somewhat dubious reputation in the district, but whose

powers as a mathematician, combined with his business abilities, were

invaluable to Eustace.

Uncle and nephew saw little of each other. The visits of Eustace were

confined to a week in the summer or autumn: long weeks, that dragged

almost as slowly as the bath-chair in which the old man was drawn along

the sunny sea front. In their way the two men were fond of each other,

though their intimacy would doubtless have been greater had they shared

the same religious views. Adrian held to the old-fashioned evangelical

dogmas of his early manhood; his nephew for many years had been thinking

of embracing Buddhism. Both men possessed, too, the reticence the

Borlsovers had always shown, and which their enemies sometimes called

hypocrisy. With Adrian it was a reticence as to the things he had left

undone; but with Eustace it seemed that the curtain which he was so

careful to leave undrawn hid something more than a half-empty chamber.

*       *       *       *       *

Two years before his death Adrian Borlsover developed, unknown to

himself, the not uncommon power of automatic writing. Eustace made the

discovery by accident. Adrian was sitting reading in bed, the forefinger

of his left hand tracing the Braille characters, when his nephew noticed

that a pencil the old man held in his right hand was moving slowly along

the opposite page. He left his seat in the window and sat down beside

the bed. The right hand continued to move, and now he could see plainly

that they were letters and words which it was forming.

"Adrian Borlsover," wrote the hand, "Eustace Borlsover, George

Borlsover, Francis Borlsover Sigismund Borlsover, Adrian Borlsover,

Eustace Borlsover, Saville Borlsover. B, for Borlsover. Honesty is the

Best Policy. Beautiful Belinda Borlsover."

"What curious nonsense!" said Eustace to himself.

"King George the Third ascended the throne in 1760," wrote the hand.

"Crowd, a noun of multitude; a collection of individuals--Adrian

Borlsover, Eustace Borlsover."

"It seems to me," said his uncle, closing the book, "that you had much

better make the most of the afternoon sunshine and take your walk now."

"I think perhaps I will," Eustace answered as he picked up the volume.

"I won't go far, and when I come back I can read to you those articles

in _Nature_ about which we were speaking."

He went along the promenade, but stopped at the first shelter, and

seating himself in the corner best protected from the wind, he examined

the book at leisure. Nearly every page was scored with a meaningless

jungle of pencil marks: rows of capital letters, short words, long

words, complete sentences, copy-book tags. The whole thing, in fact, had

the appearance of a copy-book, and on a more careful scrutiny Eustace

thought that there was ample evidence to show that the handwriting at

the beginning of the book, good though it was was not nearly so good as

the handwriting at the end.

He left his uncle at the end of October, with a promise to return early

in December. It seemed to him quite clear that the old man's power of

automatic writing was developing rapidly, and for the first time he

looked forward to a visit that combined duty with interest.

But on his return he was at first disappointed. His uncle, he thought,

looked older. He was listless too, preferring others to read to him and

dictating nearly all his letters. Not until the day before he left had

Eustace an opportunity of observing Adrian Borlsover's new-found

faculty.

The old man, propped up in bed with pillows, had sunk into a light

sleep. His two hands lay on the coverlet, his left hand tightly clasping

his right. Eustace took an empty manuscript book and placed a pencil

within reach of the fingers of the right hand. They snatched at it

eagerly; then dropped the pencil to unloose the left hand from its

restraining grasp.

"Perhaps to prevent interference I had better hold that hand," said

Eustace to himself, as he watched the pencil. Almost immediately it

began to write.

"Blundering Borlsovers, unnecessarily unnatural, extraordinarily

eccentric, culpably curious."

"Who are you?" asked Eustace, in a low voice.

"Never you mind," wrote the hand of Adrian.

"Is it my uncle who is writing?"

"Oh, my prophetic soul, mine uncle."

"Is it anyone I know?"

"Silly Eustace, you'll see me very soon."

"When shall I see you?"

"When poor old Adrian's dead."

"Where shall I see you?"

"Where shall you not?"

Instead of speaking his next question, Borlsover wrote it. "What is the

time?"

The fingers dropped the pencil and moved three or four times across the

paper. Then, picking up the pencil, they wrote:

"Ten minutes before four. Put your book away, Eustace. Adrian mustn't

find us working at this sort of thing. He doesn't know what to make of

it, and I won't have poor old Adrian disturbed. _Au revoir_."

Adrian Borlsover awoke with a start.

"I've been dreaming again," he said; "such queer dreams of leaguered

cities and forgotten towns. You were mixed up in this one, Eustace,

though I can't remember how. Eustace, I want to warn you. Don't walk in

doubtful paths. Choose your friends well. Your poor grandfather----"

A fit of coughing put an end to what he was saying, but Eustace saw that

the hand was still writing. He managed unnoticed to draw the book away.

"I'll light the gas," he said, "and ring for tea." On the other side of

the bed curtain he saw the last sentences that had been written.

"It's too late, Adrian," he read. "We're friends already; aren't we,

Eustace Borlsover?"

On the following day Eustace Borlsover left. He thought his uncle looked

ill when he said good-by, and the old man spoke despondently of the

failure his life had been.

"Nonsense, uncle!" said his nephew. "You have got over your difficulties

in a way not one in a hundred thousand would have done. Every one

marvels at your splendid perseverance in teaching your hand to take the

place of your lost sight. To me it's been a revelation of the

possibilities of education."

"Education," said his uncle dreamily, as if the word had started a new

train of thought, "education is good so long as you know to whom and for

what purpose you give it. But with the lower orders of men, the base and

more sordid spirits, I have grave doubts as to its results. Well,

good-by, Eustace, I may not see you again. You are a true Borlsover,

with all the Borlsover faults. Marry, Eustace. Marry some good, sensible

girl. And if by any chance I don't see you again, my will is at my

solicitor's. I've not left you any legacy, because I know you're well

provided for, but I thought you might like to have my books. Oh, and

there's just one other thing. You know, before the end people often lose

control over themselves and make absurd requests. Don't pay any

attention to them, Eustace. Good-by!" and he held out his hand. Eustace

took it. It remained in his a fraction of a second longer than he had

expected, and gripped him with a virility that was surprising. There

was, too, in its touch a subtle sense of intimacy.

"Why, uncle!" he said, "I shall see you alive and well for many long

years to come."

Two months later Adrian Borlsover died.

II

Eustace Borlsover was in Naples at the time. He read the obituary notice

in the _Morning Post_ on the day announced for the funeral.

"Poor old fellow!" he said. "I wonder where I shall find room for all

his books."

The question occurred to him again with greater force when three days

later he found himself standing in the library at Borlsover Conyers, a

huge room built for use, and not for beauty, in the year of Waterloo by

a Borlsover who was an ardent admirer of the great Napoleon. It was

arranged on the plan of many college libraries, with tall, projecting

bookcases forming deep recesses of dusty silence, fit graves for the old

hates of forgotten controversy, the dead passions of forgotten lives. At

the end of the room, behind the bust of some unknown eighteenth-century

divine, an ugly iron corkscrew stair led to a shelf-lined gallery.

Nearly every shelf was full.

"I must talk to Saunders about it," said Eustace. "I suppose that it

will be necessary to have the billiard-room fitted up with book cases."

The two men met for the first time after many weeks in the dining-room

that evening.

"Hullo!" said Eustace, standing before the fire with his hands in his

pockets. "How goes the world, Saunders? Why these dress togs?" He

himself was wearing an old shooting-jacket. He did not believe in

mourning, as he had told his uncle on his last visit; and though he

usually went in for quiet-colored ties, he wore this evening one of an

ugly red, in order to shock Morton the butler, and to make them thrash

out the whole question of mourning for themselves in the servants' hall.

Eustace was a true Borlsover. "The world," said Saunders, "goes the same

as usual, confoundedly slow. The dress togs are accounted for by an

invitation from Captain Lockwood to bridge."

"How are you getting there?"

"I've told your coachman to drive me in your carriage. Any objection?"

"Oh, dear me, no! We've had all things in common for far too many years

for me to raise objections at this hour of the day."

"You'll find your correspondence in the library," went on Saunders.

"Most of it I've seen to. There are a few private letters I haven't

opened. There's also a box with a rat, or something, inside it that

came by the evening post. Very likely it's the six-toed albino. I didn't

look, because I didn't want to mess up my things but I should gather

from the way it's jumping about that it's pretty hungry."

"Oh, I'll see to it," said Eustace, "while you and the Captain earn an

honest penny."

Dinner over and Saunders gone, Eustace went into the library. Though the

fire had been lit the room was by no means cheerful.

"We'll have all the lights on at any rate," he said, as he turned the

switches. "And, Morton," he added, when the butler brought the coffee,

"get me a screwdriver or something to undo this box. Whatever the animal

is, he's kicking up the deuce of a row. What is it? Why are you

dawdling?"

"If you please, sir, when the postman brought it he told me that they'd

bored the holes in the lid at the post-office. There were no breathin'

holes in the lid, sir, and they didn't want the animal to die. That is

all, sir."

"It's culpably careless of the man, whoever he was," said Eustace, as he

removed the screws, "packing an animal like this in a wooden box with no

means of getting air. Confound it all! I meant to ask Morton to bring me

a cage to put it in. Now I suppose I shall have to get one myself."

He placed a heavy book on the lid from which the screws had been

removed, and went into the billiard-room. As he came back into the

library with an empty cage in his hand he heard the sound of something

falling, and then of something scuttling along the floor.

"Bother it! The beast's got out. How in the world am I to find it again

in this library!"

To search for it did indeed seem hopeless. He tried to follow the sound

of the scuttling in one of the recesses where the animal seemed to be

running behind the books in the shelves, but it was impossible to locate

it. Eustace resolved to go on quietly reading. Very likely the animal

might gain confidence and show itself. Saunders seemed to have dealt in

his usual methodical manner with most of the correspondence. There were

still the private letters.

What was that? Two sharp clicks and the lights in the hideous candelabra

that hung from the ceiling suddenly went out.

"I wonder if something has gone wrong with the fuse," said Eustace, as

he went to the switches by the door. Then he stopped. There was a noise

at the other end of the room, as if something was crawling up the iron

corkscrew stair. "If it's gone into the gallery," he said, "well and

good." He hastily turned on the lights, crossed the room, and climbed up

the stair. But he could see nothing. His grandfather had placed a little

gate at the top of the stair, so that children could run and romp in the

gallery without fear of accident. This Eustace closed, and having

considerably narrowed the circle of his search, returned to his desk by

the fire.

How gloomy the library was! There was no sense of intimacy about the

room. The few busts that an eighteenth-century Borlsover had brought

back from the grand tour, might have been in keeping in the old library.

Here they seemed out of place. They made the room feel cold, in spite of

the heavy red damask curtains and great gilt cornices.

With a crash two heavy books fell from the gallery to the floor; then,

as Borlsover looked, another and yet another.

"Very well; you'll starve for this, my beauty!" he said. "We'll do some

little experiments on the metabolism of rats deprived of water. Go on!

Chuck them down! I think I've got the upper hand." He turned once again

to his correspondence. The letter was from the family solicitor. It

spoke of his uncle's death and of the valuable collection of books that

had been left to him in the will.

"There was one request," he read, "which certainly came as a surprise to

me. As you know, Mr. Adrian Borlsover had left instructions that his

body was to be buried in as simple a manner as possible at Eastbourne.

He expressed a desire that there should be neither wreaths nor flowers

of any kind, and hoped that his friends and relatives would not consider

it necessary to wear mourning. The day before his death we received a

letter canceling these instructions. He wished his body to be embalmed

(he gave us the address of the man we were to employ--Pennifer, Ludgate

Hill), with orders that his right hand was to be sent to you, stating

that it was at your special request. The other arrangements as to the

funeral remained unaltered."

"Good Lord!" said Eustace; "what in the world was the old boy driving

at? And what in the name of all that's holy is that?"

Someone was in the gallery. Someone had pulled the cord attached to one

of the blinds, and it had rolled up with a snap. Someone must be in the

gallery, for a second blind did the same. Someone must be walking round

the gallery, for one after the other the blinds sprang up, letting in

the moonlight.

"I haven't got to the bottom of this yet," said Eustace, "but I will do

before the night is very much older," and he hurried up the corkscrew

stair. He had just got to the top when the lights went out a second

time, and he heard again the scuttling along the floor. Quickly he stole

on tiptoe in the dim moonshine in the direction of the noise, feeling as

he went for one of the switches. His fingers touched the metal knob at

last. He turned on the electric light.

About ten yards in front of him, crawling along the floor, was a man's

hand. Eustace stared at it in utter astonishment. It was moving quickly,

in the manner of a geometer caterpillar, the fingers humped up one

moment, flattened out the next; the thumb appeared to give a crab-like

motion to the whole. While he was looking, too surprised to stir, the

hand disappeared round the corner Eustace ran forward. He no longer saw

it, but he could hear it as it squeezed its way behind the books on one

of the shelves. A heavy volume had been displaced. There was a gap in

the row of books where it had got in. In his fear lest it should escape

him again, he seized the first book that came to his hand and plugged it

into the hole. Then, emptying two shelves of their contents, he took the

wooden boards and propped them up in front to make his barrier doubly

sure.

"I wish Saunders was back," he said; "one can't tackle this sort of

thing alone." It was after eleven, and there seemed little likelihood of

Saunders returning before twelve. He did not dare to leave the shelf

unwatched, even to run downstairs to ring the bell. Morton the butler

often used to come round about eleven to see that the windows were

fastened, but he might not come. Eustace was thoroughly unstrung. At

last he heard steps down below.

"Morton!" he shouted; "Morton!"

"Sir?"

"Has Mr. Saunders got back yet?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Well, bring me some brandy, and hurry up about it. I'm up here in the

gallery, you duffer."

"Thanks," said Eustace, as he emptied the glass. "Don't go to bed yet,

Morton. There are a lot of books that have fallen down by accident;

bring them up and put them back in their shelves."

Morton had never seen Borlsover in so talkative a mood as on that night.

"Here," said Eustace, when the books had been put back and dusted, "you

might hold up these boards for me, Morton. That beast in the box got

out, and I've been chasing it all over the place."

"I think I can hear it chawing at the books, sir. They're not valuable,

I hope? I think that's the carriage, sir; I'll go and call Mr.

Saunders."

It seemed to Eustace that he was away for five minutes, but it could

hardly have been more than one when he returned with Saunders. "All

right, Morton, you can go now. I'm up here, Saunders."

"What's all the row?" asked Saunders, as he lounged forward with his

hands in his pockets. The luck had been with him all the evening. He was

completely satisfied, both with himself and with Captain Lockwood's

taste in wines. "What's the matter? You look to me to be in an absolute

blue funk."

"That old devil of an uncle of mine," began Eustace--"oh, I can't

explain it all. It's his hand that's been playing old Harry all the

evening. But I've got it cornered behind these books. You've got to help

me catch it."

"What's up with you, Eustace? What's the game?"

"It's no game, you silly idiot! If you don't believe me take out one of

those books and put your hand in and feel."

"All right," said Saunders; "but wait till I've rolled up my sleeve. The

accumulated dust of centuries, eh?" He took off his coat, knelt down,

and thrust his arm along the shelf.

"There's something there right enough," he said. "It's got a funny

stumpy end to it, whatever it is, and nips like a crab. Ah, no, you

don't!" He pulled his hand out in a flash. "Shove in a book quickly. Now

it can't get out."

"What was it?" asked Eustace.

"It was something that wanted very much to get hold of me. I felt what

seemed like a thumb and forefinger. Give me some brandy."

"How are we to get it out of there?"

"What about a landing net?"

"No good. It would be too smart for us. I tell you, Saunders, it can

cover the ground far faster than I can walk. But I think I see how we

can manage it. The two books at the end of the shelf are big ones that

go right back against the wall. The others are very thin. I'll take out

one at a time, and you slide the rest along until we have it squashed

between the end two."

It certainly seemed to be the best plan. One by one, as they took out

the books, the space behind grew smaller and smaller. There was

something in it that was certainly very much alive. Once they caught

sight of fingers pressing outward for a way of escape. At last they had

it pressed between the two big books.

"There's muscle there, if there isn't flesh and blood," said Saunders,

as he held them together. "It seems to be a hand right enough, too. I

suppose this is a sort of infectious hallucination. I've read about such

cases before."

"Infectious fiddlesticks!" said Eustace, his face white with anger;

"bring the thing downstairs. We'll get it back into the box."

It was not altogether easy, but they were successful at last. "Drive in

the screws," said Eustace, "we won't run any risks. Put the box in this

old desk of mine. There's nothing in it that I want. Here's the key.

Thank goodness, there's nothing wrong with the lock."

"Quite a lively evening," said Saunders. "Now let's hear more about your

uncle."

They sat up together until early morning. Saunders had no desire for

sleep. Eustace was trying to explain and to forget: to conceal from

himself a fear that he had never felt before--the fear of walking alone

down the long corridor to his bedroom.

III

"Whatever it was," said Eustace to Saunders on the following morning, "I

propose that we drop the subject. There's nothing to keep us here for

the next ten days. We'll motor up to the Lakes and get some climbing."

"And see nobody all day, and sit bored to death with each other every

night. Not for me thanks. Why not run up to town? Run's the exact word

in this case, isn't it? We're both in such a blessed funk. Pull yourself

together Eustace, and let's have another look at the hand."

"As you like," said Eustace; "there's the key." They went into the

library and opened the desk. The box was as they had left it on the

previous night.

"What are you waiting for?" asked Eustace.

"I am waiting for you to volunteer to open the lid. However, since you

seem to funk it, allow me. There doesn't seem to be the likelihood of

any rumpus this morning, at all events." He opened the lid and picked

out the hand.

"Cold?" asked Eustace.

"Tepid. A bit below blood-heat by the feel. Soft and supple too. If it's

the embalming, it's a sort of embalming I've never seen before. Is it

your uncle's hand?"

"Oh, yes, it's his all right," said Eustace. "I should know those long

thin fingers anywhere. Put it back in the box, Saunders. Never mind

about the screws. I'll lock the desk, so that there'll be no chance of

its getting out. We'll compromise by motoring up to town for a week. If

we get off soon after lunch we ought to be at Grantham or Stamford by

night."

"Right," said Saunders; "and to-morrow--Oh, well, by to-morrow we shall

have forgotten all about this beastly thing."

If when the morrow came they had not forgotten, it was certainly true

that at the end of the week they were able to tell a very vivid ghost

story at the little supper Eustace gave on Hallow E'en.

"You don't want us to believe that it's true, Mr. Borlsover? How

perfectly awful!"

"I'll take my oath on it, and so would Saunders here; wouldn't you, old

chap?"

"Any number of oaths," said Saunders. "It was a long thin hand, you

know, and it gripped me just like that."

"Don't Mr. Saunders! Don't! How perfectly horrid! Now tell us another

one, do. Only a really creepy one, please!"

*       *       *       *       *

"Here's a pretty mess!" said Eustace on the following day as he threw a

letter across the table to Saunders. "It's your affair, though. Mrs.

Merrit, if I understand it, gives a month's notice."

"Oh, that's quite absurd on Mrs. Merrit's part," Saunders replied. "She

doesn't know what she's talking about. Let's see what she says."

"DEAR SIR," he read, "this is to let you know that I must give you a

month's notice as from Tuesday the 13th. For a long time I've felt the

place too big for me, but when Jane Parfit, and Emma Laidlaw go off

with scarcely as much as an 'if you please,' after frightening the wits

out of the other girls, so that they can't turn out a room by themselves

or walk alone down the stairs for fear of treading on half-frozen toads

or hearing it run along the passages at night, all I can say is that

it's no place for me. So I must ask you, Mr. Borlsover, sir, to find a

new housekeeper that has no objection to large and lonely houses, which

some people do say, not that I believe them for a minute, my poor mother

always having been a Wesleyan, are haunted.

"Yours faithfully,

ELIZABETH MERRIT.

"P.S.--I should be obliged if you would give my respects to Mr.

Saunders. I hope that he won't run no risks with his cold."

"Saunders," said Eustace, "you've always had a wonderful way with you in

dealing with servants. You mustn't let poor old Merrit go."

"Of course she shan't go," said Saunders. "She's probably only angling

for a rise in salary. I'll write to her this morning."

"No; there's nothing like a personal interview. We've had enough of

town. We'll go back to-morrow, and you must work your cold for all it's

worth. Don't forget that it's got on to the chest, and will require

weeks of feeding up and nursing."

"All right. I think I can manage Mrs. Merrit."

But Mrs. Merrit was more obstinate than he had thought. She was very

sorry to hear of Mr. Saunders's cold, and how he lay awake all night in

London coughing; very sorry indeed. She'd change his room for him

gladly, and get the south room aired. And wouldn't he have a basin of

hot bread and milk last thing at night? But she was afraid that she

would have to leave at the end of the month.

"Try her with an increase of salary," was the advice of Eustace.

It was no use. Mrs. Merrit was obdurate, though she knew of a Mrs.

Handyside who had been housekeeper to Lord Gargrave, who might be glad

to come at the salary mentioned.

"What's the matter with the servants, Morton?" asked Eustace that

evening when he brought the coffee into the library. "What's all this

about Mrs. Merrit wanting to leave?"

"If you please, sir, I was going to mention it myself. I have a

confession to make, sir. When I found your note asking me to open that

desk and take out the box with the rat, I broke the lock as you told me,

and was glad to do it, because I could hear the animal in the box making

a great noise, and I thought it wanted food. So I took out the box, sir,

and got a cage, and was going to transfer it, when the animal got away."

"What in the world are you talking about? I never wrote any such note."

"Excuse me, sir, it was the note I picked up here on the floor on the

day you and Mr. Saunders left. I have it in my pocket now."

It certainly seemed to be in Eustace's handwriting. It was written in

pencil, and began somewhat abruptly.

"Get a hammer, Morton," he read, "or some other tool, and break open the

lock in the old desk in the library. Take out the box that is inside.

You need not do anything else. The lid is already open. Eustace

Borlsover."

"And you opened the desk?"

"Yes, sir; and as I was getting the cage ready the animal hopped out."

"What animal?"

"The animal inside the box, sir."

"What did it look like?"

"Well, sir, I couldn't tell you," said Morton nervously; "my back was

turned, and it was halfway down the room when I looked up."

"What was its color?" asked Saunders; "black?"

"Oh, no, sir, a grayish white. It crept along in a very funny way, sir.

I don't think it had a tail."

"What did you do then?"

"I tried to catch it, but it was no use. So I set the rat-traps and kept

the library shut. Then that girl Emma Laidlaw left the door open when

she was cleaning, and I think it must have escaped."

"And you think it was the animal that's been frightening the maids?"

"Well, no, sir, not quite. They said it was--you'll excuse me, sir--a

hand that they saw. Emma trod on it once at the bottom of the stairs.

She thought then it was a half-frozen toad, only white. And then Parfit

was washing up the dishes in the scullery. She wasn't thinking about

anything in particular. It was close on dusk. She took her hands out of

the water and was drying them absent-minded like on the roller towel,

when she found that she was drying someone else's hand as well, only

colder than hers."

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Saunders.

"Exactly, sir; that's what I told her; but we couldn't get her to stop."

"You don't believe all this?" said Eustace, turning suddenly towards the

butler.

"Me, sir? Oh, no, sir! I've not seen anything."

"Nor heard anything?"

"Well, sir, if you must know, the bells do ring at odd times, and

there's nobody there when we go; and when we go round to draw the blinds

of a night, as often as not somebody's been there before us. But as I

says to Mrs. Merrit, a young monkey might do wonderful things, and we

all know that Mr. Borlsover has had some strange animals about the

place."

"Very well, Morton, that will do."

"What do you make of it?" asked Saunders when they were alone. "I mean

of the letter he said you wrote."

"Oh, that's simple enough," said Eustace. "See the paper it's written

on? I stopped using that years ago, but there were a few odd sheets and

envelopes left in the old desk. We never fastened up the lid of the box

before locking it in. The hand got out, found a pencil, wrote this note,

and shoved it through a crack on to the floor where Morton found it.

That's plain as daylight."

"But the hand couldn't write?"

"Couldn't it? You've not seen it do the things I've seen," and he told

Saunders more of what had happened at Eastbourne.

"Well," said Saunders, "in that case we have at least an explanation of

the legacy. It was the hand which wrote unknown to your uncle that

letter to your solicitor, bequeathing itself to you. Your uncle had no

more to do with that request than I. In fact, it would seem that he had

some idea of this automatic writing, and feared it."

"Then if it's not my uncle, what is it?"

"I suppose some people might say that a disembodied spirit had got your

uncle to educate and prepare a little body for it. Now it's got into

that little body and is off on its own."

"Well, what are we to do?"

"We'll keep our eyes open," said Saunders, "and try to catch it. If we

can't do that, we shall have to wait till the bally clockwork runs

down. After all, if it's flesh and blood, it can't live for ever."

For two days nothing happened. Then Saunders saw it sliding down the

banister in the hall. He was taken unawares, and lost a full second

before he started in pursuit, only to find that the thing had escaped

him. Three days later, Eustace, writing alone in the library at night,

saw it sitting on an open book at the other end of the room. The fingers

crept over the page, feeling the print as if it were reading; but before

he had time to get up from his seat, it had taken the alarm and was

pulling itself up the curtains. Eustace watched it grimly as it hung on

to the cornice with three fingers, flicking thumb and forefinger at him

in an expression of scornful derision.

"I know what I'll do," he said. "If I only get it into the open I'll set

the dogs on to it."

He spoke to Saunders of the suggestion.

"It's jolly good idea," he said; "only we won't wait till we find it out

of doors. We'll get the dogs. There are the two terriers and the

under-keeper's Irish mongrel that's on to rats like a flash. Your

spaniel has not got spirit enough for this sort of game." They brought

the dogs into the house, and the keeper's Irish mongrel chewed up the

slippers, and the terriers tripped up Morton as he waited at table; but

all three were welcome. Even false security is better than no security

at all.

For a fortnight nothing happened. Then the hand was caught, not by the

dogs, but by Mrs. Merrit's gray parrot. The bird was in the habit of

periodically removing the pins that kept its seed and water tins in

place, and of escaping through the holes in the side of the cage. When

once at liberty Peter would show no inclination to return, and would

often be about the house for days. Now, after six consecutive weeks of

captivity, Peter had again discovered a new means of unloosing his bolts

and was at large, exploring the tapestried forests of the curtains and

singing songs in praise of liberty from cornice and picture rail.

"It's no use your trying to catch him," said Eustace to Mrs. Merrit, as

she came into the study one afternoon towards dusk with a step-ladder.

"You'd much better leave Peter alone. Starve him into surrender, Mrs.

Merrit, and don't leave bananas and seed about for him to peck at when

he fancies he's hungry. You're far too softhearted."

"Well, sir, I see he's right out of reach now on that picture rail, so

if you wouldn't mind closing the door, sir, when you leave the room,

I'll bring his cage in to-night and put some meat inside it. He's that

fond of meat, though it does make him pull out his feathers to suck the

quills. They _do_ say that if you cook--"

"Never mind, Mrs. Merrit," said Eustace, who was busy writing. "That

will do; I'll keep an eye on the bird."

There was silence in the room, unbroken but for the continuous whisper

of his pen.

"Scratch poor Peter," said the bird. "Scratch poor old Peter!"

"Be quiet, you beastly bird!"

"Poor old Peter! Scratch poor Peter, do."

"I'm more likely to wring your neck if I get hold of you." He looked up

at the picture rail, and there was the hand holding on to a hook with

three fingers, and slowly scratching the head of the parrot with the

fourth. Eustace ran to the bell and pressed it hard; then across to the

window, which he closed with a bang. Frightened by the noise the parrot

shook its wings preparatory to flight, and as it did so the fingers of

the hand got hold of it by the throat. There was a shrill scream from

Peter as he fluttered across the room, wheeling round in circles that

ever descended, borne down under the weight that clung to him. The bird

dropped at last quite suddenly, and Eustace saw fingers and feathers

rolled into an inextricable mass on the floor. The struggle abruptly

ceased as finger and thumb squeezed the neck; the bird's eyes rolled up

to show the whites, and there was a faint, half-choked gurgle. But

before the fingers had time to loose their hold, Eustace had them in his

own.

"Send Mr. Saunders here at once," he said to the maid who came in answer

to the bell. "Tell him I want him immediately."

Then he went with the hand to the fire. There was a ragged gash across

the back where the bird's beak had torn it, but no blood oozed from the

wound. He noticed with disgust that the nails had grown long and

discolored.

"I'll burn the beastly thing," he said. But he could not burn it. He

tried to throw it into the flames, but his own hands, as if restrained

by some old primitive feeling, would not let him. And so Saunders found

him pale and irresolute, with the hand still clasped tightly in his

fingers.

"I've got it at last," he said in a tone of triumph.

"Good; let's have a look at it."

"Not when it's loose. Get me some nails and a hammer and a board of some

sort."

"Can you hold it all right?"

"Yes, the thing's quite limp; tired out with throttling poor old Peter,

I should say."

"And now," said Saunders when he returned with the things, "what are we

going to do?"

"Drive a nail through it first, so that it can't get away; then we can

take our time over examining it."

"Do it yourself," said Saunders. "I don't mind helping you with

guinea-pigs occasionally when there's something to be learned; partly

because I don't fear a guinea-pig's revenge. This thing's different."

"All right, you miserable skunk. I won't forget the way you've stood by

me."

He took up a nail, and before Saunders had realised what he was doing

had driven it through the hand, deep into the board.

"Oh, my aunt," he giggled hysterically, "look at it now," for the hand

was writhing in agonized contortions, squirming and wriggling upon the

nail like a worm upon the hook.

"Well," said Saunders, "you've done it now. I'll leave you to examine

it."

"Don't go, in heaven's name. Cover it up, man, cover it up! Shove a

cloth over it! Here!" and he pulled off the antimacassar from the back

of a chair and wrapped the board in it. "Now get the keys from my pocket

and open the safe. Chuck the other things out. Oh, Lord, it's getting

itself into frightful knots! and open it quick!" He threw the thing in

and banged the door.

"We'll keep it there till it dies," he said. "May I burn in hell if I

ever open the door of that safe again."

*       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Merrit departed at the end of the month. Her successor certainly

was more successful in the management of the servants. Early in her rule

she declared that she would stand no nonsense, and gossip soon withered

and died. Eustace Borlsover went back to his old way of life. Old habits

crept over and covered his new experience. He was, if anything, less

morose, and showed a greater inclination to take his natural part in

country society.

"I shouldn't be surprised if he marries one of these days," said

Saunders. "Well, I'm in no hurry for such an event. I know Eustace far

too well for the future Mrs. Borlsover to like me It will be the same

old story again: a long friendship slowly made--marriage--and a long

friendship quickly forgotten."

IV

But Eustace Borlsover did not follow the advice of his uncle and marry.

He was too fond of old slippers and tobacco. The cooking, too, under

Mrs. Handyside's management was excellent, and she seemed, too, to have

a heaven-sent faculty in knowing when to stop dusting.

Little by little the old life resumed its old power. Then came the

burglary. The men, it was said, broke into the house by way of the

conservatory. It was really little more than an attempt, for they only

succeeded in carrying away a few pieces of plate from the pantry. The

safe in the study was certainly found open and empty, but, as Mr.

Borlsover informed the police inspector, he had kept nothing of value in

it during the last six months.

"Then you're lucky in getting off so easily, sir," the man replied. "By

the way they have gone about their business, I should say they were

experienced cracksmen. They must have caught the alarm when they were

just beginning their evening's work."

"Yes," said Eustace, "I suppose I am lucky."

"I've no doubt," said the inspector, "that we shall be able to trace

the men. I've said that they must have been old hands at the game. The

way they got in and opened the safe shows that. But there's one little

thing that puzzles me. One of them was careless enough not to wear

gloves, and I'm bothered if I know what he was trying to do. I've traced

his finger-marks on the new varnish on the window sashes in every one of

the downstairs rooms. They are very distinct ones too."

"Right hand or left, or both?" asked Eustace.

"Oh, right every time. That's the funny thing. He must have been a

foolhardy fellow, and I rather think it was him that wrote that." He

took out a slip of paper from his pocket. "That's what he wrote, sir.

'I've got out, Eustace Borlsover, but I'll be back before long.' Some

gaol bird just escaped, I suppose. It will make it all the easier for us

to trace him. Do you know the writing, sir?"

"No," said Eustace; "it's not the writing of anyone I know."

"I'm not going to stay here any longer," said Eustace to Saunders at

luncheon. "I've got on far better during the last six months than ever I

expected, but I'm not going to run the risk of seeing that thing again.

I shall go up to town this afternoon. Get Morton to put my things

together, and join me with the car at Brighton on the day after

to-morrow. And bring the proofs of those two papers with you. We'll run

over them together."

"How long are you going to be away?"

"I can't say for certain, but be prepared to stay for some time. We've

stuck to work pretty closely through the summer, and I for one need a

holiday. I'll engage the rooms at Brighton. You'll find it best to break

the journey at Hitchin. I'll wire to you there at the Crown to tell you

the Brighton address."

The house he chose at Brighton was in a terrace. He had been there

before. It was kept by his old college gyp, a man of discreet silence,

who was admirably partnered by an excellent cook. The rooms were on the

first floor. The two bedrooms were at the back, and opened out of each

other. "Saunders can have the smaller one, though it is the only one

with a fireplace," he said. "I'll stick to the larger of the two, since

it's got a bathroom adjoining. I wonder what time he'll arrive with the

car."

Saunders came about seven, cold and cross and dirty. "We'll light the

fire in the dining-room," said Eustace, "and get Prince to unpack some

of the things while we are at dinner. What were the roads like?"

"Rotten; swimming with mud, and a beastly cold wind against us all day.

And this is July. Dear old England!"

"Yes," said Eustace, "I think we might do worse than leave dear old

England for a few months."

They turned in soon after twelve.

"You oughtn't to feel cold, Saunders," said Eustace, "when you can

afford to sport a great cat-skin lined coat like this. You do yourself

very well, all things considered. Look at those gloves, for instance.

Who could possibly feel cold when wearing them?"

"They are far too clumsy though for driving. Try them on and see," and

he tossed them through the door on to Eustace's bed, and went on with

his unpacking. A minute later he heard a shrill cry of terror. "Oh,

Lord," he heard, "it's in the glove! Quick, Saunders, quick!" Then came

a smacking thud. Eustace had thrown it from him. "I've chucked it into

the bathroom," he gasped, "it's hit the wall and fallen into the bath.

Come now if you want to help." Saunders, with a lighted candle in his

hand, looked over the edge of the bath. There it was, old and maimed,

dumb and blind, with a ragged hole in the middle, crawling, staggering,

trying to creep up the slippery sides, only to fall back helpless.

"Stay there," said Saunders. "I'll empty a collar box or something, and

we'll jam it in. It can't get out while I'm away."

"Yes, it can," shouted Eustace. "It's getting out now. It's climbing up

the plug chain. No, you brute, you filthy brute, you don't! Come back,

Saunders, it's getting away from me. I can't hold it; it's all slippery.

Curse its claw! Shut the window, you idiot! The top too, as well as the

bottom. You utter idiot! It's got out!" There was the sound of

something dropping on to the hard flagstones below, and Eustace fell

back fainting.

*       *       *       *       *

For a fortnight he was ill.

"I don't know what to make of it," the doctor said to Saunders. "I can

only suppose that Mr. Borlsover has suffered some great emotional shock.

You had better let me send someone to help you nurse him. And by all

means indulge that whim of his never to be left alone in the dark. I

would keep a light burning all night if I were you. But he _must_ have

more fresh air. It's perfectly absurd this hatred of open windows."

Eustace, however, would have no one with him but Saunders. "I don't want

the other men," he said. "They'd smuggle it in somehow. I know they

would."

"Don't worry about it, old chap. This sort of thing can't go on

indefinitely. You know I saw it this time as well as you. It wasn't half

so active. It won't go on living much longer, especially after that

fall. I heard it hit the flags myself. As soon as you're a bit stronger

we'll leave this place; not bag and baggage, but with only the clothes

on our backs, so that it won't be able to hide anywhere. We'll escape it

that way. We won't give any address, and we won't have any parcels sent

after us. Cheer up, Eustace! You'll be well enough to leave in a day or

two. The doctor says I can take you out in a chair to-morrow."

"What have I done?" asked Eustace. "Why does it come after me? I'm no

worse than other men. I'm no worse than you, Saunders; you know I'm not.

It was you who were at the bottom of that dirty business in San Diego,

and that was fifteen years ago."

"It's not that, of course," said Saunders. "We are in the twentieth

century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins

finding you out. Before you caught the hand in the library it was filled

with pure malevolence--to you and all mankind. After you spiked it

through with that nail it naturally forgot about other people, and

concentrated its attention on you. It was shut up in the safe, you know,

for nearly six months. That gives plenty of time for thinking of

revenge."

Eustace Borlsover would not leave his room, but he thought that there

might be something in Saunders's suggestion to leave Brighton without

notice. He began rapidly to regain his strength.

"We'll go on the first of September," he said.

*       *       *       *       *

The evening of August 31st was oppressively warm. Though at midday the

windows had been wide open, they had been shut an hour or so before

dusk. Mrs. Prince had long since ceased to wonder at the strange habits

of the gentlemen on the first floor. Soon after their arrival she had

been told to take down the heavy window curtains in the two bedrooms,

and day by day the rooms had seemed to grow more bare. Nothing was left

lying about.

"Mr. Borlsover doesn't like to have any place where dirt can collect,"

Saunders had said as an excuse. "He likes to see into all the corners of

the room."

"Couldn't I open the window just a little?" he said to Eustace that

evening. "We're simply roasting in here, you know."

"No, leave well alone. We're not a couple of boarding-school misses

fresh from a course of hygiene lectures. Get the chessboard out."

They sat down and played. At ten o'clock Mrs. Prince came to the door

with a note. "I am sorry I didn't bring it before," she said, "but it

was left in the letter-box."

"Open it, Saunders, and see if it wants answering."

It was very brief. There was neither address nor signature.

"Will eleven o'clock to-night be suitable for our last appointment?"

"Who is it from?" asked Borlsover.

"It was meant for me," said Saunders. "There's no answer, Mrs. Prince,"

and he put the paper into his pocket. "A dunning letter from a tailor; I

suppose he must have got wind of our leaving."

It was a clever lie, and Eustace asked no more questions. They went on

with their game.

On the landing outside Saunders could hear the grandfather's clock

whispering the seconds, blurting out the quarter-hours.

"Check!" said Eustace. The clock struck eleven. At the same time there

was a gentle knocking on the door; it seemed to come from the bottom

panel.

"Who's there?" asked Eustace.

There was no answer.

"Mrs. Prince, is that you?"

"She is up above," said Saunders; "I can hear her walking about the

room."

"Then lock the door; bolt it too. Your move, Saunders."

While Saunders sat with his eyes on the chessboard, Eustace walked over

to the window and examined the fastenings. He did the same in Saunders's

room and the bathroom. There were no doors between the three rooms, or

he would have shut and locked them too.

"Now, Saunders," he said, "don't stay all night over your move. I've had

time to smoke one cigarette already. It's bad to keep an invalid

waiting. There's only one possible thing for you to do. What was that?"

"The ivy blowing against the window. There, it's your move now,

Eustace."

"It wasn't the ivy, you idiot. It was someone tapping at the window,"

and he pulled up the blind. On the outer side of the window, clinging to

the sash, was the hand.

"What is it that it's holding?"

"It's a pocket-knife. It's going to try to open the window by pushing

back the fastener with the blade."

"Well, let it try," said Eustace. "Those fasteners screw down; they

can't be opened that way. Anyhow, we'll close the shutters. It's your

move, Saunders. I've played."

But Saunders found it impossible to fix his attention on the game. He

could not understand Eustace, who seemed all at once to have lost his

fear. "What do you say to some wine?" he asked. "You seem to be taking

things coolly, but I don't mind confessing that I'm in a blessed funk."

"You've no need to be. There's nothing supernatural about that hand,

Saunders. I mean it seems to be governed by the laws of time and space.

It's not the sort of thing that vanishes into thin air or slides through

oaken doors. And since that's so, I defy it to get in here. We'll leave

the place in the morning. I for one have bottomed the depths of fear.

Fill your glass, man! The windows are all shuttered, the door is locked

and bolted. Pledge me my uncle Adrian! Drink, man! What are you waiting

for?"

Saunders was standing with his glass half raised. "It can get in," he

said hoarsely; "it can get in! We've forgotten. There's the fireplace in

my bedroom. It will come down the chimney."

"Quick!" said Eustace, as he rushed into the other room; "we haven't a

minute to lose. What can we do? Light the fire, Saunders. Give me a

match, quick!"

"They must be all in the other room. I'll get them."

"Hurry, man, for goodness' sake! Look in the bookcase! Look in the

bathroom! Here, come and stand here; I'll look."

"Be quick!" shouted Saunders. "I can hear something!"

"Then plug a sheet from your bed up the chimney. No, here's a match." He

had found one at last that had slipped into a crack in the floor.

"Is the fire laid? Good, but it may not burn. I know--the oil from that

old reading-lamp and this cotton-wool. Now the match, quick! Pull the

sheet away, you fool! We don't want it now."

There was a great roar from the grate as the flames shot up. Saunders

had been a fraction of a second too late with the sheet. The oil had

fallen on to it. It, too, was burning.

"The whole place will be on fire!" cried Eustace, as he tried to beat

out the flames with a blanket. "It's no good! I can't manage it. You

must open the door, Saunders, and get help."

Saunders ran to the door and fumbled with the bolts. The key was stiff

in the lock.

"Hurry!" shouted Eustace; "the whole place is ablaze!"

The key turned in the lock at last. For half a second Saunders stopped

to look back. Afterwards he could never be quite sure as to what he had

seen, but at the time he thought that something black and charred was

creeping slowly, very slowly, from the mass of flames towards Eustace

Borlsover. For a moment he thought of returning to his friend, but the

noise and the smell of the burning sent him running down the passage

crying, "Fire! Fire!" He rushed to the telephone to summon help, and

then back to the bathroom--he should have thought of that before--for

water. As he burst open the bedroom door there came a scream of terror

which ended suddenly, and then the sound of a heavy fall.

The Mass of Shadows

BY ANATOLE FRANCE

From _Mother of Pearl_, by Anatole France. Copyright by John Lane

Company. By permission of the publishers.

This tale the sacristan of the church of St. Eulalie at Neuville

d'Aumont told me, as we sat under the arbor of the White Horse, one fine

summer evening, drinking a bottle of old wine to the health of the dead

man, now very much at his ease, whom that very morning he had borne to

the grave with full honors, beneath a pall powdered with smart silver

tears.

"My poor father who is dead" (it is the sacristan who is speaking,) "was

in his lifetime a grave-digger. He was of an agreeable disposition, the

result, no doubt, of the calling he followed, for it has often been

pointed out that people who work in cemeteries are of a jovial turn.

Death has no terrors for them; they never give it a thought. I, for

instance, monsieur, enter a cemetery at night as little perturbed as

though it were the arbor of the White Horse. And if by chance I meet

with a ghost, I don't disturb myself in the least about it, for I

reflect that he may just as likely have business of his own to attend to

as I. I know the habits of the dead, and I know their character.

Indeed, so far as that goes, I know things of which the priests

themselves are ignorant. If I were to tell you all I have seen, you

would be astounded. But a still tongue makes a wise head, and my father,

who, all the same, delighted in spinning a yarn, did not disclose a

twentieth part of what he knew. To make up for this he often repeated

the same stories, and to my knowledge he told the story of Catherine

Fontaine at least a hundred times.

"Catherine Fontaine was an old maid whom he well remembered having seen

when he was a mere child. I should not be surprised if there were still,

perhaps, three old fellows in the district who could remember having

heard folks speak of her, for she was very well known and of excellent

reputation, though poor enough. She lived at the corner of the Rue aux

Nonnes, in the turret which is still to be seen there, and which formed

part of an old half-ruined mansion looking on to the garden of the

Ursuline nuns. On that turret can still be traced certain figures and

half-obliterated inscriptions. The late cure of St. Eulalie, Monsieur

Levasseur, asserted that there are the words in Latin, _Love is stronger

than death_, 'which is to be understood,' so he would add, 'of divine

love.'

"Catherine Fontaine lived by herself in this tiny apartment. She was a

lace-maker. You know, of course, that the lace made in our part of the

world was formerly held in high esteem. No one knew anything of her

relatives or friends. It was reported that when she was eighteen years

of age she had loved the young Chevalier d'Aumont-Clery, and had been

secretly affianced to him. But decent folk didn't believe a word of it,

and said it was nothing but a tale concocted because Catherine

Fontaine's demeanor was that of a lady rather than that of a working

woman, and because, moreover, she possessed beneath her white locks the

remains of great beauty. Her expression was sorrowful, and on one finger

she wore one of those rings fashioned by the goldsmith into the

semblance of two tiny hands clasped together. In former days folks were

accustomed to exchange such rings at their betrothal ceremony. I am sure

you know the sort of thing I mean.

"Catherine Fontaine lived a saintly life. She spent a great deal of time

in churches, and every morning, whatever might be the weather, she went

to assist at the six o'clock Mass at St. Eulalie.

"Now one December night, whilst she was in her little chamber, she was

awakened by the sound of bells, and nothing doubting that they were

ringing for the first Mass, the pious woman dressed herself, and came

downstairs and out into the street. The night was so obscure that not

even the walls of the houses were visible, and not a ray of light shone

from the murky sky. And such was the silence amid this black darkness,

that there was not even the sound of a distant dog barking, and a

feeling of aloofness from every living creature was perceptible. But

Catherine Fontaine knew well every single stone she stepped on, and, as

she could have found her way to the church with her eyes shut, she

reached without difficulty the corner of the Rue aux Nonnes and the Rue

de la Paroisse, where the timbered house stands with the tree of Jesse

carved on one of its massive beams. When she reached this spot she

perceived that the church doors were open, and that a great light was

streaming out from the wax tapers. She resumed her journey, and when she

had passed through the porch she found herself in the midst of a vast

congregation which entirely filled the church. But she did not recognize

any of the worshipers and was surprised to observe that all of these

people were dressed in velvets and brocades, with feathers in their

hats, and that they wore swords in the fashion of days gone by. Here

were gentlemen who carried tall canes with gold knobs, and ladies with

lace caps fastened with coronet-shaped combs. Chevaliers of the Order of

St. Louis extended their hands to these ladies, who concealed behind

their fans painted faces, of which only the powdered brow and the patch

at the corner of the eye were visible! All of them proceeded to take

their places without the slightest sound, and as they moved neither the

sound of their footsteps on the pavement, nor the rustle of their

garments could be heard. The lower places were filled with a crowd of

young artisans in brown jackets, dimity breeches, and blue stockings,

with their arms round the waists of pretty blushing girls who lowered

their eyes. Near the holy water stoups peasant women, in scarlet

petticoats and laced bodices, sat upon the ground as immovable as

domestic animals, whilst young lads, standing up behind them, stared out

from wide-open eyes and twirled their hats round and round on their

fingers, and all these sorrowful countenances seemed centred irremovably

on one and the same thought, at once sweet and sorrowful. On her knees,

in her accustomed place, Catherine Fontaine saw the priest advance

toward the altar, preceded by two servers. She recognized neither priest

nor clerks. The Mass began. It was a silent Mass, during which neither

the sound of the moving lips nor the tinkle of the bell was audible.

Catherine Fontaine felt that she was under the observation and the

influence also of her mysterious neighbor, and when, scarcely turning

her head, she stole a glance at him, she recognized the young Chevalier

d'Aumont-Clery, who had once loved her, and who had been dead for five

and forty years. She recognized him by a small mark which he had over

the left ear, and above all by the shadow which his long black eyelashes

cast upon his cheeks. He was dressed in his hunting clothes, scarlet

with gold lace, the very clothes he wore that day when he met her in St.

Leonard's Wood, begged of her a drink, and stole a kiss. He had

preserved his youth and good looks. When he smiled, he still displayed

magnificent teeth. Catherine said to him in an undertone:

"'Monseigneur, you who were my friend, and to whom in days gone by I

gave all that a girl holds most dear, may God keep you in His grace! O,

that He would at length inspire me with regret for the sin I committed

in yielding to you; for it is a fact that, though my hair is white and I

approach my end, I have not yet repented of having loved you. But, dear

dead friend and noble seigneur, tell me, who are these folk, habited

after the antique fashion, who are here assisting at this silent Mass?'

"The Chevalier d'Aumont-Clery replied in a voice feebler than a breath,

but none the less crystal clear:

"'Catherine, these men and women are souls from purgatory who have

grieved God by sinning as we ourselves sinned through love of the

creature, but who are not on that account cast off by God, inasmuch as

their sin, like ours, was not deliberate.

"'Whilst separated from those whom they loved upon earth, they are

purified in the cleansing fires of purgatory, they suffer the pangs of

absence, which is for them the most cruel of tortures. They are so

unhappy that an angel from heaven takes pity upon their love-torment. By

the permission of the Most High, for one hour in the night, he reunites

each year lover to loved in their parish church, where they are

permitted to assist at the Mass of Shadows, hand clasped in hand. These

are the facts. If it has been granted to me to see thee before thy

death, Catherine, it is a boon which is bestowed by God's special

permission.'

"And Catherine Fontaine answered him:

"'I would die gladly enough, dear, dead lord, if I might recover the

beauty that was mine when I gave you to drink in the forest.'

"Whilst they thus conversed under their breath, a very old canon was

taking the collection and proffering to the worshipers a great copper

dish, wherein they let fall, each in his turn, ancient coins which have

long since ceased to pass current: ecus of six livres, florins, ducats

and ducatoons, jacobuses and rose-nobles, and the pieces fell silently

into the dish. When at length it was placed before the Chevalier, he

dropped into it a louis which made no more sound than had the other

pieces of gold and silver.

"Then the old canon stopped before Catherine Fontaine, who fumbled in

her pocket without being able to find a farthing. Then, being unwilling

to allow the dish to pass without an offering from herself, she slipped

from her finger the ring which the Chevalier had given her the day

before his death, and cast it into the copper bowl. As the golden ring

fell, a sound like the heavy clang of a bell rang out, and on the stroke

of this reverberation the Chevalier, the canon, the celebrant, the

servers, the ladies and their cavaliers, the whole assembly vanished

utterly; the candles guttered out, and Catherine Fontaine was left alone

in the darkness."

Having concluded his narrative after this fashion, the sacristan drank a

long draught of wine, remained pensive for a moment, and then resumed

his talk in these words:

"I have told you this tale exactly as my father has told it to me over

and over again, and I believe that it is authentic, because it agrees in

all respects with what I have observed of the manners and customs

peculiar to those who have passed away. I have associated a good deal

with the dead ever since my childhood, and I know that they are

accustomed to return to what they have loved.

"It is on this account that the miserly dead wander at night in the

neighborhood of the treasures they conceal during their life time. They

keep a strict watch over their gold; but the trouble they give

themselves, far from being of service to them, turns to their

disadvantage; and it is not a rare thing at all to come upon money

buried in the ground on digging in a place haunted by a ghost. In the

same way deceased husbands come by night to harass their wives who have

made a second matrimonial venture, and I could easily name several who

have kept a better watch over their wives since death than they ever did

while living.

"That sort of thing is blameworthy, for in all fairness the dead have no

business to stir up jealousies. Still I do but tell you what I have

observed myself. It is a matter to take into account if one marries a

widow. Besides, the tale I have told you is vouchsafed for in the

manner following:

"The morning after that extraordinary night Catherine Fontaine was

discovered dead in her chamber. And the beadle attached to St. Eulalie

found in the copper bowl used for the collection a gold ring with two

clasped hands. Besides, I'm not the kind of man to make jokes. Suppose

we order another bottle of wine?..."

What Was It?

BY FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN

It is, I confess, with considerable diffidence, that I approach the

strange narrative which I am about to relate. The events which I purpose

detailing are of so extraordinary a character that I am quite prepared

to meet with an unusual amount of incredulity and scorn. I accept all

such beforehand. I have, I trust, the literary courage to face unbelief.

I have, after mature consideration resolved to narrate, in as simple and

straightforward a manner as I can compass, some facts that passed under

my observation, in the month of July last, and which, in the annals of

the mysteries of physical science, are wholly unparalleled.

I live at No. ---- Twenty-sixth Street, in New York. The house is in some

respects a curious one. It has enjoyed for the last two years the

reputation of being haunted. It is a large and stately residence,

surrounded by what was once a garden, but which is now only a green

enclosure used for bleaching clothes. The dry basin of what has been a

fountain, and a few fruit trees ragged and unpruned, indicate that this

spot in past days was a pleasant, shady retreat, filled with fruits and

flowers and the sweet murmur of waters.

The house is very spacious. A hall of noble size leads to a large spiral

staircase winding through its center, while the various apartments are

of imposing dimensions. It was built some fifteen or twenty years since

by Mr. A----, the well-known New York merchant, who five years ago threw

the commercial world into convulsions by a stupendous bank fraud. Mr.

A----, as everyone knows, escaped to Europe, and died not long after, of

a broken heart. Almost immediately after the news of his decease reached

this country and was verified, the report spread in Twenty-sixth Street

that No. ---- was haunted. Legal measures had dispossessed the widow of

its former owner, and it was inhabited merely by a caretaker and his

wife, placed there by the house agent into whose hands it had passed for

the purposes of renting or sale. These people declared that they were

troubled with unnatural noises. Doors were opened without any visible

agency. The remnants of furniture scattered through the various rooms

were, during the night, piled one upon the other by unknown hands.

Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs in broad daylight,

accompanied by the rustle of unseen silk dresses, and the gliding of

viewless hands along the massive balusters. The caretaker and his wife

declared they would live there no longer. The house agent laughed,

dismissed them, and put others in their place. The noises and

supernatural manifestations continued. The neighborhood caught up the

story, and the house remained untenanted for three years. Several

persons negotiated for it; but, somehow, always before the bargain was

closed they heard the unpleasant rumors and declined to treat any

further.

It was in this state of things that my landlady, who at that time kept a

boarding-house in Bleecker Street, and who wished to move further up

town, conceived the bold idea of renting No. ---- Twenty-sixth Street.

Happening to have in her house rather a plucky and philosophical set of

boarders, she laid her scheme before us, stating candidly everything she

had heard respecting the ghostly qualities of the establishment to which

she wished to remove us. With the exception of two timid persons,--a

sea-captain and a returned Californian, who immediately gave notice that

they would leave,--all of Mrs. Moffat's guests declared that they would

accompany her in her chivalric incursion into the abode of spirits.

Our removal was effected in the month of May, and we were charmed with

our new residence. The portion of Twenty-sixth Street where our house is

situated, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, is one of the pleasantest

localities in New York. The gardens back of the houses, running down

nearly to the Hudson, form, in the summer time, a perfect avenue of

verdure. The air is pure and invigorating, sweeping, as it does,

straight across the river from the Weehawken heights, and even the

ragged garden which surrounded the house, although displaying on washing

days rather too much clothesline, still gave us a piece of greensward to

look at, and a cool retreat in the summer evenings, where we smoked our

cigars in the dusk, and watched the fireflies flashing their dark

lanterns in the long grass.

Of course we had no sooner established ourselves at No. ---- than we

began to expect ghosts. We absolutely awaited their advent with

eagerness. Our dinner conversation was supernatural. One of the

boarders, who had purchased Mrs. Crowe's _Night Side of Nature_ for his

own private delectation, was regarded as a public enemy by the entire

household for not having bought twenty copies. The man led a life of

supreme wretchedness while he was reading this volume. A system of

espionage was established, of which he was the victim. If he

incautiously laid the book down for an instant and left the room, it was

immediately seized and read aloud in secret places to a select few. I

found myself a person of immense importance, it having leaked out that I

was tolerably well versed in the history of supernaturalism, and had

once written a story the foundation of which was a ghost. If a table or

a wainscot panel happened to warp when we were assembled in the large

drawing-room, there was an instant silence, and everyone was prepared

for an immediate clanking of chains and a spectral form.

After a month of psychological excitement, it was with the utmost

dissatisfaction that we were forced to acknowledge that nothing in the

remotest degree approaching the supernatural had manifested itself. Once

the black butler asseverated that his candle had been blown out by some

invisible agency while he was undressing himself for the night; but as I

had more than once discovered this colored gentleman in a condition when

one candle must have appeared to him like two, thought it possible that,

by going a step further in his potations, he might have reversed this

phenomenon, and seen no candle at all where he ought to have beheld one.

Things were in this state when an accident took place so awful and

inexplicable in its character that my reason fairly reels at the bare

memory of the occurrence. It was the tenth of July. After dinner was

over I repaired, with my friend Dr. Hammond, to the garden to smoke my

evening pipe. Independent of certain mental sympathies which existed

between the Doctor and myself, we were linked together by a vice. We

both smoked opium. We knew each other's secret, and respected it. We

enjoyed together that wonderful expansion of thought, that marvelous

intensifying of the perceptive faculties, that boundless feeling of

existence when we seem to have points of contact with the whole

universe,--in short, that unimaginable spiritual bliss, which I would

not surrender for a throne, and which I hope you, reader, will

never--never taste.

Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor and I spent together in

secret were regulated with a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly

smoke the drug of paradise, and leave our dreams to chance. While

smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest and

calmest channels of thought. We talked of the East, and endeavored to

recall the magical panorama of its glowing scenery. We criticized the

most sensuous poets,--those who painted life ruddy with health, brimming

with passion, happy in the possession of youth and strength and beauty.

If we talked of Shakespeare's _Tempest_, we lingered over Ariel, and

avoided Caliban. Like the Guebers, we turned our faces to the East, and

saw only the sunny side of the world.

This skillful coloring of our train of thought produced in our

subsequent visions a corresponding tone. The splendors of Arabian

fairyland dyed our dreams. We paced the narrow strip of grass with the

tread and port of kings. The song of the _rana arborea_, while he clung

to the bark of the ragged plum-tree, sounded like the strains of divine

musicians. Houses, walls, and streets melted like rain clouds, and

vistas of unimaginable glory stretched away before us. It was a

rapturous companionship. We enjoyed the vast delight more perfectly

because, even in our most ecstatic moments, we were conscious of each

other's presence. Our pleasures, while individual, were still twin,

vibrating and moving in musical accord.

On the evening in question, the tenth of July, the Doctor and myself

drifted into an unusually metaphysical mood. We lit our large

meerschaums, filled with fine Turkish tobacco, in the core of which

burned a little black nut of opium, that, like the nut in the fairy

tale, held within its narrow limits wonders beyond the reach of kings;

we paced to and fro, conversing. A strange perversity dominated the

currents of our thought. They would _not_ flow through the sun-lit

channels into which we strove to divert them. For some unaccountable

reason, they constantly diverged into dark and lonesome beds, where a

continual gloom brooded. It was in vain that, after our old fashion, we

flung ourselves on the shores of the East, and talked of its gay

bazaars, of the splendors of the time of Haroun, of harems and golden

palaces. Black afreets continually arose from the depths of our talk,

and expanded, like the one the fisherman released from the copper

vessel, until they blotted everything bright from our vision.

Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force that swayed us, and indulged

in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time upon the proneness of the

human mind to mysticism, and the almost universal love of the terrible,

when Hammond suddenly said to me. "What do you consider to be the

greatest element of terror?"

The question puzzled me. That many things were terrible, I knew.

Stumbling over a corpse in the dark; beholding, as I once did, a woman

floating down a deep and rapid river, with wildly lifted arms, and

awful, upturned face, uttering, as she drifted, shrieks that rent one's

heart while we, spectators, stood frozen at a window which overhung the

river at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the slightest effort to

save her, but dumbly watching her last supreme agony and her

disappearance. A shattered wreck, with no life visible, encountered

floating listlessly on the ocean, is a terrible object, for it suggests

a huge terror, the proportions of which are veiled. But it now struck

me, for the first time, that there must be one great and ruling

embodiment of fear,--a King of Terrors, to which all others must

succumb. What might it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe

its existence?

"I confess, Hammond," I replied to my friend, "I never considered the

subject before. That there must be one Something more terrible than any

other thing, I feel. I cannot attempt, however, even the most vague

definition."

"I am somewhat like you, Harry," he answered. "I feel my capacity to

experience a terror greater than anything yet conceived by the human

mind;--something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation

hitherto supposed incompatible elements. The calling of the voices in

Brockden Brown's novel of _Wieland_ is awful; so is the picture of the

Dweller of the Threshold, in Bulwer's _Zanoni_; but," he added, shaking

his head gloomily, "there is something more horrible still than those."

"Look here, Hammond," I rejoined, "let us drop this kind of talk, for

Heaven's sake! We shall suffer for it, depend on it."

"I don't know what's the matter with me to-night," he replied, "but my

brain is running upon all sorts of weird and awful thoughts. I feel as

if I could write a story like Hoffman, to-night, if I were only master

of a literary style."

"Well, if we are going to be Hoffmanesque in our talk, I'm off to bed.

Opium and nightmares should never be brought together. How sultry it is!

Good-night, Hammond."

"Good-night, Harry. Pleasant dreams to you."

"To you, gloomy wretch, afreets, ghouls, and enchanters."

We parted, and each sought his respective chamber. I undressed quickly

and got into bed, taking with me, according to my usual custom, a book,

over which I generally read myself to sleep. I opened the volume as soon

as I had laid my head upon the pillow, and instantly flung it to the

other side of the room. It was Goudon's _History of Monsters_,--a

curious French work, which I had lately imported from Paris, but which,

in the state of mind I had then reached, was anything but an agreeable

companion. I resolved to go to sleep at once; so, turning down my gas

until nothing but a little blue point of light glimmered on the top of

the tube, I composed myself to rest.

The room was in total darkness. The atom of gas that still remained

alight did not illuminate a distance of three inches round the burner. I

desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even the

darkness, and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The confounded

themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves on

my brain. I battled against them. I erected ramparts of would-be

blackness of intellect to keep them out. They still crowded upon me.

While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical

inaction I should hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred. A

Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, plumb upon my chest,

and the next instant I felt two bony hands encircling my throat,

endeavoring to choke me.

I am no coward, and am possessed of considerable physical strength. The

suddenness of the attack, instead of stunning me, strung every nerve to

its highest tension. My body acted from instinct, before my brain had

time to realize the terrors of my position. In an instant I wound two

muscular arms around the creature, and squeezed it, with all the

strength of despair, against my chest. In a few seconds the bony hands

that had fastened on my throat loosened their hold, and I was free to

breathe once more. Then commenced a struggle of awful intensity.

Immersed in the most profound darkness, totally ignorant of the nature

of the Thing by which I was so suddenly attacked, finding my grasp

slipping every moment, by reason, it seemed to me, of the entire

nakedness of my assailant, bitten with sharp teeth in the shoulder,

neck, and chest, having every moment to protect my throat against a pair

of sinewy, agile hands, which my utmost efforts could not

confine,--these were a combination of circumstances to combat which

required all the strength, skill, and courage that I possessed.

At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting struggle, I got my assailant

under by a series of incredible efforts of strength. Once pinned, with

my knee on what I made out to be its chest, I knew that I was victor. I

rested for a moment to breathe. I heard the creature beneath me panting

in the darkness, and felt the violent throbbing of a heart. It was

apparently as exhausted as I was; that was one comfort. At this moment I

remembered that I usually placed under my pillow, before going to bed, a

large yellow silk pocket handkerchief. I felt for it instantly; it was

there. In a few seconds more I had, after a fashion, pinioned the

creature's arms.

I now felt tolerably secure. There was nothing more to be done but to

turn on the gas, and, having first seen what my midnight assailant was

like, arouse the household. I will confess to being actuated by a

certain pride in not giving the alarm before; I wished to make the

capture alone and unaided.

Never losing my hold for an instant, I slipped from the bed to the

floor, dragging my captive with me. I had but a few steps to make to

reach the gas-burner; these I made with the greatest caution, holding

the creature in a grip like a vice. At last I got within arm's length of

the tiny speck of blue light which told me where the gas-burner lay.

Quick as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the full

flood of light. Then I turned to look at my captive.

I cannot even attempt to give any definition of my sensations the

instant after I turned on the gas. I suppose I must have shrieked with

terror, for in less than a minute afterward my room was crowded with the

inmates of the house. I shudder now as I think of that awful moment. _I

saw nothing_! Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing,

panting, corporeal shape, my other hand gripped with all its strength a

throat as warm, as apparently fleshy, as my own; and yet, with this

living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed against my own, and

all in the bright glare of a large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld

nothing! Not even an outline,--a vapor!

I do not, even at this hour, realize the situation in which I found

myself. I cannot recall the astounding incident thoroughly. Imagination

in vain tries to compass the awful paradox.

It breathed. I felt its warm breath upon my cheek. It struggled

fiercely. It had hands. They clutched me. Its skin was smooth, like my

own. There it lay, pressed close up against me, solid as stone,--and

yet utterly invisible!

I wonder that I did not faint or go mad on the instant. Some wonderful

instinct must have sustained me; for, absolutely, in place of loosening

my hold on the terrible Enigma, I seemed to gain an additional strength

in my moment of horror, and tightened my grasp with such wonderful force

that I felt the creature shivering with agony.

Just then Hammond entered my room at the head of the household. As soon

as he beheld my face--which, I suppose, must have been an awful sight to

look at--he hastened forward, crying, "Great heaven, Harry! what has

happened?"

"Hammond! Hammond!" I cried, "come here. O, this is awful! I have been

attacked in bed by something or other, which I have hold of; but I can't

see it,--I can't see it!"

Hammond, doubtless struck by the unfeigned horror expressed in my

countenance, made one or two steps forward with an anxious yet puzzled

expression. A very audible titter burst from the remainder of my

visitors. This suppressed laughter made me furious. To laugh at a human

being in my position! It was the worst species of cruelty. _Now_, I can

understand why the appearance of a man struggling violently, as it would

seem, with an airy nothing, and calling for assistance against a vision,

should have appeared ludicrous. _Then_, so great was my rage against the

mocking crowd that had I the power I would have stricken them dead

where they stood.

"Hammond! Hammond!" I cried again, despairingly, "for God's sake come to

me. I can hold the--the thing but a short while longer. It is

overpowering me. Help me! Help me!"

"Harry," whispered Hammond, approaching me, "you have been smoking too

much opium."

"I swear to you, Hammond, that this is no vision," I answered, in the

same low tone. "Don't you see how it shakes my whole frame with its

struggles? If you don't believe me, convince yourself. Feel it,--touch

it."

Hammond advanced and laid his hand in the spot I indicated. A wild cry

of horror burst from him. He had felt it!

In a moment he had discovered somewhere in my room a long piece of cord,

and was the next instant winding it and knotting it about the body of

the unseen being that I clasped in my arms.

"Harry," he said, in a hoarse, agitated voice, for, though he preserved

his presence of mind, he was deeply moved, "Harry, it's all safe now.

You may let go, old fellow, if you're tired. The Thing can't move."

I was utterly exhausted, and I gladly loosed my hold.

Hammond stood holding the ends of the cord that bound the Invisible,

twisted round his hand, while before him, self-supporting as it were, he

beheld a rope laced and interlaced, and stretching tightly around a

vacant space. I never saw a man look so thoroughly stricken with awe.

Nevertheless his face expressed all the courage and determination which

I knew him to possess. His lips, although white, were set firmly, and

one could perceive at a glance that, although stricken with fear, he was

not daunted.

The confusion that ensued among the guests of the house who were

witnesses of this extraordinary scene between Hammond and myself,--who

beheld the pantomime of binding this struggling Something,--who beheld

me almost sinking from physical exhaustion when my task of jailer was

over,--the confusion and terror that took possession of the bystanders,

when they saw all this, was beyond description. The weaker ones fled

from the apartment. The few who remained clustered near the door and

could not be induced to approach Hammond and his Charge. Still

incredulity broke out through their terror. They had not the courage to

satisfy themselves, and yet they doubted. It was in vain that I begged

of some of the men to come near and convince themselves by touch of the

existence in that room of a living being which was invisible. They were

incredulous, but did not dare to undeceive themselves. How could a

solid, living, breathing body be invisible, they asked. My reply was

this. I gave a sign to Hammond, and both of us--conquering our fearful

repugnance to touch the invisible creature--lifted it from the ground,

manacled as it was, and took it to my bed. Its weight was about that of

a boy of fourteen.

"Now my friends," I said, as Hammond and myself held the creature

suspended over the bed, "I can give you self-evident proof that here is

a solid, ponderable body, which, nevertheless, you cannot see. Be good

enough to watch the surface of the bed attentively."

I was astonished at my own courage in treating this strange event so

calmly; but I had recovered from my first terror, and felt a sort of

scientific pride in the affair, which dominated every other feeling.

The eyes of the bystanders were immediately fixed on my bed. At a given

signal Hammond and I let the creature fall. There was a dull sound of a

heavy body alighting on a soft mass. The timbers of the bed creaked. A

deep impression marked itself distinctly on the pillow, and on the bed

itself. The crowd who witnessed this gave a low cry, and rushed from the

room. Hammond and I were left alone with our Mystery.

We remained silent for some time, listening to the low, irregular

breathing of the creature on the bed, and watching the rustle of the

bedclothes as it impotently struggled to free itself from confinement.

Then Hammond spoke.

"Harry, this is awful."

"Ay, awful."

"But not unaccountable."

"Not unaccountable! What do you mean? Such a thing has never occurred

since the birth of the world. I know not what to think, Hammond. God

grant that I am not mad, and that this is not an insane fantasy!"

"Let us reason a little, Harry. Here is a solid body which we touch, but

which we cannot see. The fact is so unusual that it strikes us with

terror. Is there no parallel, though, for such a phenomenon? Take a

piece of pure glass. It is tangible and transparent. A certain chemical

coarseness is all that prevents its being so entirely transparent as to

be totally invisible. It is not _theoretically impossible_, mind you, to

make a glass which shall not reflect a single ray of light,--a glass so

pure and homogeneous in its atoms that the rays from the sun will pass

through it as they do through the air, refracted but not reflected. We

do not see the air, and yet we feel it."

"That's all very well, Hammond, but these are inanimate substances.

Glass does not breathe, air does not breathe. _This_ thing has a heart

that palpitates,--a will that moves it,--lungs that play, and inspire

and respire."

"You forget the phenomena of which we have so often heard of late,"

answered the Doctor, gravely. "At the meetings called 'spirit circles,'

invisible hands have been thrust into the hands of those persons round

the table,--warm, fleshly hands that seemed to pulsate with mortal

life."

"What? Do you think, then, that this thing is----"

"I don't know what it is," was the solemn reply; "but please the gods I

will, with your assistance, thoroughly investigate it."

We watched together, smoking many pipes, all night long, by the bedside

of the unearthly being that tossed and panted until it was apparently

wearied out. Then we learned by the low, regular breathing that it

slept.

The next morning the house was all astir. The boarders congregated on

the landing outside my room, and Hammond and myself were lions. We had

to answer a thousand questions as to the state of our extraordinary

prisoner, for as yet not one person in the house except ourselves could

be I induced to set foot in the apartment.

The creature was awake. This was evidenced by the convulsive manner in

which the bedclothes were moved in its efforts to escape. There was

something truly terrible in beholding, as it were, those second-hand

indications of the terrible writhings and agonized struggles for liberty

which themselves were invisible.

Hammond and myself had racked our brains during the long night to

discover some means by which we might realize the shape and general

appearance of the Enigma. As well as we could make out by passing our

hands over the creature's form, its outlines and lineaments were human.

There was a mouth; a round, smooth head without hair; a nose, which,

however, was little elevated above the cheeks; and its hands and feet

felt like those of a boy. At first we thought of placing the being on a

smooth surface and tracing its outlines with chalk, as shoemakers trace

the outline of the foot. This plan was given up as being of no value.

Such an outline would give not the slightest idea of its conformation.

A happy thought struck me. We would take a cast of it in plaster of

Paris. This would give us the solid figure, and satisfy all our wishes.

But how to do it? The movements of the creature would disturb the

setting of the plastic covering, and distort the mold. Another thought.

Why not give it chloroform? It had respiratory organs,--that was evident

by its breathing. Once reduced to a state of insensibility, we could do

with it what we would. Doctor X---- was sent for; and after the worthy

physician had recovered from the first shock of amazement, he proceeded

to administer the chloroform. In three minutes afterward we were enabled

to remove the fetters from the creature's body, and a modeler was busily

engaged in covering the invisible form with the moist clay. In five

minutes more we had a mold, and before evening a rough facsimile of the

Mystery. It was shaped like a man--distorted, uncouth, and horrible, but

still a man. It was small, not over four feet and some inches in height,

and its limbs revealed a muscular development that was unparalleled. Its

face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever seen. Gustav Dore, or

Callot, or Tony Johannot, never conceived anything so horrible. There

is a face in one of the latter's illustrations to _Un Voyage ou il vous

plaira_, which somewhat approaches the countenance of this creature, but

does not equal it. It was the physiognomy of what I should fancy a ghoul

might be. It looked as if it was capable of feeding on human flesh.

Having satisfied our curiosity, and bound every one in the house to

secrecy, it became a question what was to be done with our Enigma? It

was impossible that we should keep such a horror in our house; it was

equally impossible that such an awful being should be let loose upon the

world. I confess that I would have gladly voted for the creature's

destruction. But who would shoulder the responsibility? Who would

undertake the execution of this horrible semblance of a human being? Day

after day this question was deliberated gravely. The boarders all left

the house. Mrs. Moffat was in despair, and threatened Hammond and myself

with all sorts of legal penalties if we did not remove the Horror. Our

answer was, "We will go if you like, but we decline taking this creature

with us. Remove it yourself if you please. It appeared in your house. On

you the responsibility rests." To this there was, of course, no answer.

Mrs. Moffat could not obtain for love or money a person who would even

approach the Mystery.

The most singular part of the affair was that we were entirely ignorant

of what the creature habitually fed on. Everything in the way of

nutriment that we could think of was placed before it, but was never

touched. It was awful to stand by, day after day, and see the clothes

toss, and hear the hard breathing, and know that it was starving.

Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and it still lived. The pulsations

of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter, and had now nearly

ceased. It was evident that the creature was dying for want of

sustenance. While this terrible life-struggle was going on, I felt

miserable. I could not sleep. Horrible as the creature was, it was

pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering.

At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one morning in

the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire. We hastened

to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the dropping of that

viewless corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its form I gave to

Doctor X----, who keeps it in his museum in Tenth Street.

As I am on the eve of a long journey from which I may not return, I have

drawn up this narrative of an event the most singular that has ever come

to my knowledge.

The Middle Toe of the Right Foot

BY AMBROSE BIERCE

From _Can Such Things Be?_ by Ambrose Bierce. Copyright by the

Neale Publishing Company. By permission of the publishers.

I

It is well known that the old Manton house is haunted. In all the rural

district near about, and even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not

one person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it; incredulity is

confined to those opinionated persons who will be called "cranks" as

soon as the useful word shall have penetrated the intellectual demesne

of the Marshall _Advance_. The evidence that the house is haunted is of

two kinds; the testimony of disinterested witnesses who have had ocular

proof, and that of the house itself. The former may be disregarded and

ruled out on any of the various grounds of objection which may be urged

against it by the ingenious; but facts within the observation of all are

material and controlling.

In the first place the Manton house has been unoccupied by mortals for

more than ten years, and with its outbuildings is slowly falling into

decay--a circumstance which in itself the judicious will hardly venture

to ignore. It stands a little way off the loneliest reach of the

Marshall and Harriston road, in an opening which was once a farm and is

still disfigured with strips of rotting fence and half covered with

brambles overrunning a stony and sterile soil long unacquainted with the

plow. The house itself is in tolerably good condition, though badly

weather-stained and in dire need of attention from the glazier, the

smaller male population of the region having attested in the manner of

its kind its disapproval of dwelling without dwellers. It is two stories

in height, nearly square, its front pierced by a single doorway flanked

on each side by a window boarded up to the very top. Corresponding

windows above, not protected, serve to admit light and rain to the rooms

of the upper floor. Grass and weeds grow pretty rankly all about, and a

few shade trees, somewhat the worse for wind, and leaning all in one

direction, seem to be making a concerted effort to run away. In short,

as the Marshall town humorist explained in the columns of the _Advance_,

"the proposition that the Manton house is badly haunted is the only

logical conclusion from the premises." The fact that in this dwelling

Mr. Manton thought it expedient one night some ten years ago to rise and

cut the throats of his wife and two small children, removing at once to

another part of the country, has no doubt done its share in directing

public attention to the fitness of the place for supernatural phenomena.

To this house, one summer evening, came four men in a wagon. Three of

them promptly alighted, and the one who had been driving hitched the

team to the only remaining post of what had been a fence. The fourth

remained seated in the wagon. "Come," said one of his companions,

approaching him, while the others moved away in the direction of the

dwelling--"this is the place."

The man addressed did not move. "By God!" he said harshly, "this is a

trick, and it looks to me as if you were in it."

"Perhaps I am," the other said, looking him straight in the face and

speaking in a tone which had something of contempt in it. "You will

remember, however, that the choice of place was with your own assent

left to the other side. Of course if you are afraid of spooks--"

"I am afraid of nothing," the man interrupted with another oath, and

sprang to the ground. The two then joined the others at the door, which

one of them had already opened with some difficulty, caused by rust of

lock and hinge. All entered. Inside it was dark, but the man who had

unlocked the door produced a candle and matches and made a light. He

then unlocked a door on their right as they stood in the passage. This

gave them entrance to a large, square room that the candle but dimly

lighted. The floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which partly muffled

their footfalls. Cobwebs were in the angles of the walls and depended

from the ceiling like strips of rotting lace making undulatory movements

in the disturbed air. The room had two windows in adjoining sides, but

from neither could anything be seen except the rough inner surfaces of

boards a few inches from the glass. There was no fireplace, no

furniture; there was nothing: besides the cobwebs and the dust, the four

men were the only objects there which were not a part of the structure.

Strange enough they looked in the yellow light of the candle. The one

who had so reluctantly alighted was especially spectacular--he might

have been called sensational. He was of middle age, heavily built, deep

chested, and broad shouldered. Looking at his figure, one would have

said that he had a giant's strength; at his features, that he would use

it like a giant. He was clean shaven, his hair rather closely cropped

and gray. His low forehead was seamed with wrinkles above the eyes, and

over the nose these became vertical. The heavy black brows followed the

same law, saved from meeting only by an upward turn at what would

otherwise have been the point of contact. Deeply sunken beneath these,

glowed in the obscure light a pair of eyes of uncertain color, but

obviously enough too small. There was something forbidding in their

expression, which was not bettered by the cruel mouth and wide jaw. The

nose was well enough, as noses go; one does not expect much of noses.

All that was sinister in the man's face seemed accentuated by an

unnatural pallor--he appeared altogether bloodless.

The appearance of the other men was sufficiently commonplace; they were

such persons as one meets and forgets that he met. All were younger than

the man described, between whom and the eldest of the others, who stood

apart, there was apparently no kindly feeling. They avoided looking at

each other.

"Gentlemen," said the man holding the candle and keys, "I believe

everything is right. Are you ready, Mr. Rosser?"

The man standing apart from the group bowed and smiled.

"And you, Mr. Grossmith?"

The heavy man bowed and scowled.

"You will be pleased to remove your outer clothing."

Their hats, coats, waistcoats, and neckwear were soon removed and thrown

outside the door, in the passage. The man with the candle now nodded,

and the fourth man--he who had urged Grossmith to leave the

wagon--produced from the pocket of his overcoat two long,

murderous-looking bowie-knives, which he drew now from their leather

scabbards.

"They are exactly alike," he said, presenting one to each of the two

principals--for by this time the dullest observer would have understood

the nature of this meeting. It was to be a duel to the death.

Each combatant took a knife, examined it critically near the candle and

tested the strength of the blade and handle across his lifted knee. Their

persons were then searched in turn, each by the second of the other.

"If it is agreeable to you, Mr. Grossmith," said the man holding the

light, "you will place yourself in that corner."

He indicated the angle of the room farthest from the door, whither

Grossmith retired, his second parting from him with a grasp of the hand

which had nothing of cordiality in it. In the angle nearest the door Mr.

Rosser stationed himself, and after a whispered consultation his second

left him, joining the other near the door. At that moment the candle was

suddenly extinguished, leaving all in profound darkness. This may have

been done by a draught from the opened door; whatever the cause, the

effect was startling.

"Gentlemen," said a voice which sounded strangely unfamiliar in the

altered condition affecting the relations of the senses--"gentlemen, you

will not move until you hear the closing of the outer door."

A sound of trampling ensued, then the closing of the inner door; and

finally the outer one closed with a concussion which shook the entire

building.

A few minutes afterward a belated farmer's boy met a light wagon which

was being driven furiously toward the town of Marshall. He declared that

behind the two figures on the front seat stood a third, with its hands

upon the bowed shoulders of the others, who appeared to struggle vainly

to free themselves from its grasp. This figure, unlike the others, was

clad in white, and had undoubtedly boarded the wagon as it passed the

haunted house. As the lad could boast a considerable former experience

with the supernatural thereabouts his word had the weight justly due to

the testimony of an expert. The story (in connection with the next day's

events) eventually appeared in the _Advance_, with some slight literary

embellishments and a concluding intimation that the gentlemen referred

to would be allowed the use of the paper's columns for their version of

the night's adventure. But the privilege remained without a claimant.

II

The events that led up to this "duel in the dark" were simple enough.

One evening three young men of the town of Marshall were sitting in a

quiet corner of the porch of the village hotel, smoking and discussing

such matters as three educated young men of a Southern village would

naturally find interesting. Their names were King, Sancher, and Rosser.

At a little distance, within easy hearing, but taking no part in the

conversation, sat a fourth. He was a stranger to the others. They

merely knew that on his arrival by the stage-coach that afternoon he had

written in the hotel register the name of Robert Grossmith. He had not

been observed to speak to anyone except the hotel clerk. He seemed,

indeed, singularly fond of his own company--or, as the _personnel_ of

the _Advance_ expressed it, "grossly addicted to evil associations." But

then it should be said in justice to the stranger that the _personnel_

was himself of a too convivial disposition fairly to judge one

differently gifted, and had, moreover, experienced a slight rebuff in an

effort at an "interview."

"I hate any kind of deformity in a woman," said King, "whether natural

or--acquired. I have a theory that any physical defect has its

correlative mental and moral defect."

"I infer, then," said Rosser, gravely, "that a lady lacking the moral

advantage of a nose would find the struggle to become Mrs. King an

arduous enterprise."

"Of course you may put it that way," was the reply; "but, seriously, I

once threw over a most charming girl on learning quite accidentally that

she had suffered amputation of a toe. My conduct was brutal if you like,

but if I had married that girl I should have been miserable for life and

should have made her so."

"Whereas," said Sancher, with a light laugh, "by marrying a gentleman of

more liberal view she escaped with a parted throat."

"Ah, you know to whom I refer. Yes, she married Manton, but I don't know

about his liberality; I'm not sure but he cut her throat because he

discovered that she lacked that excellent thing in woman, the middle toe

of the right foot."

"Look at that chap!" said Rosser in a low voice, his eyes fixed upon the

stranger.

That chap was obviously listening intently to the conversation.

"Damn his impudence!" muttered King--"what ought we to do?"

"That's an easy one," Rosser replied, rising. "Sir," he continued,

addressing the stranger, "I think it would be better if you would remove

your chair to the other end of the veranda. The presence of gentlemen is

evidently an unfamiliar situation to you."

The man sprang to his feet and strode forward with clenched hands, his

face white with rage. All were now standing. Sancher stepped between the

belligerents.

"You are hasty and unjust," he said to Rosser; "this gentleman has done

nothing to deserve such language."

But Rosser would not withdraw a word. By the custom of the country and

the time there could be but one outcome to the quarrel.

"I demand the satisfaction due to a gentleman," said the stranger, who

had become more calm. "I have not an acquaintance in this region.

Perhaps you, sir," bowing to Sancher, "will be kind enough to represent

me in this matter."

Sancher accepted the trust--somewhat reluctantly it must be confessed,

for the man's appearance and manner were not at all to his liking. King,

who during the colloquy had hardly removed his eyes from the stranger's

face and had not spoken a word, consented with a nod to act for Rosser,

and the upshot of it was that, the principals having retired, a meeting

was arranged for the next evening. The nature of the arrangements has

been already disclosed. The duel with knives in a dark room was once a

commoner feature of Southwestern life than it is likely to be again. How

thin a veneering of "chivalry" covered the essential brutality of the

code under which such encounters were possible we shall see.

III

In the blaze of a midsummer noonday the old Manton house was hardly true

to its traditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The sunshine caressed it

warmly and affectionately, with evident disregard of its bad reputation.

The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to grow, not

rankly, but with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the weeds

blossomed quite like plants. Full of charming lights and shadows and

populous with pleasant-voiced birds, the neglected shade trees no longer

struggled to run away, but bent reverently beneath their burdens of sun

and song. Even in the glassless upper windows was an expression of peace

and contentment, due to the light within. Over the stony fields the

visible heat danced with a lively tremor incompatible with the gravity

which is an attribute of the supernatural.

Such was the aspect under which the place presented itself to Sheriff

Adams and two other men who had come out from Marshall to look at it.

One of these men was Mr. King, the sheriff's deputy; the other, whose

name was Brewer, was a brother of the late Mrs. Manton. Under a

beneficent law of the State relating to property which has been for a

certain period abandoned by an owner whose residence cannot be

ascertained, the sheriff was legal custodian of the Manton farm and

appurtenances thereunto belonging. His present visit was in mere

perfunctory compliance with some order of a court in which Mr. Brewer

had an action to get possession of the property as heir to his deceased

sister. By a mere coincidence, the visit was made on the day after the

night that Deputy King had unlocked the house for another and very

different purpose. His presence now was not of his own choosing: he had

been ordered to accompany his superior, and at the moment could think of

nothing more prudent than simulated alacrity in obedience to the

command.

Carelessly opening the front door, which to his surprise was not locked,

the sheriff was amazed to see, lying on the floor of the passage into

which it opened, a confused heap of men's apparel. Examination showed it

to consist of two hats, and the same number of coats, waistcoats, and

scarves all in a remarkably good state of preservation, albeit somewhat

defiled by the dust in which they lay. Mr. Brewer was equally

astonished, but Mr. King's emotion is not of record. With a new and

lively interest in his own actions the sheriff now unlatched and pushed

open a door on the right, and the three entered. The room was apparently

vacant--no; as their eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light

something was visible in the farthest angle of the wall. It was a human

figure--that of a man crouching close in the corner. Something in the

attitude made the intruders halt when they had barely passed the

threshold. The figure more and more clearly defined itself. The man was

upon one knee, his back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated

to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the

fingers spread and crooked like claws; the white face turned upward on

the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth

half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead. Yet with the

exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own

hand, not another object was in the room.

In thick dust that covered the floor were some confused footprints near

the door and along the wall through which it opened. Along one of the

adjoining walls, too, past the boarded-up windows was the trail made by

the man himself in reaching his corner. Instinctively in approaching the

body the three men followed that trail. The sheriff grasped one of the

outthrown arms; it was as rigid as iron, and the application of a gentle

force rocked the entire body without altering the relation of its parts.

Brewer, pale with excitement, gazed intently into the distorted face.

"God of mercy!" he suddenly cried, "it is Manton!"

"You are right," said King, with an evident attempt at calmness: "I knew

Manton. He then wore a full beard and his hair long, but this is he."

He might have added: "I recognized him when he challenged Rosser. I told

Rosser and Sancher who he was before we played him this horrible trick.

When Rosser left this dark room at our heels, forgetting his outer

clothing in the excitement, and driving away with us in his shirt

sleeves--all through the discreditable proceedings we knew with whom we

were dealing, murderer and coward that he was!"

But nothing of this did Mr. King say. With his better light he was

trying to penetrate the mystery of the man's death. That he had not once

moved from the corner where he had been stationed; that his posture was

that of neither attack nor defense; that he had dropped his weapon; that

he had obviously perished of sheer horror of something that he

_saw_--these were circumstances which Mr. King's disturbed intelligence

could not rightly comprehend.

Groping in intellectual darkness for a clew to his maze of doubt, his

gaze, directed mechanically downward in the way of one who ponders

momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day

and in the presence of living companions, affected him with terror. In

the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor--leading from the door

by which they had entered, straight across the room to within a yard of

Manton's crouching corpse--were three parallel lines of

footprints--light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer ones

those of small children, the inner a woman's. From the point at which

they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who

had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude

of rapt attention, horribly pale.

"Look at that!" he cried, pointing with both hands at the nearest print

of the woman's right foot, where she had apparently stopped and stood.

"The middle toe is missing--it was Gertrude!"

Gertrude was the late Mrs. Manton, sister to Mr. Brewer.

The Shell of Sense

BY OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR

From Harper's Magazine, December, 1908. By permission of Harper and

Brothers and Olivia Howard Dunbar.

It was intolerably unchanged, the dim, dark-toned room. In an agony of

recognition my glance ran from one to another of the comfortable,

familiar things that my earthly life had been passed among. Incredibly

distant from it all as I essentially was. I noted sharply that the very

gaps that I myself had left in my bookshelves still stood unfilled; that

the delicate fingers of the ferns that I had tended were still stretched

futilely toward the light; that the soft agreeable chuckle of my own

little clock, like some elderly woman with whom conversation has become

automatic, was undiminished.

Unchanged--or so it seemed at first. But there were certain trivial

differences that shortly smote me. The windows were closed too tightly;

for I had always kept the house very cool, although I had known that

Theresa preferred warm rooms. And my work-basket was in disorder; it was

preposterous that so small a thing should hurt me so. Then, for this was

my first experience of the shadow-folded transition, the odd alteration

of my emotions bewildered me. For at one moment the place seemed so

humanly familiar, so distinctly my own proper envelope, that for love of

it I could have laid my cheek against the wall; while in the next I was

miserably conscious of strange new shrillnesses. How could they be

endured--and had I ever endured them?--those harsh influences that I now

perceived at the window; light and color so blinding that they obscured

the form of the wind, tumult so discordant that one could scarcely hear

the roses open in the garden below?

But Theresa did not seem to mind any of these things. Disorder, it is

true, the dear child had never minded. She was sitting all this time at

my desk--at _my_ desk--occupied, I could only too easily surmise how. In

the light of my own habits of precision it was plain that that sombre

correspondence should have been attended to before; but I believe that I

did not really reproach Theresa, for I knew that her notes, when she did

write them, were perhaps less perfunctory than mine. She finished the

last one as I watched her, and added it to the heap of black-bordered

envelopes that lay on the desk. Poor girl! I saw now that they had cost

her tears. Yet, living beside her day after day, year after year, I had

never discovered what deep tenderness my sister possessed. Toward each

other it had been our habit to display only a temperate affection, and I

remember having always thought it distinctly fortunate for Theresa,

since she was denied my happiness, that she could live so easily and

pleasantly without emotions of the devastating sort.... And now, for the

first time, I was really to behold her.... Could it be Theresa, after

all, this tangle of subdued turbulences? Let no one suppose that it is

an easy thing to bear, the relentlessly lucid understanding that I then

first exercised; or that, in its first enfranchisement, the timid vision

does not yearn for its old screens and mists.

Suddenly, as Theresa sat there, her head, filled with its tender

thoughts of me, held in her gentle hands, I felt Allan's step on the

carpeted stair outside. Theresa felt it, too,--but how? for it was not

audible. She gave a start, swept the black envelopes out of sight, and

pretended to be writing in a little book. Then I forgot to watch her any

longer in my absorption in Allan's coming. It was he, of course, that I

was awaiting. It was for him that I had made this first lonely,

frightened effort to return, to recover.... It was not that I had

supposed he would allow himself to recognize my presence, for I had long

been sufficiently familiar with his hard and fast denials of the

invisible. He was so reasonable always, so sane--so blindfolded. But I

had hoped that because of his very rejection of the ether that now

contained me I could perhaps all the more safely, the more secretly,

watch him, linger near him. He was near now, very near,--but why did

Theresa, sitting there in the room that had never belonged to her,

appropriate for herself his coming? It was so manifestly I who had

drawn him, I whom he had come to seek.

The door was ajar. He knocked softly at it "Are you there, Theresa?" he

called. He expected to find her, then, there in my room? I shrank back,

fearing, almost, to stay.

"I shall have finished in a moment," Theresa told him, and he sat down

to wait for her.

No spirit still unreleased can understand the pang that I felt with

Allan sitting almost within my touch. Almost irresistibly the wish beset

me to let him for an instant feel my nearness. Then I checked myself,

remembering--oh, absurd, piteous human fears!--that my too unguarded

closeness might alarm him. It was not so remote a time that I myself had

known them, those blind, uncouth timidities. I came, therefore, somewhat

nearer--but I did not touch him. I merely leaned toward him and with

incredible softness whispered his name. That much I could not have

forborne; the spell of life was still too strong in me.

But it gave him no comfort, no delight. "Theresa!" he called, in a voice

dreadful with alarm--and in that instant the last veil fell, and

desperately, scarce believingly, I beheld how it stood between them,

those two.

She turned to him that gentle look of hers.

"Forgive me," came from him hoarsely. "But I had suddenly the

most--unaccountable sensation. Can there be too many windows open? There

is such a--chill--about."

"There are no windows open," Theresa assured him. "I took care to shut

out the chill. You are not well, Allan!"

"Perhaps not." He embraced the suggestion. "And yet I feel no illness

apart from this abominable sensation that persists--persists....

Theresa, you must tell me: do I fancy it, or do you, too,

feel--something--strange here?"

"Oh, there is something very strange here," she half sobbed. "There

always will be."

"Good heavens, child, I didn't mean that!" He rose and stood looking

about him. "I know, of course, that you have your beliefs, and I respect

them, but you know equally well that I have nothing of the sort!

So--don't let us conjure up anything inexplicable."

I stayed impalpably, imponderably near him. Wretched and bereft though I

was, I could not have left him while he stood denying me.

"What I mean," he went on, in his low, distinct voice, "is a special, an

almost ominous sense of cold. Upon my soul, Theresa,"--he paused--"if I

_were_ superstitious, if I _were_ a woman, I should probably imagine it

to seem--a presence!"

He spoke the last word very faintly, but Theresa shrank from it

nevertheless.

"_Don't_ say that, Allan!" she cried out. "Don't think it, I beg of you!

I've tried so hard myself not to think it--and you must help me. You

know it is only perturbed, uneasy spirits that wander. With her it is

quite different. She has always been so happy--she must still be."

I listened, stunned, to Theresa's sweet dogmatism. From what blind

distances came her confident misapprehensions, how dense, both for her

and for Allan, was the separating vapor!

Allan frowned. "Don't take me literally, Theresa," he explained; and I,

who a moment before had almost touched him, now held myself aloof and

heard him with a strange untried pity, new born in me. "I'm not speaking

of what you call--spirits. It's something much more terrible." He

allowed his head to sink heavily on his chest. "If I did not positively

know that I had never done her any harm, I should suppose myself to be

suffering from guilt, from remorse.... Theresa, you know better than I,

perhaps. Was she content, always? Did she believe in me?"

"Believe in you?--when she knew you to be so good!--when you adored

her!"

"She thought that? She said it? Then what in Heaven's name ails

me?--unless it is all as you believe, Theresa, and she knows now what

she didn't know then, poor dear, and minds----"

"Minds what? What do you mean, Allan?"

I, who with my perhaps illegitimate advantage saw so clear, knew that he

had not meant to tell her: I did him that justice, even in my first

jealousy. If I had not tortured him so by clinging near him, he would

not have told her. But the moment came, and overflowed, and he did tell

her--passionate, tumultuous story that it was. During all our life

together, Allan's and mine, he had spared me, had kept me wrapped in the

white cloak of an unblemished loyalty. But it would have been kinder, I

now bitterly thought, if, like many husbands, he had years ago found for

the story he now poured forth some clandestine listener; I should not

have known. But he was faithful and good, and so he waited till I, mute

and chained, was there to hear him. So well did I know him, as I

thought, so thoroughly had he once been mine, that I saw it in his eyes,

heard it in his voice, before the words came. And yet, when it came, it

lashed me with the whips of an unbearable humiliation. For I, his wife,

had not known how greatly he could love.

And that Theresa, soft little traitor, should, in her still way, have

cared too! Where was the iron in her, I moaned within my stricken

spirit, where the steadfastness? From the moment he bade her, she turned

her soft little petals up to him--and my last delusion was spent. It was

intolerable; and none the less so that in another moment she had,

prompted by some belated thought of me, renounced him. Allan was hers,

yet she put him from her; and it was my part to watch them both.

Then in the anguish of it all I remembered, awkward, untutored spirit

that I was, that I now had the Great Recourse. Whatever human things

were unbearable, I had no need to bear. I ceased, therefore, to make

the effort that kept me with them. The pitiless poignancy was dulled,

the sounds and the light ceased, the lovers faded from me, and again I

was mercifully drawn into the dim, infinite spaces.

*       *       *       *       *

There followed a period whose length I cannot measure and during which I

was able to make no progress in the difficult, dizzying experience of

release. "Earth-bound" my jealousy relentlessly kept me. Though my two

dear ones had forsworn each other, I could not trust them, for theirs

seemed to me an affectation of a more than mortal magnanimity. Without a

ghostly sentinel to prick them with sharp fears and recollections, who

could believe that they would keep to it? Of the efficacy of my own

vigilance, so long as I might choose to exercise it, I could have no

doubt, for I had by this time come to have a dreadful exultation in the

new power that lived in me. Repeated delicate experiment had taught me

how a touch or a breath, a wish or a whisper, could control Allan's

acts, could keep him from Theresa. I could manifest myself as palely, as

transiently, as a thought. I could produce the merest necessary flicker,

like the shadow of a just-opened leaf, on his trembling, tortured

consciousness. And these unrealized perceptions of me he interpreted, as

I had known that he would, as his soul's inevitable penance. He had come

to believe that he had done evil in silently loving Theresa all these

years, and it was my vengeance to allow him to believe this, to prod

him ever to believe it afresh.

I am conscious that this frame of mind was not continuous in me. For I

remember, too, that when Allan and Theresa were safely apart and

sufficiently miserable I loved them as dearly as I ever had, more dearly

perhaps. For it was impossible that I should not perceive, in my new

emancipation, that they were, each of them, something more and greater

than the two beings I had once ignorantly pictured them. For years they

had practiced a selflessness of which I could once scarcely have

conceived, and which even now I could only admire without entering into

its mystery. While I had lived solely for myself, these two divine

creatures had lived exquisitely for me. They had granted me everything,

themselves nothing. For my undeserving sake their lives had been a

constant torment of renunciation--a torment they had not sought to

alleviate by the exchange of a single glance of understanding. There

were even marvelous moments when, from the depths of my newly informed

heart, I pitied them--poor creatures, who, withheld from the infinite

solaces that I had come to know, were still utterly within that

Shell of sense

So frail, so piteously contrived for pain.

Within it, yes; yet exercising qualities that so sublimely transcended

it. Yet the shy, hesitating compassion that thus had birth in me was

far from being able to defeat the earlier, earthlier emotion. The two, I

recognized, were in a sort of conflict; and I, regarding it, assumed

that the conflict would never end; that for years, as Allan and Theresa

reckoned time, I should be obliged to withhold myself from the great

spaces and linger suffering, grudging, shamed, where they lingered.

*       *       *       *       *

It can never have been explained, I suppose, what, to devitalized

perception such as mine, the contact of mortal beings with each other

appears to be. Once to have exercised this sense-freed perception is to

realize that the gift of prophecy, although the subject of such frequent

marvel, is no longer mysterious. The merest glance of our sensitive and

uncloyed vision can detect the strength of the relation between two

beings, and therefore instantly calculate its duration. If you see a

heavy weight suspended from a slender string, you can know, without any

wizardry, that in a few moments the string will snap; well, such, if you

admit the analogy, is prophecy, is foreknowledge. And it was thus that I

saw it with Theresa and Allan. For it was perfectly visible to me that

they would very little longer have the strength to preserve, near each

other, the denuded impersonal relation that they, and that I, behind

them, insisted on; and that they would have to separate. It was my

sister, perhaps the more sensitive, who first realized this. It had now

become possible for me to observe them almost constantly, the effort

necessary to visit them had so greatly diminished; so that I watched

her, poor, anguished girl, prepare to leave him. I saw each reluctant

movement that she made. I saw her eyes, worn from self-searching; I

heard her step grown timid from inexplicable fears; I entered her very

heart and heard its pitiful, wild beating. And still I did not

interfere.

For at this time I had a wonderful, almost demoniacal sense of disposing

of matters to suit my own selfish will. At any moment I could have

checked their miseries, could have restored happiness and peace. Yet it

gave me, and I could weep to admit it, a monstrous joy to know that

Theresa thought she was leaving Allan of her own free intention, when it

was I who was contriving, arranging, insisting.... And yet she

wretchedly felt my presence near her; I am certain of that.

A few days before the time of her intended departure my sister told

Allan that she must speak with him after dinner. Our beautiful old house

branched out from a circular hall with great arched doors at either end;

and it was through the rear doorway that always in summer, after dinner,

we passed out into the garden adjoining. As usual, therefore, when the

hour came, Theresa led the way. That dreadful daytime brilliance that in

my present state I found so hard to endure was now becoming softer. A

delicate, capricious twilight breeze danced inconsequently through

languidly whispering leaves. Lovely pale flowers blossomed like little

moons in the dusk, and over them the breath of mignonette hung heavily.

It was a perfect place--and it had so long been ours, Allan's and mine.

It made me restless and a little wicked that those two should be there

together now.

For a little they walked about together, speaking of common, daily

things. Then suddenly Theresa burst out:

"I am going away, Allan. I have stayed to do everything that needed to

be done. Now your mother will be here to care for you, and it is time

for me to go."

He stared at her and stood still. Theresa had been there so long, she so

definitely, to his mind, belonged there. And she was, as I also had

jealously known, so lovely there, the small, dark, dainty creature, in

the old hall, on the wide staircases, in the garden.... Life there

without Theresa, even the intentionally remote, the perpetually

renounced Theresa--he had not dreamed of it, he could not, so suddenly,

conceive of it.

"Sit here," he said, and drew her down beside him on a bench, "and tell

me what it means, why you are going. Is it because of something that I

have been--have done?"

She hesitated. I wondered if she would dare tell him. She looked out and

away from him, and he waited long for her to speak.

The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the

leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and

sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon,

the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater--a moment when

anything can happen, anything be believed in. To me, watching,

listening, hovering, there came a dreadful purpose and a dreadful

courage. Suppose for one moment, Theresa should not only feel, but _see_

me--would she dare to tell him then?

There came a brief space of terrible effort, all my fluttering,

uncertain forces strained to the utmost. The instant of my struggle was

endlessly long and the transition seemed to take place outside me--as

one sitting in a train, motionless, sees the leagues of earth float by.

And then, in a bright, terrible flash I knew I had achieved it--I had

_attained visibility_. Shuddering, insubstantial, but luminously

apparent, I stood there before them. And for the instant that I

maintained the visible state I looked straight into Theresa's soul.

She gave a cry. And then, thing of silly, cruel impulses that I was, I

saw what I had done. The very thing that I wished to avert I had

precipitated. For Allan, in his sudden terror and pity, had bent and

caught her in his arms. For the first time they were together; and it

was I who had brought them.

Then, to his whispered urging to tell the reason of her cry, Theresa

said:

"Frances was here. You did not see her, standing there, under the

lilacs, with no smile on her face?"

"My dear, my dear!" was all that Allan said. I had so long now lived

invisibly with them, he knew that she was right.

"I suppose you know what it means?" she asked him, calmly.

"Dear Theresa," Allan said, slowly, "if you and I should go away

somewhere, could we not evade all this ghostliness? And will you come

with me?"

"Distance would not banish her," my sister confidently asserted. And

then she said, softly: "Have you thought what a lonely, awesome thing it

must be to be so newly dead? Pity her, Allan. We who are warm and alive

should pity her. She loves you still,--that is the meaning of it all,

you know--and she wants us to understand that for that reason we must

keep apart. Oh, it was so plain in her white face as she stood there.

And you did not see her?"

"It was your face that I saw," Allan solemnly told her--oh, how

different he had grown from the Allan that I had known!--"and yours is

the only face that I shall ever see." And again he drew her to him.

She sprang from him. "You are defying her, Allan!" she cried. "And you

must not. It is her right to keep us apart, if she wishes. It must be as

she insists. I shall go, as I told you. And, Allan, I beg of you, leave

me the courage to do as she demands!"

They stood facing each other in the deep dusk, and the wounds that I had

dealt them gaped red and accusing. "We must pity her," Theresa had said.

And as I remembered that extraordinary speech, and saw the agony in her

face, and the greater agony in Allan's, there came the great irreparable

cleavage between mortality and me. In a swift, merciful flame the last

of my mortal emotions--gross and tenacious they must have been--was

consumed. My cold grasp of Allan loosened and a new unearthly love of

him bloomed in my heart.

I was now, however, in a difficulty with which my experience in the

newer state was scarcely sufficient to deal. How could I make it plain

to Allan and Theresa that I wished to bring them together, to heal the

wounds that I had made?

Pityingly, remorsefully, I lingered near them all that night and the

next day. And by that time had brought myself to the point of a great

determination. In the little time that was left, before Theresa should

be gone and Allan bereft and desolate, I saw the one way that lay open

to me to convince them of my acquiescence in their destiny.

In the deepest darkness and silence of the next night I made a greater

effort than it will ever be necessary for me to make again. When they

think of me, Allan and Theresa, I pray now that they will recall what I

did that night, and that my thousand frustrations and selfishnesses may

shrivel and be blown from their indulgent memories.

Yet the following morning, as she had planned, Theresa appeared at

breakfast dressed for her journey. Above in her room there were the

sounds of departure. They spoke little during the brief meal, but when

it was ended Allan said:

"Theresa, there is half an hour before you go. Will you come upstairs

with me? I had a dream that I must tell you of."

"Allan!" She looked at him, frightened, but went with him. "It was of

Frances you dreamed," she said, quietly, as they entered the library

together.

"Did I say it was a dream? But I was awake--thoroughly awake. I had not

been sleeping well, and I heard, twice, the striking of the clock. And

as I lay there, looking out at the stars, and thinking--thinking of you,

Theresa,--she came to me, stood there before me, in my room. It was no

sheeted specter, you understand; it was Frances, literally she. In some

inexplicable fashion I seemed to be aware that she wanted to make me

know something, and I waited, watching her face. After a few moments it

came. She did not speak, precisely. That is, I am sure I heard no sound.

Yet the words that came from her were definite enough. She said: 'Don't

let Theresa leave you. Take her and keep her.' Then she went away. Was

that a dream?"

"I had not meant to tell you," Theresa eagerly answered, "but now I

must. It is too wonderful. What time did your clock strike, Allan?"

"One, the last time."

"Yes; it was then that I awoke. And she had been with me. I had not seen

her, but her arm had been about me and her kiss was on my cheek. Oh. I

knew; it was unmistakable. And the sound of her voice was with me."

"Then she bade you, too----"

"Yes, to stay with you. I am glad we told each other." She smiled

tearfully and began to fasten her wrap.

"But you are not going--_now!_" Allan cried. "You know that you cannot,

now that she has asked you to stay."

"Then you believe, as I do, that it was she?" Theresa demanded.

"I can never understand, but I know," he answered her. "And now you will

not go?"

*       *       *       *       *

I am freed. There will be no further semblance of me in my old home, no

sound of my voice, no dimmest echo of my earthly self. They have no

further need of me, the two that I have brought together. Theirs is the

fullest joy that the dwellers in the shell of sense can know. Mine is

the transcendent joy of the unseen spaces.

The Woman at Seven Brothers

BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

From _Land's End_, by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Copyright, 1908, by

Harper and Brothers. By permission of the publishers and Wilbur

Daniel Steele.

I tell you sir, I was innocent. I didn't know any more about the world

at twenty-two than some do at twelve. My uncle and aunt in Duxbury

brought me up strict; I studied hard in high school, I worked hard after

hours, and I went to church twice on Sundays, and I can't see it's right

to put me in a place like this, with crazy people. Oh yes, I know

they're crazy--you can't tell _me._ As for what they said in court about

finding her with her husband, that's the Inspector's lie, sir, because

he's down on me, and wants to make it look like my fault.

No, sir, I can't say as I thought she was handsome--not at first. For

one thing, her lips were too thin and white, and her color was bad. I'll

tell you a fact, sir; that first day I came off to the Light I was

sitting on my cot in the store-room (that's where the assistant keeper

sleeps at the Seven Brothers), as lonesome as I could be, away from home

for the first time, and the water all around me, and, even though it

was a calm day, pounding enough on the ledge to send a kind of a

_woom-woom-woom_ whining up through all that solid rock of the tower.

And when old Fedderson poked his head down from the living-room with the

sunshine above making a kind of bright frame around his hair and

whiskers, to give me a cheery, "Make yourself to home, son!" I remember

I said to myself: "_He's_ all right. I'll get along with _him_. But his

wife's enough to sour milk." That was queer, because she was so much

under him in age--'long about twenty-eight or so, and him nearer fifty.

But that's what I said, sir.

Of course that feeling wore off, same as any feeling will wear off

sooner or later in a place like the Seven Brothers. Cooped up in a place

like that you come to know folks so well that you forget what they _do_

look like. There was a long time I never noticed her, any more than

you'd notice the cat. We used to sit of an evening around the table, as

if you were Fedderson there, and me here, and her somewhere back there,

in the rocker, knitting. Fedderson would be working on his

Jacob's-ladder, and I'd be reading. He'd been working on that

Jacob's-ladder a year, I guess, and every time the Inspector came off

with the tender he was so astonished to see how good that ladder was

that the old man would go to work and make it better. That's all he

lived for.

If I was reading, as I say, I daren't take my eyes off the book, or

Fedderson had me. And then he'd begin--what the Inspector said about

him. How surprised the member of the board had been, that time, to see

everything so clean about the light. What the Inspector had said about

Fedderson's being stuck here in a second-class light--best keeper on the

coast. And so on and so on, till either he or I had to go aloft and have

a look at the wicks.

He'd been there twenty-three years, all told, and he'd got used to the

feeling that he was kept down unfair--so used to it, I guess, that he

fed on it, and told himself how folks ashore would talk when he was dead

and gone--best keeper on the coast--kept down unfair. Not that he said

that to me. No, he was far too loyal and humble and respectful, doing

his duty without complaint, as anybody could see.

And all that time, night after night, hardly ever a word out of the

woman. As I remember it, she seemed more like a piece of furniture than

anything else--not even a very good cook, nor over and above tidy. One

day, when he and I were trimming the lamp, he passed the remark that his

_first_ wife used to dust the lens and take a pride in it. Not that he

said a word against Anna, though. He never said a word against any

living mortal; he was too upright.

I don't know how it came about; or, rather, I _do_ know, but it was so

sudden, and so far away from my thoughts, that it shocked me, like the

world turned over. It was at prayers. That night I remember Fedderson

was uncommon long-winded. We'd had a batch of newspapers out by the

tender, and at such times the old man always made a long watch of it,

getting the world straightened out. For one thing, the United States

minister to Turkey was dead. Well, from him and his soul, Fedderson got

on to Turkey and the Presbyterian college there, and from that to

heathen in general. He rambled on and on, like the surf on the ledge,

_woom-woom-woom_, never coming to an end.

You know how you'll be at prayers sometimes. My mind strayed. I counted

the canes in the chair-seat where I was kneeling; I plaited a corner of

the table-cloth between my fingers for a spell, and by and by my eyes

went wandering up the back of the chair.

The woman, sir, was looking at me. Her chair was back to mine, close,

and both our heads were down in the shadow under the edge of the table,

with Fedderson clear over on the other side by the stove. And there were

her two eyes hunting mine between the spindles in the shadow. You won't

believe me, sir, but I tell you I felt like jumping to my feet and

running out of the room--it was so queer.

I don't know what her husband was praying about after that. His voice

didn't mean anything, no more than the seas on the ledge away down

there. I went to work to count the canes in the seat again, but all my

eyes were in the top of my head. It got so I couldn't stand it. We were

at the Lord's prayer, saying it singsong together, when I had to look up

again. And there her two eyes were, between the spindles, hunting mine.

Just then all of us were saying, "Forgive us our trespasses--" I thought

of it afterward.

When we got up she was turned the other way, but I couldn't help seeing

her cheeks were red. It was terrible. I wondered if Fedderson would

notice, though I might have known he wouldn't--not him. He was in too

much of a hurry to get at his Jacob's-ladder, and then he had to tell me

for the tenth time what the Inspector'd said that day about getting him

another light--Kingdom Come, maybe, he said.

I made some excuse or other and got away. Once in the store-room, I sat

down on my cot and stayed there a long time, feeling queerer than

anything. I read a chapter in the Bible, I don't know why. After I'd got

my boots off I sat with them in my hands for as much as an hour, I

guess, staring at the oil-tank and its lopsided shadow on the wall. I

tell you, sir, I was shocked. I was only twenty-two remember, and I was

shocked and horrified.

And when I did turn in, finally, I didn't sleep at all well. Two or

three times I came to, sitting straight up in bed. Once I got up and

opened the outer door to have a look. The water was like glass, dim,

without a breath of wind, and the moon just going down. Over on the

black shore I made out two lights in a village, like a pair of eyes

watching. Lonely? My, yes! Lonely and nervous. I had a horror of her,

sir. The dinghy-boat hung on its davits just there in front of the door,

and for a minute I had an awful hankering to climb into it, lower away,

and row off, no matter where. It sounds foolish.

Well, it seemed foolish next morning, with the sun shining and

everything as usual--Fedderson sucking his pen and wagging his head over

his eternal "log," and his wife down in the rocker with her head in the

newspaper, and her breakfast work still waiting. I guess that jarred it

out of me more than anything else--sight of her slouched down there,

with her stringy, yellow hair and her dusty apron and the pale back of

her neck, reading the Society Notes. _Society Notes_! Think of it! For

the first time since I came to Seven Brothers I wanted to laugh.

I guess I did laugh when I went aloft to clean the lamp and found

everything so free and breezy, gulls flying high and little whitecaps

making under a westerly. It was like feeling a big load dropped off your

shoulders. Fedderson came up with his dust-rag and cocked his head at

me.

"What's the matter, Ray?" said he.

"Nothing," said I. And then I couldn't help it. "Seems kind of out of

place for society notes," said I, "out here at Seven Brothers."

He was the other side of the lens, and when he looked at me he had a

thousand eyes, all sober. For a minute I thought he was going on

dusting, but then he came out and sat down on a sill.

"Sometimes," said he, "I get to thinking it may be a mite dull for her

out here. She's pretty young, Ray. Not much more'n a girl, hardly."

"Not much more'n a _girl!_" It gave me a turn, sir, as though I'd seen

my aunt in short dresses.

"It's a good home for her, though," he went on slow. "I've seen a lot

worse ashore, Ray. Of course if I could get a shore light----"

"Kingdom Come's a shore light."

He looked at me out of his deep-set eyes, and then he turned them around

the light-room, where he'd been so long.

"No," said he, wagging his head. "It ain't for such as me."

I never saw so humble a man.

"But look here," he went on, more cheerful. "As I was telling her just

now, a month from yesterday's our fourth anniversary, and I'm going to

take her ashore for the day and give her a holiday--new hat and

everything. A girl wants a mite of excitement now and then, Ray."

There it was again, that "girl." It gave me the fidgets, sir. I had to

do something about it. It's close quarters for last names in a light,

and I'd taken to calling him Uncle Matt soon after I came. Now, when I

was at table that noon I spoke over to where she was standing by the

stove, getting him another help of chowder.

"I guess I'll have some, too, _Aunt_ Anna," said I, matter of fact.

She never said a word nor gave a sign--just stood there kind of

round-shouldered, dipping the chowder. And that night at prayers I

hitched my chair around the table, with its back the other way.

You get awful lazy in a lighthouse, some ways. No matter how much

tinkering you've got, there's still a lot of time and there's such

a thing as too much reading. The changes in weather get monotonous,

too, by and by; the light burns the same on a thick night as it

does on a fair one. Of course there's the ships, north-bound,

south-bound--wind-jammers, freighters, passenger-boats full of

people. In the watches at night you can see their lights go by, and

wonder what they are, how they're laden, where they'll fetch up,

and all. I used to do that almost every evening when it was my first

watch, sitting out on the walk-around up there with my legs hanging

over the edge and my chin propped on the railing--lazy. The Boston

boat was the prettiest to see, with her three tiers of port-holes

lit, like a string of pearls wrapped round and round a woman's

neck--well away, too, for the ledge must have made a couple of

hundred fathoms off the Light, like a white dog-tooth of a breaker,

even on the darkest night.

Well, I was lolling there one night, as I say, watching the Boston boat

go by, not thinking of anything special, when I heard the door on the

other side of the tower open and footsteps coming around to me.

By and by I nodded toward the boat and passed the remark that she was

fetching in uncommon close to-night. No answer. I made nothing of that,

for oftentimes Fedderson wouldn't answer, and after I'd watched the

lights crawling on through the dark a spell, just to make conversation I

said I guessed there'd be a bit of weather before long.

"I've noticed," said I, "when there's weather coming on, and the wind in

the northeast, you can hear the orchestra playing aboard of her just

over there. I make it out now. Do you?"

"Yes. Oh--yes--! _I hear it all right!_"

You can imagine I started. It wasn't him, but _her_.

And there was something in the way she said that speech,

sir--something--well--unnatural. Like a hungry animal snapping

at a person's hand.

I turned and looked at her sidewise. She was standing by the railing,

leaning a little outward, the top of her from the waist picked out

bright by the lens behind her. I didn't know what in the world to say,

and yet I had a feeling I ought not to sit there mum.

"I wonder," said I, "what that captain's thinking of, fetching in so

handy to-night. It's no way. I tell you, if 'twasn't for this light,

she'd go to work and pile up on the ledge some thick night----"

She turned at that and stared straight into the lens. I didn't like the

look of her face. Somehow, with its edges cut hard all around and its

two eyes closed down to slits, like a cat's, it made a kind of mask.

"And then," I went on, uneasy enough--"and then where'd all their music

be of a sudden, and their goings-on and their singing----"

"And dancing!" She clipped me off so quick it took my breath.

"D-d-dancing?" said I.

"That's dance-music," said she. She was looking at the boat again.

"How do you know?" I felt I had to keep on talking.

Well, sir--she laughed. I looked at her. She had on a shawl of some

stuff or other that shined in the light; she had it pulled tight around

her with her two hands in front at her breast, and I saw her shoulders

swaying in tune.

"How do I _know_?" she cried. Then she laughed again, the same kind of a

laugh. It was queer, sir, to see her, and to hear her. She turned, as

quick as that, and leaned toward me. "Don't you know how to dance, Ray?"

said she.

"N-no," I managed, and I was going to say "_Aunt Anna_," but the thing

choked in my throat.

I tell you she was looking square at me all the time with her two eyes

and moving with the music as if she didn't know it. By heavens, sir, it

came over me of a sudden that she wasn't so bad-looking, after all. I

guess I must have sounded like a fool.

"You--you see," said I, "she's cleared the rip there now, and the

music's gone. You--you hear?"

"Yes," said she, turning back slow. "That's where it stops every

night--night after night--it stops just there--at the rip."

When she spoke again her voice was different. I never heard the like of

it, thin and taut as a thread. It made me shiver, sir.

"I hate 'em!" That's what she said. "I hate 'em all. I'd like to see 'em

dead. I'd love to see 'em torn apart on the rocks, night after night. I

could bathe my hands in their blood, night after night."

And do you know, sir, I saw it with my own eyes, her hands moving in

each other above the rail. But it was her voice, though. I didn't know

what to do, or what to say, so I poked my head through the railing and

looked down at the water. I don't think I'm a coward, sir, but it was

like a cold--ice-cold--hand, taking hold of my beating heart.

When I looked up finally, she was gone. By and by I went in and had a

look at the lamp, hardly knowing what I was about. Then, seeing by my

watch it was time for the old man to come on duty, I started to go

below. In the Seven Brothers, you understand, the stair goes down in a

spiral through a well against the south wall and first there's the door

to the keeper's room and then you come to another, and that's the

living-room, and then down to the store-room. And at night, if you don't

carry a lantern, it's as black as the pit.

Well, down I went, sliding my hand along the rail, and as usual I

stopped to give a rap on the keeper's door, in case he was taking a nap

after supper. Sometimes he did.

I stood there, blind as a bat, with my mind still up on the walk-around.

There was no answer to my knock. I hadn't expected any. Just from habit,

and with my right foot already hanging down for the next step, I reached

out to give the door one more tap for luck.

Do you know, sir, my hand didn't fetch up on anything. The door had been

there a second before, and now the door wasn't there. My hand just went

on going through the dark, on and on, and I didn't seem to have sense or

power enough to stop it. There didn't seem any air in the well to

breathe, and my ears were drumming to the surf--that's how scared I was.

And then my hand touched the flesh of a face, and something in the dark

said, "Oh!" no louder than a sigh.

Next thing I knew, sir, I was down in the living-room, warm and

yellow-lit, with Fedderson cocking his head at me across the table,

where he was at that eternal Jacob's-ladder of his.

"What's the matter, Ray?" said he. "Lord's sake, Ray!"

"Nothing," said I. Then I think I told him I was sick. That night I

wrote a letter to A.L. Peters, the grain-dealer in Duxbury, asking for a

job--even though it wouldn't go ashore for a couple of weeks, just the

writing of it made me feel better.

It's hard to tell you how those two weeks went by. I don't know why, but

I felt like hiding in a corner all the time. I had to come to meals, but

I didn't look at her, though, not once, unless it was by accident.

Fedderson thought I was still ailing and nagged me to death with advice

and so on. One thing I took care not to do, I can tell you, and that was

to knock on his door till I'd made certain he wasn't below in the

living-room--though I was tempted to.

Yes, sir; that's a queer thing, and I wouldn't tell you if I hadn't set

out to give you the truth. Night after night, stopping there on the

landing in that black pit, the air gone out of my lungs and the surf

drumming in my ears and sweat standing cold on my neck--and one hand

lifting up in the air--God forgive me, sir! Maybe I did wrong not to

look at her more, drooping about her work in her gingham apron, with her

hair stringing.

When the Inspector came off with the tender, that time, I told him I

was through. That's when he took the dislike to me, I guess, for he

looked at me kind of sneering and said, soft as I was, I'd have to put

up with it till next relief. And then, said he, there'd be a whole

house-cleaning at Seven Brothers, because he'd gotten Fedderson the

berth at Kingdom Come. And with that he slapped the old man on the back.

I wish you could have seen Fedderson, sir. He sat down on my cot as if

his knees had given 'way. Happy? You'd think he'd be happy, with all his

dreams come true. Yes, he was happy, beaming all over--for a minute.

Then, sir, he began to shrivel up. It was like seeing a man cut down in

his prime before your eyes. He began to wag his head.

"No," said he. "No, no; it's not for such as me. I'm good enough for

Seven Brothers, and that's all, Mr. Bayliss. That's all."

And for all the Inspector could say, that's what he stuck to. He'd

figured himself a martyr so many years, nursed that injustice like a

mother with her first-born, sir; and now in his old age, so to speak,

they weren't to rob him of it. Fedderson was going to wear out his life

in a second-class light, and folks would talk--that was his idea. I

heard him hailing down as the tender was casting off:

"See you to-morrow, Mr. Bayliss. Yep. Coming ashore with the wife for a

spree. Anniversary. Yep."

But he didn't sound much like a spree. They _had_, robbed him, partly,

after all. I wondered what _she_ thought about it. I didn't know till

night. She didn't show up to supper, which Fedderson and I got

ourselves--had a headache, be said. It was my early watch. I went and

lit up and came back to read a spell. He was finishing off the

Jacob's-ladder, and thoughtful, like a man that's lost a treasure. Once

or twice I caught him looking about the room on the sly. It was

pathetic, sir.

Going up the second time, I stepped out on the walk-around to have a

look at things. She was there on the seaward side, wrapped in that silky

thing. A fair sea was running across the ledge and it was coming on a

little thick--not too thick. Off to the right the Boston boat was

blowing, _whroom-whroom!_ Creeping up on us, quarter-speed. There was

another fellow behind her, and a fisherman's conch farther offshore.

I don't know why, but I stopped beside her and leaned on the rail. She

didn't appear to notice me, one way or another. We stood and we stood,

listening to the whistles, and the longer we stood the more it got on my

nerves, her not noticing me. I suppose she'd been too much on my mind

lately. I began to be put out. I scraped my feet. I coughed. By and by I

said out loud:

"Look here, I guess I better get out the fog-horn and give those fellows

a toot."

"Why?" said she, without moving her head--calm as that.

"_Why?_" It gave me a turn, sir. For a minute I stared at her. "Why?

Because if she don't pick up this light before very many minutes she'll

be too close in to wear--tide'll have her on the rocks--that's why!"

I couldn't see her face, but I could see one of her silk shoulders lift

a little, like a shrug. And there I kept on staring at her, a dumb one,

sure enough. I know what brought me to was hearing the Boston boat's

three sharp toots as she picked up the light--mad as anything--and swung

her helm a-port. I turned away from her, sweat stringing down my face,

and walked around to the door. It was just as well, too, for the

feed-pipe was plugged in the lamp and the wicks were popping. She'd have

been out in another five minutes, sir.

When I'd finished, I saw that woman standing in the doorway. Her eyes

were bright. I had a horror of her, sir, a living horror.

"If only the light had been out," said she, low and sweet.

"God forgive you," said I. "You don't know what you're saying."

She went down the stair into the well, winding out of sight, and as long

as I could see her, her eyes were watching mine. When I went, myself,

after a few minutes, she was waiting for me on that first landing,

standing still in the dark. She took hold of my hand, though I tried to

get it away.

"Good-by," said she in my ear.

"Good-by?" said I. I didn't understand.

"You heard what he said to-day--about Kingdom Come? Be it so--on his own

head. I'll never come back here. Once I set foot ashore--I've got

friends in Brightonboro, Ray."

I got away from her and started on down. But I stopped. "Brightonboro?"

I whispered back. "Why do you tell _me_?" My throat was raw to the

words, like a sore.

"So you'd know," said she.

Well, sir, I saw them off next morning, down that new Jacob's-ladder

into the dinghy-boat, her in a dress of blue velvet and him in his best

cutaway and derby--rowing away, smaller and smaller, the two of them.

And then I went back and sat on my cot, leaving the door open and the

ladder still hanging down the wall, along with the boat-falls.

I don't know whether it was relief, or what. I suppose I must have been

worked up even more than I'd thought those past weeks, for now it was

all over I was like a rag. I got down on my knees, sir, and prayed to

God for the salvation of my soul, and when I got up and climbed to the

living-room it was half past twelve by the clock. There was rain on the

windows and the sea was running blue-black under the sun. I'd sat there

all that time not knowing there was a squall.

It was funny; the glass stood high, but those black squalls kept coming

and going all afternoon, while I was at work up in the light-room. And I

worked hard, to keep myself busy. First thing I knew it was five, and no

sign of the boat yet. It began to get dim and kind of purplish-gray over

the land. The sun was down. I lit up, made everything snug, and got out

the night-glasses to have another look for that boat. He'd said he

intended to get back before five. No sign. And then, standing there, it

came over me that of course he wouldn't be coming off--he'd be hunting

_her_, poor old fool. It looked like I had to stand two men's watches

that night.

Never mind. I felt like myself again, even if I hadn't had any dinner or

supper. Pride came to me that night on the walk-around, watching the

boats go by--little boats, big boats, the Boston boat with all her

pearls and her dance-music. They couldn't see me; they didn't know who I

was; but to the last of them, they depended on _me_. They say a man must

be born again. Well, I was born again. I breathed deep in the wind.

Dawn broke hard and red as a dying coal. I put out the light and started

to go below. Born again; yes, sir. I felt so good I whistled in the

well, and when I came to the first door on the stair I reached out in

the dark to give it a rap for luck. And then, sir, the hair prickled all

over my scalp, when I found my hand just going on and on through the

air, the same as it had gone once before, and all of a sudden I wanted

to yell, because I thought I was going to touch flesh. It's funny what

their just forgetting to close their door did to me, isn't it?

Well, I reached for the latch and pulled it to with a bang and ran down

as if a ghost was after me. I got up some coffee and bread and bacon for

breakfast. I drank the coffee. But somehow I couldn't eat, all along of

that open door. The light in the room was blood. I got to thinking. I

thought how she'd talked about those men, women, and children on the

rocks, and how she'd made to bathe her hands over the rail. I almost

jumped out of my chair then; it seemed for a wink she was there beside

the stove watching me with that queer half-smile--really, I seemed to

see her for a flash across the red table-cloth in the red light of dawn.

"Look here!" said I to myself, sharp enough; and then I gave myself a

good laugh and went below. There I took a look out of the door, which

was still open, with the ladder hanging down. I made sure to see the

poor old fool come pulling around the point before very long now.

My boots were hurting a little, and, taking them off, I lay down on the

cot to rest, and somehow I went to sleep. I had horrible dreams. I saw

her again standing in that blood-red kitchen, and she seemed to be

washing her hands, and the surf on the ledge was whining up the tower,

louder and louder all the time, and what it whined was, "Night after

night--night after night." What woke me was cold water in my face.

The store-room was in gloom. That scared me at first; I thought night

had come, and remembered the light. But then I saw the gloom was of a

storm. The floor was shining wet, and the water in my face was spray,

flung up through the open door. When I ran to close it, it almost made

me dizzy to see the gray-and-white breakers marching past. The land was

gone; the sky shut down heavy overhead; there was a piece of wreckage on

the back of a swell, and the Jacob's-ladder was carried clean away. How

that sea had picked up so quick I can't think. I looked at my watch and

it wasn't four in the afternoon yet.

When I closed the door, sir, it was almost dark in the store-room. I'd

never been in the Light before in a gale of wind. I wondered why I was

shivering so, till I found it was the floor below me shivering, and the

walls and stair. Horrible crunchings and grindings ran away up the

tower, and now and then there was a great thud somewhere, like a

cannon-shot in a cave. I tell you, sir, I was alone, and I was in a

mortal fright for a minute or so. And yet I had to get myself together.

There was the light up there not tended to, and an early dark coming on

and a heavy night and all, and I had to go. And I had to pass that door.

You'll say it's foolish, sir, and maybe it _was_ foolish. Maybe it was

because I hadn't eaten. But I began thinking of that door up there the

minute I set foot on the stair, and all the way up through that howling

dark well I dreaded to pass it. I told myself I wouldn't stop. I didn't

stop. I felt the landing underfoot and I went on, four steps, five--and

then I couldn't. I turned and went back. I put out my hand and it went

on into nothing. That door, sir, was open again.

I left it be; I went on up to the light-room and set to work. It was

Bedlam there, sir, screeching Bedlam, but I took no notice. I kept my

eyes down. I trimmed those seven wicks, sir, as neat as ever they were

trimmed; I polished the brass till it shone, and I dusted the lens. It

wasn't till that was done that I let myself look back to see who it was

standing there, half out of sight in the well. It was her, sir.

"Where'd you come from?" I asked. I remember my voice was sharp.

"Up Jacob's-ladder," said she, and hers was like the syrup of flowers.

I shook my head. I was savage, sir. "The ladder's carried away."

"I cast it off," said she, with a smile.

"Then," said I, "you must have come while I was asleep." Another thought

came on me heavy as a ton of lead. "And where's _he_?" said I. "Where's

the boat?"

"He's drowned," said she, as easy as that. "And I let the boat go

adrift. You wouldn't hear me when I called."

"But look here," said I. "If you came through the store-room, why didn't

you wake me up? Tell me that!" It sounds foolish enough, me standing

like a lawyer in court, trying to prove she _couldn't_ be there.

She didn't answer for a moment. I guess she sighed, though I couldn't

hear for the gale, and her eyes grew soft, sir, so soft.

"I couldn't," said she. "You looked so peaceful--dear one."

My cheeks and neck went hot, sir, as if a warm iron was laid on them. I

didn't know what to say. I began to stammer, "What do you mean--" but

she was going back down the stair, out of sight. My God sir, and I used

not to think she was good-looking!

I started to follow her. I wanted to know what she meant. Then I said to

myself, "If I don't go--if I wait here--she'll come back." And I went to

the weather side and stood looking out of the window. Not that there was

much to see. It was growing dark, and the Seven Brothers looked like the

mane of a running horse, a great, vast, white horse running into the

wind. The air was a-welter with it. I caught one peep of a fisherman,

lying down flat trying to weather the ledge, and I said, "God help them

all to-night," and then I went hot at sound of that "God."

I was right about her, though. She was back again. I wanted her to speak

first, before I turned, but she wouldn't. I didn't hear her go out; I

didn't know what she was up to till I saw her coming outside on the

walk-around, drenched wet already. I pounded on the glass for her to

come in and not be a fool; if she heard she gave no sign of it.

There she stood, and there I stood watching her. Lord, sir--was it just

that I'd never had eyes to see? Or are there women who bloom? Her

clothes were shining on her, like a carving, and her hair was let down

like a golden curtain tossing and streaming in the gale, and there she

stood with her lips half open, drinking, and her eyes half closed,

gazing straight away over the Seven Brothers, and her shoulders swaying,

as if in tune with the wind and water and all the ruin. And when I

looked at her hands over the rail, sir, they were moving in each other

as if they bathed, and then I remembered, sir.

A cold horror took me. I knew now why she had come back again. She

wasn't a woman--she was a devil. I turned my back on her. I said to

myself: "It's time to light up. You've got to light up"--like that, over

and over, out loud. My hand was shivering so I could hardly find a

match; and when I scratched it, it only flared a second and then went

out in the back draught from the open door. She was standing in the

doorway, looking at me. It's queer, sir, but I felt like a child caught

in mischief.

"I--I--was going to light up," I managed to say, finally.

"Why?" said she. No, I can't say it as she did.

"_Why?_" said I. "_My God!_"

She came nearer, laughing, as if with pity, low, you know. "Your God?

And who is your God? What is God? What is anything on a night like

this?"

I drew back from her. All I could say anything about was the light.

"Why not the dark?" said she. "Dark is softer than

light--tenderer--dearer than light. From the dark up here, away up here

in the wind and storm, we can watch the ships go by, you and I. And you

love me so. You've loved me so long, Ray."

"I never have!" I struck out at her. "I don't! I don't!"

Her voice was lower than ever, but there was the same laughing pity in

it. "Oh yes, you have." And she was near me again.

"I have?" I yelled. "I'll show you! I'll show you if I have!"

I got another match, sir, and scratched it on the brass. I gave it to

the first wick, the little wick that's inside all the others. It bloomed

like a yellow flower. "I _have_?" I yelled, and gave it to the next.

Then there was a shadow, and I saw she was leaning beside me, her two

elbows on the brass, her two arms stretched out above the wicks, her

bare forearms and wrists and hands. I gave a gasp:

"Take care! You'll burn them! For God's sake----"

She didn't move or speak. The match burned my fingers and went out, and

all I could do was stare at those arms of hers, helpless. I'd never

noticed her arms before. They were rounded and graceful and covered with

a soft down, like a breath of gold. Then I heard her speaking close to

my ear.

"Pretty arms," she said. "Pretty arms!"

I turned. Her eyes were fixed on mine. They seemed heavy, as if with

sleep, and yet between their lids they were two wells, deep and deep,

and as if they held all the things I'd ever thought or dreamed in them.

I looked away from them, at her lips. Her lips were red as poppies,

heavy with redness. They moved, and I heard them speaking:

"Poor boy, you love me so, and you want to kiss me--don't you?"

"No," said I. But I couldn't turn around. I looked at her hair. I'd

always thought it was stringy hair. Some hair curls naturally with damp,

they say, and perhaps that was it, for there were pearls of wet on it,

and it was thick and shimmering around her face, making soft shadows by

the temples. There was green in it, queer strands of green like braids.

"What is it?" said I.

"Nothing but weed," said she, with that slow, sleepy smile.

Somehow or other I felt calmer than I had any time. "Look here," said I.

"I'm going to light this lamp." I took out a match, scratched it, and

touched the third wick. The flame ran around, bigger than the other two

together. But still her arms hung there. I bit my lip. "By God, I will!"

said I to myself, and I lit the fourth.

It was fierce, sir, fierce! And yet those arms never trembled. I had to

look around at her. Her eyes were still looking into mine, so deep and

deep, and her red lips were still smiling with that queer, sleepy droop;

the only thing was that tears were raining down her cheeks--big, glowing

round, jewel tears. It wasn't human, sir. It was like a dream.

"Pretty arms," she sighed, and then, as if those words had broken

something in her heart, there came a great sob bursting from her lips.

To hear it drove me mad. I reached to drag her away, but she was too

quick, sir; she cringed from me and slipped out from between my hands.

It was like she faded away, sir, and went down in a bundle, nursing her

poor arms and mourning over them with those terrible, broken sobs.

The sound of them took the manhood out of me--you'd have been the same,

sir. I knelt down beside her on the floor and covered my face.

"Please!" I moaned. "Please! Please!" That's all I could say. I wanted

her to forgive me. I reached out a hand, blind, for forgiveness, and I

couldn't find her anywhere. I had hurt her so, and she was afraid of

me, of _me_, sir, who loved her so deep it drove me crazy.

I could see her down the stair, though it was dim and my eyes were

filled with tears. I stumbled after her, crying, "Please! Please!" The

little wicks I'd lit were blowing in the wind from the door and smoking

the glass beside them black. One went out. I pleaded with them, the same

as I would plead with a human being. I said I'd be back in a second. I

promised. And I went on down the stair, crying like a baby because I'd

hurt her, and she was afraid of me--of _me_, sir.

She had gone into her room. The door was closed against me and I could

hear her sobbing beyond it, broken-hearted. My heart was broken too. I

beat on the door with my palms. I begged her to forgive me. I told her I

loved her. And all the answer was that sobbing in the dark.

And then I lifted the latch and went in, groping, pleading.

"Dearest--please! Because I love you!"

I heard her speak down near the floor. There wasn't any anger in her

voice; nothing but sadness and despair.

"No," said she. "You don't love me, Ray. You never have."

"I do! I have!"

"No, no," said she, as if she was tired out.

"Where are you?" I was groping for her. I thought, and lit a match. She

had got to the door and was standing there as if ready to fly. I went

toward her, and she made me stop. She took my breath away. "I hurt your

arms," said I, in a dream.

"No," said she, hardly moving her lips. She held them out to the match's

light for me to look and there was never a scar on them--not even that

soft, golden down was singed, sir. "You can't hurt my body," said she,

sad as anything. "Only my heart, Ray; my poor heart."

I tell you again, she took my breath away. I lit another match. "How can

you be so beautiful?" I wondered.

She answered in riddles--but oh, the sadness of her, sir.

"Because," said she, "I've always so wanted to be."

"How come your eyes so heavy?" said I.

"Because I've seen so many things I never dreamed of," said she.

"How come your hair so thick?"

"It's the seaweed makes it thick," said she smiling queer, queer.

"How come seaweed there?"

"Out of the bottom of the sea."

She talked in riddles, but it was like poetry to hear her, or a song.

"How come your lips so red?" said I.

"Because they've wanted so long to be kissed."

Fire was on me, sir. I reached out to catch her, but she was gone, out

of the door and down the stair. I followed, stumbling. I must have

tripped on the turn, for I remember going through the air and fetching

up with a crash, and I didn't know anything for a spell--how long I

can't say. When I came to, she was there, somewhere, bending over me,

crooning, "My love--my love--" under her breath like, a song.

But then when I got up, she was not where my arms went; she was down the

stair again, just ahead of me. I followed her. I was tottering and dizzy

and full of pain. I tried to catch up with her in the dark of the

store-room, but she was too quick for me, sir, always a little too quick

for me. Oh, she was cruel to me, sir. I kept bumping against things,

hurting myself still worse, and it was cold and wet and a horrible noise

all the while, sir; and then, sir, I found the door was open, and a sea

had parted the hinges.

I don't know how it all went, sir. I'd tell you if I could, but it's all

so blurred--sometimes it seems more like a dream. I couldn't find her

any more; I couldn't hear her; I went all over, everywhere. Once, I

remember, I found myself hanging out of that door between the davits,

looking down into those big black seas and crying like a baby. It's all

riddles and blur. I can't seem to tell you much, sir. It was all--all--I

don't know.

I was talking to somebody else--not her. It was the Inspector. I hardly

knew it was the Inspector. His face was as gray as a blanket, and his

eyes were bloodshot, and his lips were twisted. His left wrist hung

down, awkward. It was broken coming aboard the Light in that sea. Yes,

we were in the living-room. Yes, sir, it was daylight--gray daylight. I

tell you, sir, the man looked crazy to me. He was waving his good arm

toward the weather windows, and what he was saying, over and over, was

this:

"_Look what you done, damn you! Look what you done_!"

And what I was saying was this:

"_I've lost her_!"

I didn't pay any attention to him, nor him to me. By and by he did,

though. He stopped his talking all of a sudden, and his eyes looked like

the devil's eyes. He put them up close to mine. He grabbed my arm with

his good hand, and I cried, I was so weak.

"Johnson," said he, "is that it? By the living God--if you got a woman

out here, Johnson!"

"No," said I. "I've lost her."

"What do you mean--lost her?"

"It was dark," said I--and it's funny how my head was clearing up--"and

the door was open--the store-room door--and I was after her--and I guess

she stumbled, maybe--and I lost her."

"Johnson," said he, "what do you mean? You sound crazy--downright crazy.

Who?"

"Her," said I. "Fedderson's wife."

"_Who?_"

"Her," said I. And with that he gave my arm another jerk.

"Listen," said he, like a tiger. "Don't try that on me. It won't do any

good--that kind of lies--not where _you're_ going to. Fedderson and his

wife, too--the both of 'em's drowned deader 'n a door-nail."

"I know," said I, nodding my head. I was so calm it made him wild.

"You're crazy! Crazy as a loon, Johnson!" And he was chewing his lip

red. "I know, because it was me that found the old man laying on Back

Water Flats yesterday morning--_me!_ And she'd been with him in the

boat, too, because he had a piece of her jacket tore off, tangled in his

arm."

"I know," said I, nodding again, like that.

"You know _what_, you _crazy, murdering fool_?" Those were his words to

me, sir.

"I know," said I, "what I know."

"And _I_ know," said he, "what _I_ know."

And there you are, sir. He's Inspector. I'm--nobody.

At the Gate

BY MYLA JO CLOSSER

From the _Century Magazine_. By permission of the Century Company

and Myla J. Closser.

A shaggy Airedale scented his way along the highroad. He had not been

there before, but he was guided by the trail of his brethren who had

preceded him. He had gone unwillingly upon this journey, yet with the

perfect training of dogs he had accepted it without complaint. The path

had been lonely, and his heart would have failed him, traveling as he

must without his people, had not these traces of countless dogs before

him promised companionship of a sort at the end of the road.

The landscape had appeared arid at first, for the translation from

recent agony into freedom from pain had been so numbing in its swiftness

that it was some time before he could fully appreciate the pleasant

dog-country through which he was passing. There were woods with leaves

upon the ground through which to scurry, long grassy slopes for extended

runs, and lakes into which he might plunge for sticks and bring them

back to--But he did not complete his thought, for the boy was not with

him. A little wave of homesickness possessed him.

It made his mind easier to see far ahead a great gate as high as the

heavens, wide enough for all. He understood that only man built such

barriers and by straining his eyes he fancied he could discern humans

passing through to whatever lay beyond. He broke into a run that he

might the more quickly gain this inclosure made beautiful by men and

women; but his thoughts outran his pace, and he remembered that he had

left the family behind, and again this lovely new compound became not

perfect, since it would lack the family.

The scent of the dogs grew very strong now, and coming nearer, he

discovered, to his astonishment that of the myriads of those who had

arrived ahead of him thousands were still gathered on the outside of the

portal. They sat in a wide circle spreading out on each side of the

entrance, big, little, curly, handsome, mongrel, thoroughbred dogs of

every age, complexion, and personality. All were apparently waiting for

something, someone, and at the pad of the Airedale's feet on the hard

road they arose and looked in his direction.

That the interest passed as soon as they discovered the new-comer to be

a dog puzzled him. In his former dwelling-place a four-footed brother

was greeted with enthusiasm when he was a friend, with suspicious

diplomacy when a stranger, and with sharp reproof when an enemy; but

never had he been utterly ignored.

He remembered something that he had read many times on great buildings

with lofty entrances. "Dogs not admitted," the signs had said, and he

feared this might be the reason for the waiting circle outside the gate.

It might be that this noble portal stood as the dividing-line between

mere dogs and humans. But he had been a member of the family, romping

with them in the living-room, sitting at meals with them in the

dining-room, going upstairs at night with them, and the thought that he

was to be "kept out" would be unendurable.

He despised the passive dogs. They should be treating a barrier after

the fashion of their old country, leaping against it, barking, and

scratching the nicely painted door. He bounded up the last little hill

to set them an example, for he was still full of the rebellion of the

world; but he found no door to leap against. He could see beyond the

entrance dear masses of people, yet no dog crossed the threshold. They

continued in their patient ring, their gaze upon the winding road.

He now advanced cautiously to examine the gate. It occurred to him that

it must be fly-time in this region, and he did not wish to make himself

ridiculous before all these strangers by trying to bolt through an

invisible mesh like the one that had baffled him when he was a little

chap. Yet there were no screens, and despair entered his soul. What

bitter punishment these poor beasts must have suffered before they

learned to stay on this side the arch that led to human beings! What

had they done on earth to merit this? Stolen bones troubled his

conscience, runaway days, sleeping in the best chair until the key

clicked in the lock. These were sins.

At that moment an English bull-terrier, white, with liver-colored spots

and a jaunty manner, approached him, snuffling in a friendly way. No

sooner had the bull-terrier smelt his collar than he fell to expressing

his joy at meeting him. The Airedale's reserve was quite thawed by this

welcome, though he did not know just what to make of it.

"I know you! I know you!" exclaimed the bull-terrier, adding

inconsequently, "What's your name?"

"Tam o'Shanter. They call me Tammy," was the answer, with a pardonable

break in the voice.

"I know them," said the bull-terrier. "Nice folks."

"Best ever," said the Airedale, trying to be nonchalant, and scratching

a flea which was not there. "I don't remember you. When did you know

them?"

"About fourteen tags ago, when they were first married. We keep track of

time here by the license-tags. I had four."

"This is my first and only one. You were before my time, I guess." He

felt young and shy.

"Come for a walk, and tell me all about them," was his new friend's

invitation.

"Aren't we allowed in there?" asked Tam, looking toward the gate.

"Sure. You can go in whenever you want to. Some of us do at first, but

we don't stay."

"Like it better outside?"

"No, no; it isn't that."

"Then why are all you fellows hanging around here? Any old dog can see

it's better beyond the arch."

"You see, we're waiting for our folks to come."

The Airedale grasped it at once, and nodded understandingly.

"I felt that way when I came along the road. It wouldn't be what it's

supposed to be without them. It wouldn't be the perfect place."

"Not to us," said the bull-terrier.

"Fine! I've stolen bones, but it must be that I have been forgiven, if

I'm to see them here again. It's the great good place all right. But

look here," he added as a new thought struck him, "do they wait for us?"

The older inhabitant coughed in slight embarrassment.

"The humans couldn't do that very well. It wouldn't be the thing to have

them hang around outside for just a dog--not dignified."

"Quite right," agreed Tam. "I'm glad they go straight to their mansions.

I'd--I'd hate to have them missing me as I am missing them." He sighed.

"But, then, they wouldn't have to wait so long."

"Oh, well, they're getting on. Don't be discouraged," comforted the

terrier. "And in the meantime it's like a big hotel in summer--watching

the new arrivals. See, there is something doing now."

All the dogs were aroused to excitement by a little figure making its

way uncertainly up the last slope. Half of them started to meet it,

crowding about in a loving, eager pack.

"Look out; don't scare it," cautioned the older animals, while word was

passed to those farthest from the gate: "Quick! Quick! A baby's come!"

Before they had entirely assembled, however, a gaunt yellow hound pushed

through the crowd, gave one sniff at the small child, and with a yelp of

joy crouched at its feet. The baby embraced the hound in recognition,

and the two moved toward the gate. Just outside the hound stopped to

speak to an aristocratic St. Bernard who had been friendly:

"Sorry to leave you, old fellow," he said, "but I'm going in to watch

over the kid. You see, I'm all she has up here."

The bull-terrier looked at the Airedale for appreciation.

"That's the way we do it," he said proudly.

"Yes, but--" the Airedale put his head on one side in perplexity.

"Yes, but what?" asked the guide.

"The dogs that don't have any people--the nobodies' dogs?"

"That's the best of all. Oh, everything is thought out here. Crouch

down,--you must be tired,--and watch," said the bull-terrier.

Soon they spied another small form making the turn in the road. He wore

a Boy Scout's uniform, but he was a little fearful, for all that, so new

was this adventure. The dogs rose again and snuffled, but the better

groomed of the circle held back, and in their place a pack of odds and

ends of the company ran down to meet him. The Boy Scout was reassured by

their friendly attitude, and after petting them impartially, he chose an

old-fashioned black and tan, and the two passed in.

Tam looked questioningly.

"They didn't know each other!" he exclaimed.

"But they've always wanted to. That's one of the boys who used to beg

for a dog, but his father wouldn't let him have one. So all our strays

wait for just such little fellows to come along. Every boy gets a dog,

and every dog gets a master."

"I expect the boy's father would like to know that now," commented the

Airedale. "No doubt he thinks quite often, 'I wish I'd let him have a

dog.'"

The bull-terrier laughed.

"You're pretty near the earth yet, aren't you?"

Tam admitted it.

"I've a lot of sympathy with fathers and with boys, having them both in

the family, and a mother as well."

The bull-terrier leaped up in astonishment.

"You don't mean to say they keep a boy?"

"Sure; greatest boy on earth. Ten this year."

"Well, well, this is news! I wish they'd kept a boy when I was there."

The Airedale looked at his new friend intently.

"See here, who are you?" he demanded.

But the other hurried on:

"I used to run away from them just to play with a boy. They'd punish me,

and I always wanted to tell them it was their fault for not getting

one."

"Who are you, anyway?" repeated Tam. "Talking all this interest in me,

too. Whose dog _were_ you?"

"You've already guessed. I see it in your quivering snout. I'm the old

dog that had to leave them about ten years ago."

"Their old dog Bully?"

"Yes, I'm Bully." They nosed each other with deeper affection, then

strolled about the glades shoulder to shoulder. Bully the more eagerly

pressed for news. "Tell me, how are they getting along?"

"Very well indeed; they've paid for the house."

"I--I suppose you occupy the kennel?"

"No. They said they couldn't stand it to see another dog in your old

place."

Bully stopped to howl gently.

"That touches me. It's generous in you to tell it. To think they missed

me!"

For a little while they went on in silence, but as evening fell, and

the light from the golden streets inside of the city gave the only glow

to the scene, Bully grew nervous and suggested that they go back.

"We can't see so well at night, and I like to be pretty close to the

path, especially toward morning."

Tam assented.

"And I will point them out. You might not know them just at first."

"Oh, we know them. Sometimes the babies have so grown up they're rather

hazy in their recollection of how we look. They think we're bigger than

we are; but you can't fool us dogs."

"It's understood," Tam cunningly arranged, "that when he or she arrives

you'll sort of make them feel at home while I wait for the boy?"

"That's the best plan," assented Bully, kindly. "And if by any chance

the little fellow should come first,--there's been a lot of them this

summer--of course you'll introduce me?"

"I shall be proud to do it."

And so with muzzles sunk between their paws, and with their eyes

straining down the pilgrims' road, they wait outside the gate.

Ligeia

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the

mystery of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will

pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not

yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only

through the weakness of his feeble will.--_Joseph Glanvill._

I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I

first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since

elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I

cannot _now_ bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the

character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast

of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low

musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and

stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I

believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old,

decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family--I have surely heard her

speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia!

Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to

deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word

alone--by Ligeia--that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of

her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon

me that I have _never known_ the paternal name of her who was my friend

and my bethrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally

the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia?

or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no

inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own--a

wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?

I but indistinctly recall the fact itself--what wonder that I have

utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?

And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled _Romance_--if ever

she, the wan misty-winged _Ashtophet_ of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as

they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over

mine.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It

is the _person_ of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat

slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain

attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the

incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came

and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into

my closed study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she

placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden

ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream--an airy and

spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which

hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her

features were not of that regular mold which we have been falsely taught

to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite

beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and

_genera_ of beauty, "without some _strangeness_ in the proportion."

Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic

regularity--although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed

"exquisite," and felt that there was much of "strangeness" pervading it,

yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my

own perception of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and

pale forehead--it was faultless--how cold indeed that word when applied

to a majesty so divine!--the skin rivaling the purest ivory, the

commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above

the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant, and

naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric

epithet, "hyacinthine!" I looked at the delicate outlines of the

nose--and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I

beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of

surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the

same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded

the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly--the

magnificent turn of the short upper lip--the soft, voluptuous slumber of

the under--the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke--the

teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of

the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid yet most

exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the

chin--and, here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness

and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek--the

contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the

son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been,

too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord

Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary

eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the

gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at

intervals--in moments of intense excitement--that this peculiarity

became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was

her beauty--in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps--the beauty of

beings either above or apart from the earth--the beauty of the fabulous

Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,

and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows,

slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness,"

however, which I found in the eyes was of a nature distinct from the

formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must,

after all, be referred to the _expression_. Ah, word of no meaning!

behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so

much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for

long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a

midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it--that something

more profound than the well of Democritus--which lay far within the

pupils of my beloved? What _was_ it? I was possessed with a passion to

discover. Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs!

they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of

astrologers.

There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the

science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact--never, I

believe, noticed in the schools--than in our endeavors to recall to

memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves _upon the very

verge_ of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And

thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I

felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression--felt it

approaching--yet not quite be mine--and so at length entirely depart!

And (strange, oh, strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest

objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I

mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed

into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many

existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always

around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more

could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I

recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly

growing vine--in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis,

a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean--in the falling

of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And

there are one or two stars in heaven (one especially, a star of the

sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star

in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the

feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed

instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among

innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of

Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness--who shall

say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: "And the will

therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will,

with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by

nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto

death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."

Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace,

indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English

moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An _intensity_ in

thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result, or at least

an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse,

failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of

all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the

ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous

vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate,

save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so

delighted and appalled me,--by the almost magical melody, modulation,

distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice,--and by the fierce

energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of

utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.

I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense--such as I have

never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply

proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the

modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon

any theme of the most admired because simply the most abstruse of the

boasted erudition of the Academy, have I _ever_ found Ligeia at fault?

How singularly--how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife

has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said

her knowledge was such as I have never known in woman--but where

breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, _all_ the wide

areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what

I now clearly perceive that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic,

were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy

to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through

the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most

busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast

a triumph--with how vivid a delight--with how much of all that is

ethereal in hope did I _feel_, as she bent over me in studies but little

sought--but less known,--that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding

before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at

length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to

be forbidden.

How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some

years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves

and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her

presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many

mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting

the radiant luster of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller

than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently

upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed

with a too--too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the

transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the lofty

forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most gentle

emotion. I saw that she must die--and I struggled desperately in spirit

with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were, to

my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had been much in

her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would

have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are impotent to convey

any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled

with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would

have soothed--I would have reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild

desire for life--for life--_but_ for life--solace and reason were alike

the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most

convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external

placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more gentle--grew more

low--yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly

uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened, entranced, to a melody

more than mortal--to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had

never before known.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been

easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no

ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the

strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she

pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate

devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by

such confessions?--how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal

of my beloved in the hour of my making them? But upon this subject I

cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than

womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily

bestowed, I at length, recognized the principle of her longing, with so

wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly

away. It is this wild longing--it is this eager vehemence of desire for

life--_but_ for life--that I have no power to portray--no utterance

capable of expressing.

At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me,

peremptorily, to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by

herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these:--

Lo! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly;

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their condor wings

Invisible Wo!

That motley drama!--oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot;

And much of Madness, and more of Sin

And Horror, the soul of the plot!

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out--out are the lights--out all:

And over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm--

And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"

And its hero, the conqueror Worm.

"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her

arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these

lines--"O God! O Divine Father!--shall these things be undeviatingly

so?--shall this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and

parcel in Thee? Who--who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its

vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, _nor unto death utterly_,

save only through the weakness of his feeble will."

And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to

fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her

last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I

bent to them my ear, and distinguished, again, the concluding words of

the passage in Glanvill: "_Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor

unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will._"

She died: and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer

endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying

city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia

had brought me far more, very far more, than ordinarily falls to the lot

of mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless

wandering, I purchased and put in some repair, an abbey, which I shall

not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair

England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost

savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored

memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of

utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial

region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant

decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I gave way, with

a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating

my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within. For

such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they

came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even

of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and

fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild

cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted

gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my

labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. But these

absurdities I must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one

chamber, ever accursed, whither, in a moment of mental alienation, I led

from the altar as my bride--as the successor of the unforgotten

Ligeia--the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of

Tremaine.

There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of

that bridal chamber which is not visibly before me. Where were the souls

of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold, they

permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment _so_ bedecked, a maiden

and a daughter so beloved? I have said, that I minutely remember the

details of the chamber--yet I am sadly forgetful on topics of deep

moment; and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic

display to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of

the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size.

Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagonal was the sole

window--an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice--a single pane,

and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon

passing through it, fell with a ghastly luster on the objects within.

Over the upper portion of this huge window extended the trellis-work of

an aged vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The

ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and

elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a

semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of

this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long

links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with

many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as

if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of

parti-colored fires.

Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in

various stations about; and there was the couch, too--the bridal

couch--of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with

a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on

end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings

over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture.

But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of

all. The lofty walls, gigantic in height--even unproportionably so--were

hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and

massive-looking tapestry--tapestry of a material which was found alike

as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony

bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the

curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the richest

cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with

arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth

in patterns of the most jetty black. But these figures partook of the

true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point

of view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very

remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one

entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but

upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and, step by

step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself

surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to

the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the

monk. The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial

introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the

draperies--giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.

In halls such as these--in a bridal chamber such as this--I passed, with

the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our

marriage--passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded

the fierce moodiness of my temper--that she shunned me, and loved me but

little--I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than

otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to

man. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia,

the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I reveled in

recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty--her ethereal

nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my spirit

fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the

excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the

shackles of the drug), I would call aloud upon her name, during the

silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by

day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the

consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to

the pathways she had abandoned--ah, _could_ it be forever?--upon the

earth.

About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady

Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was

slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in

her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of

motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had

no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the

phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length

convalescent--finally, well. Yet but a second more violent disorder

again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame,

at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses were,

after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming

recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her

physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease, which had thus,

apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated

by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the

nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by

trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently and

pertinaciously, of the sounds--of the slight sounds--and of the unusual

motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this

distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She

had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with

feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her

emaciated countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of

the ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low

whisper, of sounds which she _then_ heard, but which I could not

hear--of motions which she _then_ saw, but which I could not perceive.

The wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to

show her (what, let me confess it, I could not _all_ believe) that those

almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the

figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary

rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had

proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She

appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within call. I

remembered where was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been

ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure

it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two

circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt

that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my

person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very

middle of the rich luster thrown from the censer, a shadow--a faint,

indefinite shadow of angelic aspect--such as might be fancied for the

shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate

dose of opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to

Rowena. Having found the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a

gobletful, which I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now

partially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank

upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was

then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the

carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as Rowena was in

the act of raising the wine to her lips, I saw, or may have dreamed that

I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the

atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and

ruby colored fluid. If this I saw--not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine

unhesitatingly, and I forebore to speak to her of a circumstance which

must, after all, I considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid

imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the

opium, and by the hour.

Yet I cannot conceal [Transcriber's note: The original reads "coneal".]

it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of

the ruby drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder

of my wife; so that, on the third subsequent night, the hands of her

menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with

her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as

my bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before

me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the

room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of

the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I

called to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the spot beneath

the glare of the censer where I had seen the faint traces of the shadow.

It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I

turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then

rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia--and then came back upon my

heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that

unutterable woe with which I had regarded _her_ thus enshrouded. The

night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one

only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon the body of Rowena.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had

taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct,

startled me from my revery. I _felt_ that it came from the bed of

ebony--the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious

terror--but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision

to detect any motion in the corpse--but there was not the slightest

perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I _had_ heard the

noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely

and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes

elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the

mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and

barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and

along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of

unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no

sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my

limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to

restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been

precipitate in our preparations--that Rowena still lived. It was

necessary that some immediate exertion be made; yet the turret was

altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the

servants--there were none within call--I had no means of summoning them

to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes--and this I could

not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to call

back the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was certain,

however, that a relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both

eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the

lips became doubly shriveled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of

death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the

surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately

supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had

been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate

waking visions of Ligeia.

An hour thus elapsed, when (could it be possible?) I was a second time

aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I

listened--in extremity of horror. The sound came again--it was a sigh.

Rushing to the corpse, I saw--distinctly saw--a tremor upon the lips. In

a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly

teeth. Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which

had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that

my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort that I at length

succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had

pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the

cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there

was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady _lived_; and with

redoubled ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I chafed and

bathed the temples and the hands and used every exertion which

experience, and no little medical reading, could suggest. But in vain.

Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the

expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body

took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense

rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of

that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.

And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia--and again (what marvel that I

shudder while I write?), _again_ there reached my ears a low sob from

the region of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely detail the

unspeakable horrors of that night? Why shall I pause to relate how, time

after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama

of revivification was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only into

a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony wore

the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each struggle

was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the personal

appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.

The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had

been dead once again stirred--and now more vigorously than hitherto,

although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter

hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and

remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl

of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least

terrible, the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now

more vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted

energy into the countenance--the limbs relaxed--and, save that the

eyelids were yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and

draperies of the grave still imparted their charnel character to the

figure, I might have dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly,

the fetters of Death. But if this idea was not, even then, altogether

adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, arising from the bed,

tottering, with feeble steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of

one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly

and palpably into the middle of the apartment.

I trembled not--I stirred not--for a crowd of unutterable fancies

connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor, of the figure,

rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed--had chilled me into

stone. I stirred not--but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad

disorder in my thoughts--a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the

_living_ Rowena who confronted me? Could it, indeed, be Rowena _at

all_--the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine?

Why, _why_ should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the

mouth--but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of

Tremaine? And the cheeks--there were the roses as in her noon of

life--yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of

Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might it not be

hers?--but _had she then grown taller since her malady?_ What

inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had

reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head,

unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there

streamed forth into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses of

long and disheveled hair; _it was blacker than the raven wings of

midnight._ And now slowly opened _the eyes_ of the figure which stood

before me. "Here then, at least," I shrieked aloud, "can I never--can I

never be mistaken--these are the full, and the black, and the wild

eyes--of my lost love--of the Lady--of the LADY LIGEIA."

The Haunted Orchard

BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

From _Harper's Magazine_, January, 1912. By permission of Harper

and Brothers and Richard Le Gallienne.

Spring was once more in the world. As she sang to herself in the faraway

woodlands her voice reached even the ears of the city, weary with the

long winter. Daffodils flowered at the entrances to the Subway,

furniture removing vans blocked the side streets, children clustered

like blossoms on the doorsteps, the open cars were running, and the cry

of the "cash clo'" man was once more heard in the land.

Yes, it was the spring, and the city dreamed wistfully of lilacs and the

dewy piping of birds in gnarled old apple-trees, of dogwood lighting up

with sudden silver the thickening woods, of water-plants unfolding their

glossy scrolls in pools of morning freshness.

On Sunday mornings, the outbound trains were thronged with eager

pilgrims, hastening out of the city, to behold once more the ancient

marvel of the spring; and, on Sunday evenings, the railway termini were

aflower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard carried

in the hands of the returning pilgrims, whose eyes still shone with the

spring magic, in whose ears still sang the fairy music.

And as I beheld these signs of the vernal equinox I knew that I, too,

must follow the music, forsake awhile the beautiful siren we call the

city, and in the green silences meet once more my sweetheart Solitude.

As the train drew out of the Grand Central, I hummed to myself,

"I've a neater, sweeter maiden, in a greener, cleaner land"

and so I said good-by to the city, and went forth with beating heart to

meet the spring.

I had been told of an almost forgotten corner on the south coast of

Connecticut, where the spring and I could live in an inviolate

loneliness--a place uninhabited save by birds and blossoms, woods and

thick grass, and an occasional silent farmer, and pervaded by the breath

and shimmer of the Sound.

Nor had rumor lied, for when the train set me down at my destination I

stepped out into the most wonderful green hush, a leafy Sabbath silence

through which the very train, as it went farther on its way, seemed to

steal as noiselessly as possible for fear of breaking the spell.

After a winter in the town, to be dropped thus suddenly into the intense

quiet of the country-side makes an almost ghostly impression upon one,

as of an enchanted silence, a silence that listens and watches but

never speaks, finger on lip. There is a spectral quality about

everything upon which the eye falls: the woods, like great green clouds,

the wayside flowers, the still farm-houses half lost in orchard

bloom--all seem to exist in a dream. Everything is so still, everything

so supernaturally green. Nothing moves or talks, except the gentle

susurrus of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet

sky, or a bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly to itself

among the crowding rushes.

Though, from the houses one notes here and there, there are evidently

human inhabitants of this green silence, none are to be seen. I have

often wondered where the countryfolk hide themselves, as I have walked

hour after hour, past farm and croft and lonely door-yards, and never

caught sight of a human face. If you should want to ask the way, a

farmer is as shy as a squirrel, and if you knock at a farm-house door,

all is as silent as a rabbit-warren.

As I walked along in the enchanted stillness, I came at length to a

quaint old farm-house--"old Colonial" in its architecture--embowered in

white lilacs, and surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple-trees which

cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass. The orchard had the

impressiveness of those old religious groves, dedicated to the strange

worship of sylvan gods, gods to be found now only in Horace or Catullus,

and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is

still dear.

The old house seemed already the abode of Solitude. As I lifted the

latch of the white gate and walked across the forgotten grass, and up on

to the veranda already festooned with wistaria, and looked into the

window, I saw Solitude sitting by an old piano, on which no composer

later than Bach had ever been played.

In other words, the house was empty; and going round to the back, where

old barns and stables leaned together as if falling asleep, I found a

broken pane, and so climbed in and walked through the echoing rooms. The

house was very lonely. Evidently no one had lived in it for a long time.

Yet it was all ready for some occupant, for whom it seemed to be

waiting. Quaint old four-poster bedsteads stood in three rooms--dimity

curtains and spotless linen--old oak chests and mahogany presses; and,

opening drawers in Chippendale sideboards, I came upon beautiful frail

old silver and exquisite china that set me thinking of a beautiful

grandmother of mine, made out of old lace and laughing wrinkles and

mischievous old blue eyes.

There was one little room that particularly interested me, a tiny

bedroom all white, and at the window the red roses were already in bud.

But what caught my eye with peculiar sympathy was a small bookcase, in

which were some twenty or thirty volumes, wearing the same forgotten

expression--forgotten and yet cared for--which lay like a kind of

memorial charm upon everything in the old house. Yes, everything seemed

forgotten and yet everything, curiously--even religiously--remembered. I

took out book after book from the shelves, once or twice flowers fell

out from the pages--and I caught sight of a delicate handwriting here

and there and frail markings. It was evidently the little intimate

library of a young girl. What surprised me most was to find that quite

half the books were in French--French poets and French romancers: a

charming, very rare edition of Ronsard, a beautifully printed edition of

Alfred de Musset, and a copy of Theophile Gautier's _Mademoiselle de

Maupin_. How did these exotic books come to be there alone in a deserted

New England farm-house?

This question was to be answered later in a strange way. Meanwhile I had

fallen in love with the sad, old, silent place, and as I closed the

white gate and was once more on the road, I looked about for someone who

could tell me whether or not this house of ghosts might be rented for

the summer by a comparatively living man.

I was referred to a fine old New England farm-house shining white

through the trees a quarter of a mile away. There I met an ancient

couple, a typical New England farmer and his wife; the old man, lean,

chin-bearded, with keen gray eyes flickering occasionally with a shrewd

humor, the old lady with a kindly old face of the withered-apple type

and ruddy. They were evidently prosperous people, but their minds--for

some reason I could not at the moment divine--seemed to be divided

between their New England desire to drive a hard bargain and their

disinclination to let the house at all.

Over and over again they spoke of the loneliness of the place. They

feared I would find it very lonely. No one had lived in it for a long

time, and so on. It seemed to me that afterwards I understood their

curious hesitation, but at the moment only regarded it as a part of the

circuitous New England method of bargaining. At all events, the rent I

offered finally overcame their disinclination, whatever its cause, and

so I came into possession--for four months--of that silent old house,

with the white lilacs, and the drowsy barns, and the old piano, and the

strange orchard; and, as the summer came on, and the year changed its

name from May to June, I used to lie under the apple-trees in the

afternoons, dreamily reading some old book, and through half-sleepy

eyelids watching the silken shimmer of the Sound.

I had lived in the old house for about a month, when one afternoon a

strange thing happened to me. I remember the date well. It was the

afternoon of Tuesday, June 13th. I was reading, or rather dipping here

and there, in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. As I read, I remember

that a little unripe apple, with a petal or two of blossom still

clinging to it, fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I must

have fallen into a dream, though it seemed to me that both my eyes and

my ears were wide open, for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful

young voice singing very softly somewhere among the leaves. The singing

was very frail, almost imperceptible, as though it came out of the air.

It came and went fitfully, like the elusive fragrance of sweetbrier--as

though a girl was walking to and fro, dreamily humming to herself in the

still afternoon. Yet there was no one to be seen. The orchard had never

seemed more lonely. And another fact that struck me as strange was that

the words that floated to me out of the aerial music were French, half

sad, half gay snatches of some long-dead singer of old France, I looked

about for the origin of the sweet sounds, but in vain. Could it be the

birds that were singing in French in this strange orchard? Presently the

voice seemed to come quite close to me, so near that it might have been

the voice of a dryad singing to me out of the tree against which I was

leaning. And this time I distinctly caught the words of the sad little

song:

_"Chante, rossignol, chante,

Toi qui as le coeur gai;

Tu as le coeur a rire,

Moi, je l'ai-t-a pleurer."_

But, though the voice was at my shoulder, I could see no one, and then

the singing stopped with what sounded like a sob; and a moment or two

later I seemed to hear a sound of sobbing far down the orchard. Then

there followed silence, and I was left to ponder on the strange

occurrence. Naturally, I decided that it was just a day-dream between

sleeping and waking over the pages of an old book; yet when next day and

the day after the invisible singer was in the orchard again, I could not

be satisfied with such mere matter-of-fact explanation.

_"A la claire fontaine,"_

went the voice to and fro through the thick orchard boughs,

_"M'en allant promener,

J'ai trouve l'eau si belle

Que je m'y suis baigne,

Lui y a longtemps que je t'aime,

Jamais je ne t'oubliai."_

It was certainly uncanny to hear that voice going to and fro the

orchard, there somewhere amid the bright sun-dazzled boughs--yet not a

human creature to be seen--not another house even within half a mile.

The most materialistic mind could hardly but conclude that here was

something "not dreamed of in our philosophy." It seemed to me that the

only reasonable explanation was the entirely irrational one--that my

orchard was haunted: haunted by some beautiful young spirit, with some

sorrow of lost joy that would not let her sleep quietly in her grave.

And next day I had a curious confirmation of my theory. Once more I was

lying under my favorite apple-tree, half reading and half watching the

Sound, lulled into a dream by the whir of insects and the spices called

up from the earth by the hot sun. As I bent over the page, I suddenly

had the startling impression that someone was leaning over my shoulder

and reading with me, and that a girl's long hair was falling over me

down on to the page. The book was the Ronsard I had found in the little

bedroom. I turned, but again there was nothing there. Yet this time I

knew that I had not been dreaming, and I cried out:

"Poor child! tell me of your grief--that I may help your sorrowing heart

to rest."

But, of course, there was no answer; yet that night I dreamed a strange

dream. I thought I was in the orchard again in the afternoon and once

again heard the strange singing--but this time, as I looked up, the

singer was no longer invisible. Coming toward me was a young girl with

wonderful blue eyes filled with tears and gold hair that fell to her

waist. She wore a straight, white robe that might have been a shroud or

a bridal dress. She appeared not to see me, though she came directly to

the tree where I was sitting. And there she knelt and buried her face in

the grass and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her long hair fell

over her like a mantle, and in my dream I stroked it pityingly and

murmured words of comfort for a sorrow I did not understand.... Then I

woke suddenly as one does from dreams. The moon was shining brightly

into the room. Rising from my bed, I looked out into the orchard. It was

almost as bright as day. I could plainly see the tree of which I had

been dreaming, and then a fantastic notion possessed me. Slipping on my

clothes, I went out into one of the old barns and found a spade. Then I

went to the tree where I had seen the girl weeping in my dream and dug

down at its foot.

I had dug little more than a foot when my spade struck upon some hard

substance, and in a few more moments I had uncovered and exhumed a small

box, which, on examination, proved to be one of those pretty

old-fashioned Chippendale work-boxes used by our grandmothers to keep

their thimbles and needles in, their reels of cotton and skeins of silk.

After smoothing down the little grave in which I had found it, I carried

the box into the house, and under the lamplight examined its contents.

Then at once I understood why that sad young spirit went to and fro the

orchard singing those little French songs--for the treasure-trove I had

found under the apple-tree, the buried treasure of an unquiet, suffering

soul, proved to be a number of love-letters written mostly in French in

a very picturesque hand--letters, too, written but some five or six

years before. Perhaps I should not have read them--yet I read them with

such reverence for the beautiful, impassioned love that animated them,

and literally made them "smell sweet and blossom in the dust," that I

felt I had the sanction of the dead to make myself the confidant of

their story. Among the letters were little songs, two of which I had

heard the strange young voice singing in the orchard, and, of course,

there were many withered flowers and such like remembrances of bygone

rapture.

Not that night could I make out all the story, though it was not

difficult to define its essential tragedy, and later on a gossip in the

neighborhood and a headstone in the churchyard told me the rest. The

unquiet young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro the orchard was

my landlord's daughter. She was the only child of her parents, a

beautiful, willful girl, exotically unlike those from whom she was

sprung and among whom she lived with a disdainful air of exile. She was,

as a child, a little creature of fairy fancies, and as she grew up it

was plain to her father and mother that she had come from another world

than theirs. To them she seemed like a child in an old fairy-tale

strangely found on his hearth by some shepherd as he returns from the

fields at evening--a little fairy girl swaddled in fine linen, and

dowered with a mysterious bag of gold.

Soon she developed delicate spiritual needs to which her simple parents

were strangers. From long truancies in the woods she would come home

laden with mysterious flowers, and soon she came to ask for books and

pictures and music, of which the poor souls that had given her birth had

never heard. Finally she had her way, and went to study at a certain

fashionable college; and there the brief romance of her life began.

There she met a romantic young Frenchman who had read Ronsard to her and

written her those picturesque letters I had found in the old mahogany

work-box. And after a while the young Frenchman had gone back to France,

and the letters had ceased. Month by month went by, and at length one

day, as she sat wistful at the window, looking out at the foolish sunlit

road, a message came. He was dead. That headstone in the village

churchyard tells the rest. She was very young to die--scarcely nineteen

years; and the dead who have died young, with all their hopes and dreams

still like unfolded buds within their hearts, do not rest so quietly in

the grave as those who have gone through the long day from morning until

evening and are only too glad to sleep.

*       *       *       *       *

Next day I took the little box to a quiet corner of the orchard, and

made a little pyre of fragrant boughs--for so I interpreted the wish of

that young, unquiet spirit--and the beautiful words are now safe, taken

up again into the aerial spaces from which they came.

But since then the birds sing no more little French songs in my old

orchard.

The Bowmen

BY ARTHUR MACHEN

From _The Bowmen_, by Arthur Machen. Published in England by

Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., and in America by

G.P. Putnam's Sons. By permission of the publishers and Arthur

Machen.

It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority of

the Censorship is sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But it

was on the most awful day of that awful time, on the day when ruin and

disaster came so near that their shadow fell over London far away; and,

without any certain news, the hearts of men failed within them and grew

faint; as if the agony of the army in the battlefield had entered into

their souls.

On this dreadful day, then, when three hundred thousand men in arms with

all their artillery swelled like a flood against the little English

company, there was one point above all other points in our battle line

that was for a time in awful danger, not merely of defeat, but of utter

annihilation. With the permission of the Censorship and of the military

expert, this corner may, perhaps, be described as a salient, and if this

angle were crushed and broken, then the English force as a whole would

be shattered, the Allied left would be turned, and Sedan would

inevitably follow.

All the morning the German guns had thundered and shrieked against this

corner, and against the thousand or so of men who held it. The men joked

at the shells, and found funny names for them, and had bets about them,

and greeted them with scraps of music-hall songs. But the shells came on

and burst, and tore good Englishmen limb from limb, and tore brother

from brother, and as the heat of the day increased so did the fury of

that terrific cannonade. There was no help, it seemed. The English

artillery was good, but there was not nearly enough of it; it was being

steadily battered into scrap iron.

There comes a moment in a storm at sea when people say to one another,

"It is at its worst; it can blow no harder," and then there is a blast

ten times more fierce than any before it. So it was in these British

trenches.

There were no stouter hearts in the whole world than the hearts of these

men; but even they were appalled as this seven-times-heated hell of the

German cannonade fell upon them and overwhelmed them and destroyed them.

And at this very moment they saw from their trenches that a tremendous

host was moving against their lines. Five hundred of the thousand

remained, and as far as they could see the German infantry was pressing

on against them, column upon column, a gray world of men, ten thousand

of them, as it appeared afterwards.

There was no hope at all. They shook hands, some of them. One man

improvised a new version of the battle-song, "Good-by, good-by to

Tipperary," ending with "And we shan't get there." And they all went on

firing steadily. The officer pointed out that such an opportunity for

high-class fancy shooting might never occur again; the Tipperary

humorist asked, "What price Sidney Street?" And the few machine guns did

their best. But everybody knew it was of no use. The dead gray bodies

lay in companies and battalions, as others came on and on and on, and

they swarmed and stirred, and advanced from beyond and beyond.

"World without end. Amen," said one of the British soldiers with some

irrelevance as he took aim and fired. And then he remembered--he says he

cannot think why or wherefore--a queer vegetarian restaurant in London

where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets made of

lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates in this

restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue, with the

motto, "_Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius_"--"May St. George be a present

help to the English." This soldier happened to know Latin and other

useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the gray advancing

mass--three hundred yards away--he uttered the pious vegetarian motto.

He went on firing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had to clout

him cheerfully over the head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so

that the King's ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted

in drilling funny patterns into dead Germans.

For as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something

between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar

of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead of it,

he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a thunder-peal

crying, "Array, array, array!"

His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him, as

it seemed to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons. He

heard, or seemed to hear, thousands shouting: "St. George! St. George!"

"Ha! Messire, ha! sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!"

"St. George for merry England!"

"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succor us!"

"Ha! St. George! Ha! St. George! a long bow and a strong bow."

"Heaven's Knight, aid us!"

And as the soldier heard these voices he saw before him, beyond the

trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like

men who drew the bow, and with another shout, their cloud of arrows flew

singing and tingling through the air towards the German hosts.

The other men in the trench were firing all the while. They had no hope;

but they aimed just as if they had been shooting at Bisley.

Suddenly one of them lifted up his voice in the plainest English.

"Gawd help us!" he bellowed to the man next to him, "but we're blooming

marvels! Look at those gray ... gentlemen, look at them! D'ye see them?

They're not going down in dozens nor in 'undreds; it's thousands, it is.

Look! look! there's a regiment gone while I'm talking to ye."

"Shut it!" the other soldier bellowed, taking aim, "what are ye gassing

about?"

But he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for, indeed, the gray

men were falling by the thousands. The English could hear the guttural

scream of the German officers, the crackle of their revolvers as they

shot the reluctant; and still line after line crashed to the earth.

All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry:

"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur, dear Saint, quick to our aid! St. George

help us!"

"High Chevalier, defend us!"

The singing arrows fled so swift and thick that they darkened the air,

the heathen horde melted from before them.

"More machine guns!" Bill yelled to Tom.

"Don't hear them," Tom yelled back.

"But, thank God, anyway; they've got it in the neck."

In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that

salient of the English army, and consequently there was no Sedan. In

Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, the Great General

Staff decided that the contemptible English must have employed shells

containing an unknown gas of a poisonous nature, as no wounds were

discernible on the bodies of the dead German soldiers. But the man who

knew what nuts tasted like when they called themselves steak knew also

that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help the English.

A Ghost

BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Translated for this volume by M. Charles Sommer.

We were speaking of sequestration, alluding to a recent lawsuit. It was

at the close of a friendly evening in a very old mansion in the Rue de

Grenelle, and each of the guests had a story to tell, which he assured

us was true.

Then the old Marquis de la Tour-Samuel, eighty-two years of age, rose

and came forward to lean on the mantelpiece. He told the following story

in his slightly quavering voice.

"I, also, have witnessed a strange thing--so strange that it has been

the nightmare of my life. It happened fifty-six years ago, and yet there

is not a month when I do not see it again in my dreams. From that day I

have borne a mark, a stamp of fear,--do you understand?

"Yes, for ten minutes I was a prey to terror, in such a way that ever

since a constant dread has remained in my soul. Unexpected sounds chill

me to the heart; objects which I can ill distinguish in the evening

shadows make me long to flee. I am afraid at night.

"No! I would not have owned such a thing before reaching my present

age. But now I may tell everything. One may fear imaginary dangers at

eighty-two years old. But before actual danger I have never turned back,

_mesdames_.

"That affair so upset my mind, filled me with such a deep, mysterious

unrest that I never could tell it. I kept it in that inmost part, that

corner where we conceal our sad, our shameful secrets, all the

weaknesses of our life which cannot be confessed.

"I will tell you that strange happening just as it took place, with no

attempt to explain it. Unless I went mad for one short hour it must be

explainable, though. Yet I was not mad, and I will prove it to you.

Imagine what you will. Here are the simple facts:

"It was in 1827, in July. I was quartered with my regiment in Rouen.

"One day, as I was strolling on the quay, I came across a man I believed

I recognized, though I could not place him with certainty. I

instinctively went more slowly, ready to pause. The stranger saw my

impulse, looked at me, and fell into my arms.

"It was a friend of my younger days, of whom I had been very fond. He

seemed to have become half a century older in the five years since I had

seen him. His hair was white, and he stooped in his walk, as if he were

exhausted. He understood my amazement and told me the story of his life.

"A terrible event had broken him down. He had fallen madly in love with

a young girl and married her in a kind of dreamlike ecstasy. After a

year of unalloyed bliss and unexhausted passion, she had died suddenly

of heart disease, no doubt killed by love itself.

"He had left the country on the very day of her funeral, and had come to

live in his hotel at Rouen. He remained there, solitary and desperate,

grief slowly mining him, so wretched that he constantly thought of

suicide.

"'As I thus came across you again,' he said, 'I shall ask a great favor

of you. I want you to go to my chateau and get some papers I urgently

need. They are in the writing-desk of my room, of _our_ room. I cannot

send a servant or a lawyer, as the errand must be kept private. I want

absolute silence.

"'I shall give you the key of the room, which I locked carefully myself

before leaving, and the key to the writing-desk. I shall also give you a

note for the gardener, who will let you in.

"'Come to breakfast with me to-morrow, and we'll talk the matter over.'

"I promised to render him that slight service. It would mean but a

pleasant excursion for me, his home not being more than twenty-five

miles from Rouen. I could go there in an hour on horseback.

"At ten o'clock the next day I was with him. We breakfasted alone

together, yet he did not utter more than twenty words. He asked me to

excuse him. The thought that I was going to visit the room where his

happiness lay shattered, upset him, he said. Indeed, he seemed

perturbed, worried, as if some mysterious struggle were taking place in

his soul.

"At last he explained exactly what I was to do. It was very simple. I

was to take two packages of letters and some papers, locked in the first

drawer at the right of the desk of which I had the key. He added:

"'I need not ask you not to glance at them.'

"I was almost hurt by his words, and told him so, rather sharply. He

stammered:

"'Forgive me. I suffer so much!'

"And tears came to his eyes.

"I left about one o'clock to accomplish my errand.

"The day was radiant, and I rushed through the meadows, listening to the

song of the larks, and the rhythmical beat of my sword on my

riding-boots.

"Then I entered the forest, and I set my horse to walking. Branches of

the trees softly caressed my face, and now and then I would catch a leaf

between my teeth and bite it with avidity, full of the joy of life, such

as fills you without reason, with a tumultuous happiness almost

indefinable, a kind of magical strength.

"As I neared the house I took out the letter for the gardener, and noted

with surprise that it was sealed. I was so amazed and so annoyed that I

almost turned back without fulfilling my mission. Then I thought that I

should thus display over-sensitiveness and bad taste. My friend might

have sealed it unconsciously, worried as he was.

"The manor looked as though it had been deserted the last twenty years.

The gate, wide-open and rotten, held, one wondered how. Grass filled the

paths; you could not tell the flower-beds from the lawn.

"At the noise I made kicking a shutter, an old man came out from a

side-door and was apparently amazed to see me there. I dismounted from

my horse and gave him the letter. He read it once or twice, turned it

over, looked at me with suspicion, and asked:

"'Well, what do you want?'

"I answered sharply:

"'You must know it as you have read your master's orders. I want to get

in the house.'

"He appeared overwhelmed. He said:

"'So--you are going in--in his room?'

"I was getting impatient.

"'_Parbleu!_ Do you intend to question me, by chance?'

"He stammered:

"'No--monsieur--only--it has not been opened since--since the death. If

you will wait five minutes, I will go in to see whether----'

"I interrupted angrily:

"'See here, are you joking? You can't go in that room, as I have the

key!'

"He no longer knew what to say.

"'Then, monsieur, I will show you the way.'

"'Show me the stairs and leave me alone. I can find it without your

help.'

"'But--still--monsieur----'

"Then I lost my temper.

"'Now be quiet! Else you'll be sorry!'

"I roughly pushed him aside and went into the house.

"I first went through the kitchen, then crossed two small rooms occupied

by the man and his wife. From there I stepped into a large hall. I went

up the stairs, and I recognized the door my friend had described to me.

"I opened it with ease and went in.

"The room was so dark that at first I could not distinguish anything. I

paused, arrested by that moldy and stale odor peculiar to deserted and

condemned rooms, of dead rooms. Then gradually my eyes grew accustomed

to the gloom, and I saw rather clearly a great room in disorder, a bed

without sheets having still its mattresses and pillows, one of which

bore the deep print of an elbow or a head, as if someone had just been

resting on it.

"The chairs seemed all in confusion. I noticed that a door, probably

that of a closet, had remained ajar.

"I first went to the window and opened it to get some light, but the

hinges of the outside shutters were so rusted that I could not loosen

them.

"I even tried to break them with my sword, but did not succeed. As those

fruitless attempts irritated me, and as my eyes were by now adjusted to

the dim light, I gave up hope of getting more light and went toward the

writing-desk.

"I sat down in an arm-chair, folded back the top, and opened the drawer.

It was full to the edge. I needed but three packages, which I knew how

to distinguish, and I started looking for them.

"I was straining my eyes to decipher the inscriptions, when I thought I

heard, or rather felt a rustle behind me. I took no notice, thinking a

draft had lifted some curtain. But a minute later, another movement,

almost indistinct, sent a disagreeable little shiver over my skin. It

was so ridiculous to be moved thus even so slightly, that I would not

turn round, being ashamed. I had just discovered the second package I

needed, and was on the point of reaching for the third, when a great and

sorrowful sigh, close to my shoulder, made me give a mad leap two yards

away. In my spring I had turned round, my hand on the hilt of my sword,

and surely had I not felt that, I should have fled like a coward.

"A tall woman, dressed in white, was facing me, standing behind the

chair in which I had sat a second before.

"Such a shudder ran through me that I almost fell back! Oh, no one who

has not felt them can understand those gruesome and ridiculous terrors!

The soul melts; your heart seems to stop; your whole body becomes limp

as a sponge, and your innermost parts seem collapsing.

"I do not believe in ghosts; and yet I broke down before the hideous

fear of the dead; and I suffered, oh, I suffered more in a few minutes,

in the irresistible anguish of supernatural dread, than I have suffered

in all the rest of my life!

"If she had not spoken, I might have died. But she did speak; she spoke

in a soft and plaintive voice which set my nerves vibrating. I could not

say that I regained my self-control. No, I was past knowing what I did;

but the kind of pride I have in me, as well as a military pride, helped

me to maintain, almost in spite of myself, an honorable countenance. I

was making a pose, a pose for myself, and for her, for her, whatever she

was, woman, or phantom. I realized this later, for at the time of the

apparition, I could think of nothing. I was afraid.

"She said:

"'Oh, you can be of great help to me, monsieur!'

"I tried to answer, but I was unable to utter one word. A vague sound

came from my throat.

"She continued:

"'Will you? You can save me, cure me. I suffer terribly. I always

suffer. I suffer, oh, I suffer!'

"And she sat down gently in my chair. She looked at me.

"'Will you?'

"I nodded my head, being still paralyzed.

"Then she handed me a woman's comb of tortoise-shell, and murmured:

"'Comb my hair! Oh, comb my hair! That will cure me. Look at my

head--how I suffer! And my hair--how it hurts!'

"Her loose hair, very long, very black, it seemed to me, hung over the

back of the chair, touching the floor.

"Why did I do it? Why did I, shivering, accept that comb, and why did I

take between my hands her long hair, which left on my skin a ghastly

impression of cold, as if I had handled serpents? I do not know.

"That feeling still clings about my fingers, and I shiver when I recall

it.

"I combed her, I handled, I know not how, that hair of ice. I bound and

unbound it; I plaited it as one plaits a horse's mane. She sighed, bent

her head, seemed happy.

"Suddenly she said, 'Thank you!' tore the comb from my hands, and fled

through the door which I had noticed was half opened.

"Left alone, I had for a few seconds the hazy feeling one feels in

waking up from a nightmare. Then I recovered myself. I ran to the window

and broke the shutters by my furious assault.

"A stream of light poured in. I rushed to the door through which that

being had gone. I found it locked and immovable.

"Then a fever of flight seized on me, a panic, the true panic of battle.

I quickly grasped the three packages of letters from the open desk; I

crossed the room running, I took the steps of the stairway four at a

time. I found myself outside, I don't know how, and seeing my horse

close by, I mounted in one leap and left at a full gallop.

"I didn't stop till I reached Rouen and drew up in front of my house.

Having thrown the reins to my orderly, I flew to my room and locked

myself in to think.

"Then for an hour I asked myself whether I had not been the victim of an

hallucination. Certainly I must have had one of those nervous shocks,

one of those brain disorders such as give rise to miracles, to which the

supernatural owes its strength.

"And I had almost concluded that it was a vision, an illusion of my

senses, when I came near to the window. My eyes by chance looked down.

My tunic was covered with hairs, long woman's hairs which had entangled

themselves around the buttons!

"I took them off one by one and threw them out of the window with

trembling fingers.

"I then called my orderly. I felt too perturbed, too moved, to go and

see my friend on that day. Besides, I needed to think over what I should

tell him.

"I had his letters delivered to him. He gave a receipt to the soldier.

He inquired after me and was told that I was not well. I had had a

sunstroke, or something. He seemed distressed.

"I went to see him the next day, early in the morning, bent on telling

him the truth. He had gone out the evening before and had not come

back.

"I returned the same day, but he had not been seen. I waited a week. He

did not come back. I notified the police. They searched for him

everywhere, but no one could find any trace of his passing or of his

retreat.

"A careful search was made in the deserted manor. No suspicious clue was

discovered.

"There was no sign that a woman had been concealed there.

"The inquest gave no result, and so the search went no further.

"And in fifty-six years I have learned nothing more. I never found out

the truth."

THE END