Complete weird tales of.., p.1240
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1240
Then we walked arm in arm down a fragrant lane to the river bank, where the dearest old lady toddled out of the granite house to welcome us and show us our rooms. Sweetheart went with her, while I stopped an instant to chat with Stuart.
“That is Madame Ylven,” he said. “She is the most stunning peasant woman in Finistére, and you will want for nothing.” Then, after a moment, “Good heavens! Jack, what a beauty your wife — —” He stopped short, but added, “What a delicious little beauty Sweetheart has grown to be!”
A white-coiffed maid came to the door, and said, “Will monsieur have the goodness to come? Madame wishes him to see the rooms.”
The wind blew from the south, and the thunder of the sea was in my ears as I mounted the stairs to our new quarters.
Sweetheart met me at the door, saying, “It seems almost too much happiness to bear, but I feel that we are at home at last — alone together for all time.”
Alone together? The ocean at our threshold, the moors and forests at our back, and a good slate roof above us. Before me through the open door I could see the great old-fashioned room, warm in the afternoon sunlight — the room we were to live in so long, the room in which we were to pass the happiest and bitterest moments of our lives.
She hesitated an instant before the threshold. I think we knew that we stood upon the threshold of our destiny. Then I said, half in earnest: “Are you afraid to cross with me into the unknown future? See, the room is filled with sunshine. Are you afraid?”
She sprang across the threshold, and, turning to me, held out both hands.
XV.
The sun slipped lower and lower into the sea, until a distant tossing wave washed it out against the sky. Light died in the room, and shadows closed around us; yet it was in the darkness and shadows that we drew nearer to each other, then and after.
XVI.
Stuart stood under our window and yelled up at me, “Oh, Jack! I say, Jack!”
Sweetheart, who was fussing over the half-unpacked trunk, went to the window and threw open the panes.
“You don’t mean to say you have had your coffee?” she said. “Jack isn’t up yet.”
“Jack is up,” I explained, coming to the window in pajamas. “Hello!”
“I only wanted to say that I haven’t had my coffee,” he explained, “and I’m going to take it with you when you’re ready.”
Sweetheart picked up her béret, and, passing a hatpin through it, turned to me with a warning, “I shall eat all the breakfast, monsieur!” and vanished down the stairs. A moment later I heard her clear voice below:
Sonnez le chœur,
Chasseur!
Sonnez la mort!
Before I had finished dressing, Sweetheart tripped in with my coffee and toast.
“Of course I’ve finished,” she said, “and you don’t deserve this. Mr. Stuart has gone off with his canvases, and says he’ll see you at lunch.”
I swallowed the coffee and browsed on little squares of toast which she condescendingly buttered for me, and then, lighting a cigarette, I announced my intention of commanding an exploring expedition consisting of Sweetheart and myself. A scratching at the door and a patter of feet announced that I had been over-heard.
Sweetheart unlatched the door, and the pointer pup of the evening before charged into the room and covered us with boisterous caresses, which we took to indicate that he not only approved of the expedition, but intended to undertake the general supervision of it himself. I resigned the leadership at once.
“His name,” said Sweetheart in the tone of one who presents a distinguished guest, “is ‘Luff.’”
I gravely acknowledged the honour by patting his head.
“I’m afraid,” I said to Sweetheart, “that there is a bar sinister upon his escutcheon, but possibly it is only the indelible mark of the conquering British foxhound.”
Sweetheart said, “Nonsense!” and the expedition moved, Luff leading with a series of ear-splitting orders in the dog language which we perfectly understood.
In ten minutes we stood on the cliffs, the salt wind whipping our faces. Saint-Grildas-des-Pres lay at our feet.
“I know,” observed Sweetheart calmly, “all about this place. Captain Ylven told me at breakfast.”
“Well,” said I, “what’s that island on the horizon?”
Then she overwhelmed me with erudition, until I longed for Baedeker and revenge.
“That is the Isle de Groix, and all about us is the Bay of Biscay. This little hamlet on the cliff is St. Julien, and if we follow the coast far enough we come to Lorient.”
“Follow the coast? Which way?”
Sweetheart had forgotten, and I triumphed in silence, until she stamped her foot and marched off to assist Luff in investigating a suspicious hole in the cliff.
I went to the edge of the plateau and looked over. The surf thundered against the rocks, tossing long strands of seaweed over the pebbly beach. A man with a wooden rake stood in the water up to his knees. He raked the seaweed from the breakers as a farmer rakes weeds from the lawn. The salt wind began to sting my lips and eyes. My throat felt dry and salty. I turned toward the hamlet of St. Gildas. I had not imagined it so small. Besides our house there were but three others clustered under the river bank. Behind it stretched woods and grain fields broken by patches of yellow gorse. Across the river stood a stone chapel almost lost in the miles of moorland. To the east and west the downs covered with gorse and heather rolled to the horizon. Here and there along the cliffs stood what appeared to be the ruins of ancient forts, and on a rock, just where the river sweeps out into the sea, rose a dirty white signal tower. The tower was low and squatty and wet. It looked like some saline excrescence which had slowly exuded from the brine-soaked rock. On the bar hundreds of white gulls rose and settled as the tide encroached; curlew were running along the foam-splashed shore under the eastern cliffs across the river.
On our side of the river the cliffs were covered with blackthorn and hawthorn, with here and there a stunted oak, probably so placed by Providence as general rendezvous for all the
small twittering birds of Finistère. Birds were everywhere. From the clouds came the ceaseless carol of skylarks; from the grain fields and the flowering gorse rose an unbroken chorus, taken up and repeated by flocks of microscopical songsters among the blackthorns on the cliffs.
“This is paradise, this wilderness,” I thought.
Then, as I heard Sweetheart’s mocking voice from the cliff:
O frère Jaques,
Dormez vous
“I’m not asleep!” I cried in answer.
“What is it?”
“Luff has unearthed a poor little mole, but I won’t allow him to hurt it.”
“Jack, dear,” she said, as I came up, “couldn’t we keep it as a pet? See, the poor little thing is blind.”
As it was blind we called it “Love,” which later was changed to “Cupid,” and finally, when we discovered it true gormandizing character, for “Cupid” we substituted “Cupidity,” by which name it flourished and fattened.
“What a change,” said Sweetheart sadly, “from Blind Love to Blind Greed!”
The mole grew very fat.
XVII.
When the winds stir the leaves among the poplars, and the long shadows fall athwart the fields; when the winds rise at night, and the branches scrape and crack above the moonlit snow; when in the long hot days the earth is bathed in fragrance, and all the little creatures of the fields are silent; when in the still evenings the flowers perfume the air, and the gravel walks shine white in the moonlight; when the breezes quicken from the distant coast; when the sand shakes beneath the shock of the breakers, and every wave is plumed with white; when the calm eye of the beacon turns to mine, lingers, and turn away, and the surf is yeasty and thick; when I start at the sound of a voice from the cliffs, and my eyes are raised in vain; when the white gulls toss and drift in the storm-clouds, and the water hurries out in the black ebb tide; when I rise and look from the window; when I dress; when I work with pen and colour; when I rest; when I walk; when I sleep — there is one face before my eyes, one name on my lips. For the white shadow is turning gray, and God alone knows the end.
XVIII.
And God alone knows the end, for the mists are crowding, brooding like angry-browed clouds, and I hear the whistle of unseen winds, and my life-flame wavers and sinks and flares, blown hither and thither, tossing, fading, leaping, but fading, always fading.
In a flash, like a printed picture on a screen, illuminated, keenly etched in the white glare, I see the bed, and the people around me, the black gowns, the pale eyes of the doctor, the sponge and basin, the rolls of lint.
Voices, minute but clean-cut and clear as picked harp-strings, tinkle in my ears; the voice of the doctor, other voices, but always the voice of the doctor— “The splinter of bone on the brain; the splinter pressing on the tissues; the depression.”
The doctor! That is the man! That is the man who comes to my side, who follows, follows where I go, who seeks me throughout the world! I saw him as I lay flung on the turf, limp, unconscious, below the cliffs on the Aspen hills; I felt his presence in the studio; I heard him creeping at my heels across the gorse thickets of St. Gildas. And now he has come to cut short the magic second, to turn back time — back, back, into the old worn channels, rock-ribbed and salt with tears.
As a leaf of written paper torn in two, so shall my life be torn in two; and the long tear shall mangle the chapter written in rose and gold.
Then, too, my shadow, already turned from white to gray, shall fall with a deeper stain wherever I pass; and I shall see the yellow gorse glimmer and turn to golden-rod, and the poplars turn to oaks; and the twin towers of Notre Dame, filmy, lace-carved, and gray with centuries, shall dwindle as I look — dwindle and sway and turn to pines, singing pines that murmur to the winds, blowing across the Aspen hills.
* * * *
All that is fair shall pass away; all that I love, all that I fear for — these shall the doctor take away, lifting them from my memory on the point of a steel blade. What has he to give in return? A hell of vapour, distorting sight; a hell of sound, drowning the soul.
* * * *
Gigantic apparitions arise across the world of water, wavering like shadows on the clouds. Steel-clad, clothed in skins, casqued in steel, their winged heads bend and nod and move against the clouds. And even they are changing as clouds change shape. I see steel limbs turn red and naked. I see winged casques trail to the earth, feathered, painted in colours of earth.
Ihó! Inâh! Etó! E-hó!
The bridge of stars spans the vast lake of air; the sun and the moon travel over it.
* * * *
My shadow is turning dark; I can scarcely see the doctor, but now — God have mercy! — I can touch him.
* * * *
All the high spectres are stooping from the clouds, bending above me to watch. I know them and their eyes of shadow I know them now; Hârpen that was to Chaské what Hárpstinâ shall be to Hapéda; and Harkâ shall come after all with the voice of winter winds:
“Aké u, aké u, aké u!”
But the magic second shall never return.
“Mâ cânté maséca!”
* * * *
Now they leave my bed, the people who crowded there under the shadowy forms of the spectres; now the doctor bends over; I see and feel him. His hands are tangled in the threads of time; he is cutting a thread; he ——
XIX.
When I spoke to him first I spoke in the French language. Before he answered, the scream of a blue jay in the elms outside set my nerves aquiver, and I called for Donald and Walter.
As I lay there I could see the Aspen hills from the window, heaps of crumpled gold bathed in sunshine. Over them sailed the froth from the silken milkweed; over them drifted the big brown-red butterflies, luminous as richest autumn leaves.
Some one closed the door softly. The doctor had gone.
The sunlight poured into the window, etching my shadow on the wall behind. Lying very still there I saw it motionless beside me. The shadow was black.
Somebody said in the next room, “Will he die?”
“Die?” I said aloud.
A bird twittered outside my window.
The door opened again, noiselessly.
“Sweetheart?” I whispered.
“Yes, Jack.”
After a moment I said, “When do you go back to school?”
“I? I finished school a year ago.”
“Come nearer.”
“I am here, Jack.”
“Time stopped a year ago.”
“A year ago to-day.”
The same gray eyes, the same face, paler, perhaps.
“We have journeyed far,” I sighed, “always together, but in those days our shadows were white as snow. Am I going to die? There are tears in your eyes.”
They fell on my cheek; her arms fell too, closer, closer, around my neck.
“Life has begun,” she said.
“Life? What was the year that ends to-day? The magic second of life?”
“A year of death, to me!”
Ah, but her soul knows of a life in death! And she shall know it, too, when her shadow turns whiter than snow. For the Temple of Idols has closed its doors at the sound of a voice, and an idol of gilt has turned to flesh and blood.
I-hó!
So shall she know of the life in death when her soul and her body are one.
O friends, I’ve served ye food and bed;
O friends, the mist is rising wet;
Then bide a moment, O my dead,
Where, lonely, I must linger yet!
PASSEUR.
Because man goeth to his long home,
And the mourners go about the streets.
WHEN he had finished his pipe he tapped the brier bowl against the chimney until the ashes powdered the charred log smouldering across the andirons. Then he sank back in his chair, absently touching the hot pipe-bowl with the tip of each finger until it grew cool enough to be dropped into his coat pocket.
Twice he raised his eyes to the little American clock ticking upon the mantel. He had half an hour to wait.
The three candles that lighted the room might be trimmed to advantage; this would give him something to do. A pair of scissors lay open upon the bureau, and he rose and picked them up. For a while he stood dreamily shutting and opening the scissors, his eyes roaming about the room. There was an easel in the corner, and a pile of dusty canvases behind it; behind the canvases there was a shadow — that gray, menacing shadow that never moved.
When he had trimmed each candle he wiped the smoky scissors on a paint rag and flung them on the bureau again. The clock pointed to ten; he had been occupied exactly three minutes.
The bureau was littered with neckties, pipes, combs and brushes, matches, reels and fly-books, collars, shirt studs, a new pair of Scotch shooting stockings, and a woman’s workbasket. He picked out all the neckties, folded them once, and hung them over a bit of twine that stretched across the looking-glass; the shirt studs he shovelled into the top drawer along with brushes, combs, and stockings; the reels and fly-books he dusted with his handkerchief and placed methodically along the mantel shelf. Twice he stretched out his hand toward the woman’s workbasket, but his hand fell to his side again, and he turned away into the room staring at the dying fire.
Outside the snow-sealed window a shutter broke loose and banged monotonously, until he flung open the panes and fastened it. The soft, wet snow, that had choked the window-panes all day, was frozen hard now, and he had to break the polished crust before he could find the rusty shutter hinge.
He leaned out for a moment, his numbed hands resting on the snow, the roar of a rising snow-squall in his ears; and out across the desolate garden and stark hedgerow he saw the flat black river spreading through the gloom.
A candle sputtered and snapped behind him; a sheet of drawing-paper fluttered across the floor, and he closed the panes and turned back into the room, both hands in his worn pockets.
The little American clock on the mantel ticked and ticked, but the hands lagged, for he had not been occupied five minutes in all. He went up to the mantel and watched the hands of the clock. A minute — longer than a year to him — crept by.
Around the room the furniture stood ranged — a chair or two of yellow pine, a table, the easel, and in one corner the broad curtained bed; and behind each lay shadows, menacing shadows that never moved.
A little pale flame started up from the smoking log on the andirons; the room sang with the sudden hiss of escaping wood gases. After a little the back of the log caught fire; jets of blue flared up here and there with mellow sounds like the lighting of gas-burners in a row, and in a moment a thin sheet of yellow flame wrapped the whole charred log.
Then the shadows moved; not the shadows behind the furniture — they never moved — but other shadows, thin, gray, confusing, that came and spread their slim patterns all around him, and trembled and trembled.
He dared not step or tread upon them, they were too real; they meshed the floor around his feet, they ensnared his knees, they fell across his breast like ropes. Some night, in the silence of the moors, when wind and river were still, he feared these strands of shadow might tighten — creep higher around his throat and tighten. But even then he knew that those other shadows would never move, those gray shapes that knelt crouching in every corner.
When he looked up at the clock again ten minutes had straggled past. Time was disturbed in the room; the strands of shadow seemed entangled among the hands of the clock, dragging them back from their rotation. He wondered if the shadows would strangle Time, some still night when the wind and the flat river were silent.
