"I stuffed the note back in my pocket. The more I thought about the
whole affair the less I liked it. The flirtation had begun harmlessly
enough, and Julie was as lovely and appealing as a figure in a
fairy-tale, but there are unpleasant aspects to most fairy-tales, and
this was no exception. That scene last night when she had seemed to
argue with a full-grown cottonmouth, and the mysterious appearance of
the snake whenever I spoke of breaking my promise to go back to
her--there was something too much like black magic in it. Now she
addressed me as her adored and signed herself for eternity; finally
named a graveyard as our rendezvous. Things had become a little bit
too thick.
"I was standing at the corner of Canal and Baronne Streets, and crowds
of office workers and late shoppers elbowed past me. 'I'll be damned
if I'll meet her in a cemetery, or anywhere else,' I muttered. 'I've
had enough of all this nonsense----'
"A woman's shrill scream, echoed by a man's hoarse shout of terror,
interrupted me. On the marble pavement of Canal Street, with half a
thousand people bustling by, lay coiled a three-foot water moccasin.
Here was proof. I'd seen it twice in my room at the hotel, but I'd
been alone each time. Some form of weird hypnosis might have made me
think I saw it, but the screaming woman and the shouting man, these
panic-stricken people in Canal Street, couldn't all be victims of a
spell which had been cast on me. 'All right, I'll go,' I almost
shouted, and instantly, as though it been but a puff of smoke, the
snake was gone, the half-fainting woman and a crowd of curious
bystanders asking what was wrong left to prove I had not been the
victim of some strange delusion.
* * * * *
"Old Saint Denis Cemetery lay drowsing in the blue, faint twilight. It
has no graves as we know them, for when the city was laid out it was
below sea-level and bodies were stored away in crypts set row on row
like lines of pigeon-holes in walls as thick as those of mediaeval
castles. Grass-grown aisles run between the rows of vaults, and the
effect is a true city of the dead with narrow streets shut in by
close-set houses. The rattle of a trolley car in Rampart Street came
to me faintly as I walked between the rows of tombs; from the river
came the mellow-throated bellow of a steamer's whistle, but both
sounds were muted as though heard from a great distance. The
tomb-lined bastions of Saint Denis hold the present out as firmly as
they hold the memories of the past within.
"Down one aisle and up another I walked, the close-clipped turf
deadening my footfalls so I might have been a ghost come back to haunt
the ancient burial ground, but nowhere was there sign or trace of
Julie. I made the circuit of the labyrinth and finally paused before
one of the more pretentious tombs.
"'Looks as if she'd stood me up,' I murmured. 'If she has, I have a
good excuse to----'
"'But _non, mon coeur_, I have not disappointed you!' a soft voice
whispered in my ear. 'See, I am here.'
"I think I must have jumped at sound of her greeting, for she clapped
her hands delightedly before she put them on my shoulders and turned
her face up for a kiss. 'Silly one,' she chided, 'did you think your
Julie was unfaithful?'
"I put her hands away as gently as I could, for her utter
self-surrender was embarrassing. 'Where were you?' I asked, striving
to make neutral conversation. 'I've been prowling round this graveyard
for the last half-hour, and came through this aisle not a minute ago,
but I didn't see you----'
"'Ah, but I saw you, _cheri_; I have watched you as you made your
solemn rounds like a watchman of the night. _Ohe_, but it was hard to
wait until the sun went down to greet you, _mon petit_!'
"She laughed again, and her mirth was mellowly musical as the gurgle
of cool water poured from a silver vase.
"'How could you have seen me?' I demanded. 'Where were you all this
time?'
"But here, of course,' she answered naively, resting one hand against
the graystone slab that sealed the tomb.
"I shook my head bewilderedly. The tomb, like all the others in the
deeply recessed wall, was of rough cement incrusted with small
seashells, and its sides were straight and blank without a spear of
ivy clinging to them. A sparrow could not have found cover there,
yet....
"Julie raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms out right and
left while she looked at me through half-closed, smiling eyes. '_Je
suis engourdie_--I am stiff with sleep,' she told me, stifling a yawn.
'But now that you are come, _mon cher_, I am wakeful as the pussy-cat
that rouses at the scampering of the mouse. Come, let us walk in this
garden of mine.' She linked her arm through mine and started down the
grassy, grave-lined path.
"Tiny shivers--not of cold--were flickering through my cheeks and down
my neck beneath my ears. I _had_ to have an explanation ... the snake,
her declaration that she watched me as I searched the cemetery--and
from a tomb where a beetle could not have found a hiding-place--her
announcement she was still stiff from sleeping, now her reference to
a half-forgotten graveyard as her garden.
"'See here, I want to know----' I started, but she laid her hand
across my lips.
"'Do not ask to know too soon, _mon coeur_,' she bade. 'Look at me, am
I not veritably _elegante_?' She stood back a step, gathered up her
skirts and swept me a deep curtsy.
"There was no denying she was beautiful. Her tightly curling hair had
been combed high and tied back with a fillet of bright violet tissue
which bound her brows like a diadem and at the front of which an
aigret plume was set. In her ears were hung two beautifully matched
cameos, outlined in gold and seed-pearls, and almost large as silver
dollars; a necklace of antique dull-gold hung round her throat, and
its pendant was a duplicate of her ear-cameos, while a bracelet of
matt-gold set with a fourth matched anaglyph was clasped about her
left arm just above the elbow. Her gown was sheer white muslin, low
cut at front and back, with little puff-sleeves at the shoulders,
fitted tightly at the bodice and flaring sharply from a high-set
waist. Over it she wore a narrow scarf of violet silk, hung behind her
neck and dropping down on either side in front like a clergyman's
stole. Her sandals were gilt leather, heel-less as a ballet dancer's
shoes and laced with violet ribbons. Her lovely, pearl-white hands
were bare of rings, but on the second toe of her right foot there
showed a little cameo which matched the others which she wore.
"I could feel my heart begin to pound and my breath come quicker as I
looked at her, but:
"'You look as if you're going to a masquerade,' I said.
"A look of hurt surprize showed in her eyes. 'A masquerade?' she
echoed. 'But no, it is my best, my very finest, that I wear for you
tonight, _mon adore_. Do not you like it; do you not love me,
Edouard?'
"'No,' I answered shortly, 'I do not. We might as well understand each
other, Julie. I'm not in love with you and I never was. It's been a
pretty flirtation, nothing more. I'm going home tomorrow, and----'
"'But you will come again? Surely you will come again?' she pleaded,
'You cannot mean it when you say you do not love me, Edouard. Tell me
that you spoke so but to tease me----'
"A warning hiss sounded in the grass beside my foot, but I was too
angry to be frightened. 'Go ahead, set your devilish snake on me,' I
taunted. 'Let it bite me. I'd as soon be dead as----'
"The snake was quick, but Julie quicker. In the split-second required
for the thing to drive at me she leaped across the grass-grown aisle
and pushed me back. So violent was the shove she gave me that I fell
against the tomb, struck my head against a small projecting stone and
stumbled to my knees. As I fought for footing on the slippery grass I
saw the deadly, wedge-shaped head strike full against the girl's bare
ankle and heard her gasp with pain. The snake recoiled and swung its
head toward me, but Julie dropped down to her knees and spread her
arms protectingly about me.
"'_Non, non, grand'tante!_' she screamed; 'not this one! Let me----'
Her voice broke on a little gasp and with a retching hiccup she sank
limply to the grass.
"I tried to rise, but my foot slipped on the grass and I fell back
heavily against the tomb, crashing my brow against its shell-set
cement wall. I saw Julie lying in a little huddled heap of white
against the blackness of the sward, and, shadowy but clearly visible,
an aged, wrinkled Negress with turbaned head and cambric apron
bending over her, nursing her head against her bosom and rocking back
and forth grotesquely while she crooned a wordless threnody. Where had
she come from? I wondered idly. Where had the snake gone? Why did the
moonlight seem to fade and flicker like a dying lamp? Once more I
tried to rise, but slipped back to the grass before the tomb as
everything went black before me.
"The lavender light of early morning was streaming over the tomb-walls
of the cemetery when I waked. I lay quiet for a little while,
wondering sleepily how I came there. Then, just as the first rays of
the sun shot through the thinning shadows, I remembered. Julie! The
snake had bitten her when she flung herself before me. She was gone;
the old Negress--where had _she_ come from?--was gone, too, and I was
utterly alone in the old graveyard.
"Stiff from lying on the ground, I got myself up awkwardly, grasping
at the flower-shelf projecting from the tomb. As my eyes came level
with the slab that sealed the crypt I felt the breath catch in my
throat. The crypt, like all its fellows, looked for all the world like
an old oven let into a brick wall overlaid with peeling plaster. The
sealing-stone was probably once white, but years had stained it to a
dirty gray, and time had all but rubbed its legend out. Still, I could
see the faint inscription carved in quaint, old-fashioned letters, and
disbelief gave way to incredulity, which was replaced by panic terror
as I read:
_Ici repose malheureusement
Julie Amelie Marie d'Ayen
Nationale de Paris France
Nee le 29 Aout 1788
Decedee a la N O le 2 Juillet 1807_
"Julie! Little Julie whom I'd held in my arms, whose mouth had lain on
mine in eager kisses, was a corpse! Dead and in her grave more than a
century!"
* * * * *
The silence lengthened. Ned stared miserably before him, his outward
eyes unseeing, but his mind's eye turned upon that scene in old Saint
Denis Cemetery. De Grandin tugged and tugged again at the ends of his
mustache till I thought he'd drag the hairs out by the roots. I could
think of nothing which might ease the tension till:
"Of course, the name cut on the tombstone was a piece of pure
coincidence," I hazarded. "Most likely the young woman deliberately
assumed it to mislead you----"
"And the snake which threatened our young friend, he was an
assumption, also, one infers?" de Grandin interrupted.
"N-o, but it could have been a trick. Ned saw an aged Negress in the
cemetery, and those old Southern darkies have strange powers----"
"I damn think that you hit the thumb upon the nail that time, my
friend," the little Frenchman nodded, "though you do not realize how
accurate your diagnosis is." To Ned:
"Have you seen this snake again since coming North?"
"Yes," Ned replied. "I have. I was too stunned to speak when I read
the epitaph, and I wandered back to the hotel in a sort of daze and
packed my bags in silence. Possibly that's why there was no further
visitation there. I don't know. I do know nothing further happened,
though, and when several months had passed with nothing but my
memories to remind me of the incident, I began to think I'd suffered
from some sort of walking nightmare. Nella and I went ahead with
preparations for our wedding, but three weeks ago the postman brought
me this----"
He reached into an inner pocket and drew out an envelope. It was of
soft gray paper, edged with silver-gilt, and the address was in tiny,
almost unreadable script:
M. Edouard Minton,
30 Rue Carteret 30,
Harrisonville, N. J.
"U'm?" de Grandin commented as he inspected it. "It is addressed a la
francaise. And the letter, may one read it?"
"Of course," Ned answered. "I'd like you to."
Across de Grandin's shoulder I made out the hastily-scrawled missive:
_Adore_
_Remember your promise and the kiss of blood that sealed it.
Soon I shall call and you must come._
_Pour le temps et pour l'eternite_,