"He was in the room when I opened this letter, and when the
cottonmouth appeared beside me on the floor he made a dash for it.
Whether it would have struck me I don't know, but it struck at him as
he leaped and caught him squarely in the throat. He thrashed and
fought, and the thing held on with locked jaws till I grabbed a
fire-shovel and made for it; then, before I could strike, it vanished.
"But its venom didn't. Poor old Rowdy was dead before I could get him
out of the house, but I took his corpse to Doctor Kirchoff, the
veterinary, and told him Rowdy died suddenly and I wanted him to make
an autopsy. He went back to his operating-room and stayed there half
an hour. When he came back to the office he was wiping his glasses and
wore the most astonished look I've ever seen on a human face. 'You say
your dog died suddenly--in the house?' he asked.
"'Yes,' I told him; 'just rolled over and died.'
"'Well, bless my soul, that's the most amazing thing I ever heard!' he
answered. 'I can't account for it. That dog died from snake-bite;
copperhead, I'd say, and the marks of the fangs show plainly on his
throat.'"
"But I thought you said it was a water moccasin," I objected. "Now
Doctor Kirchoff says it was a copperhead----"
"_Ah hah_!" de Grandin laughed a thought unpleasantly. "Did no one
ever tell you that the copperhead and moccasin are of close kind, my
friend? Have not you heard some ophiologists maintain the moccasin is
but a dark variety of copperhead?" He did not pause for my reply, but
turned again to Ned:
"One understands your chivalry, _Monsieur_. For yourself you have no
fear, since after all at times life can be bought too dearly, but the
death of your small dog has put a different aspect on the matter. If
this never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized serpent which comes and
goes like the _boite a surprise_--the how do you call him? Jack from
the box?--is enough a ghost thing to appear at any time and place it
wills, but sufficiently physical to exude venom which will kill a
strong and healthy terrier, you have the fear for Mademoiselle Nella,
_n'est-ce-pas_?"
"Precisely, you----"
"And you are well advised to have the caution, my young friend. We
face a serious condition."
"What do you advise?"
The Frenchman teased his needlepoint mustache-tip with a thoughtful
thumb and forefinger. "For the present, nothing," he replied at
length. "Let me look this situation over; let me view it from all
angles. Whatever I might tell you now would probably be wrong. Suppose
we meet again one week from now. By that time I should have my data
well in hand."
"And in the meantime----"
"Continue to be coy with Mademoiselle Nella. Perhaps it would be well
if you recalled important business which requires that you leave town
till you hear from me again. There is no need to put her life in peril
at this time."
* * * * *
"If it weren't for Kirchoff's testimony I'd say Ned Minton had gone
raving crazy," I declared as the door closed on our visitors. "The
whole thing's wilder than an opium smoker's dream--that meeting with
the girl in New Orleans, the snake that comes and disappears, the
assignation in the cemetery--it's all too preposterous. But I know
Kirchoff. He's as unimaginative as a side of sole-leather, and as
efficient as he is unimaginative. If he says Minton's dog died of
snake-bite that's what it died of, but the whole affair's so utterly
fantastic----"
"Agreed," de Grandin nodded; "but what is fantasy but the appearance
of mental images as such, severed from ordinary relations? The
'ordinary relations' of images are those to which we are accustomed,
which conform to our experience. The wider that experience, the more
ordinary will we find extraordinary relations. By example, take
yourself: You sit in a dark auditorium and see a railway train come
rushing at you. Now, it is not at all in ordinary experience for a
locomotive to come dashing in a theater filled with people, it is
quite otherwise; but you keep your seat, you do not flinch, you are
not frightened. It is nothing but a motion picture, which you
understand. But if you were a savage from New Guinea you would rise
and fly in panic from this steaming, shrieking iron monster which
bears down on you. _Tiens_, it is a matter of experience, you see. To
you it is an everyday event, to the savage it would be a new and
terrifying thing.
"Or, perhaps, you are at the hospital. You place a patient between you
and the Crookes' tube of an X-ray, you turn on the current, you
observe him through the fluoroscope and _pouf_! his flesh all melts
away and his bones spring out in sharp relief. Three hundred years ago
you would have howled like a stoned dog at the sight, and prayed to be
delivered from the witchcraft which produced it. Today you curse and
swear like twenty drunken pirates if the Rontgenologist is but thirty
seconds late in setting up the apparatus. These things are
'scientific,' you understand their underlying formulae, therefore they
seem natural. But mention what you please to call the occult, and you
scoff, and that is but admitting that you are opposed to something
which you do not understand. The credible and believable is that to
which we are accustomed, the fantastic and incredible is what we
cannot explain in terms of previous experience. _Voila, c'est tres
simple, n'est-ce-pas?_"
"You mean to say you understand all this?"
"Not at all by any means; I am clever, me, but not that clever. No, my
friend, I am as much in the dark as you, only I do not refuse to
credit what our young friend tells us. I believe the things he has
related happened, exactly as he has recounted them. I do not
understand, but I believe. Accordingly, I must probe, I must sift, I
must examine this matter. We see it now as a group of unrelated and
irrelevant occurrences, but somewhere lies the key which will enable
us to make harmony from this discord, to gather these stray, tangled
threads into an ordered pattern. I go to seek that key."
"Where?"
"To New Orleans, of course. Tonight I pack my portmanteaux, tomorrow I
entrain. Just now"--he smothered a tremendous yawn--"now I do what
every wise man does as often as he can. I take a drink."
* * * * *
Seven evenings later we gathered in my study, de Grandin, Ned and I,
and from the little Frenchman's shining eyes I knew his quest had been
productive of results.
"My friends," he told us solemnly, "I am a clever person, and a lucky
one, as well. The morning after my arrival at New Orleans I enjoyed
three Ramos fizzes, then went to sit in City Park by the old
Dueling-Oak and wished with all my heart that I had taken four. And
while I sat in self-reproachful thought, sorrowing for the drink that
I had missed, behold, one passed by whom I recognized. He was my old
schoolfellow, Paul Dubois, now a priest in holy orders and attached to
the Cathedral of Saint Louis.
[Illustration: DR. DE GRANDIN.]
"He took me to his quarters, that good, pious man, and gave me
luncheon. It was Friday and a fast day, so we fasted. _Mon Dieu_, but
we did fast! On creole gumbo and oysters a la Rockefeller, and baked
pompano and little shrimp fried crisp in olive oil and chicory salad
and seven different kinds of cheese and wine. When we were so filled
with fasting that we could not eat another morsel my old friend took
me to another priest, a native of New Orleans whose stock of local
lore was second only to his marvelous capacity for fine champagne.
_Morbleu_, how I admire that one! And now, attend me very carefully,
my friends. What he disclosed to me makes many hidden mysteries all
clear:
"In New Orleans there lived a wealthy family named d'Ayen. They
possessed much gold and land, a thousand slaves or more, and one fair
daughter by the name of Julie. When this country bought the Louisiana
Territory from Napoleon and your army came to occupy the forts, this
young girl fell in love with a young officer, a Lieutenant Philip
Merriwell. _Tenez_, army love in those times was no different than it
is today, it seems. This gay young lieutenant, he came, he wooed, he
won, he rode away, and little Julie wept and sighed and finally died
of heartbreak. In her lovesick illness she had for constant company a
slave, an old mulatress known to most as Maman Dragonne, but to Julie
simply as _grand'tante_, great-aunt. She had nursed our little Julie
at the breast, and all her life she fostered and attended her. To her
little white '_mamselle_' she was all gentleness and kindness, but to
others she was fierce and frightful, for she was a 'conjon woman,'
adept at obeah, the black magic of the Congo, and among the blacks she
ruled as queen by force of fear, while the whites were wont to treat
her with respect and, it was more than merely whispered, retain her
services upon occasion. She could sell protection to the duelist, and
he who bore her charm would surely conquer on the field of honor; she
brewed love-drafts which turned the hearts and heads of the most
capricious coquettes or the most constant wives, as occasion
warranted; by merely staring fixedly at someone she could cause him to
take sick and die, and--here we commence to tread upon our own
terrain--she was said to have the power of changing to a snake at
will.
"Very good. You follow? When poor young Julie died of heartbreak it
was old Maman Dragonne--the little white one's _grand'tante_--who
watched beside her bed. It is said she stood beside her mistress'
coffin and called a curse upon the fickle lover; swore he would come
back and die beside the body of the sweetheart he deserted. She also
made a prophecy. Julie should have many loves, but her body should not
know corruption nor her spirit rest until she could find one to keep
his promise and return to her with words of love upon his lips. Those
who failed her should die horribly, but he who kept his pledge would
bring her rest and peace. This augury she made while she stood beside
her mistress' coffin just before they sealed it in the tomb in old
Saint Denis Cemetery. Then she disappeared."
"You mean she ran away?" I asked.
"I mean she disappeared, vanished, evanesced, evaporated. She was
never seen again, not even by the people who stood next to her when
she pronounced her prophecy."
"But----"
"No buts, my friend, if you will be so kind. Years later, when the
British stormed New Orleans, Lieutenant Merriwell was there with
General Andrew Jackson. He survived the battle like a man whose life
is charmed, though all around him comrades fell and three horses were
shot under him. Then, when the strife was done, he went to the grand
banquet tendered to the victors. While gayety was at its height he
abruptly left the table. Next morning he was found upon the grass
before the tomb of Julie d'Ayen. He was dead. He died from snake-bite.
"The years marched on and stories spread about the town, stories of a
strange and lovely _belle dame sans merci_, a modern Circe who lured
young gallants to their doom. Time and again some gay young blade of
New Orleans would boast a conquest. Passing late at night through
Royal Street, he would have a flower dropped to him as he walked
underneath a balcony. He would meet a lovely girl dressed in the early
Empire style, and be surprized at the ease with which he pushed his
suit; then--upon the trees in Chartres Street appeared his funeral
notices. He was dead, invariably he was dead of snake-bite. _Parbleu_,
it got to be a saying that he who died mysteriously must have met the
Lady of the Moonlight as he walked through Royal Street!"
He paused and poured a thimbleful of brandy in his coffee. "You see?"
he asked.
"No, I'm shot if I do!" I answered. "I can't see the connection
between----"
"Night and breaking dawn, perhaps?" he asked sarcastically. "If two
and two make four, my friend, and even you will not deny they do, then
these things I have told you give an explanation of our young friend's
trouble. This girl he met was most indubitably Julie, poor little
Julie d'Ayen on whose tombstone it is carved: '_Ici repose
malheureusement_--here lies unhappily.' The so mysterious snake which
menaces young Monsieur Minton is none other than the aged Maman
Dragonne--_grand'tante_, as Julie called her."
"But Ned's already failed to keep his tryst," I objected. "Why didn't
this snake-woman sting him in the hotel, or----"
"Do you recall what Julie said when first the snake appeared?" he
interrupted. "'Not this one, _grand'tante_!' And again, in the old
cemetery when the serpent actually struck at him, she threw herself
before him and received the blow. It could not permanently injure her;
to earthly injuries the dead are proof, but the shock of it caused her
to swoon, it seems. _Monsieur_," he bowed to Ned, "you are more
fortunate than any of those others. Several times you have been close
to death, but each time you escaped. You have been given chance and
chance again to keep your pledged word to the dead, a thing no other
faithless lover of the little Julie ever had. It seems, Monsieur, this
dead girl truly loves you."
"How horrible!" I muttered.
"You said it, Doctor Trowbridge!" Ned seconded. "It looks as if I'm in
a spot, all right."
"_Mais non_," de Grandin contradicted. "Escape is obvious, my friend."
"How, in heaven's name?"
"Keep your promised word; go back to her."
"Good Lord, I can't do that! Go back to a corpse, take her in my
arms--kiss her?"
"_Certainement_, why not?"
"Why--why, she's _dead_!"
"Is she not beautiful?"
"She's lovely and alluring as a siren's song. I think she's the most
exquisite thing I've ever seen, but----" he rose and walked unsteadily
across the room. "If it weren't for Nella," he said slowly, "I might
not find it hard to follow your advice. Julie's sweet and beautiful,
and artless and affectionate as a child; kind, too, the way she stood
between me and that awful snake-thing, but--oh, it's out of the
question!"
"Then we must expand the question to accommodate it, my friend. For
the safety of the living--for Mademoiselle Nella's sake--and for the
repose of the dead, you must keep the oath you swore to little Julie
d'Ayen. You must go back to New Orleans and keep your rendezvous."
* * * * *
The dead of old Saint Denis lay in dreamless sleep beneath the palely
argent rays of the fast-waxing moon. The oven-like tombs were gay with
hardly-wilted flowers; for two days before was All Saints' Day, and no
grave in all New Orleans is so lowly, no dead so long interred, that
pious hands do not bear blossoms of remembrance to them on that feast
of memories.
De Grandin had been busily engaged all afternoon, making mysterious
trips to the old Negro quarter in company with a patriarchal scion of
Indian and Negro ancestry who professed ability to guide him to the
city's foremost practitioner of voodoo; returning to the hotel only
to dash out again to consult his friend at the Cathedral; coming back
to stare with thoughtful eyes upon the changing panorama of Canal
Street while Ned, nervous as a race-horse at the barrier, tramped up
and down the room lighting cigarette from cigarette and drinking
absinthe frappes alternating with sharp, bitter sazarac cocktails till
I wondered that he did not fall in utter alcoholic collapse. By
evening I had that eery feeling that the sane experience when alone
with mad folk. I was ready to shriek at any unexpected noise or turn
and run at sight of a strange shadow.
"My friend," de Grandin ordered as we reached the grass-paved corridor
of tombs where Ned had told us the d'Ayen vaults were, "I suggest that
you drink this." From an inner pocket he drew out a tiny flask of ruby
glass and snapped its stopper loose. A strong and slightly acrid scent
came to me, sweet and spicy, faintly reminiscent of the odor of the
aromatic herbs one smells about a mummy's wrappings.
"Thanks, I've had enough to drink already," Ned said shortly.
"You are informing me, _mon vieux_?" the little Frenchman answered
with a smile. "It is for that I brought this draft along. It will help
you draw yourself together. You have need of all your faculties this
time, believe me."
Ned put the bottle to his lips, drained its contents, hiccuped
lightly, then braced his shoulders. "That _is_ a pick-up," he
complimented. "Too bad you didn't let me have it sooner, sir. I think
I can go through the ordeal now."
"One is sure you can," the Frenchman answered confidently. "Walk
slowly toward the spot where you last saw Julie, if you please. We
shall await you here, in easy call if we are needed."
The aisle of tombs was empty as Ned left us. The turf had been
fresh-mown for the day of visitation and was as smooth and short as a
lawn tennis court. A field-mouse could not have run across the pathway
without our seeing it. This much I noticed idly as Ned trudged away
from us, walking more like a man on his way to the gallows than one
who went to keep a lovers' rendezvous ... and suddenly he was not
alone. There was another with him, a girl dressed in a clinging robe
of sheer white muslin cut in the charming fashion of the First Empire,
girdled high beneath the bosom with a sash of light-blue ribbon. A
wreath of pale gardenias lay upon her bright, fair hair; her slender
arms were pearl-white in the moonlight. As she stepped toward Ned I
thought involuntarily of a line from Sir John Suckling:
"Her feet ... like little mice stole in and out."
"_Edouard, cheri! O, coeur de mon coeur, c'est veritablement toi?_
Thou hast come willingly, unasked, _petit amant_?"
"I'm here," Ned answered steadily, "but only----" He paused and drew a
sudden gasping breath, as though a hand had been laid on his throat.
"_Cheri_," the girl asked in a trembling voice, "you are cold to me;
do not you love me, then--you are not here because your heart heard my
heart calling? O heart of my heart's heart, if you but knew how I have
longed and waited! It has been _triste, mon Edouard_, lying in my
narrow bed alone while winter rains and summer suns beat down,
listening for your footfall. I could have gone out at my pleasure
whenever moonlight made the nights all bright with silver; I could
have sought for other lovers, but I would not. You held release for me
within your hands, and if I might not have it from you I would forfeit
it for ever. Do not you bring release for me, my Edouard? Say that it
is so!"
An odd look came into the boy's face. He might have seen her for the
first time, and been dazzled by her beauty and the winsome sweetness
of her voice.
"Julie!" he whispered softly. "Poor, patient, faithful little Julie!"
In a single stride he crossed the intervening turf and was on his
knees before her, kissing her hands, the hem of her gown, her sandaled
feet, and babbling half-coherent, broken words of love.
She put her hands upon his head as if in benediction, then turned
them, holding them palm-forward to his lips, finally crooked her
fingers underneath his chin and raised his face. "Nay, love, sweet
love, art thou a worshipper and I a saint that thou should kneel to
me?" she asked him tenderly. "See, my lips are famishing for thine,
and wilt thou waste thy kisses on my hands and feet and garment? Make
haste, my heart, we have but little time, and I would know the kisses
of redemption ere----"
They clung together in the moonlight, her white-robed, lissome form
and his somberly-clad body seemed to melt and merge in one while her
hands reached up to clasp his cheeks and draw his face down to her
yearning, scarlet mouth.
De Grandin was reciting something in a mumbling monotone; his words
were scarcely audible, but I caught a phrase occasionally: "... rest
eternal grant to her, O Lord ... let light eternal shine upon her ...
from the gates of hell her soul deliver.... _Kyrie eleison_...."
"Julie!" we heard Ned's despairing cry, and:
"_Ha_, it comes, it has begun; it finishes!" de Grandin whispered
gratingly.
The girl had sunk down to the grass as though she swooned; one arm had
fallen limply from Ned's shoulder, but the other still was clasped
about his neck as we raced toward them. "_Adieu, mon amoureux; adieu
pour ce monde, adieu pour l'autre; adieu pour l'eternite!_" we heard
her sob. When we reached him, Ned knelt empty-armed before the tomb.
Of Julie there was neither sign nor trace.
"So, assist him, if you will, my friend," de Grandin bade, motioning
me to take Ned's elbow. "Help him to the gate. I follow quickly, but
first I have a task to do."
As I led Ned, staggering like a drunken man, toward the cemetery exit,
I heard the clang of metal striking metal at the tomb behind us.
* * * * *
"What did you stop behind to do?" I asked as we prepared for bed at
the hotel.
He flashed his quick, infectious smile at me, and tweaked his mustache
ends, for all the world like a self-satisfied tomcat furbishing his
whiskers after finishing a bowl of cream. "There was an alteration to
that epitaph I had to make. You recall it read, '_Ici repose
malheureusement_--here lies unhappily Julie d'Ayen'? That is no longer
true. I chiseled off the _malheureusement_. Thanks to Monsieur
Edouard's courage and my cleverness the old one's prophecy was
fulfilled tonight; and poor, small Julie has found rest at last.
Tomorrow morning they celebrate the first of a series of masses I have
arranged for her at the Cathedral."
"What was that drink you gave Ned just before he left us?" I asked
curiously. "It smelled like----"
"_Le bon Dieu_ and the devil know--not I," he answered with a grin.
"It was a voodoo love-potion. I found the realization that she had
been dead a century and more so greatly troubled our young friend that
he swore he could not be affectionate to our poor Julie; so I went
down to the Negro quarter in the afternoon and arranged to have a
philtre brewed. _Eh bien_, that aged black one who concocted it
assured me that she could inspire love for the image of a crocodile in
the heart of anyone who looked upon it after taking but a drop of her
decoction, and she charged me twenty dollars for it. But I think I had
my money's worth. Did it not work marvelously?"
"Then Julie's really gone? Ned's coming back released her from the
spell----"
"Not wholly gone," he corrected. "Her little body now is but a small
handful of dust, her spirit is no longer earth-bound, and the familiar
demon who in life was old Maman Dragonne has left the earth with her,
as well. No longer will she metamorphosize into a snake and kill the
faithless ones who kiss her little mistress and then forswear their
troth, but--_non_, my friend, Julie is not gone entirely, I think. In
the years to come when Ned and Nella have long been joined in wedded
bliss, there will be minutes when Julie's face and Julie's voice and
the touch of Julie's little hands will haunt his memory. There will
always be one little corner of his heart which never will belong to
Madame Nella Minton, for it will be for ever Julie's. Yes, I think
that it is so."
Slowly, deliberately, almost ritualistically, he poured a glass of
wine and raised it. "To you, my little poor one," he said softly as he
looked across the sleeping city toward old Saint Denis Cemetery. "You
quit earth with a kiss upon your lips; may you sleep serene in
Paradise until another kiss shall waken you."
* * * * *