[Illustration: THE ATTIC]
The forest-girdled village upon the Jura slopes slept soundly,
although it was not yet many minutes after ten o’clock. The clang of
the _couvre-feu_ had indeed just ceased, its notes swept far into the
woods by a wind that shook the mountains. This wind now rushed down
the deserted street. It howled about the old rambling building called
La Citadelle, whose roof towered gaunt and humped above the smaller
houses--Château left unfinished long ago by Lord Wemyss, the exiled
Jacobite. The families who occupied the various apartments listened
to the storm and felt the building tremble. ‘It’s the mountain wind.
It will bring the snow,’ the mother said, without looking up from her
knitting. ‘And how sad it sounds.’
But it was not the wind that brought sadness as we sat round the open
fire of peat. It was the wind of memories. The lamplight slanted along
the narrow room towards the table where breakfast things lay ready for
the morning. The double windows were fastened. At the far end stood
a door ajar, and on the other side of it the two elder children lay
asleep in the big bed. But beside the window was a smaller unused bed,
that had been empty now a year. And to-night was the anniversary....
And so the wind brought sadness and long thoughts. The little chap
that used to lie there was already twelve months gone, far, far beyond
the Hole where the Winds came from, as he called it; yet it seemed only
yesterday that I went to tell him a tuck-up story, to stroke Riquette,
the old motherly cat that cuddled against his back and laid a paw
beside his pillow like a human being, and to hear his funny little
earnest whisper say, ‘Oncle, tu sais, j’ai prié pour Petavel.’ For
La Citadelle had its unhappy ghost--of Petavel, the usurer, who had
hanged himself in the attic a century gone by, and was known to walk
its dreary corridors in search of peace--and this wise Irish mother,
calming the boy’s fears with wisdom, had told him, ‘If you pray for
Petavel, you’ll save his soul and make him happy, and he’ll only love
you.’ And, thereafter, this little imaginative boy had done so every
night. With a passionate seriousness he did it. He had wonderful,
delicate ways like that. In all our hearts he made his fairy nests
of wonder. In my own, I know, he lay closer than any joy imaginable,
with his big blue eyes, his queer soft questionings, and his splendid
child’s unselfishness--a sun-kissed flower of innocence that, had he
lived, might have sweetened half a world.
‘Let’s put more peat on,’ the mother said, as a handful of rain like
stones came flinging against the windows; ‘that must be hail.’ And
she went on tiptoe to the inner room. ‘They’re sleeping like two
puddings,’ she whispered, coming presently back. But it struck me she
had taken longer than to notice merely that; and her face wore an odd
expression that made me uncomfortable. I thought she was somehow just
about to laugh or cry. By the table a second she hesitated. I caught
the flash of indecision as it passed. ‘Pan,’ she said suddenly--it was
a nickname, stolen from my tuck-up stories, _he_ had given me--‘I
wonder how Riquette got in.’ She looked hard at me. ‘It wasn’t you,
was it?’ For we never let her come at night since he had gone. It was
too poignant. The beastie always went cuddling and nestling into that
empty bed. But this time it was not my doing, and I offered plausible
explanations. ‘But--she’s on the bed. Pan, _would_ you be so kind----’
She left the sentence unfinished, but I easily understood, for a lump
had somehow risen in my own throat too, and I remembered now that she
had come out from the inner room so quickly--with a kind of hurried
rush almost. I put ‘mère Riquette’ out into the corridor. A lamp stood
on the chair outside the door of another occupant further down, and
I urged her gently towards it. She turned and looked at me--straight
up into my face; but, instead of going down as I suggested, she went
slowly in the opposite direction. She stepped softly towards a door in
the wall that led up broken stairs into the attics. There she sat down
and waited. And so I left her, and came back hastily to the peat fire
and companionship. The wind rushed in behind me and slammed the door.
And we talked then somewhat busily of cheerful things; of the
children’s future, the excellence of the cheap Swiss schools, of
Christmas presents, ski-ing, snow, tobogganing. I led the talk away
from mournfulness; and when these subjects were exhausted I told
stories of my own adventures in distant parts of the world. But
‘mother’ listened the whole time--not to me. Her thoughts were all
elsewhere. And her air of intently, secretly listening, bordered, I
felt, upon the uncanny. For she often stopped her knitting and sat
with her eyes fixed upon the air before her; she stared blankly at
the wall, her head slightly on one side, her figure tense, attention
strained--elsewhere. Or, when my talk positively demanded it, her nod
was oddly mechanical and her eyes looked through and past me. The wind
continued very loud and roaring; but the fire glowed, the room was warm
and cosy. Yet she shivered, and when I drew attention to it, her reply,
‘I do feel cold, but I didn’t know I shivered,’ was given as though she
spoke across the air to some one else. But what impressed me even more
uncomfortably were her repeated questions about Riquette. When a pause
in my tales permitted, she would look up with ‘I wonder where Riquette
went?’ or, thinking of the inclement night, ‘I hope mère Riquette’s not
out of doors. Perhaps Madame Favre has taken her in?’ I offered to go
and see. Indeed I was already half-way across the room when there came
the heavy bang at the door that rooted me to the ground where I stood.
It was not wind. It was something alive that made it rattle. There was
a second blow. A thud on the corridor boards followed, and then a high,
odd voice that at first was as human as the cry of a child.
It is undeniable that we both started, and for myself I can answer
truthfully that a chill ran down my spine; but what frightened me more
than the sudden noise and the eerie cry was the way ‘mother’ supplied
the immediate explanation. For behind the words ‘It’s only Riquette;
she sometimes springs at the door like that; perhaps we’d better let
her in,’ was a certain touch of uncanny quiet that made me feel she
had known the cat would come, and knew also _why_ she came. One cannot
explain such impressions further. They leave their vital touch, then go
their way. Into the little room, however, in that moment there came
between us this uncomfortable sense that the night held other purposes
than our own--and that my companion was aware of them. There was
something going on far, far removed from the routine of life as we were
accustomed to it. Moreover, our usual routine was the eddy, while this
was the main stream. It felt big, I mean.
And so it was that the entrance of the familiar, friendly creature
brought this thing both itself and ‘mother’ _knew_, but whereof I as
yet was ignorant. I held the door wide. The draught rushed through
behind her, and sent a shower of sparks about the fireplace. The lamp
flickered and gave a little gulp. And Riquette marched slowly past,
with all the impressive dignity of her kind, towards the other door
that stood ajar. Turning the corner like a shadow, she disappeared
into the room where the two children slept. We heard the soft thud
with which she leaped upon the bed. Then, in a lull of the wind, she
came back again and sat on the oilcloth, staring into ‘mother’s’ face.
She mewed and put a paw out, drawing the black dress softly with
half-opened claws. And it was all so horribly suggestive and pathetic,
it revived such poignant memories, that I got up impulsively--I think
I had actually said the words, ‘We’d better put her out, mother, after
all’--when my companion rose to her feet and forestalled me. She said
another thing instead. It took my breath away to hear it. ‘She wants us
to go with her. Pan, will you come too?’ The surprise on my face must
have asked the question, for I do not remember saying anything. ‘To the
attic,’ she said quietly.
She stood there by the table, a tall, grave figure dressed in black,
and her face above the lamp-shade caught the full glare of light.
Its expression positively stiffened me. She seemed so secure in her
singular purpose. And her familiar appearance had so oddly given
place to something wholly strange to me. She looked like another
person--almost with the unwelcome transformation of the sleep-walker
about her. Cold came over me as I watched her, for I remembered
suddenly her Irish second-sight, her story years ago of meeting a
figure on the attic stairs, the figure of Petavel. And the idea of
this motherly, sedate, and wholesome woman, absorbed day and night
in prosaic domestic duties, and yet ‘seeing’ things, touched the
incongruous almost to the point of alarm. It was so distressingly
convincing.
Yet she knew quite well that I would come. Indeed, following the
excited animal, she was already by the door, and a moment later, still
without answering or protesting, I was with them in the draughty
corridor. There was something inevitable in her manner that made it
impossible to refuse. She took the lamp from its nail on the wall, and
following our four-footed guide, who ran with obvious pleasure just
in front, she opened the door into the courtyard. The wind nearly put
the lamp out, but a minute later we were safe inside the passage that
led up flights of creaky wooden stairs towards the world of tenantless
attics overhead.
And I shall never forget the way the excited Riquette first stood up
and put her paws upon the various doors, trotted ahead, turned back to
watch us coming, and then finally sat down and waited on the threshold
of the empty, raftered space that occupied the entire length of the
building underneath the roof. For her manner was more that of an
intelligent dog than of a cat, and sometimes more like that of a human
mind than either.
We had come up without a single word. The howling of the wind as we
rose higher was like the roar of artillery. There were many broken
stairs, and the narrow way was full of twists and turnings. It was
a dreadful journey. I felt eyes watching us from all the yawning
spaces of the darkness, and the noise of the storm smothered footsteps
everywhere. Troops of shadows kept us company. But it was on the
threshold of this big, chief attic, when ‘mother’ stopped abruptly to
put down the lamp, that real fear took hold of me. For Riquette marched
steadily forward into the middle of the dusty flooring, picking her way
among the fallen tiles and mortar, as though she went towards--some
one. She purred loudly and uttered little cries of excited pleasure.
Her tail went up into the air, and she lowered her head with the
unmistakable intention of being stroked. Her lips opened and shut. Her
green eyes smiled. She _was_ being stroked.
It was an unforgettable performance. I would rather have witnessed an
execution or a murder than watch that mysterious creature twist and
turn about in the way she did. Her magnified shadow was as large as
a pony on the floor and rafters. I wanted to hide the whole thing by
extinguishing the lamp. For, even before the mysterious action began, I
experienced the sudden rush of conviction that others besides ourselves
were in this attic--and standing very close to us indeed. And, although
there was ice in my blood, there was also a strange swelling of the
heart that only love and tenderness could bring.
But, whatever it was, my human companion, still silent, knew and
understood. She _saw_. And her soft whisper that ran with the wind
among the rafters, ‘Il a prié pour Petavel et le bon Dieu l’a entendu,’
did not amaze me one quarter as much as the expression I then caught
upon her radiant face. Tears ran down the cheeks, but they were
tears of happiness. Her whole figure seemed lit up. She opened her
arms--picture of great Motherhood, proud, blessed, and tender beyond
words. I thought she was going to fall, for she took quick steps
forward; but when I moved to catch her, she drew me aside instead with
a sudden gesture that brought fear back in the place of wonder.
‘Let them pass,’ she whispered grandly. ‘Pan, don’t you see.... He’s
leading him into peace and safety ... by the hand!’ And her joy seemed
to kill the shadows and fill the entire attic with white light. Then,
almost simultaneously with her words, she swayed. I was in time to
catch her, but as I did so, across the very spot where we had just been
standing--two figures, I swear, went past us like a flood of light.
There was a moment next of such confusion that I did not see what
happened to Riquette, for the sight of my companion kneeling on the
dusty boards and praying with a curious sort of passionate happiness,
while tears pressed between her covering fingers--the strange wonder of
this made me utterly oblivious to minor details....
We were sitting round the peat fire again, and ‘mother’ was saying
to me in the gentlest, tenderest whisper I ever heard from human
lips--‘Pan, I think perhaps that’s why God took him....’
And when a little later we went in to make Riquette cosy in the empty
bed, ever since kept sacred to her use, the mournfulness had lifted;
and in the place of resignation was proud peace and joy that knew no
longer sad or selfish questionings.