THE WALKER IN THE NIGHT
It was an hour from midnight when Alan rose, opened a window, and
looked out. The storm was over. He could see the stars glistening like
silver fruit among the upper branches of the elms. Behind the great
cypress known as the Fate of Kerival there was a golden radiance, as
though a disk of radiant bronze were being slowly wheeled round and
round, invisible itself but casting a quivering gleam upon the fibrous
undersides of the cypress spires. Soon the moon would lift upward, and
her paling gold become foam-white along the wide reaches of the forest.
The wind had suddenly fallen. In this abrupt lapse into silence there
was something mysterious. After so much violence, after that wild,
tempestuous cry, such stillness! There was no more than a faint
rustling sound, as though invisible feet were stealthily flying along
the pathway of the upper boughs and through the dim defiles in the
dense coverts of oak and beech in the very heart of the woods. Only,
from hitherward of the unseen dunes floated a melancholy, sighing
refrain, the echo of the eddying sea-breath among the pines. Beyond the
last sands, the deep, hollow boom of the sea itself.
To stay indoors seemed to Alan a wanton forfeiture of beauty. The
fragrance of the forest intoxicated him. Spring was come, indeed.
This wild storm had ruined nothing, for at its fiercest it had swept
overhead; and on the morrow the virginal green world would be more
beautiful than ever. Everywhere the green fire of spring would be
litten anew. A green flame would pass from meadow to hedgerow, from
hedgerow to the tangled thickets of bramble and dog-rose, from the
underwoods to the inmost forest glades. Everywhere song would be to
the birds, everywhere young life would pulse, everywhere the rhythm
of a new rapture would run rejoicing. The miracle of spring would be
accomplished in the sight of all men, of all birds and beasts, of all
green life. Each, in its kind, would have a swifter throb in the red
blood or the vivid sap.
No, he could not wait. No, Alan added to himself with a smile, not even
though to sleep in the House of Kerival was to be beneath the same roof
as Ynys--to be but a few yards, a passage, a corridor away. Ah! for
sure, he could dream his dream as well out there among the gleaming
boughs, in the golden sheen of the moon, under the stars. Was there not
the silence for deep peace, and the voice of the unseen sea for echo
to the deep tides of love which surged obscurely in his heart? Yes, he
would go out to that beautiful redemption of the night. How often, in
fevered Paris, he had known that healing, either when his gaze was held
by the quiet stars, as he kept his hours-long vigil, or when he escaped
westward along the banks of the Seine, and could wander undisturbed
across grassy spaces or under shadowy boughs!
In the great hall of the Manor he found white-haired Matieu asleep in
his wicker chair. The old man silently opened the heavy oaken door,
and, with a smile which somewhat perplexed Alan, bowed to him as he
passed forth.
Could it be a space only of a few hours that divided him from his
recent arrival, he wondered. The forest was no longer the same. Then it
was swept by the wind, lashed by the rains, and was everywhere tortured
into a tempestuous music. Now it was so still, save for a ceaseless
faint dripping from wet leaves and the conduits of a myriad sprays
and branches, that he could hear the occasional shaking of the wings
of hidden birds, ruffling out their plumage because of the moonlit
quietudes that were come again.
And then, too, he had seen Ynys; had held her hand in his; had looked
in her beautiful, hazel-green eyes, dusky and wonderful as a starlit
gloaming because of the depth of her dear love; had pressed his
lips to hers, and felt the throbbing of her heart against his own.
There, in the forest-edge, it was difficult to realize all this. It
would be time to turn soon, to walk back along the sycamore-margined
Seine embankment, to reach the Tour de l'Ile and be at his post in
the observatory again. Then he glanced backward, and saw a red light
shining from the room where the Marquis de Kerival sat up late night
after night, and he wondered if Ynys were still there, or if she were
now in her room and asleep, or if she lay in a waking dream.
For a time he stared at this beacon. Then, troubled by many thoughts,
but most by his love, he moved slowly into one of the beech avenues
which radiated from the fantastic mediæval sun-dial at the end of the
tulip garden in front of the château.
While the moon slowly lifted from branch to branch a transient stir of
life came into the forest.
Here and there he heard low cries, sometimes breaking into abrupt
eddies of arrested song; thrushes, he knew, ever swift to slide their
music out against any tide of light. Once or twice a blackcap, in one
of the beeches near the open, sang so poignantly a brief strain that he
thought it that of a nightingale. Later, in an oak glade, he heard the
unmistakable song itself.
The sea sound came hollowly under the boughs like a spent billow.
Instinctively he turned that way, and so crossed a wide glade that
opened on the cypress alley to the west of the château.
Just as he emerged upon this glade he thought he saw a stooping figure
glide swiftly athwart the northern end of it and disappear among the
cypresses. Startled, he stood still.
No one stirred. Nothing moved. He could hear no sound save the faint
sighing of the wind-eddy among the pines, the dull rhythmic beat of the
sea falling heavily upon the sands.
"It must have been a delusion," he muttered. Yet, for the moment, he
had felt certain that the crouching figure of a man had moved swiftly
out of the shadow of the solitary wide-spreading thorn he knew so well,
and had disappeared into the darker shadow of the cypress alley.
After all, what did it matter? It could only be some poor fellow
poaching. With a smile, Alan remembered how often he had sinned
likewise. He would listen, however, and give the man a fright, for
he knew that Tristran de Kerival was stern in his resentment against
poachers, partly because he was liberal in certain woodland-freedom
he granted, on the sole condition that none of the peasants ever came
within the home domain.
Soon, however, he was convinced that he was mistaken. Deep silence
prevailed everywhere. Almost, he fancied, he could hear the soft fall
of the dew. A low whirring sound showed that a night-jar had already
begun his summer wooing. Now that, as he knew from Ynys, the cuckoo
was come, and that the swallows had suddenly multiplied from a score
of pioneers into a battalion of ever-flying darts; now that he had
listened to the nightingales calling through the moonlit woods and had
heard the love-note of the night-jar, the hot weather must be come at
last--that glorious tide of golden life which flows from April to June
and makes them the joy of the world.
Slowly he walked across the glade. At the old thorn he stopped, and
leaned a while against its rugged, twisted bole, recalling incident
after incident associated with it.
It was strangely restful there. Around him was the quiet sea of
moonlight; yonder, behind the cypresses and the pine-crowned dunes,
was the quiet sea of moving waters; yet, in the one, there was scarce
less of silence than in the other. Ah! he remembered abruptly, on just
such a night, years ago, he and Annaik had stood long there, hand in
hand, listening to a nightingale. What a strange girl she was, even
then! Well he recalled how, at the end of the song and when the little
brown singer had slipped from its bough, like a stone slung from a
sling, Annaik had laughed, though he knew not at what, and had all at
once unfastened her hair, and let its tawny bronze-red mass fall about
her shoulders. She was so beautiful and wild that he had clasped her
in his arms, and had kissed her again and again. And Annaik ... oh, he
remembered, half shyly, half exultantly ... she had laughed again, but
more low, and had tied the long drifts of her hair around his neck like
a blood-red scarf.
It gave him a strange emotion to recall all this. Did Annaik also think
of it ever, he wondered? Then, too, had they not promised somewhat to
each other? Yes ... Annaik had said: "One night we shall come here
again, and then, if you do not love me as much as you do now, I shall
strangle you with my hair: and if you love me more we shall go away
into the forest, and never return, or not for long, long; but if you do
not love me at all, then you are to tell me so, and I will----"
"What?" he had asked, when she stopped abruptly.
At that, however, she had said no more as to what was in her mind, but
had asked him to carve upon the thorn the "A" of her name and the "A"
of his into a double "A." Yes, of course, he had done this. Where was
it? he pondered. Surely midway on the southward side, for then as now
the moonlight would be there.
With an eagerness of which he was conscious he slipped from where he
leaned, and examined the bole of the tree. A heavy branch intervened.
This he caught and withheld, and the light flooded upon the gnarled
trunk.
With a start, Alan almost relinquished the branch. There, unmistakable,
was a large carven "A," but not only was it the old double "A" made
into a single letter, but clearly the change had been made quite
recently, apparently within a few hours. Moreover, it was now linked to
another letter. The legend ran: "_A & J_."
Puzzled, he looked close. There could be no mistake. The cutting was
recent. The "_J_," indeed, might have been that moment done. Suddenly
an idea flashed into his mind. He stooped and examined the mossed
roots. Yes, there were the fragments. He took one and put it between
his teeth; the wood was soft, and had the moisture of fibre recently
severed.
Who was "J"? Alan pondered over every name he could think of. He
knew no one whose baptismal name began thus, with the exception of
Jervaise de Morvan, the brother of Andrik, and he was married and
resident in distant Pondicherry. Otherwise there was but Jak Bourzak,
the woodcutter--a bent, broken-down old man who could not have cut
the letters for the good reason that he was unable to write and was
so ignorant that, even in that remote region, he was called Jak the
Stupid. Alan was still pondering over this when suddenly the stillness
was broken by the loud screaming of peacocks.
Kerival was famous for these birds, of which the peasantry stood in
superstitious awe. Indeed, a legend was current to the effect that
Tristran de Kerival maintained those resplendent creatures because
they were the souls of his ancestors, or such of them as before death
had not been able to gain absolution for their sins. When they were
heard crying harshly before rain or at sundown, or sometimes in the
moonlight, the hearers shuddered. "The lost souls of Kerival" became a
saying, and there were prophets here and there who foreboded ill for
Tristran the Silent, or some one near and dear to him, whenever that
strange clamor rang forth unexpectedly.
Alan himself was surprised, startled. The night was so still, no
further storm was imminent, and the moon had been risen for some time.
Possibly the peacocks had strolled into the cypress alley, to strut to
and fro in the moonshine, as their wont was in their wooing days, and
two of them had come into jealous dispute.
Still that continuous harsh tumult seemed rather to have the note of
alarm than of quarrel. Alan walked to the seaward side of the thorn,
but still kept within its shadow.
The noise was now not only clamant but startling. The savage screaming,
like that of barbaric trumpets, filled the night.
Swiftly the listener crossed the glade, and was soon among the
cypresses. There, while the dull thud of the falling seas was more than
ever audible, the screams of the peacocks were so insistent that he had
ears for these alone.
At the eastern end of the alley the glade broke away into scattered
pines, and from these swelled a series of low dunes. Alan could see
them clearly from where he stood, under the boughs of a huge yew, one
of several that grew here and there among their solemn, columnar kin.
His gaze was upon this open space when, abruptly, he started. A tall,
slim figure, coming from the shore, moved slowly inland across the
dunes.
Who could this walker in the dark be? The shadowy Walker in the Night
herself, mayhap; the dreaded soulless woman who wanders at dead of
night through forests, or by desolate shores, or by the banks of the
perilous _marais_.
Often he had heard of her. When any man met this woman, his fate
depended on whether he saw her before she caught sight of him. If she
saw him first, she had but to sing her wild, strange song, and he would
have to go to her; and when he was before her two flames would come out
of her eyes, and one flame would burn up his life as though it were dry
tinder, and the other would wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl,
and she would take it and live with it in a cavern underground for a
year and a day. And on that last day she would let it go, as a hare is
let go a furlong beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly like a windy
shadow from glade to glade or from dune to dune, in the vain hope to
reach a wayside Calvary; but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy Tree
would almost be reached; then, with a gliding swiftness, like a flood
racing down a valley, the Walker in the Night would be alongside the
fugitive. Now and again unhappy night-farers--unhappy they, for sure,
for never does weal remain with any one who hears what no human ear
should hearken--would be startled by a sudden laughing in the darkness.
This was when some such terrible chase had happened, and when the
creature of the night had taken the captive soul, in the last moments
of the last hour of the last day of its possible redemption, and rent
it this way and that, as a hawk scatters the feathered fragments of its
mutilated quarry.
Alan thought of this wild legend, and shuddered. Years ago he had been
foolhardy enough to wish to meet the phantom, to see her before she saw
him, and to put a spell upon her. For, if this were possible, he could
compel her to whisper some of her secret lore, and she could give him
spells to keep him scathless till old age.
But as, with fearful gaze, he stared at the figure which so leisurely
moved toward the cypress alley, he was puzzled by some vague
resemblance, by something familiar. The figure was that of a woman,
unmistakably; and she moved as though she were in a dream.
But who could it be, there, in that lonely place, at that hour of the
night? Who would venture or care....
In a flash all was clear. It was Annaik!
There was no room for doubt. He might have known her lithe walk, her
wildwood grace, her peculiar carriage; but before recognition of these
had come, he had caught a glimpse of her hair in the moonlight. It was
like burnished brass, in that yellow shine. There was no other such
hair in the world, he believed.
But ... Annaik! What could she be doing there? How had she been able to
leave the château; when had she stolen forth; where had she wandered;
whither was she going; to what end?
These and other thoughts stormed through Alan's mind. Almost--he
muttered below his breath--almost he would rather have seen the Walker
in the Night.
As she drew nearer he could see her as clearly as though it were
daylight. She appeared to be thinking deeply, and ever and again be
murmuring disconnected phrases. His heart smote him when he saw her,
twice, raise her arms and then wring her hands as if in sore straits of
sorrow.
He did not stir. He would wait, he thought. It might add to Annaik's
strange grief, if grief it were, to betray his presence. Again, was
it possible that she was there to meet some one--to encounter the "J"
whose initial was beside her own on the old thorn? How pale she was!
he noticed. A few yards away her dress caught; she hesitated, slowly
disengaged herself, but did not advance again. For the third time she
wrung her hands.
What could it mean? Alan was about to move forward when he heard her
voice:
"Oh, Alan, Alan, Alan!"
What ... had she seen him? He flushed there in the shadow, and words
rose to his lips. Then he was silent, for she spoke again:
"I hate her ... I hate her ... not for herself, no, no, no ... but
because she has taken you from me. Why does Ynys have you, all of you,
when I have loved you all along? None of us knew any thing--none, till
last Noël. Then we knew; only, neither you nor Ynys knew that I loved
you as a soul in hell loves the memory of its earthly joy."
Strange words, there in that place, at that hour; but far stranger
the passionless voice in which the passionate words were uttered.
Bewildered, Alan leaned forward, intent. The words had waned to a
whisper, but were now incoherent. Fragmentary phrases, irrelevant
words, what could it all mean?
Suddenly an idea made him start. He moved slightly, so as to catch the
full flood of a moonbeam as it fell on Annaik's face.
Yes, he was right. Her eyes were open, but were fixed in an unseeing
stare. For the first time, too, he noted that she was clad simply in
a long dressing-gown. Her feet were bare, and were glistening with the
wet they had gathered; on her lustrous hair, nothing but the moonlight.
He had remembered. Both Annaik and Ynys had a tendency to somnambulism,
a trait inherited from their father. It had been cured years ago, he
had understood. But here--here was proof that Annaik at any rate was
still subject to that mysterious malady of sleep.
That she was absolutely trance-bound he saw clearly. But what he should
do--that puzzled, that bewildered him.
Slowly Annaik, after a brief hesitancy when he fancied she was about to
awake, moved forward again.
She came so close that almost she brushed against him; would have done
so, indeed, but that he was hidden from contact as well as from sight
by the boughs of the yew, which on that side swept to the ground.
Alan put out his hand. Then he withdrew it. No, he thought, he would
let her go unmolested, and, if possible, unawaked: but he would follow
her, lest evil befell. She passed. His nerves thrilled. What was this
strange emotion, that gave him a sensation almost as though he had seen
his own wraith? But different ... for, oh--he could not wait to think
about that, he muttered.
He was about to stoop and emerge from the yew-boughs when he heard a
sound which made him stop abruptly.
It was a step; of that he felt sure. And at hand, too. The next moment
he was glad he had not disclosed himself, for a crouching figure
stealthily followed Annaik.
Surely that was the same figure he had seen cross the glade, the figure
that had slipped from the thorn?
If so, could it be the person who had cut the letter "J" on the bark of
the tree? The man kept so much in the shadow that it was difficult to
obtain a glimpse of his face. Alan waited. In a second or two he would
have to pass the yew.
Just before the mysterious pursuer reached the old tree, he stopped.
Alan furtively glanced to his left. He saw that Annaik had suddenly
halted. She stood intent, as though listening. Possibly she had awaked.
He saw her lips move. She spoke, or called something; what, he could
not hear because of the intermittent screaming of the peacocks.
When he looked at the man in the shadow he started. A moonbeam had
penetrated the obscurity, and the face was white against the black
background of a cypress.
Alan recognized the man in a moment. It was Jud Kerbastiou, the
forester. What ... was it possible: could _he_ be the "J" who had
linked his initial with that of Annaik?
It was incredible. The man was not only a boor, but one with rather
an ill repute. At any rate, he was known to be a poacher as well as a
woodlander of the old Breton kind--men who would never live save in the
forest, any more than a gypsy would become a clerk and live in a street.
It was said among the peasants of Kerival that his father, old Iouenn
Kerbastiou, the charcoal burner, was an illegitimate brother of the
late Marquis--so that Jud, or Judik, as he was generally called, was
a blood-relation of the great folk at the château. Once this had been
hinted to the Marquis Tristran. It was for the first and last time.
Since then, Jud Kerbastiou had become more morose than ever, and was
seldom seen among his fellows. When not with his infirm old father, at
the hut in the woods that were to the eastward of the forest-hamlet
of Ploumael, he was away in the densely wooded reaches to the south.
Occasionally he was seen upon the slopes of the Black Hills, but this
was only in winter, when he crossed over into Upper Brittany with a
mule-train laden with cut fagots.
That he was prowling about the home domain of Kerival was itself
ominous; but that in this stealthy manner he should be following Annaik
was to Allan a matter of genuine alarm. Surely the man could mean no
evil against one of the Big House, and one, too, so much admired, and
in a certain way loved, as Annaik de Kerival? And yet, the stealthy
movements of the peasant, his crouching gait, his patient dogging of
her steps--and this, doubtless, ever since _she_ had crossed the glade
from the forest to the cypresses--all this had a menacing aspect.
At that moment the peacocks ceased their wild miaulling. Low and clear,
Annaik's voice same thrillingly along the alley:
"_Alan! Alan! Oh, Alan, darling, are you there?_"
His heart beat. Then a flush sprang to his brow, as with sudden anger
he heard Jud Kerbastiou reply, in a thick, muffled tone:
"Yes, yes, ... and, and I love you, Annaik!"
Possibly the sleeper heard and understood. Even at that distance Alan
saw the light upon her face, the light from within.
Judik the peasant slowly advanced. His stealthy tread was light as that
of a fox. He stopped when he was within a yard of Annaik. "Annaik," he
muttered hoarsely, "Annaik, it was I who was out among the beeches in
front of the château while the storm was raging. Sure you must have
known it; else, why would you come out? I love you, white woman. I am
only a peasant ... but I love you, Annaik de Kerival, I love you--I
love you--I love you!"
Surely she was on the verge of waking! The color had come back to her
white face, her lips moved, as though stirred by a breath from within.
Her hands were clasped, and the fingers intertwisted restlessly.
Kerbastiou was so wrought that he did not hear steps behind him as Alan
moved swiftly forward.
"Sure, you will be mine at last," the man cried hoarsely, "mine, and
none to dispute ... ay, and this very night, too."
Slowly Jud put out an arm. His hand almost touched that of Annaik.
Suddenly he was seized from behind, and a hand was claspt firmly upon
his mouth. He did not see who his unexpected assailant was, but he
heard the whisper that was against his ear:
"If you make a sound, I will strangle you to death."
With a nod, he showed that he understood. "If I let go for the moment,
will you come back under the trees here, where she cannot see or hear
us?"
Another nod.
Alan relaxed his hold, but did not wholly relinquish his grip.
Kerbastiou turned and looked at him.
"Oh, it's _you_!" he muttered, as he followed his assailant into the
shadow some yards back.
"Yes, Judik Kerbastiou, it is I, Alan de Kerival."
"Well, what do you want?"
"What do I want? How dare you be so insolent, fellow? you, who have
been following a defenceless woman!"
"What have _you_ been doing?"
"I ... oh, of course I have been following Mlle. Annaik also ... but
that was ... that was ... to protect her."
"And is it not possible I might follow her for the same reason?"
"It is not the same thing at all, Judik Kerbastiou, and you know it. In
the first place you have no right to be here at all. In the next, I am
Mlle. Annaik's cousin, and----"
"And I am her lover."
Alan stared at the man in sheer amaze. He spoke quietly and assuredly,
nor seemed in the least degree perturbed.
"But ... but ... why, Kerbastiou, it is impossible!"
"What is impossible?"
"That Annaik could love _you_."
"I did not say she loved me. I said I was her lover."
"And you believe that you, a peasant, a man held in ill repute even
among your fellow-peasants, a homeless woodlander, can gain the love of
the daughter of your seigneur, of a woman nurtured as she has been?"
"You speak like a book, as the saying is, M. de Kerival." Judik uttered
the words mockingly, and with raised voice. Annaik, who was still
standing as one entranced, heard it: for she whispered again, "_Alan!
Alan! Alan!_"
"Hush, man! she will hear. Listen, Judik, I don't want to speak
harshly. You know me. Every one here does. You must be well aware that
I am the last person to despise you or any man because you are poor
and unfortunate. But you _must_ see that such a love as this of yours
is madness."
"All love is madness."
"Oh, yes; of course! But look you, Judik, what right have you to be
here at all, in the home domain, in the dead of night?"
"You love Ynys de Kerival?"
"Yes ... well, yes, I do love her; but what then? What is that to you?"
"Well, I love Annaik. I am here by the same right as you are."
"You forget. _I_ am welcome. You come by stealth. Do you mean for a
moment to say that you are here to meet Mlle. Annaik by appointment?"
The man was silent.
"Judik Kerbastiou!"
"Yes?"
"You are a coward. You followed this woman whom you say you love with
intent to rob her."
"You are a fool, Alan de Kerival."
Alan raised his arm. Then, ashamed, he let it fall.
"Will you go? Will you go now, at once, or shall I wake Mlle. Annaik,
and tell her what I have seen--and from what I believe I have saved
her?"
"No, you need not wake her, nor tell her any thing. I know she has
never even given me a thought."
Suddenly the man bowed his head. A sob burst through the dark.
Alan put his hand on his shoulder.
"Judik! Judik Kerbastiou! I am sorry for you from my heart. But go ...
go now, at once. Nothing shall be said of this. No one shall know any
thing. If you wish me to tell my cousin, I will. Then she can see you
or not, as she may wish."
"I go. But ... yes, tell her. To-morrow. Tell her to-morrow. Only I
would not have hurt her. Tell her that. I go now. _Adiou._"
With that Judik Kerbastiou lifted his shaggy head, and turned his great
black, gypsy-wild eyes upon Alan.
"She loves _you_," he said simply. Then he stepped lightly over the
path, passed between the cypresses, and moved out across the glade.
Alan watched his dark figure slide through the moonlight. He traversed
the glade to the right of the thorn. For nearly half a mile he was
visible; then he turned and entered the forest.
* * * * *
An hour later two figures moved, in absolute silence, athwart the
sand-dunes beyond the cypress alley.
Hand in hand they moved. Their faces were in deep shadow, for the
moonlight was now obscured by a league-long cloud.
When they emerged from the scattered pines to the seaward of the
château, the sentinel peacocks saw them, and began once more their
harsh, barbaric screams.
The twain unclasped their hands, and walked steadily forward, speaking
no word, not once looking one at the other.
As they entered the yew-close at the end of the old garden of the
château they were as shadows drowned in night. For some minutes they
were invisible; though, from above, the moon shone upon their white
faces and on their frozen stillness. The peacocks sullenly ceased.
Once more they emerged into the moon-dusk. As they neared the ivied
gables of the west wing of the Manor the cloud drifted from the moon,
and her white flood turned the obscurity into a radiance wherein every
object stood forth as clear as at noon.
Alan's face was white as are the faces of the dead. His eyes did not
once lift from the ground. But in Annaik's face was a flush, and her
eyes were wild and beautiful as falling stars.
It was not an hour since she had wakened from her trance; not an hour,
and yet already had Alan forgotten--forgotten her, and Ynys, and the
storm, and the after calm. Of one thing he thought only, and that
was of what Daniel Darc had once said to him laughingly: "If the old
fables of astrology were true, your horoscope would foretell impossible
things."
In absolute silence they moved up the long flight of stone stairs that
led to the château; in absolute silence, they entered by the door which
old Matieu had left ajar; in silence, they passed that unconscious
sleeper; in silence, they crossed the landing where the corridors
diverged.
Both stopped, simultaneously. Alan seemed about to speak, but his lips
closed again without utterance.
Abruptly he turned. Without a word he passed along the corridor to the
right, and disappeared in the obscurity.
Annaik stood a while, motionless, silent. Then she put her hand to her
heart. On her impassive face the moonlight revealed nothing; only in
her eyes there was a gleam as of one glad unto death.
Then she too passed, noiseless and swift as a phantom. Outside, on the
stone terrace, Ys, the blind peacock, strode to and fro, uttering his
prolonged, raucous screams. When, at last, he was unanswered by the
peacocks in the cypress alley, his clamant voice no longer tore the
silence.
The moon trailed her flood of light across the earth. It lay upon the
waters, and was still a glory there when, through the chill quietudes
of dawn, the stars waned one by one in the soft graying that filtered
through the morning dusk. The new day was come.