IV

This part of the story he told to Dr. Silence, without special coaxing,

it is true, yet with much stammering embarrassment. He could not in

the least understand, he said, how the girl had managed to affect him

so profoundly, and even before he had set eyes upon her. For her mere

proximity in the darkness had been sufficient to set him on fire. He

knew nothing of enchantments, and for years had been a stranger to

anything approaching tender relations with any member of the opposite

sex, for he was encased in shyness, and realised his overwhelming

defects only too well. Yet this bewitching young creature came to him

deliberately. Her manner was unmistakable, and she sought him out on

every possible occasion. Chaste and sweet she was undoubtedly, yet

frankly inviting; and she won him utterly with the first glance of her

shining eyes, even if she had not already done so in the dark merely by

the magic of her invisible presence.

“You felt she was altogether wholesome and good?” queried the doctor.

“You had no reaction of any sort--for instance, of alarm?”

Vezin looked up sharply with one of his inimitable little apologetic

smiles. It was some time before he replied. The mere memory of the

adventure had suffused his shy face with blushes, and his brown eyes

sought the floor again before he answered.

“I don’t think I can quite say that,” he explained presently. “I

acknowledged certain qualms, sitting up in my room afterwards. A

conviction grew upon me that there was something about her--how shall I

express it?--well, something unholy. It is not impurity in any sense,

physical or mental, that I mean, but something quite indefinable that

gave me a vague sensation of the creeps. She drew me, and at the same

time repelled me, more than--than----”

He hesitated, blushing furiously, and unable to finish the sentence.

“Nothing like it has ever come to me before or since,” he concluded,

with lame confusion. “I suppose it was, as you suggested just now,

something of an enchantment. At any rate, it was strong enough to make

me feel that I would stay in that awful little haunted town for years

if only I could see her every day, hear her voice, watch her wonderful

movements, and sometimes, perhaps, touch her hand.”

“Can you explain to me what you felt was the source of her power?” John

Silence asked, looking purposely anywhere but at the narrator.

“I am surprised that _you_ should ask me such a question,” answered

Vezin, with the nearest approach to dignity he could manage. “I think

no man can describe to another convincingly wherein lies the magic of

the woman who ensnares him. I certainly cannot. I can only say this

slip of a girl bewitched me, and the mere knowledge that she was living

and sleeping in the same house filled me with an extraordinary sense of

delight.

“But there’s one thing I can tell you,” he went on earnestly, his eyes

aglow, “namely, that she seemed to sum up and synthesise in herself

all the strange hidden forces that operated so mysteriously in the

town and its inhabitants. She had the silken movements of the panther,

going smoothly, silently to and fro, and the same indirect, oblique

methods as the townsfolk, screening, like them, secret purposes of

her own--purposes that I was sure had _me_ for their objective. She

kept me, to my terror and delight, ceaselessly under observation, yet

so carelessly, so consummately, that another man less sensitive, if I

may say so”--he made a deprecating gesture--“or less prepared by what

had gone before, would never have noticed it at all. She was always

still, always reposeful, yet she seemed to be everywhere at once, so

that I never could escape from her. I was continually meeting the stare

and laughter of her great eyes, in the corners of the rooms, in the

passages, calmly looking at me through the windows, or in the busiest

parts of the public streets.”

Their intimacy, it seems, grew very rapidly after this first encounter

which had so violently disturbed the little man’s equilibrium. He was

naturally very prim, and prim folk live mostly in so small a world that

anything violently unusual may shake them clean out of it, and they

therefore instinctively distrust originality. But Vezin began to forget

his primness after awhile. The girl was always modestly behaved, and

as her mother’s representative she naturally had to do with the guests

in the hotel. It was not out of the way that a spirit of camaraderie

should spring up. Besides, she was young, she was charmingly pretty,

she was French, and--she obviously liked him.

At the same time, there was something indescribable--a certain

indefinable atmosphere of other places, other times--that made him try

hard to remain on his guard, and sometimes made him catch his breath

with a sudden start. It was all rather like a delirious dream, half

delight, half dread, he confided in a whisper to Dr. Silence; and more

than once he hardly knew quite what he was doing or saying, as though

he were driven forward by impulses he scarcely recognised as his own.

And though the thought of leaving presented itself again and again to

his mind, it was each time with less insistence, so that he stayed on

from day to day, becoming more and more a part of the sleepy life of

this dreamy mediæval town, losing more and more of his recognisable

personality. Soon, he felt, the Curtain within would roll up with an

awful rush, and he would find himself suddenly admitted into the

secret purposes of the hidden life that lay behind it all. Only, by

that time, he would have become transformed into an entirely different

being.

And, meanwhile, he noticed various little signs of the intention

to make his stay attractive to him: flowers in his bedroom, a more

comfortable arm-chair in the corner, and even special little extra

dishes on his private table in the dining-room. Conversations, too,

with “Mademoiselle Ilsé” became more and more frequent and pleasant,

and although they seldom travelled beyond the weather, or the details

of the town, the girl, he noticed, was never in a hurry to bring them

to an end, and often contrived to interject little odd sentences that

he never properly understood, yet felt to be significant.

And it was these stray remarks, full of a meaning that evaded him, that

pointed to some hidden purpose of her own and made him feel uneasy.

They all had to do, he felt sure, with reasons for his staying on in

the town indefinitely.

“And has M’sieur not even yet come to a decision?” she said softly in

his ear, sitting beside him in the sunny yard before _déjeuner_, the

acquaintance having progressed with significant rapidity. “Because, if

it’s so difficult, we must all try together to help him!”

The question startled him, following upon his own thoughts. It was

spoken with a pretty laugh, and a stray bit of hair across one eye, as

she turned and peered at him half roguishly. Possibly he did not quite

understand the French of it, for her near presence always confused

his small knowledge of the language distressingly. Yet the words, and

her manner, and something else that lay behind it all in her mind,

frightened him. It gave such point to his feeling that the town was

waiting for him to make his mind up on some important matter.

At the same time, her voice, and the fact that she was there so close

beside him in her soft dark dress, thrilled him inexpressibly.

“It is true I find it difficult to leave,” he stammered, losing his

way deliciously in the depths of her eyes, “and especially now that

Mademoiselle Ilsé has come.”

He was surprised at the success of his sentence, and quite delighted

with the little gallantry of it. But at the same time he could have

bitten his tongue off for having said it.

“Then after all you like our little town, or you would not be pleased

to stay on,” she said, ignoring the compliment.

“I am enchanted with it, and enchanted with you,” he cried, feeling

that his tongue was somehow slipping beyond the control of his brain.

And he was on the verge of saying all manner of other things of the

wildest description, when the girl sprang lightly up from her chair

beside him, and made to go.

“It is _soupe à l’onion_ to-day!” she cried, laughing back at him

through the sunlight, “and I must go and see about it. Otherwise, you

know, M’sieur will not enjoy his dinner, and then, perhaps, he will

leave us!”

He watched her cross the courtyard, moving with all the grace and

lightness of the feline race, and her simple black dress clothed her,

he thought, exactly like the fur of the same supple species. She turned

once to laugh at him from the porch with the glass door, and then

stopped a moment to speak to her mother, who sat knitting as usual in

her corner seat just inside the hall-way.

But how was it, then, that the moment his eye fell upon this ungainly

woman, the pair of them appeared suddenly as other than they were?

Whence came that transforming dignity and sense of power that enveloped

them both as by magic? What was it about that massive woman that

made her appear instantly regal, and set her on a throne in some

dark and dreadful scenery, wielding a sceptre over the red glare of

some tempestuous orgy? And why did this slender stripling of a girl,

graceful as a willow, lithe as a young leopard, assume suddenly an air

of sinister majesty, and move with flame and smoke about her head, and

the darkness of night beneath her feet?

Vezin caught his breath and sat there transfixed. Then, almost

simultaneously with its appearance, the queer notion vanished again,

and the sunlight of day caught them both, and he heard her laughing to

her mother about the _soupe à l’onion_, and saw her glancing back at

him over her dear little shoulder with a smile that made him think of a

dew-kissed rose bending lightly before summer airs.

And, indeed, the onion soup was particularly excellent that day,

because he saw another cover laid at his small table and, with

fluttering heart, heard the waiter murmur by way of explanation that

“Ma’mselle Ilsé would honour M’sieur to-day at _déjeuner_, as her

custom sometimes is with her mother’s guests.”

So actually she sat by him all through that delirious meal, talking

quietly to him in easy French, seeing that he was well looked after,

mixing the salad-dressing, and even helping him with her own hand.

And, later in the afternoon, while he was smoking in the courtyard,

longing for a sight of her as soon as her duties were done, she came

again to his side, and when he rose to meet her, she stood facing him a

moment, full of a perplexing sweet shyness before she spoke--

“My mother thinks you ought to know more of the beauties of our little

town, and _I_ think so too! Would M’sieur like me to be his guide,

perhaps? I can show him everything, for our family has lived here for

many generations.”

She had him by the hand, indeed, before he could find a single word

to express his pleasure, and led him, all unresisting, out into the

street, yet in such a way that it seemed perfectly natural she should

do so, and without the faintest suggestion of boldness or immodesty.

Her face glowed with the pleasure and interest of it, and with her

short dress and tumbled hair she looked every bit the charming child of

seventeen that she was, innocent and playful, proud of her native town,

and alive beyond her years to the sense of its ancient beauty.

So they went over the town together, and she showed him what she

considered its chief interest: the tumble-down old house where her

forebears had lived; the sombre, aristocratic-looking mansion where her

mother’s family dwelt for centuries, and the ancient market-place where

several hundred years before the witches had been burnt by the score.

She kept up a lively running stream of talk about it all, of which he

understood not a fiftieth part as he trudged along by her side, cursing

his forty-five years and feeling all the yearnings of his early manhood

revive and jeer at him. And, as she talked, England and Surbiton

seemed very far away indeed, almost in another age of the world’s

history. Her voice touched something immeasurably old in him, something

that slept deep. It lulled the surface parts of his consciousness to

sleep, allowing what was far more ancient to awaken. Like the town,

with its elaborate pretence of modern active life, the upper layers

of his being became dulled, soothed, muffled, and what lay underneath

began to stir in its sleep. That big Curtain swayed a little to and

fro. Presently it might lift altogether....

He began to understand a little better at last. The mood of the town

was reproducing itself in him. In proportion as his ordinary external

self became muffled, that inner secret life, that was far more real and

vital, asserted itself. And this girl was surely the high-priestess of

it all, the chief instrument of its accomplishment. New thoughts, with

new interpretations, flooded his mind as she walked beside him through

the winding streets, while the picturesque old gabled town, softly

coloured in the sunset, had never appeared to him so wholly wonderful

and seductive.

And only one curious incident came to disturb and puzzle him, slight

in itself, but utterly inexplicable, bringing white terror into the

child’s face and a scream to her laughing lips. He had merely pointed

to a column of blue smoke that rose from the burning autumn leaves

and made a picture against the red roofs, and had then run to the

wall and called her to his side to watch the flames shooting here and

there through the heap of rubbish. Yet, at the sight of it, as though

taken by surprise, her face had altered dreadfully, and she had turned

and run like the wind, calling out wild sentences to him as she ran,

of which he had not understood a single word, except that the fire

apparently frightened her, and she wanted to get quickly away from it,

and to get him away too.

Yet five minutes later she was as calm and happy again as though

nothing had happened to alarm or waken troubled thoughts in her, and

they had both forgotten the incident.

They were leaning over the ruined ramparts together listening to

the weird music of the band as he had heard it the first day of his

arrival. It moved him again profoundly as it had done before, and

somehow he managed to find his tongue and his best French. The girl

leaned across the stones close beside him. No one was about. Driven by

some remorseless engine within he began to stammer something--he hardly

knew what--of his strange admiration for her. Almost at the first word

she sprang lightly off the wall and came up smiling in front of him,

just touching his knees as he sat there. She was hatless as usual, and

the sun caught her hair and one side of her cheek and throat.

“Oh, I’m _so_ glad!” she cried, clapping her little hands softly in his

face, “so very glad, because that means that if you like me you must

also like what I do, and what I belong to.”

Already he regretted bitterly having lost control of himself. Something

in the phrasing of her sentence chilled him. He knew the fear of

embarking upon an unknown and dangerous sea.

“You will take part in our real life, I mean,” she added softly,

with an indescribable coaxing of manner, as though she noticed his

shrinking. “You will come back to us.”

Already this slip of a child seemed to dominate him; he felt her power

coming over him more and more; something emanated from her that stole

over his senses and made him aware that her personality, for all its

simple grace, held forces that were stately, imposing, august. He saw

her again moving through smoke and flame amid broken and tempestuous

scenery, alarmingly strong, her terrible mother by her side. Dimly this

shone through her smile and appearance of charming innocence.

“You will, I know,” she repeated, holding him with her eyes.

They were quite alone up there on the ramparts, and the sensation that

she was overmastering him stirred a wild sensuousness in his blood. The

mingled abandon and reserve in her attracted him furiously, and all of

him that was man rose up and resisted the creeping influence, at the

same time acclaiming it with the full delight of his forgotten youth.

An irresistible desire came to him to question her, to summon what

still remained to him of his own little personality in an effort to

retain the right to his normal self.

The girl had grown quiet again, and was now leaning on the broad wall

close beside him, gazing out across the darkening plain, her elbows on

the coping, motionless as a figure carved in stone. He took his courage

in both hands.

“Tell me, Ilsé,” he said, unconsciously imitating her own purring

softness of voice, yet aware that he was utterly in earnest, “what is

the meaning of this town, and what is this real life you speak of? And

why is it that the people watch me from morning to night? Tell me what

it all means? And, tell me,” he added more quickly with passion in his

voice, “what you really are--yourself?”

She turned her head and looked at him through half-closed eyelids, her

growing inner excitement betraying itself by the faint colour that ran

like a shadow across her face.

“It seems to me,”--he faltered oddly under her gaze--“that I have some

right to know----”

Suddenly she opened her eyes to the full. “You love me, then?” she

asked softly.

“I swear,” he cried impetuously, moved as by the force of a rising

tide, “I never felt before--I have never known any other girl who----”

“Then you _have_ the right to know,” she calmly interrupted his

confused confession; “for love shares all secrets.”

She paused, and a thrill like fire ran swiftly through him. Her words

lifted him off the earth, and he felt a radiant happiness, followed

almost the same instant in horrible contrast by the thought of death.

He became aware that she had turned her eyes upon his own and was

speaking again.

“The real life I speak of,” she whispered, “is the old, old life

within, the life of long ago, the life to which you, too, once

belonged, and to which you still belong.”

A faint wave of memory troubled the deeps of his soul as her low

voice sank into him. What she was saying he knew instinctively to be

true, even though he could not as yet understand its full purport.

His present life seemed slipping from him as he listened, merging his

personality in one that was far older and greater. It was this loss of

his present self that brought to him the thought of death.

“You came here,” she went on, “with the purpose of seeking it, and the

people felt your presence and are waiting to know what you decide,

whether you will leave them without having found it, or whether----”

Her eyes remained fixed upon his own, but her face began to change,

growing larger and darker with an expression of age.

“It is their thoughts constantly playing about your soul that makes

you feel they watch you. They do not watch you with their eyes. The

purposes of their inner life are calling to you, seeking to claim you.

You were all part of the same life long, long ago, and now they want

you back again among them.”

Vezin’s timid heart sank with dread as he listened; but the girl’s

eyes held him with a net of joy so that he had no wish to escape. She

fascinated him, as it were, clean out of his normal self.

“Alone, however, the people could never have caught and held you,”

she resumed. “The motive force was not strong enough; it has faded

through all these years. But I”--she paused a moment and looked at him

with complete confidence in her splendid eyes--“I possess the spell to

conquer you and hold you: the spell of old love. I can win you back

again and make you live the old life with me, for the force of the

ancient tie between us, if I choose to use it, is irresistible. And

I do choose to use it I still want you. And you, dear soul of my dim

past”--she pressed closer to him so that her breath passed across his

eyes, and her voice positively sang--“I mean to have you, for you love

me and are utterly at my mercy.”

Vezin heard, and yet did not hear; understood, yet did not understand.

He had passed into a condition of exaltation. The world was beneath his

feet, made of music and flowers, and he was flying somewhere far above

it through the sunshine of pure delight. He was breathless and giddy

with the wonder of her words. They intoxicated him. And, still, the

terror of it all, the dreadful thought of death, pressed ever behind

her sentences. For flames shot through her voice out of black smoke and

licked at his soul.

And they communicated with one another, it seemed to him, by a process

of swift telepathy, for his French could never have compassed all he

said to her. Yet she understood perfectly, and what she said to him was

like the recital of verses long since known. And the mingled pain and

sweetness of it as he listened were almost more than his little soul

could hold.

“Yet I came here wholly by chance----” he heard himself saying.

“No,” she cried with passion, “you came here because I called to you. I

have called to you for years, and you came with the whole force of the

past behind you. You had to come, for I own you, and I claim you.”

She rose again and moved closer, looking at him with a certain

insolence in the face--the insolence of power.

The sun had set behind the towers of the old cathedral and the darkness

rose up from the plain and enveloped them. The music of the band had

ceased. The leaves of the plane trees hung motionless, but the chill

of the autumn evening rose about them and made Vezin shiver. There

was no sound but the sound of their voices and the occasional soft

rustle of the girl’s dress. He could hear the blood rushing in his

ears. He scarcely realised where he was or what he was doing. Some

terrible magic of the imagination drew him deeply down into the tombs

of his own being, telling him in no unfaltering voice that her words

shadowed forth the truth. And this simple little French maid, speaking

beside him with so strange authority, he saw curiously alter into quite

another being. As he stared into her eyes, the picture in his mind grew

and lived, dressing itself vividly to his inner vision with a degree

of reality he was compelled to acknowledge. As once before, he saw her

tall and stately, moving through wild and broken scenery of forests and

mountain caverns, the glare of flames behind her head and clouds of

shifting smoke about her feet. Dark leaves encircled her hair, flying

loosely in the wind, and her limbs shone through the merest rags of

clothing. Others were about her too, and ardent eyes on all sides cast

delirious glances upon her, but her own eyes were always for One only,

one whom she held by the hand. For she was leading the dance in some

tempestuous orgy to the music of chanting voices, and the dance she led

circled about a great and awful Figure on a throne, brooding over the

scene through lurid vapours, while innumerable other wild faces and

forms crowded furiously about her in the dance. But the one she held by

the hand he knew to be himself, and the monstrous shape upon the throne

he knew to be her mother.

The vision rose within him, rushing to him down the long years

of buried time, crying aloud to him with the voice of memory

reawakened.... And then the scene faded away and he saw the clear

circle of the girl’s eyes gazing steadfastly into his own, and she

became once more the pretty little daughter of the innkeeper, and he

found his voice again.

“And you,” he whispered tremblingly--“you child of visions and

enchantment, how is it that you so bewitch me that I loved you even

before I saw?”

She drew herself up beside him with an air of rare dignity.

“The call of the Past,” she said; “and besides,” she added proudly, “in

the real life I am a princess----”

“A princess!” he cried.

“----and my mother is a queen!”

At this, little Vezin utterly lost his head. Delight tore at his heart

and swept him into sheer ecstasy. To hear that sweet singing voice, and

to see those adorable little lips utter such things, upset his balance

beyond all hope of control. He took her in his arms and covered her

unresisting face with kisses.

But even while he did so, and while the hot passion swept him, he

felt that she was soft and loathsome, and that her answering kisses

stained his very soul.... And when, presently, she had freed herself

and vanished into the darkness, he stood there, leaning against the

wall in a state of collapse, creeping with horror from the touch of

her yielding body, and inwardly raging at the weakness that he already

dimly realised must prove his undoing.

And from the shadows of the old buildings into which she disappeared

there rose in the stillness of the night a singular, long-drawn cry,

which at first he took for laughter, but which later he was sure he

recognised as the almost human wailing of a cat.

V

For a long time Vezin leant there against the wall, alone with his

surging thoughts and emotions. He understood at length that he had

done the one thing necessary to call down upon him the whole force of

this ancient Past. For in those passionate kisses he had acknowledged

the tie of olden days, and had revived it. And the memory of that soft

impalpable caress in the darkness of the inn corridor came back to him

with a shudder. The girl had first mastered him, and then led him to

the one act that was necessary for her purpose. He had been waylaid,

after the lapse of centuries--caught, and conquered.

Dimly he realised this, and sought to make plans for his escape. But,

for the moment at any rate, he was powerless to manage his thoughts or

will, for the sweet, fantastic madness of the whole adventure mounted

to his brain like a spell, and he gloried in the feeling that he was

utterly enchanted and moving in a world so much larger and wilder than

the one he had ever been accustomed to.

The moon, pale and enormous, was just rising over the sea-like plain,

when at last he rose to go. Her slanting rays drew all the houses into

new perspective, so that their roofs, already glistening with dew,

seemed to stretch much higher into the sky than usual, and their gables

and quaint old towers lay far away in its purple reaches.

The cathedral appeared unreal in a silver mist. He moved softly,

keeping to the shadows; but the streets were all deserted and very

silent; the doors were closed, the shutters fastened. Not a soul was

astir. The hush of night lay over everything; it was like a town of

the dead, a churchyard with gigantic and grotesque tombstones.

Wondering where all the busy life of the day had so utterly disappeared

to, he made his way to a back door that entered the inn by means of

the stables, thinking thus to reach his room unobserved. He reached

the courtyard safely and crossed it by keeping close to the shadow of

the wall. He sidled down it, mincing along on tiptoe, just as the old

men did when they entered the _salle à manger_. He was horrified to

find himself doing this instinctively. A strange impulse came to him,

catching him somehow in the centre of his body--an impulse to drop upon

all fours and run swiftly and silently. He glanced upwards and the idea

came to him to leap up upon his window-sill overhead instead of going

round by the stairs. This occurred to him as the easiest, and most

natural way. It was like the beginning of some horrible transformation

of himself into something else. He was fearfully strung up.

The moon was higher now, and the shadows very dark along the side of

the street where he moved. He kept among the deepest of them, and

reached the porch with the glass doors.

But here there was light; the inmates, unfortunately, were still about.

Hoping to slip across the hall unobserved and reach the stairs, he

opened the door carefully and stole in. Then he saw that the hall was

not empty. A large dark thing lay against the wall on his left. At

first he thought it must be household articles. Then it moved, and he

thought it was an immense cat, distorted in some way by the play of

light and shadow. Then it rose straight up before him and he saw that

it was the proprietress.

What she had been doing in this position he could only venture a

dreadful guess, but the moment she stood up and faced him he was aware

of some terrible dignity clothing her about that instantly recalled the

girl’s strange saying that she was a queen. Huge and sinister she stood

there under the little oil lamp; alone with him in the empty hall. Awe

stirred in his heart, and the roots of some ancient fear. He felt that

he must bow to her and make some kind of obeisance. The impulse was

fierce and irresistible, as of long habit. He glanced quickly about

him. There was no one there. Then he deliberately inclined his head

towards her. He bowed.

“Enfin! M’sieur s’est donc décidé. C’est bien alors. J’en suis

contente.”

Her words came to him sonorously as through a great open space.

Then the great figure came suddenly across the flagged hall at him and

seized his trembling hands. Some overpowering force moved with her and

caught him.

“On pourrait faire un p’tit tour ensemble, n’est-ce pas? Nous y allons

cette nuit et il faut s’exercer un peu d’avance pour cela. Ilsé, Ilsé,

viens donc ici. Viens vite!”

And she whirled him round in the opening steps of some dance that

seemed oddly and horribly familiar. They made no sound on the stones,

this strangely assorted couple. It was all soft and stealthy. And

presently, when the air seemed to thicken like smoke, and a red glare

as of flame shot through it, he was aware that some one else had joined

them and that his hand the mother had released was now tightly held

by the daughter. Ilsé had come in answer to the call, and he saw her

with leaves of vervain twined in her dark hair, clothed in tattered

vestiges of some curious garment, beautiful as the night, and horribly,

odiously, loathsomely seductive.

“To the Sabbath! to the Sabbath!” they cried. “On to the Witches’

Sabbath!”

Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of

him, to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly,

dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and went

out, and they were left in total darkness. And the devil woke in his

heart with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid.

Suddenly they released his hands and he heard the voice of the mother

cry that it was time, and they must go. Which way they went he did

not pause to see. He only realised that he was free, and he blundered

through the darkness till he found the stairs and then tore up them to

his room as though all hell was at his heels.

He flung himself on the sofa, with his face in his hands, and groaned.

Swiftly reviewing a dozen ways of immediate escape, all equally

impossible, he finally decided that the only thing to do for the moment

was to sit quiet and wait. He must see what was going to happen. At

least in the privacy of his own bedroom he would be fairly safe. The

door was locked. He crossed over and softly opened the window which

gave upon the courtyard and also permitted a partial view of the hall

through the glass doors.

As he did so the hum and murmur of a great activity reached his ears

from the streets beyond--the sound of footsteps and voices muffled by

distance. He leaned out cautiously and listened. The moonlight was

clear and strong now, but his own window was in shadow, the silver

disc being still behind the house. It came to him irresistibly that

the inhabitants of the town, who a little while before had all been

invisible behind closed doors, were now issuing forth, busy upon some

secret and unholy errand. He listened intently.

At first everything about him was silent, but soon he became aware of

movements going on in the house itself. Rustlings and cheepings came

to him across that still, moonlit yard. A concourse of living beings

sent the hum of their activity into the night. Things were on the move

everywhere. A biting, pungent odour rose through the air, coming he

knew not whence. Presently his eyes became glued to the windows of

the opposite wall where the moonshine fell in a soft blaze. The roof

overhead, and behind him, was reflected clearly in the panes of glass,

and he saw the outlines of dark bodies moving with long footsteps over

the tiles and along the coping. They passed swiftly and silently,

shaped like immense cats, in an endless procession across the pictured

glass, and then appeared to leap down to a lower level where he lost

sight of them. He just caught the soft thudding of their leaps.

Sometimes their shadows fell upon the white wall opposite, and then

he could not make out whether they were the shadows of human beings

or of cats. They seemed to change swiftly from one to the other. The

transformation looked horribly real, for they leaped like human beings,

yet changed swiftly in the air immediately afterwards, and dropped like

animals.

The yard, too, beneath him, was now alive with the creeping movements

of dark forms all stealthily drawing towards the porch with the glass

doors. They kept so closely to the wall that he could not determine

their actual shape, but when he saw that they passed on to the great

congregation that was gathering in the hall, he understood that these

were the creatures whose leaping shadows he had first seen reflected in

the window-panes opposite. They were coming from all parts of the town,

reaching the appointed meeting-place across the roofs and tiles, and

springing from level to level till they came to the yard.

Then a new sound caught his ear, and he saw that the windows all about

him were being softly opened, and that to each window came a face. A

moment later figures began dropping hurriedly down into the yard. And

these figures, as they lowered themselves down from the windows, were

human, he saw; but once safely in the yard they fell upon all fours and

changed in the swiftest possible second into--cats--huge, silent cats.

They ran in streams to join the main body in the hall beyond.

So, after all, the rooms in the house had not been empty and unoccupied.

Moreover, what he saw no longer filled him with amazement. For he

remembered it all. It was familiar. It had all happened before just

so, hundreds of times, and he himself had taken part in it and known

the wild madness of it all. The outline of the old building changed,

the yard grew larger, and he seemed to be staring down upon it from

a much greater height through smoky vapours. And, as he looked, half

remembering, the old pains of long ago, fierce and sweet, furiously

assailed him, and the blood stirred horribly as he heard the Call of

the Dance again in his heart and tasted the ancient magic of Ilsé

whirling by his side.

Suddenly he started back. A great lithe cat had leaped softly up from

the shadows below on to the sill close to his face, and was staring

fixedly at him with the eyes of a human. “Come,” it seemed to say,

“come with us to the Dance! Change as of old! Transform yourself

swiftly and come!” Only too well he understood the creature’s soundless

call.

It was gone again in a flash with scarcely a sound of its padded feet

on the stones, and then others dropped by the score down the side of

the house, past his very eyes, all changing as they fell and darting

away rapidly, softly, towards the gathering point. And again he felt

the dreadful desire to do likewise; to murmur the old incantation,

and then drop upon hands and knees and run swiftly for the great

flying leap into the air. Oh, how the passion of it rose within him

like a flood, twisting his very entrails, sending his heart’s desire

flaming forth into the night for the old, old Dance of the Sorcerers

at the Witches’ Sabbath! The whirl of the stars was about him; once

more he met the magic of the moon. The power of the wind, rushing

from precipice and forest, leaping from cliff to cliff across the

valleys, tore him away.... He heard the cries of the dancers and their

wild laughter, and with this savage girl in his embrace he danced

furiously about the dim Throne where sate the Figure with the sceptre

of majesty....

Then, suddenly, all became hushed and still, and the fever died down a

little in his heart. The calm moonlight flooded a courtyard empty and

deserted. They had started. The procession was off into the sky. And he

was left behind--alone.

Vezin tiptoed softly across the room and unlocked the door. The murmur

from the streets, growing momentarily as he advanced, met his ears. He

made his way with the utmost caution down the corridor. At the head of

the stairs he paused and listened. Below him, the hall where they had

gathered was dark and still, but through opened doors and windows on

the far side of the building came the sound of a great throng moving

farther and farther into the distance.

He made his way down the creaking wooden stairs, dreading yet longing

to meet some straggler who should point the way, but finding no one;

across the dark hall, so lately thronged with living, moving things,

and out through the opened front doors into the street. He could not

believe that he was really left behind, really forgotten, that he had

been purposely permitted to escape. It perplexed him.

Nervously he peered about him, and up and down the street; then, seeing

nothing, advanced slowly down the pavement.

The whole town, as he went, showed itself empty and deserted, as

though a great wind had blown everything alive out of it. The doors

and windows of the houses stood open to the night; nothing stirred;

moonlight and silence lay over all. The night lay about him like a

cloak. The air, soft and cool, caressed his cheek like the touch of a

great furry paw. He gained confidence and began to walk quickly, though

still keeping to the shadowed side. Nowhere could he discover the

faintest sign of the great unholy exodus he knew had just taken place.

The moon sailed high over all in a sky, cloudless and serene.

Hardly realising where he was going, he crossed the open market-place

and so came to the ramparts, whence he knew a pathway descended to the

high road and along which he could make good his escape to one of the

other little towns that lay to the northward, and so to the railway.

But first he paused and gazed out over the scene at his feet where the

great plain lay like a silver map of some dream country. The still

beauty of it entered his heart, increasing his sense of bewilderment

and unreality. No air stirred, the leaves of the plane trees stood

motionless, the near details were defined with the sharpness of day

against dark shadows, and in the distance the fields and woods melted

away into haze and shimmering mistiness.

But the breath caught in his throat and he stood stockstill as though

transfixed when his gaze passed from the horizon and fell upon the near

prospect in the depth of the valley at his feet. The whole lower slopes

of the hill, that lay hid from the brightness of the moon, were aglow,

and through the glare he saw countless moving forms, shifting thick and

fast between the openings of the trees; while overhead, like leaves

driven by the wind, he discerned flying shapes that hovered darkly one

moment against the sky and then settled down with cries and weird

singing through the branches into the region that was aflame.

Spellbound, he stood and stared for a time that he could not measure.

And then, moved by one of the terrible impulses that seemed to control

the whole adventure, he climbed swiftly upon the top of the broad

coping, and balanced a moment where the valley gaped at his feet. But

in that very instant, as he stood hovering, a sudden movement among the

shadows of the houses caught his eye, and he turned to see the outline

of a large animal dart swiftly across the open space behind him, and

land with a flying leap upon the top of the wall a little lower down.

It ran like the wind to his feet and then rose up beside him upon the

ramparts. A shiver seemed to run through the moonlight, and his sight

trembled for a second. His heart pulsed fearfully. Ilsé stood beside

him, peering into his face.

Some dark substance, he saw, stained the girl’s face and skin, shining

in the moonlight as she stretched her hands towards him; she was

dressed in wretched tattered garments that yet became her mightily; rue

and vervain twined about her temples; her eyes glittered with unholy

light. He only just controlled the wild impulse to take her in his arms

and leap with her from their giddy perch into the valley below.

“See!” she cried, pointing with an arm on which the rags fluttered in

the rising wind towards the forest aglow in the distance. “See where

they await us! The woods are alive! Already the Great Ones are there,

and the dance will soon begin! The salve is here! Anoint yourself and

come!”

Though a moment before the sky was clear and cloudless, yet even while

she spoke the face of the moon grew dark and the wind began to toss

in the crests of the plane trees at his feet. Stray gusts brought the

sounds of hoarse singing and crying from the lower slopes of the hill,

and the pungent odour he had already noticed about the courtyard of the

inn rose about him in the air.

“Transform, transform!” she cried again, her voice rising like a song.

“Rub well your skin before you fly. Come! Come with me to the Sabbath,

to the madness of its furious delight, to the sweet abandonment of

its evil worship! See! the Great Ones are there, and the terrible

Sacraments prepared. The Throne is occupied. Anoint and come! Anoint

and come!”

She grew to the height of a tree beside him, leaping upon the wall with

flaming eyes and hair strewn upon the night. He too began to change

swiftly. Her hands touched the skin of his face and neck, streaking him

with the burning salve that sent the old magic into his blood with the

power before which fades all that is good.

A wild roar came up to his ears from the heart of the wood, and the

girl, when she heard it, leaped upon the wall in the frenzy of her

wicked joy.

“Satan is there!” she screamed, rushing upon him and striving to draw

him with her to the edge of the wall. “Satan has come! The Sacraments

call us! Come, with your dear apostate soul, and we will worship and

dance till the moon dies and the world is forgotten!”

Just saving himself from the dreadful plunge, Vezin struggled to

release himself from her grasp, while the passion tore at his reins and

all but mastered him. He shrieked aloud, not knowing what he said, and

then he shrieked again. It was the old impulses, the old awful habits

instinctively finding voice; for though it seemed to him that he merely

shrieked nonsense, the words he uttered really had meaning in them, and

were intelligible. It was the ancient call. And it was heard below. It

was answered.

The wind whistled at the skirts of his coat as the air round him

darkened with many flying forms crowding upwards out of the valley. The

crying of hoarse voices smote upon his ears, coming closer. Strokes of

wind buffeted him, tearing him this way and that along the crumbling

top of the stone wall; and Ilsé clung to him with her long shining

arms, smooth and bare, holding him fast about the neck. But not Ilsé

alone, for a dozen of them surrounded him, dropping out of the air.

The pungent odour of the anointed bodies stifled him, exciting him to

the old madness of the Sabbath, the dance of the witches and sorcerers

doing honour to the personified Evil of the world.

“Anoint and away! Anoint and away!” they cried in wild chorus about

him. “To the Dance that never dies! To the sweet and fearful fantasy of

evil!”

Another moment and he would have yielded and gone, for his will turned

soft and the flood of passionate memory all but overwhelmed him,

when--so can a small thing alter the whole course of an adventure--he

caught his foot upon a loose stone in the edge of the wall, and

then fell with a sudden crash on to the ground below. But he fell

towards the houses, in the open space of dust and cobble stones, and

fortunately not into the gaping depth of the valley on the farther side.

And they, too, came in a tumbling heap about him, like flies upon a

piece of food, but as they fell he was released for a moment from

the power of their touch, and in that brief instant of freedom there

flashed into his mind the sudden intuition that saved him. Before he

could regain his feet he saw them scrabbling awkwardly back upon the

wall, as though bat-like they could only fly by dropping from a height,

and had no hold upon him in the open. Then, seeing them perched there

in a row like cats upon a roof, all dark and singularly shapeless,

their eyes like lamps, the sudden memory came back to him of Ilsé’s

terror at the sight of fire.

Quick as a flash he found his matches and lit the dead leaves that lay

under the wall.

Dry and withered, they caught fire at once, and the wind carried the

flame in a long line down the length of the wall, licking upwards as

it ran; and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded row of forms upon

the top melted away into the air on the other side, and were gone with

a great rush and whirring of their bodies down into the heart of the

haunted valley, leaving Vezin breathless and shaken in the middle of

the deserted ground.

“Ilsé!” he called feebly; “Ilsé!” for his heart ached to think that she

was really gone to the great Dance without him, and that he had lost

the opportunity of its fearful joy. Yet at the same time his relief

was so great, and he was so dazed and troubled in mind with the whole

thing, that he hardly knew what he was saying, and only cried aloud in

the fierce storm of his emotion....

The fire under the wall ran its course, and the moonlight came out

again, soft and clear, from its temporary eclipse. With one last

shuddering look at the ruined ramparts, and a feeling of horrid wonder

for the haunted valley beyond, where the shapes still crowded and flew,

he turned his face towards the town and slowly made his way in the

direction of the hotel.

And as he went, a great wailing of cries, and a sound of howling,

followed him from the gleaming forest below, growing fainter and

fainter with the bursts of wind as he disappeared between the houses.