III

Janenne is on the outskirts of the Forest Country, and in the shooting

season the _chasseur_ is a familiar personage. He arrives by evening

train or diligence, half a dozen strong. He sups and betakes himself to

the singing of comic songs with choruses, moistening and mellowing his

vocal chords with plenteous burgundy. Long after everybody else has gone

to bed, he tramps in chorus along the echoing unclothed corridor, and

he and his chums open bedroom doors to shout Belgian scraps of _facetio_

at each other, or to cast prodigious boots upon the sounding boards.

Then long before anybody else has a mind to rise, he is up again

promenading the corridor like a multiplied copy of the giant in the

_Castle of Otranto_. He rolls away in the darkness with the cracking of

whips and jingling of bells, and sleep and silence settle down again.

At night he is back to supper with tales of big game multitudinous as

Laban’s flocks, and a bag unaccountably empty. That same evening he is

away to desk or counter or studio in Brussels, Antwerp, or Liège, and

Janenne falls back into its normal peace.

It was mid-December, and the snow was falling in powdery flakes, when

a sportsman alighted at the Hotel des Postes, and at the first glance

I knew him for a countryman. He was a fine, frank, free-hearted young

fellow, one of the most easily likable of youngsters, and we were on

friendly terms together before the first evening was over. He knew a

number of people in the neighbourhood, had received a dozen invitations

to shoot, or thereabouts, and meant to put up three weeks at Janenne,

so he told me, shooting when sport was to be had, and on other days

tramping about the country. He was accompanied by a bull-terrier, who

answered to the name of Scraper, a handsome creature of his kind, with

one eye in permanent mourning.

‘Of course he’s no good,’ said the young fellow, in answer to an

observation of mine, ‘but then he’s perfectly tamed, and therefore he’s

no harm. He’ll stay where he’s told; and I believe the poor beggar would

break his heart if I left him behind. Wouldn’t you, old chap?’

The young sportsman went away to the chase next morning, taking his

bull-terrier with him, and returning at night reported Scraper’s perfect

good behaviour. In the course of that evening’s talk I spoke of certain

peculiarities I had noticed in the formation of the country, and my new

acquaintance proposed that on an idle day of his next week we should

take a walk of exploration. When the day came we started together, and I

showed him some of the curiosities of nature I had noticed.

Round and about Janenne the world is hollow. The hills are mere bubbles,

and the earth is honeycombed with caverns. By the side of the road which

leads to Houssy a river accompanies the traveller’s steps, purling and

singing, and talking secrets (as shallow pebbly-bedded streams have a

way of doing), and on a sudden the traveller misses it. There, before

him, is a river bed, wide, white, and stony, but where is the river? If

he be a curious traveller he will retrace his steps, and will find the

stream racing with some impetuosity towards a bend, where it dwindles by

apparent miracle into nothing. The curious traveller, naturally growing

more curious than common in the presence of these phenomena, will,

at some risk to his neck, descend the bank, and make inquiry into the

reason for the disappearance of the stream. He will see nothing to

account for it, but he will probably arrive at the conclusion that there

are fissures in the river’s bed, through which the water falls to feed

the subterranean stream, of which he is pretty certain to have heard

or read. If he will walk back a mile, against the course of the stream,

will cross the main street of Janenne, strike the Montcourtois Road

there, and cross the river bridge, he will see a cavern lipped by the

flowing water, and in that cavern, only a foot or so below the level of

the open-air stream, he will find its subterranean continuation. It has

worked back upon itself in this secret way, by what strange courses no

man knows or can guess. But that the stream is the same has been proved

by a device at once ingenious and simple. Colouring matter of various

sorts has from time to time been thrown into the water at its place

of disappearance, and the tinted stream has poured, hours and hours

afterwards, through the cavern, which is only a mile away, and stands so

near the earlier stream that in times of rain the waters mingle there.

On the sides of the hills, and in the brushwood which clothes their

feet, one finds all manner of holes and caves and crevices, some of them

very shallow, and some of them of unknown depth. In the Bois de Janenne

alone there are four or five of them.

All this has strictly to do with the history of Schwartz, as will by and

by be seen.

When heavy rains fall the river is so swollen that the underground call

upon its resources fails to drain it, and it foams above the fissures in

full volume, so wild and deep that a passer-by would never guess of the

curious trick of nature which is here being played. But the season being

exceptionally dry, I was able to show my find, and from the spot of

the stream’s disappearance I led my acquaintance to the cavern. Here

prowling about in a light-footed and adventurous fashion the young

Englishman found a hole in the wall of stone, and, venturing into it,

discovered to his great delight a passage which seemed to lead into the

very entrails of the hill. He proposed instantly to explore this, and I

having that morning purchased of the local tobacconist a box of Italian

vestas, each three or four inches long, and calculated to burn for

several minutes, and having the same in my pocket at the moment, we set

out together on a journey of adventure. The passage varied in width

from six to three feet, and in height from eight feet upwards. The faint

illumination of the big wax vestas often failed to touch the roof. The

way was sometimes over ankle deep in a thick mud, and sometimes strewn

with fragments of rock which had fallen from the roof; but we went

on gaily until we came to a great slippery boulder, which blocked

the passage for some three feet in height. My companion was in act to

clamber over this, when the light I carried pinched my thumb and finger

with sudden heat, and I dropped it on to the ground. I struck another,

and found the youngster perched upon the boulder.

‘Wait a moment,’ said I, ‘and let us see what is beyond. There may be a

deepish hole there.’

We leaned over, and could see nothing. My companion got down from the

boulder with a grave look.

‘I was just going to jump when you spoke,’ he said. ‘Lucky I didn’t. I

wonder how deep it is?’

We hunted about for a stone, and by and by found one about the size of

a man’s head. This the youngster tossed over the boulder into

the darkness, and we stood looking at each other, by the little

clear-burning light of the wax match. I do not know how long we stood

there, for time has a knack of magnifying itself beyond belief in such

conditions, but it was long, long before an awful hollow boom came

rolling to our ears from the depth. We turned without a word, and

stumbled back towards the daylight, and when we reached it I looked

at the young Englishman and saw that all the roses had faded from his

healthy young cheeks, and that he was as gray as ashes.

‘I was going to jump when you spoke,’ he said. ‘Precious lucky for me I

didn’t.’

I congratulated him very heartily on not having jumped, and our search

for natural wonders being ended we went back to the hotel. We made

inquiry there--at first in vain--about this inner cavern, but at last

we came across the Garde Champêtre of the district, who told us that the

depth was unknown. He and some of his friends had had the curiosity to

try to measure it, but they never had rope enough.

It befell on the morning of the next day that I wandered out alone, and

in the course of the first score yards encountered Schwartz, who was

demonstrative of friendly civilities. I returned his salutations, and he

gave me to understand in his own too-humble manner that he would like to

accompany me. I let him know that I should be delighted by his society,

and away we went together. The ground was firm with last night’s frost

and musical to the sabots of peasants and the iron-shod feet of horses.

The hills and fields were covered with a powdery snow that threw their

grays into a dark relief, and the air was so still that I could hear the

bell-like tinkle of chisel and stone from the quarry nearly a mile

away. We entered the Bois de Janenne together, and wandered through its

branchy solitudes by many winding pathways. There is a main road running

through this wood, cut by order of the commune for the pleasure of

visitors, and the middle of this road was white with a thin untrodden

snow. On either side this ribbon of white lay a narrower ribbon of gold

where the pines had shed their yellow needles and the overhanging

boughs had guarded them from the falling snow. The ground ivy was of all

imaginable colours, but only yielded its secrets on a close examination,

and did not call upon the eye like some of the louder reds and yellows

which still clung to the trees. Here and there the _fusain_ burned like

a flame with its vivid scarlet berries--_chapeau de curé_ the country

people call them, though the colour is a little too gay for less than a

cardinal’s wearing. For the most part the undergrowth was bare, and the

branches were either purple or of the tone of a ripe filbert, so that

the atmosphere, with the reflected dull golds and bluish-reds and

reddish-blues, was in a swimming maze like that of a sunset distance,

though the eye could scarcely pierce twenty yards into the thick-grown

tangle.

Schwartz and I rambled along, now and then exchanging a sign of friendly

interest, and in a while we left the main path and wandered where we

would. Suddenly Schwartz began to hunt and sniff and bark on what I

supposed to be the recent trace of a rabbit or a hare, and I stood

still to watch him. He worried industriously here and there until he

disappeared behind a clump of brushwood, and then I heard a sudden

‘Yowk!’ of unmistakable terror. After this there was dead silence. I

called, but there was not even the rustle of a leaf in answer. I waited

a while and called again, but still no answer came. Not in the least

guessing what had befallen the dog, I mounted the hillside and came to

the clump of bushes behind which he had disappeared. There I found a

hole some three feet wide and two in height, a hole with sides of moist

earth, formed like an irregularly-shaped funnel, and affording at its

farther end little more than room enough for a creature of Schwartz’s

size to pass. At the narrow end the earth was freshly disturbed.

I shouted down this reversed trumpet of a hole. I listened after every

call I explored the place so far as I could with a six-foot wand cut

from a near tree. I heard no movement, no whine of distress, and I

touched nothing with the wand except the roof of the cavern into which

poor Schwartz had fallen. At length I gave him up for dead, remembering

the adventure of the day before, the terrible space of time which had

elapsed before the echo of the fallen boulder came booming from the

abyss, and thinking it as likely as not that Schwartz had fallen to an

equal depth. When I got back to the hotel I told the tale as well as I

could, and one of the servants took the news to Schwartz’s master.

When once this lamentable accident had happened, it became surprising to

learn how frequently its like had happened before. There was scarcely

a sportsman in the village who had not his story of some such

disappearance of a dog whilst out shooting. The poor beast would become

excited in pursuit of game, would dash headlong into a set of bushes and

emerge no more. Then a moment’s examination would reveal the fatal cave.

I am certain that I heard a good half-score of such histories. The cave,

by the way, was not always fatal, for I heard of cases in which the dog

had been known to find his way out of the underground labyrinth, and

return home dreadfully thin and hungry, but otherwise undamaged. These

cases gave me some faint hope for Schwartz, but as day after day went by

the hope faded, and I made up my mind that I had seen the last of him.

I was sorry to think so, for he had been very much a friend and a

companion.