November--the skirmish line of the advancing army of winter--drove the
colony back to Paris.
It was the last day at Pontivy, and Mlle. Heloise had come down to Notre
Dame for a last look at the beautiful shrine, a last prayer for the
repose of the tortured soul of poor Jean d'Yriex. The rains had ceased
for a time, and a warm stillness lay over the cliffs and on the creeping
sea, swaying and lapping around the ragged shore. Heloise knelt very
long before the Altar of Our Lady of the Waters; and when she finally
rose, could not bring herself to leave as yet that place of sorrowful
beauty, all warm and golden with the last light of the declining sun.
She watched the old verger, Pierre Polou, stumping softly around the
darkening building, and spoke to him once, asking the hour; but he was
very deaf, as well as nearly blind, and he did not answer.
So she sat in the corner of the aisle by the Altar of Our Lady of the
Waters, watching the checkered light fade in the advancing shadows,
dreaming sad day-dreams of the dead summer, until the day-dreams merged
in night-dreams, and she fell asleep.
Then the last light of the early sunset died in the gleaming quarries of
the west window; Pierre Polou stumbled uncertainly through the dusky
shadow, locked the sagging doors of the mouldering south porch, and took
his way among the leaning crosses up to the highway and his little
cottage, a good mile away,--the nearest house to the lonely Church of
Notre Dame des Eaux.
With the setting of the sun great clouds rose swiftly from the sea; the
wind freshened, and the gaunt branches of the weather-worn trees in the
churchyard lashed themselves beseechingly before the coming storm. The
tide turned, and the waters at the foot of the rocks swept uneasily up
the narrow beach and caught at the weary cliffs, their sobbing growing
and deepening to a threatening, solemn roar. Whirls of dead leaves rose
in the churchyard, and threw themselves against the blank windows. The
winter and the night came down together.
Heloise awoke, bewildered and wondering; in a moment she realized the
situation, and without fear or uneasiness. There was nothing to dread in
Notre Dame by night; the ghosts, if there were ghosts, would not trouble
her, and the doors were securely locked. It was foolish of her to fall
asleep, and her mother would be most uneasy at Pontivy if she realized
before dawn that Heloise had not returned. On the other hand, she was in
the habit of wandering off to walk after dinner, often not coming home
until late, so it was quite possible that she might return before Madame
knew of her absence, for Polou came always to unlock the church for the
low mass at six o'clock; so she arose from her cramped position in the
aisle, and walked slowly up to the choir-rail, entered the chancel, and
felt her way to one of the stalls, on the south side, where there were
cushions and an easy back.
It was really very beautiful in Notre Dame by night; she had never
suspected how strange and solemn the little church could be when the
moon shone fitfully through the south windows, now bright and clear, now
blotted out by sweeping clouds. The nave was barred with the long
shadows of the heavy pillars, and when the moon came out she could see
far down almost to the west end. How still it was! Only a soft low
murmur without of the restless limbs of the trees, and of the creeping
sea.
It was very soothing, almost like a song; and Heloise felt sleep coming
back to her as the clouds shut out the moon, and all the church grew
black.
She was drifting off into the last delicious moment of vanishing
consciousness, when she suddenly came fully awake, with a shock that
made every nerve tingle. In the midst of the far faint sounds of the
tempestuous night she had heard a footstep! Yet the church was utterly
empty, she was sure. And again! A footstep dragging and uncertain,
stealthy and cautious, but an unmistakable step, away in the blackest
shadow at the end of the church.
She sat up, frozen with the fear that comes at night and that is
overwhelming, her hands clutching the coarse carving of the arms of the
stall, staring down into the dark.
Again the footstep, and again,--slow, measured, one after another at
intervals of perhaps half a minute, growing a little louder each time, a
little nearer.
Would the darkness never be broken? Would the cloud never pass? Minute
after minute went like weary hours, and still the moon was hid, still
the dead branches rattled clatteringly on the high windows.
Unconsciously she moved, as under a magician's spell, down to the
choir-rail, straining her eyes to pierce the thick night. And the step,
it was very near! Ah, the moon at last! A white ray fell through the
westernmost window, painting a bar of light on the floor of sagging
stone. Then a second bar, then a third, and a fourth, and for a moment
Heloise could have cried out with relief, for nothing broke the lines of
light,--no figure, no shadow. In another moment came a step, and from
the shadow of the last column appeared in the pallid moonlight the
figure of a man. The girl stared breathless, the moonlight falling on
her as she stood rigid against the low parapet. Another step and
another, and she saw before her--was it ghost or living man?--a white
mad face staring from matted hair and beard, a tall thin figure half
clothed in rags, limping as it stepped towards her with wounded feet.
From the dead face stared mad eyes that gleamed like the eyes of a cat,
fixed on hers with insane persistence, holding her, fascinating her as a
cat fascinates a bird.
One more step,--it was close before her now! those awful, luminous eyes
dilating and contracting in awful palpitations. And the moon was going
out; the shadows swept one by one over the windows; she stared at the
moonlit face for a last fascinated glance--Mother of God! it was---- The
shadow swept over them, and now only remained the blazing eyes and the
dim outline of a form that crouched waveringly before her as a cat
crouches, drawing its vibrating body together for the spring that blots
out the life of the victim.
In another instant the mad thing would leap; but just as the quiver
swept over the crouching body, Heloise gathered all her strength into
one action of desperate terror.
"Jean, stop!"
The thing crouched before her paused, chattering softly to itself; then
it articulated dryly, and with all the trouble of a learning child, the
one word, "_Chantez!_"
Without a thought, Heloise sang; it was the first thing that she
remembered, an old Provencal song that d'Yriex had always loved. While
she sang, the poor mad creature lay huddled at her feet, separated from
her only by the choir parapet, its dilating, contracting eyes never
moving for an instant. As the song died away, came again that awful
tremor, indicative of the coming death-spring, and again she sang,--this
time the old _Pange lingua_, its sonorous Latin sounding in the deserted
church like the voice of dead centuries.
And so she sang, on and on, hour after hour,--hymns and _chansons_,
folk-songs and bits from comic operas, songs of the boulevards
alternating with the _Tantum ergo_ and the _O Filii et Filiae_. It
mattered little what she sang. At last it seemed to her that it mattered
little whether she sang or no; for her brain whirled round and round
like a dizzy maelstrom, her icy hands, griping the hard rail, alone
supported her dying body. She could hear no sound of her song; her body
was numb, her mouth parched, her lips cracked and bleeding; she felt
the drops of blood fall from her chin. And still she sang, with the
yellow palpitating eyes holding her as in a vice. If only she could
continue until dawn! It must be dawn so soon! The windows were growing
gray, the rain lashed outside, she could distinguish the features of the
horror before her; but the night of death was growing with the coming
day, blackness swept down upon her; she could sing no more, her tortured
lips made one last effort to form the words, "Mother of God, save me!"
and night and death came down like a crushing wave.
But her prayer was heard; the dawn had come, and Polou unlocked the
porch-door for Father Augustin just in time to hear the last agonized
cry. The maniac turned in the very act of leaping on his victim, and
sprang for the two men, who stopped in dumb amazement. Poor old Pierre
Polou went down at a blow; but Father Augustin was young and fearless,
and he grappled the mad animal with all his strength and will. It would
have gone ill even with him,--for no one can stand against the bestial
fury of a man in whom reason is dead,--had not some sudden impulse
seized the maniac, who pitched the priest aside with a single movement,
and, leaping through the door, vanished forever.
Did he hurl himself from the cliffs in the cold wet morning, or was he
doomed to wander, a wild beast, until, captured, he beat himself in vain
against the walls of some asylum, an unknown pauper lunatic? None ever
knew.
The colony at Pontivy was blotted out by the dreary tragedy, and Notre
Dame des Eaux sank once more into silence and solitude. Once a year
Father Augustin said mass for the repose of the soul of Jean d'Yriex;
but no other memory remained of the horror that blighted the lives of an
innocent girl and of a gray-haired mother mourning for her dead boy in
far Lozere.
THE DEAD VALLEY.
The Dead Valley.
I have a friend, Olof Ehrensvaerd, a Swede by birth, who yet, by reason
of a strange and melancholy mischance of his early boyhood, has thrown
his lot with that of the New World. It is a curious story of a
headstrong boy and a proud and relentless family: the details do not
matter here, but they are sufficient to weave a web of romance around
the tall yellow-bearded man with the sad eyes and the voice that gives
itself perfectly to plaintive little Swedish songs remembered out of
childhood. In the winter evenings we play chess together, he and I, and
after some close, fierce battle has been fought to a finish--usually
with my own defeat--we fill our pipes again, and Ehrensvaerd tells me
stories of the far, half-remembered days in the fatherland, before he
went to sea: stories that grow very strange and incredible as the night
deepens and the fire falls together, but stories that, nevertheless, I
fully believe.
One of them made a strong impression on me, so I set it down here, only
regretting that I cannot reproduce the curiously perfect English and the
delicate accent which to me increased the fascination of the tale. Yet,
as best I can remember it, here it is.
"I never told you how Nils and I went over the hills to Hallsberg, and
how we found the Dead Valley, did I? Well, this is the way it happened.
I must have been about twelve years old, and Nils Sjoeberg, whose
father's estate joined ours, was a few months younger. We were
inseparable just at that time, and whatever we did, we did together.
"Once a week it was market day in Engelholm, and Nils and I went always
there to see the strange sights that the market gathered from all the
surrounding country. One day we quite lost our hearts, for an old man
from across the Elfborg had brought a little dog to sell, that seemed to
us the most beautiful dog in all the world. He was a round, woolly
puppy, so funny that Nils and I sat down on the ground and laughed at
him, until he came and played with us in so jolly a way that we felt
that there was only one really desirable thing in life, and that was the
little dog of the old man from across the hills. But alas! we had not
half money enough wherewith to buy him, so we were forced to beg the old
man not to sell him before the next market day, promising that we would
bring the money for him then. He gave us his word, and we ran home very
fast and implored our mothers to give us money for the little dog.
"We got the money, but we could not wait for the next market day.
Suppose the puppy should be sold! The thought frightened us so that we
begged and implored that we might be allowed to go over the hills to
Hallsberg where the old man lived, and get the little dog ourselves, and
at last they told us we might go. By starting early in the morning we
should reach Hallsberg by three o'clock, and it was arranged that we
should stay there that night with Nils's aunt, and, leaving by noon the
next day, be home again by sunset.
"Soon after sunrise we were on our way, after having received minute
instructions as to just what we should do in all possible and
impossible circumstances, and finally a repeated injunction that we
should start for home at the same hour the next day, so that we might
get safely back before nightfall.
"For us, it was magnificent sport, and we started off with our rifles,
full of the sense of our very great importance: yet the journey was
simple enough, along a good road, across the big hills we knew so well,
for Nils and I had shot over half the territory this side of the
dividing ridge of the Elfborg. Back of Engelholm lay a long valley, from
which rose the low mountains, and we had to cross this, and then follow
the road along the side of the hills for three or four miles, before a
narrow path branched off to the left, leading up through the pass.
"Nothing occurred of interest on the way over, and we reached Hallsberg
in due season, found to our inexpressible joy that the little dog was
not sold, secured him, and so went to the house of Nils's aunt to spend
the night.
"Why we did not leave early on the following day, I can't quite
remember; at all events, I know we stopped at a shooting range just
outside of the town, where most attractive pasteboard pigs were sliding
slowly through painted foliage, serving so as beautiful marks. The
result was that we did not get fairly started for home until afternoon,
and as we found ourselves at last pushing up the side of the mountain
with the sun dangerously near their summits, I think we were a little
scared at the prospect of the examination and possible punishment that
awaited us when we got home at midnight.
"Therefore we hurried as fast as possible up the mountain side, while
the blue dusk closed in about us, and the light died in the purple sky.
At first we had talked hilariously, and the little dog had leaped ahead
of us with the utmost joy. Latterly, however, a curious oppression came
on us; we did not speak or even whistle, while the dog fell behind,
following us with hesitation in every muscle.
"We had passed through the foothills and the low spurs of the mountains,
and were almost at the top of the main range, when life seemed to go out
of everything, leaving the world dead, so suddenly silent the forest
became, so stagnant the air. Instinctively we halted to listen.
"Perfect silence,--the crushing silence of deep forests at night; and
more, for always, even in the most impenetrable fastnesses of the wooded
mountains, is the multitudinous murmur of little lives, awakened by the
darkness, exaggerated and intensified by the stillness of the air and
the great dark: but here and now the silence seemed unbroken even by the
turn of a leaf, the movement of a twig, the note of night bird or
insect. I could hear the blood beat through my veins; and the crushing
of the grass under our feet as we advanced with hesitating steps sounded
like the falling of trees.
"And the air was stagnant,--dead. The atmosphere seemed to lie upon the
body like the weight of sea on a diver who has ventured too far into its
awful depths. What we usually call silence seems so only in relation to
the din of ordinary experience. This was silence in the absolute, and it
crushed the mind while it intensified the senses, bringing down the
awful weight of inextinguishable fear.
"I know that Nils and I stared towards each other in abject terror,
listening to our quick, heavy breathing, that sounded to our acute
senses like the fitful rush of waters. And the poor little dog we were
leading justified our terror. The black oppression seemed to crush him
even as it did us. He lay close on the ground, moaning feebly, and
dragging himself painfully and slowly closer to Nils's feet. I think
this exhibition of utter animal fear was the last touch, and must
inevitably have blasted our reason--mine anyway; but just then, as we
stood quaking on the bounds of madness, came a sound, so awful, so
ghastly, so horrible, that it seemed to rouse us from the dead spell
that was on us.
"In the depth of the silence came a cry, beginning as a low, sorrowful
moan, rising to a tremulous shriek, culminating in a yell that seemed to
tear the night in sunder and rend the world as by a cataclysm. So
fearful was it that I could not believe it had actual existence: it
passed previous experience, the powers of belief, and for a moment I
thought it the result of my own animal terror, an hallucination born of
tottering reason.
"A glance at Nils dispelled this thought in a flash. In the pale light
of the high stars he was the embodiment of all possible human fear,
quaking with an ague, his jaw fallen, his tongue out, his eyes
protruding like those of a hanged man. Without a word we fled, the
panic of fear giving us strength, and together, the little dog caught
close in Nils's arms, we sped down the side of the cursed
mountains,--anywhere, goal was of no account: we had but one impulse--to
get away from that place.
"So under the black trees and the far white stars that flashed through
the still leaves overhead, we leaped down the mountain side, regardless
of path or landmark, straight through the tangled underbrush, across
mountain streams, through fens and copses, anywhere, so only that our
course was downward.
"How long we ran thus, I have no idea, but by and by the forest fell
behind, and we found ourselves among the foothills, and fell exhausted
on the dry short grass, panting like tired dogs.
"It was lighter here in the open, and presently we looked around to see
where we were, and how we were to strike out in order to find the path
that would lead us home. We looked in vain for a familiar sign. Behind
us rose the great wall of black forest on the flank of the mountain:
before us lay the undulating mounds of low foothills, unbroken by trees
or rocks, and beyond, only the fall of black sky bright with
multitudinous stars that turned its velvet depth to a luminous gray.
"As I remember, we did not speak to each other once: the terror was too
heavy on us for that, but by and by we rose simultaneously and started
out across the hills.
"Still the same silence, the same dead, motionless air--air that was at
once sultry and chilling: a heavy heat struck through with an icy chill
that felt almost like the burning of frozen steel. Still carrying the
helpless dog, Nils pressed on through the hills, and I followed close
behind. At last, in front of us, rose a slope of moor touching the white
stars. We climbed it wearily, reached the top, and found ourselves
gazing down into a great, smooth valley, filled half way to the brim
with--what?
"As far as the eye could see stretched a level plain of ashy white,
faintly phosphorescent, a sea of velvet fog that lay like motionless
water, or rather like a floor of alabaster, so dense did it appear, so
seemingly capable of sustaining weight. If it were possible, I think
that sea of dead white mist struck even greater terror into my soul
than the heavy silence or the deadly cry--so ominous was it, so utterly
unreal, so phantasmal, so impossible, as it lay there like a dead ocean
under the steady stars. Yet through that mist _we must go_! there seemed
no other way home, and, shattered with abject fear, mad with the one
desire to get back, we started down the slope to where the sea of milky
mist ceased, sharp and distinct around the stems of the rough grass.
"I put one foot into the ghostly fog. A chill as of death struck through
me, stopping my heart, and I threw myself backward on the slope. At that
instant came again the shriek, close, close, right in our ears, in
ourselves, and far out across that damnable sea I saw the cold fog lift
like a water-spout and toss itself high in writhing convolutions towards
the sky. The stars began to grow dim as thick vapor swept across them,
and in the growing dark I saw a great, watery moon lift itself slowly
above the palpitating sea, vast and vague in the gathering mist.
"This was enough: we turned and fled along the margin of the white sea
that throbbed now with fitful motion below us, rising, rising, slowly
and steadily, driving us higher and higher up the side of the foothills.
"It was a race for life; that we knew. How we kept it up I cannot
understand, but we did, and at last we saw the white sea fall behind us
as we staggered up the end of the valley, and then down into a region
that we knew, and so into the old path. The last thing I remember was
hearing a strange voice, that of Nils, but horribly changed, stammer
brokenly, 'The dog is dead!' and then the whole world turned around
twice, slowly and resistlessly, and consciousness went out with a crash.
"It was some three weeks later, as I remember, that I awoke in my own
room, and found my mother sitting beside the bed. I could not think very
well at first, but as I slowly grew strong again, vague flashes of
recollection began to come to me, and little by little the whole
sequence of events of that awful night in the Dead Valley came back. All
that I could gain from what was told me was that three weeks before I
had been found in my own bed, raging sick, and that my illness grew fast
into brain fever. I tried to speak of the dread things that had happened
to me, but I saw at once that no one looked on them save as the
hauntings of a dying frenzy, and so I closed my mouth and kept my own
counsel.
"I must see Nils, however, and so I asked for him. My mother told me
that he also had been ill with a strange fever, but that he was now
quite well again. Presently they brought him in, and when we were alone
I began to speak to him of the night on the mountain. I shall never
forget the shock that struck me down on my pillow when the boy denied
everything: denied having gone with me, ever having heard the cry,
having seen the valley, or feeling the deadly chill of the ghostly fog.
Nothing would shake his determined ignorance, and in spite of myself I
was forced to admit that his denials came from no policy of concealment,
but from blank oblivion.
"My weakened brain was in a turmoil. Was it all but the floating
phantasm of delirium? Or had the horror of the real thing blotted Nils's
mind into blankness so far as the events of the night in the Dead Valley
were concerned? The latter explanation seemed the only one, else how
explain the sudden illness which in a night had struck us both down? I
said nothing more, either to Nils or to my own people, but waited, with
a growing determination that, once well again, I would find that valley
if it really existed.
"It was some weeks before I was really well enough to go, but finally,
late in September, I chose a bright, warm, still day, the last smile of
the dying summer, and started early in the morning along the path that
led to Hallsberg. I was sure I knew where the trail struck off to the
right, down which we had come from the valley of dead water, for a great
tree grew by the Hallsberg path at the point where, with a sense of
salvation, we had found the home road. Presently I saw it to the right,
a little distance ahead.
"I think the bright sunlight and the clear air had worked as a tonic to
me, for by the time I came to the foot of the great pine, I had quite
lost faith in the verity of the vision that haunted me, believing at
last that it was indeed but the nightmare of madness. Nevertheless, I
turned sharply to the right, at the base of the tree, into a narrow path
that led through a dense thicket. As I did so I tripped over something.
A swarm of flies sung into the air around me, and looking down I saw
the matted fleece, with the poor little bones thrusting through, of the
dog we had bought in Hallsberg.