"There!" I went on, "you have harrowed yourself unnecessarily with that
poor creature's pain and want--surely you could have sent money? There
are people whose sole business it is to attend to such cases, and their
nerves are coarser than yours--they are not so wrung by what is daily
work to them."
At that moment a great fall of snow slid from one of the sloping roofs,
so that the air was white before us. It swept to the ground with a
dense, rushing crash and heaped itself into fantastic towers and walls;
close by a red lantern shone out; the wind moaned sadly.
"Look! look!" she cried, one hand at her side, "the Dunes again! Surely
you see that Castle, too? Or is it the sign--Oh, I am ready! Believe me,
I am ready!"
I caught her hand.
"Those are no dunes, my dear friend, only black shadows on the snow of
your own lands," I assured her, "and it is one of your own men with a
lantern going on your own errand. It is the fallen snow that takes those
strange spire-like shapes--no castle. This wind wails too much for your
nerves. Look in, at the fire and the warm hall."
"No, no," she said quietly, "I love to look out--I am not afraid. I
never know when I may see the Castle. And what you said about my
rest.... Well, it seems to open my lips. It was on just such a night
... how cold the stars were! And I had nearly lost myself--hunting for
my rest! When the moon rises I will tell you."
And then I knew that I was to hear one of those strange experiences of
hers. As always, she spoke quickly, often halting for long between swift
gushes of narrative, now as one who reads from an old book about a
stranger, now like the adventurer himself. She did not always or
steadily employ the style into which I have thrown her words, but she
wrapped me in an atmosphere, and from that and the remembrance of a
rising winter moon and a still, cold night, I write.
* * * * *
Her old friend the great physician, who now, in the evening of his busy
life, attended only upon those whose necessities baffled the less
experienced, pursed his lips and stared at her out of a grizzle of white
hair.
"And what will you do," he asked abruptly, "when I have convinced them
that you are unable to keep up these various relations that have been so
many years a-building? Where will you go for this great rest?"
"Somewhere where I can be alone," she answered him, firmly, "where I can
fold my hands by some quiet, lonely river, and think, where I can
realize what I am; a widow, lonely for her best and life-long friend, a
mother whose children need her no longer, a woman who has tasted life
long enough and paid her debt to the world, and would slip out of it
quietly. Surely that is little to ask?"
"I should say that the fact of your living showed you had not yet paid
your debt to life," he said drily, "and I confess that I cannot see any
great value in realizing these things you speak of. If they are so, they
are so. Let them be."
"Oh, you are a man!" she cried bitterly.
"And I know, therefore, what a woman needs," he said, "and you,
especially, who have many gifts denied, mostly, to your sex. Believe me,
there is only one river for you--it is, literally, the River of Life."
"It is Lethe," she said obstinately, "and you shall not deny it to me. I
tell you I am weary of my thoughts, and all the business of this River
of yours. I have gained the bank; it is philosophy. Before I am driven
far Inland--where even you cannot come and get me--and lose it
altogether, I claim the right to begin the journey of my own accord. I
want you to give me again that delicious, soothing treatment, that
electric whirring, that takes away my thoughts--will you?"
He mused a while, seemed to have forgotten her.
"No, I will not," he said at length. And it was in vain that she urged
him for he held to the refusal.
"Ours is no time of life to soothe away thought, dear friend," he said,
"you need no treatment of mine."
While she begged him there came an urgent call from an inner office and
he left the room quickly, asking her to wait. And as she sat there,
baffled and a little resentful, the sight of the bright, mysterious
machine so obedient there and always ready with its delicious oblivion,
put a wild idea into her brain.
"We are old friends," she said to herself, "I know how he does it--why
not? He will soon be here!"
And she pressed the well-known knob and watched the great discs begin to
whir softly around under their glass dome. At the familiar sound her
hunger for the coming comfort mounted fiercely, and she seized the long,
supple, silk-wrapped cords and pressed the bulbs to either temple. A
slight shock ran through her blood and with the realization of her folly
came the knowledge that she could not take down her hands. The whirring
grew, doubled, multiplied in volume; the room seemed to sway and rock; a
low rumbling, like thunder, filled the air. Blind terror seized her, and
shame for what she had done and could not undo, and as the office door
flew open and a sharp, angry exclamation rose above the roaring, she
summoned all her strength of will, tore away her hands, and fled, sick
with fear, through a door covered by a velvet curtain. Through a small
passage she stumbled, and then, as hurrying feet sounded behind her, and
the roaring and whirring grew momently, she wove her way among a network
of back stairs and halls and fell upon a small door under some steps,
thinking it must lead to a cellar and stupidly remembering the safety
of such spots in explosions and earthquakes--for now the whole house was
quivering with the throbs of the terrible force she had set in motion.
Down the narrow stair she plunged and hurried through the dim, earthy
cellar, past bins of coal and great coiling pipes and drains. The jar
seemed lessened here, but her humiliation and fright were no less.
"I can never meet his eyes again!" she murmured. "Will he ever forgive
me? I must find a way out, down here."
But in the dim light and her utter ignorance of that part of the house,
she could find no way out, though she went steadily away, during many
minutes, from the stair she had descended. A great rat whisked across
her foot and with a shriek of disgust she pressed the knob of a low
door, forced it open, and found herself at the head of another flight of
steps, of heavy stone. This would be a sub-cellar, she reasoned, and
drew back, but the clattering feet of the rat behind her scared away
all judgment and she plunged downward; the door closed heavily behind
her.
These steps seemed interminable, twisted like a tower, and wearied the
muscles of her legs terribly. At last they ended, and she found herself
in a great arched vault like some ancient catacomb, empty, so far as she
could see, but for cobwebs and dust. At least it was utterly silent;
there was no more of that throbbing, and her eyes had by now accustomed
themselves to the dimness. How broad this cellar might be she dared not
adventure to find out, for a few paces from the wall the darkness
swallowed everything.
"It must be that all the houses are connected at this depth," she
thought, her mind still so confused from the shock she had sustained and
all her hurry and fright, that she did not perceive the folly of her
wandering farther, "for I have certainly gone far beyond the length of a
city block, even. Perhaps I am in the heart of a great aqueduct
system--it is all walled and ceiled with stone."
At last the dim glow faded and she was in the utter dark. But she dared
not go back, for she had no clew to the stone stairs and had lost all
her reckoning.
A piercing chill grew in the dead air; the silence was terrifying. But
just as her brain cleared and fear began to creep into her blood, such
fatigue had laid hold on her that the fear could not choke her--she was
too far spent.
"To die like a rat in a drain!" she whimpered. "To stifle underground!
Oh, I am too old for it! He might have let me die in my bed!"
Just then she saw ahead of her--she could not say if it were far or
near--an arch, the outline of a low door, lighted through the cracks of
it, and she drove her weary feet toward this and bent upon it, but
uselessly, for it was thick stone. With her last remnant of strength she
set her mouth to the crack and screamed, and it seemed to her that
three loud knocks upon the other side answered her in some sort. She
screamed again. Again came the three knocks and close against the crack
a voice whispered.
"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I adjure you,
wandering soul, be quiet!"
The voice was shaking with a fear as great as her own, and this gave her
courage. She put her lips to the crack and cried:
"I am no wandering soul, but a poor woman! I am lost in this great
vault--open, and let me out!"
"Do you swear this by the Holy Trinity, the Wounds of Christ and--and
the Sorrows of Mary?"
"I swear it by anything you wish," she called, "if you will open the
door and see how little you have to fear from me! But I shall soon be as
dead as you think me, unless you make haste, for I am nearly frozen."
Now a rusty key grated, and after much tugging and panting from the
other side, the door opened a little way and the scared head of a brown
friar, such as one sees in the old countries, hooded and tonsured,
peeped out.
"Mother of us all!" he cried fearfully, "and what--who art thou, then?"
"Only a woman, father," she said gently, for he was clearly ready to
shut her back into the dark. "I am here by mistake. I only ask to be put
on my way again, and I will not trouble your monastery."
For she had travelled much abroad and though she supposed herself to
have entered through the cellar some church-school or cathedral
establishment, of which there were not a few in her city, unconsciously
she spoke of a monastery, as if she had met this holy brother in such a
place.
"Monastery!" he repeated, but more assured now and opening the door
wider, "why do you speak of that, my daughter? Who looks for a monastery
on the Dunes?"
So simple and sincere he seemed that she could not doubt him and stared
around her, to see herself in a rich, if small chapel, of rough stone,
with coloured windows and a carved altar. The candles were but half
alight; her cries had stopped this friar in his pious task, evidently.
Holly was twined about among the carvings, and the effigy of a knight in
full armour, his crossed feet upon a crouched hound, had candles on
either side and the choicest berries and glossiest leaves upon his
breastplate, but she did not stop to look at these but rushed to the
only door she saw besides the one she had entered, the monk watching her
curiously the while.
This door led to a narrow passage, that in turn to a broader, hung with
rich tapestry, lighted with torches, set alternately with branching deer
horns. This would never take her out, certainly, and she turned in
confusion to the waiting friar.
"Is there no door to the street?" she said, impatiently.
He stared curiously at her.
"The street? The street," he repeated, "my daughter, what are you
thinking of? Look through this pane and recollect your whereabouts."
He pointed to an empty pane among the coloured pieces of the window
through which, now and then, the wind blew powdery snow. She put her
eyes to it and looked out upon a great bare moorland, white under a cold
winter moon. Here and there sprang a fir tree, but for the most part the
land stretched away to the horizon, empty as death--and as chill. So
close to her eye that she must hold her head back in order to see it,
rose a great square tower with stretches of tiled roof, mostly
snow-covered, spreading out below it; this chapel was the end of the
building, it was plain.
Now a strange, uncertain doubt fell over her, and forgetting the terrors
of the dark cellar and the long vaults, she turned to the little door
again.
"Open that," she said, "and I will try my luck at getting back. For I
have come farther than I knew, it seems."
The friar crossed himself. "Back!" he cried, "back through those ancient
tombs, Christ knows where? Never dream of it, my daughter! Besides," as
she rushed to the door, "it would be impossible. The old key broke in
the lock even as I laboured over it, and ten men could not stir it now."
"Tombs?" she murmured, fearfully, "what do you mean by tombs? I came
through a cellar...."
"My daughter in Christ," said the friar, advancing firmly toward her and
holding out with shaking hands an ivory crucifix so that it touched her
breast, "if thou art a mad-woman only, God pity thee, but if thou art
more--and worse--then know this sign, before Whom all devils tremble,
and vanish! For thou art covered inches deep with the dust of tombs so
old that they are forgotten utterly of us who tend the ashes of their
descendants, and the cobweb that drapes thy body like a shawl so that I
cannot tell for my life the fashion of thy garments, or if thou art
young or old, maid or widow, has been a-thickening these hundred years
and more!"
At this the moon struck sharply through the empty pane and she saw
herself for what he had said and swooned with the cold and her deadly
fear.
She came to herself in a soft whispering and rustling of skirts, and
knew that women were moving around her.
"What will happen to her?" said one voice, "I had not thought such
things possible, hadst thou, Alys?"
"I know that old Ursula who was here in the old Countess's day told of
something like it, and that the old Countess ordered a bath made ready,
_such_, she said, _as her grandmother had ordered_. It seems they are
always prepared."
"Be still, girls, she is stirring at the eyelids! How is it with you,
madam?"
She opened her eyes and saw three or four young women in fanciful
dresses looped up with chains, with jewelled nets upon their heads, and
seed pearls braided into their hair. Their gowns of brocaded silk clung
closely to the body and left the neck and shoulders bare.
"This is evidently no monastery," she said, and then, "where am I? I am
so cold!"
"Soon you will be warm, madam," said the tallest of the girls, with two
long braids of dark hair over her shoulders and a wine-red gown trimmed
with black fur; "could you find it possible to walk between two of us,
think you? Come, Mawdlyn, your arm!"
But little Mawdlyn shrank back. "I am in great fear of all that cobweb,
cousin Alys," she whimpered, and no scowls availed to move her.
"Let me help you, Mistress Alys," said, very gravely, a young boy,
stepping forward with a plumed cap in his hand and a short hunting knife
at his leather girdle.
The tired woman leaned heavily on his arm, and it was he that led her
gently and carefully along the great hall between the moving
tapestries. Before a curtained door he paused.
"I can go no farther, madam, but if I may ever serve you, which is my
true hope, call for me. You will see me on the instant," he said softly,
and Alys led her behind the curtain.
Upon a dais sat a very beautiful young woman with deep eyes like brown
stars and two great braids of hair like the inner side of chestnuts when
they fall apart. She was all in shot-gold silk and on her dark hair lay
a twisted golden coronet with rubies studded in it. A big ruby hung on a
golden chain around her warm white neck. Below her lay a great silver
bath full to the brim of steaming water, and as the two entered, she
rose, took a carved ivory box from an old serving woman beside her, and
sprinkled a handful of what looked to be white sea sand from it into the
bath, which bubbled and clouded and turned milky like an opal.
"Quickly, quickly, Alys!" she cried, "give her to me!"
And as the woman tottered and drew back from the steamy clouds, she of
the coronet hastened toward her, took her in her young powerful arms as
if she had been an infant, and lifted her over the silver edge. Now the
warmth restored her a little and she resisted feebly and protested.
"But I am dressed--I am not ready for a bath--who are you that expect me
here and masquerade so strangely? Let me see----"
For she perceived that she was being held so as to prevent her looking
into the bath.
"Ah, madam, be guided, be guided! The Countess would not have you look!"
cried Alys, but she turned in the strong arms that held her and peered
into the milky waves, that smelt of roses, and her heart turned in her,
for the bath had no bottom at all, and below the waves were the rocks of
the sea itself, white and ribbed, stretching out endlessly! Great masts
of ships were there and huge fishes oaring their way, and as the water
touched her she did not feel it warm, but cold and salt. She struggled,
but it reached her lips and she felt the Countess thrust her down, down.
"Push her, push her, Alys!" cried this cruel Countess, "press down her
feet!" and she sank, gasping.
The water drew through her nostrils and the air was full of deep,
tolling bells and at last a steady hum, as of bees. She knew nothing
more.
At last, as one might waken after death, she breathed again, and felt
herself being lifted from a warm, sweet bath and held, naked as a new
child, on the knees of one who dried her softly with a towel of finest
linen that smelt of roses.
"See how clean, my lady! Everything has gone!" She heard the voice of
Alys, and peeped beneath her lids at where she had been plunged: it was
but a great silver bath, clear, now, to the bottom, and quite empty.
"Where are my clothes?" she whispered, feeling strangely light and
strong, "I am not cold any more; I can go on."
"Surely, if you will," said she whom they called the Countess, "but not
till you have eaten and drunk and had of us new wear in the stead of
that my bath has washed away."
And so, almost before she knew it, Alys and the old serving woman had
put on her soft, fine linen and a shot-silver robe, looped up with a
silver chain, and dressed her hair nobly. Over her neck and shoulders,
no longer smoothly full like her own, this countess fastened a sort of
cape of lace and silver, and on her feet the old woman fitted pointed
velvet shoes. She watched them gravely, tingling still from that strange
bath, trying to shape out in her mind what she would say to lead them to
explain to her the place she had fallen upon, and why they played this
pretty jest, and spoke and dressed so quaintly.
Now the Countess touched a silver bell and the old woman drew a heavy
curtain before the bath and the dais and placed a carved chair, and when
Alys had led her to it, the same youth appeared with a tray in his hand,
holding fine wheat bread and a graceful flagon of rosy wine and a
fragment of honeycomb. He knelt before her, seriously, with eyes never
raised above his silken knees, but his very presence moved her strangely
and she put her hand softly on his head when he said, "Will you eat,
madam, and refresh yourself?" and hastened to taste of all on his tray
before he could be offended.
"And now, Alys, where is your mistress?" she said, when her strength was
stayed and her eyes and voice bright again with the comforting wine,
"for I must talk with her."
"Presently, madam, presently," said the girl, "none may speak with her
at the moment, for she is gone to Mass--'tis the Count's name-day and
the night, too, when God and St. Michael took him, fighting, and we have
been out all day for holly for the chapel. We are all to go--will you
come with us?"
"No," she said, thinking to make her way out when they were all gone and
find out where this wild tract could be, "no, I will wait here. I am not
of your religion, Alys."
The girl sprang back from her with frightened eyes and crossed herself.
"Madam!" she cried, "never speak so! If they thought a Moslem here--and
to-night--hush, there go the men!"
There was a great tramping, and along the tapestries, before the drawn
curtain, came a company of men-at-arms, clanking in full armour, with
set, hard faces under the helmets.
She grasped at the arms of her oak chair wildly; these harsh men sent a
chill through her--was some horrid treachery thus hinted to her? Then as
Alys sped along behind them she felt her hand kissed softly and the
little page-boy was there.
"There is none to hurt you--if you stay quiet here," he said softly,
and she knew she dared not move or spy about.
Now arose a low chanting and then murmured prayers, and soon a smell of
incense reached them. Then at last the mystic bell struck mellow on the
night air and she knew that God was made and that men, maids, and
Countess-widow were bowed before this mystery. The page bent low and
crossed himself and a strange jealousy rushed over her that he should be
of this sort, when she was not, for she loved the boy unreasonably.
"Your mother is a good Catholic, I see," she said, when the chant grew
louder and covered her voice.
"I do not know, madam," he said.
"You do not know?" she cried, "and why not?"
"Because I do not know my mother, dear madam," he answered, and flushed
to where his slim neck was hidden by his long hair.
Then a keen trouble rose in her and grew ever stronger, and the boy's
eyes frightened her and yet she must watch him. Steadily she looked at
him and sat as one in a dream and thought no more of going away, but
when the Countess and her train came back and the men had vanished and
the maids-in-waiting were whispering around the great fireplace, she put
out her hand and caught the young widow's silken gown.
"Who--who is his mother?" she asked eagerly.
"Who should be?" the Countess answered strangely, "whom hath he a look
of, guest of mine?"
The boy lifted his face as she put a shaking finger under his round chin
and turned his eyes up to her, and a shiver ran through her--for they
were her own eyes.
"This--this is no boy of mine!" she gasped, shaking with more than
terror.
"He might have been," said the young Countess with grave gentleness,
"but you would not have him. So that he must come to us."
"But that--all that was long ago," she whispered, thinking that she
spoke aloud, her eyes lost in the boy's.
"Here they grow slowly, being nearly soulless when they come," said the
Countess. "He would have been your oldest son, had he stayed with you."
"'Here!' In God's name, where am I?" she cried. "Am I dead, then, at
last? But I had not thought--I had hoped for peace. I had counted on
rest."
"Rest?" the Countess echoed her, "and why should you look for that, my
guest? What, in all the worlds of God, rests? You are a strange people,
beyond the Dunes.... But you are not dead. No dead come here."
She took her by the hand, the boy clinging to the other, and walked with
her to the great fire. Here they sat down to tapestry work, green and
blue and russet weavings, and the woman folded her hands in her lap and
watched them moodily. At last she spoke.
[Illustration: Here they sat down to tapestry work, green and blue and
russet weavings.]
"You will never make a huntsman at that rate, Alys--one would think him
standing on his horse."
"Help her, then," said the Countess, and her guest took a piece of
charcoal and drew out a fair pattern for the girl.
"And mine, madam?" "And mine?" cried the others, and she leaned over the
shoulder of each and made her a true picture for her work. But her eye
was often on the boy and when the girls were all busy at last, she spoke
softly to him.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Madam, they call me Gildres," said he.
"And what do you do, Gildres, in this strange castle?"
"Is it strange?" said the boy. "I do not know. I am to be squire to the
lord, my lady's brother, soon, and now I learn falconry and the care of
his armour and sometimes I serve the Mass. I wait on my lady herself,
too, for I must learn that. But I like best to colour the missals with
Father Petrus--you should see the phoenix I did, madam, and the
leopard, last week! He said it was brave work--all blue and stars with
red pierced hearts in the border, madam--and that the church needed me."
She put her hand on his dark head and sighed.
"If I had kept you with me, you should have made your leopards, dear,"
she said gently, "but now I have no right in you."
"Nay, but you may help him," said the Countess briskly, "run and get thy
phoenix, boy, and she will show thee where even that wondrous bird is
at fault."
And when they had worked over the great volume, lettered every letter by
a patient hand and clasped with silver, it was the hour for bed.
"The Countess is tired," whispered Alys to their guest, "for she has
been twice on the Dunes; once to tend a poor woodcutter of a broken leg
and again when one of the shepherd's wives was found to be a-dying."