THE PASTEUR CONQUERS
Meanwhile, following a short cut through the snowy woods that ran over
the shoulder of the intervening hill, the pair were wending their way
towards Lucerne. Godfrey, a fixed and vacant look upon his face, went
first; the Pasteur clinging to his arm like a limpet to a rock, puffed
along beside him.
“Heaven!” he gasped, “but this attraction of yours must be
strong that it makes you walk so fast immediately after dinner.”
“It is, it is!” said Godfrey, in a kind of agony. “I feel as
though my inside were being drawn out, and I must follow it. Please hold
my arm tight or I shall run.”
“Ah! the witch. The great witch!” puffed the Pasteur, “and up
this hill too, over snow. Well, it will be better on the down grade.
Give me your hand, my boy, for your coat is slipping, and if once you
got away how should I catch you?”
They accomplished the walk into Lucerne in absolutely record time.
Fortunately, at this after-dinner hour few people were about, but some
of those whom they met stared at them, and one called:
“Do you take him to the police-station? Shall I summon the
_gens-d’arme_?”
“No, no,” replied the Pasteur, “he goes to keep an
assignation, and is in a hurry.”
“Then why does he take you with him? Surely a clergyman will make a
bad third at such an affair?” ejaculated an outspoken lady who was
standing at her house door.
“Where is the street? I do not know it,” asked the Pasteur.
“Nor do I,” answered Godfrey, “but we shall come there all
right. To the left now.”
“Oh! the influence! The strong influence!” muttered Monsieur
Boiset. “Behold! it leads him.”
Truly it did lead him. Round corners and across squares they went into
an old part of the town with which neither of them was acquainted, till
at length Godfrey, diving beneath an archway, pulled up in front of an
antique doorway, saying:
“I think this is the place.”
“Look at the writing and make sure,” said the Pasteur, “for
it seems ridiculous——”
At that moment the door opened mysteriously, and Godfrey disappeared
into the passage beyond. Scarcely had the Pasteur time to follow him
when it shut again, although he could see no _concierge_.
“Doubtless it is one of those that works with a wire,” he thought
to himself, but he had no time to stop to look, for already Godfrey was
climbing the stairs. Up he went, three floors, and up after him
scrambled the Pasteur. Suddenly Godfrey stopped at a door and not
waiting to ring the bell, knocked with his hand. Immediately it opened
and Godfrey, with his companion, passed into a very dark hall round
which were several other doors. Here in the gloom the Pasteur lost him.
Godfrey had gone through one of the doors, but which he could not see.
He stood still, listening, and presently heard a deep peculiar voice
speaking English with a very foreign accent, say:
“So you have come to see your godmamma, my dear little clever boy.
Well, I thought you would, and last night I sent you a pretty messenger
to give you remembrance.”
Then the Pasteur found the handle of the door and entered the room. It
was a curious place draped, not without taste of a bizarre kind, in
vivid colours, wherein purple dominated, and it gave an idea of mingled
magnificence and squalor. Some of the furniture was very good, as were
one or two of the pictures, though all of it was of an odd and unusual
make. Thus, the sideboard was shaped like a sarcophagus, and supported
on solid sphinxes with gilded faces. In a corner of the room also stood
an unwrapped mummy in a glass case.
In the midst of all this stood a common deal table, whereon were a black
bottle, and the remains of Madame’s meal, which seemed to have
consisted of large supplies of underdone meat. In front of the fire was
a large, well-worn couch, and by it a small stout table such as
spiritualists use, on which gleamed a ball of glass or crystal. On this
couch was seated Madame clad in a kind of black dressing-gown and a
wide gold scarf tied about her ample waist. Her fat, massive face was
painted and powdered; on her head she wore a kind of mantilla also
gold-coloured, and about her neck a string of old Egyptian amulets.
Anything more unwholesome or uncanny than were her general appearance
and surroundings as the bright flames of the fire showed them in this
stuffy, shadowed room, it would be impossible to imagine.
“Sit down here by my side, my little son in the speerit, where I have
made a place ready for you, and let me hold your hand while you tell me
all that you have been doing and if you have been thinking much of me
and that beautiful Eleanor whom I sent to see you last night,” went
on Madame Riennes in her ogreish, purring voice, patting the sofa.
Just then she looked up and caught sight of the Pasteur standing in the
shadow. Staring at him with her fierce, prominent eyes, she started
violently as though at last she had seen something of which she was
afraid.
“Say, my Godfrey,” she exclaimed in a rather doubtful voice,
“what is this that you have brought with you? Is it a scarecrow from
the fields? Or is it a speerit of your own? If so, I should have
thought that a young man would have liked better the lovely Eleanor
than this old devil.”
“Yes, Madame Jezebel,” said the Pasteur striding forward, speaking
in a loud, high voice and waving a large umbrella, which had come partly
unfolded in his hurried walk. “It is a scarecrow—one that scares
the crows of hell who seek to pick out the souls of the innocent, like
_you_, Madame Jezebel.”
Madame uttered a voluminous oath in some strange tongue, and sprang to
her feet with an agility surprising in one so stout.
“Say, who are you?” she ejaculated in French, confronting him.
“I am the Pasteur Boiset who accompany my ward to pay this little
call, Madame.”
“Oh! indeed. That thief of a clergyman, who got his finger into the
pie of dead Mademoiselle, eh? Well, there are no more pickings here,
Pasteur, but perhaps you come to have your fortune told. Shall I look
in the crystal for you and tell you nice things about—what shall we
say? About the past of that handsome Madame of yours, for instance? Oh!
I will do it for love, yes, for love. Or shall I make that mummy speak
for you? I can, for once I lived in that body of hers—it was a gay
life,” and she stopped, gasping.
“Hearken, woman,” said the Pasteur, “and do not think to
frighten me. I know all about my wife, and, if once she was foolish,
what of it in a world where none are altogether wise? If you do not
wish to visit the police cell, you will do well to leave her alone. As
for your tricks of chicanery, I want none of them. What I want is that
you take off the spell which you have laid upon this poor boy, as Satan
your master has given you the power to do. Now, obey me—or——”
“Or? Or what, you old paid advocate of God?”
“That is a good term. If I am an advocate, I know my Employer’s
mind, I, who have taken His fee, and am therefore in honour bound to
serve Him faithfully. Now I will tell you His mind about you. It is
that unless you change your ways and repent, soon you will go to hell.
Yes, quite soon, I think, for one so fat cannot be very strong in the
heart. Do what I bid you, Madame, or I, the advocate of God, having His
authority, will curse you in the Name of God, and in the ancient form
of which you may have heard.”
“Bah! would you frighten me, the great Madame Riennes who have spirits
at my command and who, as you admit, can lay on spells and take them
off. A flea for you and your God!”
“Spirits at your command! Yes, some of them in there, I think,” and
he pointed to the black bottle on the table, “and others too, perhaps;
I will not deny it. Well, let them advance, and we will see who is on
the top of the mountain, I, the old paid advocate of God, or you and
your spirits, Madame,” and hooking the handle of the big umbrella
over his wrist, he folded his arms and stared at her through the blue
spectacles.
Madame Riennes gibbered some invocation, but nothing happened.
“I await your spirits. They cannot have gone to bed so early,”
remarked the Pasteur like a new Elijah.
Then, also like Elijah, to use a vulgarism, he “sailed in” after a
way which even the terrified Godfrey, who was crouching against one of
the purple curtains, felt to be really magnificent with such artistic
sense as remained to him. In his mediæval Latin which, spoken with a
foreign accent, Godfrey, although a good scholar, could scarcely follow
save for certain holy names, he cursed Madame Riennes in some archaic
but most effective fashion. He consigned, this much Godfrey made out,
her soul to hell and her body to a number of the most uncomfortable
experiences. He trailed her in the dust at the rear of his theological
chariot; he descended from the chariot, so to speak, and jumped upon
her as he had done upon the beetle; he tossed up her mangled remains as
the holy bull, Apis of the Egyptians, might have done with those of a
Greek blasphemer. Then, like a triumphant pugilist, metaphorically he
stood over her and asked her if she wanted any more.
For a little while Madame Riennes was crushed, also very evidently
frightened, for those who deal in the supernatural are afraid of the
supernatural. Indeed, none of us welcome the curse even of a malignant
and disappointed beggar, or of the venomous gipsy angered by this or
that, and much less that of a righteous man inspired by just and holy
indignation. Madame Riennes, an expert in the trade, a dealer in
maledictions, was not exempt from this common prejudice. As she would
have expressed it, she felt that he had the Power on his side.
But Madame was no common charlatan; she had strength of a sort, though
where it came from who could say? Moreover, for all kinds of secret
reasons of her own, she desired to keep in her grip this boy Godfrey,
who had shown himself to be so wonderful a medium or clairvoyant. To
her he meant strength and fortune; also for him she had conceived some
kind of unholy liking in the recesses of her dark soul. Therefore, she
was not prepared to give him up without a struggle.
Presently Madame seemed to cast off the influences with which the
Pasteur had overwhelmed her. While his maledictions were in full flow
she sank in a huddled heap upon the couch. Of a sudden she revived; she
sprang up; notwithstanding her bulk she leapt into the air like a
ballet-dancer. She tore the golden mantilla from her head, letting down
a flood of raven hair, streaked with grey, and waved it round her. She
called upon the names of spirits or demons, long, resounding names with
an Eastern ring about them, to come to her aid. Then she pranced into
the centre of the room, crying:
“Dog of a clergyman, I defy you and will overcome you. That boy’s
soul is mine, not yours. I am the greatest mesmerist in the world and he
is in my net. I will show you!”
She turned towards the shrivelled, almost naked mummy in the case, and
addressed it:
“O Nofri,” she said, “Priestess of Set, great seeress and
magician of the old world in whom once my spirit dwelt, send forth your
Ka, your everlasting Emanation, to help me. Crush this black hound.
Come forth, come forth!”
As she spoke the fearful Godfrey in his corner saw the door of the glass
case fly open, also as he thought, probably erroneously, that he saw
the mummy move, lifting its stiff legs and champing its iron jaws so
that the yellow, ancient teeth caught the light as they moved. Then he
heard and saw something else. Suddenly the Pasteur in tones that rang
like a trumpet, cried out:
“She seems to hesitate, this mummy of yours, Madame. Let me be polite
and help her.”
With a single bound he was in front of the case. With the hook of his
big umbrella he caught the shrivelled thing round the neck; with his
long thin arm he gripped it about the middle, just like somebody
leading a lady to the dance, thought Godfrey. Then he bent himself and
pulled. Out flew the age-withered corpse. The head came off, the body
broke above the hips and fell upon the floor, leaving the legs standing
in the case, a ghastly spectacle. On to this severed trunk the Pasteur
leapt, again as he had done upon the black beetle. It crunched and
crumbled, filling the air with a pungent, resinous dust. Then he stood
amidst the débris, and placing his right foot upon what had been the
mummy’s nose, said mildly:
“Now, Madame, what next? This lady is finished?”
Madame Riennes uttered a stifled scream, more she could not do for rage
choked her. Her big eyes rolled, she clenched and unclenched her hands,
and bent forward as though she were about to fly at the Pasteur like a
wild cat. Still poised upon the fragments of the mummy he lifted the
point of the umbrella to receive the charge as it came, and taking
advantage of Madame’s temporary paralysis of speech, went on:
“Hearken! daughter of Beelzebub. You have the curse and it shall work
upon your soul, but, yes, it shall work well. Still your body remains,
and of that too I would say something. Know that I have heard much of
you—oh! the quiet old Pasteur hears many things, especially if he has
members of the secret police among his flock. I think that yonder in an
office there is a _dossier_, yes, an official record concerning you and
your doings both in this country and in other lands. It has been
allowed to sleep, but it can wake again; if it wakes—well, there is
the penitentiary for such as you.”
Madame gasped and turned green. If Monsieur had drawn a bow at a
venture, evidently that chance arrow had found the bull’s-eye, for
now she truly was frightened.
“What would you have me do?” she asked in a choking voice.
“Free this youth from your influence, as you can if you will.”
“My influence! If I had any with him would not that bald skull of
yours by now have been shattered like an egg, seeing that he is strong
and holds a stick?”
“I have no time to waste, Madame. The Police Office closes early on
Sundays.”
Then she gave in.
“Come here,” she said sullenly to Godfrey, still speaking in French.
He came and stood before her sneezing, for the pungent dust of the
smashed mummy, which the Pasteur still ground beneath his large boots,
had floated up his nose.
“Cease that noise, little fool, and look at me.”
Godfrey obeyed, but did not stop sneezing, because the mixture of spices
and organic matter would not allow him to do so. She stared at him very
evilly, muttered some more words, and made mystic upward passes with
her hands.
“There now,” she said, “you are free, so far as I am
concerned. But I do not think that you are done with spirits, since they
are guests which once entertained to breakfast, stop to luncheon and to
dinner; yes, and pass the night when they are merriest. I think you
will see many spirits before you die, and afterwards—ah! who knows,
little pig? Put your string about his leg and take your little pig
home, Pasteur. He will not be drawn to come here again.”
“Good, Madame, for remember, if he does I shall be drawn to call at
the Police Office. If Madame will take my advice she will try change of
air. Lucerne is cold in the winter, especially for those whose hearts
are not too strong. Is it finished?”
“Quite, for my part, but for you, interfering humbug, I do not know.
Get out of my room, both of you.”
The Pasteur bowed with an old-fashioned politeness, and herding Godfrey
in front of him, turned to go. As he passed through the door something
hard hit him violently in the back, so that he nearly fell. It was the
head of the mummy, which Madame had hurled at him. It fell to the
floor, and striking against a chair leg, recoiled through the doorway.
Godfrey saw it, and an impulse seized him. Lifting that head, he
turned. Madame was standing in the middle of the room with her back to
the deal table, uttering short little howls of fury.
Godfrey advanced very politely and saying, “I believe this is your
property, Madame,” placed the battered remnant of humanity upon the
table beside the black bottle. As he did so, he glanced at the
mesmerist, then turned and fled, for her face was like to that of a
devil.
“Monsieur Boiset,” he said, when they reached the street,
“something has happened to me. I am quite changed. Not for all the
world would I go near Madame Riennes again. Indeed, now I feel as
though I wished to run away from her.”
“That is good!” said the Pasteur. “Oh! I thought it would be
so, for I know how to deal with such witches. But not too fast, not too
fast, my Godfrey. I wonder what the old Egyptians put into the heads of
their mummies to make them so heavy.”
“Bitumen,” answered Godfrey, and proceeded in a cheerful voice to
give an account of the Egyptian process of mummification to his tutor,
which Isobel and he had acquired in the course of their miscellaneous
reading at Monk’s Acre. Indeed, as he had said, whatever the reason,
he was changed and prepared to talk cheerfully about anything. A great
burden was lifted from his soul.
From that day forward Godfrey became what a youth of his years and race
should be, a high-spirited, athletic, and active young man. Madame
Riennes and her visions passed from him like a bad dream. Thoughtful he
remained always, for that was his nature; sometimes sad also, when he
thought of Isobel, who seemed to have disappeared quite out of his
life. But as was natural at his age, this mood weakened by degrees. She
was always there in the background, but she ceased to obscure the
landscape as she had done before, and was to do in his after life. Had
she been a girl of the common type, attractive only because she was a
young and vivacious woman, doubtless the eclipse would have been
complete. Occasionally, indeed, men do love fools in an enduring
fashion, which is perhaps the most evil fate that can be laid upon
them. For what can be worse than to waste what is deep and real upon a
thing of flesh without a soul, an empty, painted bubble, which evades
the hand, or bursts if it is grasped? Those are the real unfortunates,
who have sold themselves for a mess of potage, that for the most part
they are never even allowed to eat, since before the bell rings it has
probably been deposited by heaven knows what hand of Circumstance in
someone else’s plate, or gone stale and been thrown away.
Godfrey was not one of these, because the hand of Circumstance had
managed his affairs otherwise. Isobel was no mess of potage, but with
all her faults and failings, a fair and great inheritance for him who
could take seisin of her. Still, as he believed, she had first treated
him badly, then utterly neglected him whose pride she had outraged, by
not even taking the trouble to write him a letter, and finally, had
vanished away. And he was young, with manhood advancing in his veins,
like the pulse of spring, and women are many in the world, some of whom
have pretty faces and proper figures. Also, although the fact is
overlooked by convention, it has pleased Nature to make man polygamous
in his instincts, though where those instincts end and what is called
love begins, is a thing almost impossible to define. Probably in truth
the limit lies beyond the borders of sex.
So Isobel’s grey eyes faded into the background of Godfrey’s mental
vision, while the violet eyes of Juliette drew ever nearer to his
physical perceptions. And here, to save trouble, it may be said at
once, that he never cared in the least for Juliette, except as a male
creature cares for a pretty female creature, and that Juliette never
cared in the least for him, except as a young woman cares in general
for a handsome and attractive young man—with prospects. Indeed, she
found him too serious for her taste. She did not understand him, as,
for his part, in her he found nothing to understand.
After all, ruling out the primary impulses which would make a scullery
maid congenial to a genius upon a desert isle, what was there in a
Juliette to appeal to a Godfrey? And, with the same qualification, what
was there in a Godfrey to appeal to a Juliette? As once, with an
accidental touch of poetry, she said to her mother, when at his side
she felt as though she were walking over a snow-covered crevasse in the
surrounding Alps. All seemed firm beneath her feet, but she never knew
when the crust would break, and he would vanish into unfathomed depths,
perchance dragging her with him. Or, feeling her danger she might run
from him on to safer ground, where she knew herself to be on good,
common rock or soil, and no strange, hollow echoes struck her ears,
leaving him to pursue his perilous journey alone.
Her mother laughed, and falling into her humour, answered, that beyond
the crevasse and at the foot of the further slope lay the warm and
merry human town, the best house of which—not unlike the Villa
Ogilvy—could be reached in no other way, and that with such a home
waiting to receive her, it was worth while to take a little risk.
Thereon Juliette shrugged her white shoulders, and in the intervals of
one of the French _chansonettes_ which she was very fond of warbling in
her gay voice, remarked that she preferred to make journeys, safe or
perilous, in the company of a singing-bird in the sunlight, rather than
in that of an owl in the dusk, who always reminded her of the advancing
darkness.
At least, that was the substance of what she said, although she did not
put it quite so neatly. Then, as though by an afterthought, she asked
when her cousin Jules, a young notary of Berne, was coming to stay with
them.
The winter wore away, the spring came, and after spring, summer, with
its greenery and flowers. Godfrey was happy enough during this time. To
begin with, the place suited him. He was very well now, and grew
enormously in that pure and trenchant air, broadening as well as
lengthening, till, notwithstanding his slimness, he gave promise of
becoming a large, athletic man.
Madame Riennes too and her unholy terrors had faded into the background.
He no longer thought of spirits, although, it is true that a sense of
the immanence and reality of the Unseen was always with him; indeed, as
time went on, it increased rather than lessened. Partly, this was owing
to the character and natural tendencies of his mind, partly also,
without doubt, to the fact that his recent experiences had, as it were,
opened a door to him between the Seen and the Hidden, or rather burst a
breach in the dividing wall that never was built up again. Also his
astronomical studies certainly gave an impetus to thoughts and
speculations such as were always present with him. Only now these were
of a wholesome and reverent nature, tending towards those ends which are
advanced by religion in its truest sense.
He worked hard, too, under the gentle guidance of the learned Pasteur,
at the classics, literature, and other subjects, while in French he
could not fail to become proficient in the company of the talkative
Madame and the sprightly Juliette. Nor did he want for relaxation.
There were great woods on the hills behind the Maison Blanche, and in
these he obtained leave to shoot rabbits, and, horrible to say, foxes.
Juliette and he would set out together towards evening, accompanied by
a clever cur which belonged to Jean, the factotum of the house.
They would post themselves at some convenient spot, while the instructed
hound ranged the woods above. Then would appear perhaps a rabbit,
perhaps a hare, though these in that land of poaching were not common,
or occasionally a great, red, stealthy fox. At first, with his English
traditions, Godfrey shrank from shooting the last, which he had been
taught ought to die in one way only, namely, by being torn to pieces in
the jaws of the hounds.
Juliette, however, mocked at him, volubly reciting Reynard’s many
misdeeds—how he stole chickens; how he tore out the throats of lambs,
and, according to local report, was not even above killing a baby if he
found that innocent alone. So it came about next time the excited
yapping of the cur-dog was heard on the slopes above them, followed by
stealthy movements among the fallen pine needles, and at length by the
appearance of the beautiful red creature slyly slinking away to
shelter, not twenty yards from where they stood behind a tree-trunk,
that Juliette whispered:
“_Tirez_! _Tirez_!” and he lifted the gun, an
old-fashioned, single-barrelled piece, aimed and fired.
Then followed a horrid scene. The big shot with which he had loaded,
mortally wounded but did not kill the fox, that with its forepaws
broken, rolled, and bit, and made dreadful noises in its agony, its
beautiful fur all stained with blood. Godfrey did not know what to do;
it was too big and strong to kill with Juliette’s little stick, so he
tried to batter it to death with the stock of the gun, but without
success, and at last withdrew, looking at it horrified.
“What shall I do?” he asked faintly of Juliette.
“Load the gun and shoot it again,” replied that practical young
woman.
So with some mistakes, for the emergency made him nervous, such as the
dropping of the cap among the pine needles, he obeyed. At last the poor
beast lay dead, a very disagreeable spectacle, with the cur-dog that
had arrived, biting joyously at its quivering form.
Godfrey put down the gun and retired behind a tree, whence presently he
emerged, looking very pale, for to tell the truth, he had been ill.
“I do not think I like shooting foxes,” he said.
“How strange you are,” answered Juliette. “Quite unlike other
men. Now my Cousin Jules, there is nothing that he loves better. Go now
and cut off his tail, to hang upon the wall. It is beautiful.”
“I can’t,” said Godfrey still more faintly.
“Then give me the knife, for I can.”
And she did!
Had Madame but known it, that fox did not die unavenged upon her family,
for with it departed from the world all hopes of the alliance which she
desired so earnestly.