you: the spell of old love. I can win you backagain and make you live the old life with me, for the force of theancient tie between us, if I choose to use it, is irresistible. And I dochoose to use it. I still want you. And you, dear soul of my dimpast"--she pressed closer to him so that her breath passed across hiseyes, and her voice positively sang--"I mean to have you, for you loveme 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 hisfeet, made of music and flowers, and he was flying somewhere far aboveit through the sunshine of pure delight. He was breathless and giddywith the wonder of her words. They intoxicated him. And, still, theterror of it all, the dreadful thought of death, pressed ever behind hersentences. For flames shot through her voice out of black smoke andlicked at his soul.
And they communicated with one another, it seemed to him, by a processof swift telepathy, for his French could never have compassed all hesaid to her. Yet she understood perfectly, and what she said to him waslike the recital of verses long since known. And the mingled pain andsweetness of it as he listened were almost more than his little soulcould 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. Ihave called to you for years, and you came with the whole force of thepast 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 insolencein the face--the insolence of power.
The sun had set behind the towers of the old cathedral and the darknessrose up from the plain and enveloped them. The music of the band hadceased. The leaves of the plane trees hung motionless, but the chill ofthe autumn evening rose about them and made Vezin shiver. There was nosound but the sound of their voices and the occasional soft rustle ofthe girl's dress. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears. Hescarcely realised where he was or what he was doing. Some terrible magicof the imagination drew him deeply down into the tombs of his own being,telling him in no unfaltering voice that her words shadowed forth thetruth. And this simple little French maid, speaking beside him with sostrange authority, he saw curiously alter into quite another being. Ashe stared into her eyes, the picture in his mind grew and lived,dressing itself vividly to his inner vision with a degree of reality hewas compelled to acknowledge. As once before, he saw her tall andstately, moving through wild and broken scenery of forests and mountaincaverns, the glare of flames behind her head and clouds of shiftingsmoke about her feet. Dark leaves encircled her hair, flying loosely inthe wind, and her limbs shone through the merest rags of clothing.Others were about her, too, and ardent eyes on all sides cast deliriousglances upon her, but her own eyes were always for One only, one whomshe held by the hand. For she was leading the dance in some tempestuousorgy to the music of chanting voices, and the dance she led circledabout a great and awful Figure on a throne, brooding over the scenethrough lurid vapours, while innumerable other wild faces and formscrowded furiously about her in the dance. But the one she held by thehand he knew to be himself, and the monstrous shape upon the throne heknew to be her mother.
The vision rose within him, rushing to him down the long years of buriedtime, crying aloud to him with the voice of memory reawakened.... Andthen the scene faded away and he saw the clear circle of the girl's eyesgazing steadfastly into his own, and she became once more the prettylittle daughter of the innkeeper, and he found his voice again.
"And you," he whispered tremblingly--"you child of visions andenchantment, how is it that you so bewitch me that I loved you evenbefore 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, "inthe 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 heartand swept him into sheer ecstasy. To hear that sweet singing voice, andto see those adorable little lips utter such things, upset his balancebeyond all hope of control. He took her in his arms and covered herunresisting face with kisses.
But even while he did so, and while the hot passion swept him, he feltthat she was soft and loathsome, and that her answering kisses stainedhis very soul.... And when, presently, she had freed herself andvanished into the darkness, he stood there, leaning against the wall ina state of collapse, creeping with horror from the touch of her yieldingbody, and inwardly raging at the weakness that he already dimlyrealised must prove his undoing.
And from the shadows of the old buildings into which she disappearedthere 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 herecognised as the almost human wailing of a cat.
V
For a long time Vezin leant there against the wall, alone with hissurging thoughts and emotions. He understood at length that he had donethe one thing necessary to call down upon him the whole force of thisancient Past. For in those passionate kisses he had acknowledged the tieof olden days, and had revived it. And the memory of that softimpalpable caress in the darkness of the inn corridor came back to himwith a shudder. The girl had first mastered him, and then led him to theone act that was necessary for her purpose. He had been waylaid, afterthe 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 orwill, for the sweet, fantastic madness of the whole adventure mounted tohis brain like a spell, and he gloried in the feeling that he wasutterly enchanted and moving in a world so much larger and wilder thanthe 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 intonew perspective, so that their roofs, already glistening with dew,seemed to stretch much higher into the sky than usual, and their gablesand quaint old towers lay far away in its purple reaches.
The cathedral appeared unreal in a silver mist. He moved softly, keepingto the shadows; but the streets were all deserted and very silent; thedoors were closed, the shutters fastened. Not a soul was astir. The hushof night lay over everything; it was like a town of the dead, achurchyard with gigantic and grotesque tombstones.
Wondering where all the busy life of the day had so utterly disappearedto, he made his way to a back door that entered the inn by means of thestables, thinking thus to reach his room unobserved. He reached thecourtyard safely and crossed it by keeping close to the shadow of thewall. He sidled down it, mincing along on tiptoe, just as the old mendid when they entered the _salle a manger_. He was horrified to findhimself doing this instinctively. A strange impulse came to him,catching him somehow in the centre of his body--an impulse to drop uponall fours and run swiftly and silently. He glanced upwards and the ideacame to him to leap up upon his window-sill overhead instead of goinground by the stairs. This occurred to him as the easiest, and mostnatural way. It was like the beginning of some horrible transformationof himself into something else. He was fearfully strung up.
The moon was higher now, and the shadows very dark along the side of thestreet where he moved. He kept among the deepest of them, and reachedthe 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, heopened the door carefully and stole in. Then he saw that the hall wasnot empty. A large dark thing lay against the wall on his left. At firsthe thought it must be household articles. Then it moved, and he thoughtit was an immense cat, distorted in some way by the play of light andshadow. Then it rose straight up before him and he saw that it was theproprietress.
What she had been doing in this position he could only venture adreadful guess, but the moment she stood up and faced him he was awareof some terr
ible dignity clothing her about that instantly recalled thegirl's strange saying that she was a queen. Huge and sinister she stoodthere under the little oil lamp; alone with him in the empty hall. Awestirred in his heart, and the roots of some ancient fear. He felt thathe must bow to her and make some kind of obeisance. The impulse wasfierce and irresistible, as of long habit. He glanced quickly about him.There was no one there. Then he deliberately inclined his head towardher. He bowed.
"Enfin! M'sieur s'est donc decide. C'est bien alors. J'en suiscontente."
Her words came to him sonorously as through a great open space.
Then the great figure came suddenly across the flagged hall at him andseized his trembling hands. Some overpowering force moved with her andcaught him.
"On pourrait faire un p'tit tour ensemble, n'est-ce pas? Nous y allonscette nuit et il faut s'exercer un peu d'avance pour
Three John Silence Stories Page 19
