The expression was not unkind or even cold; haughtiness and pride might indeed be read in the high-bred features, shell-like sensitive nostrils, and short upper lip; while the exquisite symmetry and perfect proportions of his figure showed suppleness and steel-like strength: for the rest, the face betokened, save for the flush upon the cheeks, only great sadness.
The eyes were fixed upon those of Girod, and he felt their soft, subtle, intense light penetrate into every nook and cranny of his soul and being. This terrible Thirteenth simply stood and gazed upon the priest, as the worshippers grew more wild, more blasphemous, more cruel.
The abbé could think of nothing but the face before him, and the great desolation that lay folded over it as a veil. He could think of no prayer, although he could remember there were prayers.
Was this Despair—the Despair of a man drowning in sight of land—being shed into him from the sad blue eyes? Was it Despair or was it Death?
Ah no, not Death!—Death was peaceful, and this was violent and passionate.
Was there no refuge, no mercy, no salvation anywhere? Perhaps, nay, surely; but while those sad blue eyes still gazed upon him, the sadness, as it seemed to him, intensifying every moment, he could not remember where to seek for and where to find such refuge, such mercy, such salvation. He could not remember, and yet he could not entirely forget. He felt that help would come to him if he sought it, and yet he could hardly tell how to seek it.
Moreover, by degrees the blue eyes—it seemed as if their color, their great blueness, had some fearful power—began pouring into him some more hideous pleasure. It was the ecstasy of great pain becoming a delight, the ecstasy of being beyond all hope, and of being thus enabled to look with scorn upon the Author of hope. And all the while the blue eyes still gazed sadly, with a soft smile breathing overwhelming despair upon him.
Girod knew that in another moment he would not sink, faint, or fall, but that he would,—oh! Much worse!—he would smile!
At this very instant a name—a familiar name, and one which the infernal worshippers had made frequent use of, but which he had never remarked before—struck his ear: the name of Christ.
Where had he heard it? He could not tell. It was the name of a young man; he could remember that and nothing more.
Again the name sounded, “Christ.”
There was another word like Christ, which seemed at some time to have brought an idea first of great suffering and then of great peace.
Ay, peace, but no pleasure. No delight like this shed from those marvelous blue eyes.
Again the name sounded, “Christ.”
Ah! the other word was cross—croix—he remembered now; a long thing with a short thing across it.
Was it that as he thought of these things the charm of the blue eyes and their great sadness lessened in intensity? We dare not say; but as some faint conception of what a cross was flitted through the abbé’s brain, although he could think of no prayer—nay, of no distinct use of this cross—he drew his right hand slowly up, for it was pinioned as by paralysis to his side, and feebly and half mechanically made the sign across his breast.
The vision vanished.
The men adoring ceased their clamor and lay crouched up one against another, as if some strong electric power had been taken from them and great weakness had succeeded, while, at the same time, the throbbing of the thousand voiceless harps was hushed.
The pause lasted but for a moment, and then the men rose, stumbling, trembling, and with loosened hands, and stood feebly gazing at the abbé, who felt faint and exhausted, and heeded them not. With extraordinary presence of mind the prince walked quickly up to him, pushed him out of the door by which they had entered, followed him, and locked the door behind them, thus precluding the possibility of being immediately pursued by the others.
Once in the adjoining room, the abbé and Pomerantseff paused for an instant to recover breath, for the swiftness of their flight had exhausted them, worn out as they both were mentally and physically; but during this brief interval the prince, who appeared to be retaining his presence of mind by a purely mechanical effort, carefully replaced over his friend’s eyes the bandage which the abbé still held tightly grasped in his hand. Then he led him on, and it was not till the cold air struck them that they noticed that they had left their hats behind.
“N’importe!” muttered Pomerantseff. “It would be dangerous to return; “and hurrying the abbé into the carriage which awaited them, he bade the coachman speed them away—“au grand galop!”
Not a word was spoken; the abbé lay back as one in a swoon, and heeded nothing until he felt the carriage stop, and the prince uncovered his eyes and told him he had reached home; then he alighted in silence, and passed into his house without a word.
How he reached his apartment he never knew; but the following morning found him raging with fever, and delirious.
When he had sufficiently recovered, after the lapse of a few days, to admit of his reading the numerous letters awaiting his attention, one was put into his hand which had been brought on the second night after the one of the memorable séance.
It ran as follows:
“Jockey Club, January 26, 18—
“Mon Cher Abbé,—I am afraid our little adventure was too much for you—in fact, I myself was very unwell all yesterday, and nothing but a Turkish bath has pulled me together. I can hardly wonder at this, however, for I have never in my life been present at so powerful a séance, and you may comfort yourself with the reflection that Sa Majesté has never honored anyone with his presence for so long a space of time before.
“Never fear, mon cher, about your illness. It is purely nervous exhaustion, and you will be well soon; but such evenings must not often be indulged in if you are not desirous of shortening your life. I shall hope to meet you at Mme. de Metternich’s on Monday.—Tout à vous,
“Pomerantseff.”
Whether or no Girod was sufficiently recovered to meet his friend at the Austrian Embassy on the evening named we do not know, nor does it concern us; but he is certainly enjoying excellent health now, and is no less charming and amusing than before his extraordinary adventure.
Such is the true story of a meeting with the devil in Paris not many years ago—a story true in every particular, as can be easily proved by a direct application to any of the persons concerned in it, for they are all living still.
The key to the enigma we cannot find, for we certainly do not put faith in any one of the theories of spiritualists; but that an apparition, such as we have described, did appear in the way and under the circumstances we have related is a fact, and we must leave the satisfactory solution of the difficulty to more profound psychologists than ourselves.
[1] I have now lying before me one among the very numerous letters which the great poet did me the honour to address to me, bearing date 20th October 1879, in which occur the following words: “…Je ne sais pas l’anglais mais vôtre lettre noble et charmante m’emeut et je me ferai lire très prochainement vôtre article ou je retrouverai la délicatesse de vôtre esprit et l’élévation de vôtre talent,” and so forth and so on. This will, I hope, put an end to the controversy as to whether or not the author of “William Shakespeare” understood English, for I am quite ready to produce the letter in question.—The Author.
CAN SUCH BEAUTY BE? by Jerome Bixby
Originally published in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, September 1953.
On March 11, 1929, while tottering barefoot over a vast expanse of white-hot coals in everlasting efforts to reach a sparkling stream of clear, cold water that really wasn’t there, the damned soul of Mrs. Elbert M. Trumbull abruptly stiffened in its tracks and turned its eyes upward. A look of wonder and expectation replaced that of hopeless suffering. The soul emitted a sound that unmistakably smacked of glee, and shot upward, seeming to dwindle in siz
e rather more than could be accounted for by its rapid ascent to, and through, the roof of Hell.
The demon who reported the matter to His Illustrious Foulness was understandably incoherent. Damned souls simply did not fly away through the roof of Hell. They stayed, and screamed, and suffered endlessly. The thing was without precedent—and Hell was in a bad way if this set one now.
* * * *
His Illustrious Foulness blew his stack. He swore and stamped and kicked his bronze throne. He committed the reporting demon, and all those fiends and demons who had been on duty at the Area of Torment in question, to six months in solitary, with only holy water to drink and a Bible for recreation. They left, wailing.
Then he put in a call to Heaven.
“Just what,” he roared, the instant the connection was made, “is going on up there? One of my souls just escaped, and the circumstances reek of reincarnation! It was observed to shrink to baby-size, just as it flew through the roof. Damn it all, you know it’s strictly against policy for any of my souls to be reincarnated!”
The cherubim at the Heavenly Switchboard put his call through to the Recording Angel, who claimed no knowledge of the matter. The Devil’s strong language soon caused the Angel to hang up in a huff, after first informing His Illustrious Foulness that no slightest attempt would conceivably ever be made by anyone in Heaven to have reincarnated any soul from the nether realm; that such lost souls scarcely qualified for the honor, and that in any case no one named Mrs. Elbert M. Trumbull was or ever had been scheduled for it; that the Devil had blessed well better look around for another explanation.
Grumbling, the Devil ordered a triple-check on the incident, which revealed nothing. The soul had simply vanished—perhaps Earthward, to resume mortal form, though, on the basis of the evidence, reincarnation seemed not to be the answer. At any rate, there was no possibility of tracing the soul.
If it had been reincarnated, then it was quite beyond grasp till the incarnation was over; while if the Recording Angel had been leveling and the soul had not been reincarnated, then not even God knew where it could be, and certainly the Devil could not bother scouring the Universe for it.
Snarling, he took the obvious step of rendering Hell even more escape-proof than it had been—by doubling the guards and turning up the fires along the boundaries—and tried to forget the whole thing.
* * * *
Months passed. The offending demons and fiends were released from solitary, with time off for bad behavior. They returned to their guard duties, which you may be sure they performed with utmost care, wanting no more of that holy water. They were seen to swizzle extraordinary amounts of lava during the next few weeks, as if wishing to rid themselves of a good taste.
Years passed. Souls came and sorrowfully entered into eternal torment. Demons howled, and thrust red-hot pitchforks at derrieres. Fires flamed, and sulphur stank.
The Devil sat his throne and ruled his realm with magnificent cruelty, and amused himself off-hours by researching a project that had interested him for some centuries—that of traveling through Time.
In the back of his infernal mind was the notion of someday returning to the Original Battleground, forearmed with hindsight as it were, licking the pants off the Heavenly Hosts and pulling a switch on history.
On July 2, 1953, something happened that had not happened for a Hell of a long time: a mortal drew the right sort of star, inside the right sort of circle, with the right sort of chalk, and said the right sort of gobbledegook.
His Illustrious Foulness was plucked like a guppy from the middle of an important ways-and-means conference and whisked up to the mortal plane to consult there with some brave mortal who evidently had reason to barter its soul.
* * * *
Nighttime, fog, a glistening London street. Big Ben struck eleven.
“Good Heavens,” a young man’s voice said. “Can such beauty be?” The yellow glow of the streetlight, made hazy by the fog, showed that she was indeed beautiful. Also, hardly of the highest intellectual caliber. Her eyes, as she turned them in the direction of the young man, had all the depth and animation of a wax-work Elizabeth’s.
“Was you addressin’ me, guvnor?” she said.
“Indeed I was… Please forgive me, miss—I know it’s not proper, but I spoke without thinking. Oh, I do beg your pardon, but you are the loveliest woman I have ever seen. Rome, Cairo, Vienna, Paris—never have I seen such exquisite beauty!”
Her beautiful face broke into a beautiful smile, a discouragingly suspicious smile, an encouragingly stupid smile. “Ga’rn. You toffs ’re all alike, comin’ around with your fancy talk and tryin’ to get a girl to forget her good ways. Ga’rn, or I’ll yell f’r a bobby.”
The young man, whose name was Peter Trumbull—of the Boston and Long Island Trumbulls, filthy rich—said, “Oh, no, I beg of you. Don’t do that. I have no intention of bothering you, really. I’ll go on, as you wish, in just a moment. I assure you that I am not the sort of man who goes around at night accosting strange young ladies…especially young ladies of such obvious breeding and respectability as yourself, if I may say so.”
The stupid, beautiful smile.
“Well-l-l, now, I guess you may, at that. Now, off with you, or—”
“Oh, but first let me really look at you. Please—one full picture of your loveliness to take away with me into the night. Come here, child—here below the streetlight.”
Taking her elbows, Peter Trumbull steered her into the illumination. He peered into her face, noted the full and wonderfully formed lips, the skin smooth as new cream, the blue eyes with their luscious tones of gray and green, the soft yellow hair upon which trembled tiny beads of moisture caught from the fog. With practiced eye he analyzed the expression on her face right down to the last millimetrical nuance. It was pleased, it was flattered—and still wary. And without a doubt she hadn’t a brain in her head. Not much will power, either. She had come along readily enough to stand under the light. Without being obvious about it, he dropped his eyes, and saw a bosom so full and shapely, even under her rather shabby coat, as to curl his fingers into iron hooks.
Now he closed his eyes, as if transported by the vision of her beauty. Apparently drawn by magnets more potent than any mortal male could resist, his hands touched her cheeks, pressed tenderly.
“My Heavens,” he whispered, and with his eyes still shut, swayed a little. “You’re ten times lovelier than I thought. You remind me of my dear old mother—none was lovelier than she—though I’ve only seen her portraits, poor thing, she departed this world as I entered. Oh, would I could paint a portrait—were a painter, a sculptor, even a photographer. Seized with inspiration as I am at this divine moment, I would take you to my flat and—”
“Now, guvnor,” she said, cheeks moving like satin beneath his thrilled fingertips. “I can still ’oiler for that bobby, you know—”
“Oh, no. I would paint you, my child, and, as I said, seized with inspiration as I am, I’m sure it would be one of the masterpieces of all time!”
At last she simpered. About time, he thought.
“Well, now, be that as it may, guvnor, I really oughter go—”
“Just another moment,” he said, pressing the cheeks lightly and noting with satisfaction that she stayed…these dumb ones were usually good hypnotics. “Alas, my dear, I am not an artist, though God knows my father saw to it that I had enough instruction to make me a dozen. I am only—” he spread his hands eloquently, brought them back instantly to her cheeks—“only a man. A lonely man, in this, strange land, on this strange street—a man who in this brief moment has been swept, nay, borne aloft! Into an enchanted fairyland, where the fog and the dark are no more, before the shining sun of your loveliness.”
The smile again.
A moment’s silence.
“You’re Americ
an, ain’t you? You talk like one.”
She’d ventured a word! She’ll give, he thought.
“Yes,” he said. “Over on a short stay, and now that I’ve seen you…an unforgettable one.”
Her name, she told him over tea and cakes in a joint off the Circus, was Mary Dingle. He told her that it was a beautiful name, as singularly beautiful as its owner. The smile. She lived southside, but had been born in Liverpool. How had Liverpool allowed such a fair flower to escape? The smile. She worked in a shoe factory. What! Not an actress, a showgirl…at the very least a model? The smile.
When they got to the door of his flat, she hung back a little, the smile now uncertain, eyes a little glazed by his flow of flattery.
But she simply must come in and meet Sis. It would be dreadfully disappointing for Sis to hear all about such an interesting and exciting person and never get to meet her. The smile.
Sis wasn’t home, naturally. Naturally…Sis didn’t exist.
Wouldn’t Mary wait to meet Sis?… Sis must have just stepped out for a second.
Well-l-l…s’pose so.
A drink in the meantime?
Another?
Another?
Let’s relax on the couch.
Another?
Oh, come, let’s do the bottle.
You really remind me most amazingly of my mother…how beautiful she was. How beautiful you are. Poor dear mother, marrying senile old father. Must’ve been after his money, you know. Really a wonder he ever manufactured me, at his age. Don’t you think it must be frightful to be senile?
He had to explain what senile meant, as he’d hoped he might. This he did in a roundabout fashion, beginning with youth and its clean and wholesome glories of the flesh, so stifled by meaningless mores, and ending with senility and all one had lost in that abysmal and inevitable state, and how short life was, really, and live while you may.
The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK ®: 25 Modern and Classic Tales Page 32
