They counted hours as they counted the golden bubbles, winking with a million eyes along the foam-flecked shore; and the hours ended, and began, and glimmered, iridescent, and ended as bubbles end in a tiny rainbow haze.
There was still fire in the world; it flashed up at her touch and where she chose. A bow strung with the silk of her own hair, an arrow winged like a sea bird and tipped with shell, a line from the silver tendon of a deer, a hook of polished bone – these were the mysteries he learned, and learned them laughing, her silken head bent close to his.
The first night that the bow was wrought and the glossy string attuned, she stole into the moonlit forest to the brook; and there they stood, whispering, listening, and whispering, though neither understood the voice they loved.
In the deeper woods, Kaug, the porcupine, scraped and snuffed. They heard Wabóse, the rabbit, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, loping across dead leaves in the moonlight. Skeé-skah, the wood-duck, sailed past, noiseless, gorgeous as a floating blossom.
Out on the ocean’s placid silver, Shinge-bis, the diver, shook the scented silence with his idle laughter, till Kay-óshk, the gray gull, stirred in his slumber. There came a sudden ripple in the stream, a mellow splash, a soft sound on the sand.
‘Ihó! Behold!’
‘I see nothing.’
The beloved voice was only a wordless melody to her.
‘Ihó! Ta-hinca, the red deer! E-hó! The buck will follow!’
‘Ta-hinca,’ he repeated, notching the arrow.
‘E-tó! Ta-mdóka!’
So he drew the arrow to the head, and the gray gull feathers brushed his ear, and the darkness hummed with the harmony of the singing string.
Thus died Ta-mdóka, the buck deer of seven prongs.
VI
As an apple tossed spinning into the air, so spun the world above the hand that tossed it into space.
And one day in early spring, Sé-só-Kah, the robin, awoke at dawn, and saw a girl at the foot of the blossoming tree holding a babe cradled in the silken sheets of her hair.
At its feeble cry, Kaug, the porcupine, raised his quilled head. Wabóse, the rabbit, sat still with palpitating sides. Kay-óshk, the gray gull, tiptoed along the beach.
Kent knelt with one bronzed arm around them both.
‘Ihó! Inâh!’ whispered the girl, and held the babe up in the rosy flames of dawn.
But Kent trembled as he looked, and his eyes filled. On the pale green moss their shadows lay – three shadows. But the shadow of the babe was white as froth.
Because it was the firstborn son, they named it Chaské; and the girl sang as she cradled it there in the silken vestments of her hair; all day long in the sunshine she sang:
Wâ-wa, wâ-wa, wâ-we – yeá;
Kah-wéen, nee-zhéka Ke-diaus-âi,
Ke-gâh nau-wâi, ne-mé-go S’weén,
Ne-bâun, ne-bâun, ne-dâun-is âis.
E-we wâ-wa, wâ-we – yeá;
E-we wâ-wa, wâ-we – yeá.
Out in the calm ocean, Shinge-bis, the diver, listened, preening his satin breast in silence. In the forest, Ta-hinca, the red deer, turned her delicate head to the wind.
That night Kent thought of the dead, for the first time since he had come to the Key of Grief.
‘Aké-u! aké-u!’ chirped Sé-só-Kah, the robin. But the dead never come again.
‘Beloved, sit close to us,’ whispered the girl, watching his troubled eyes. ‘Ma-cânte maséca.’
But he looked at the babe and its white shadow on the moss, and he only sighed: ‘Ma-cânte maséca, beloved! Death sits watching us across the sea.’
Now for the first time he knew more than the fear of fear; he knew fear. And with fear came grief.
He never before knew that grief lay hidden there in the forest. Now he knew it. Still, that happiness, eternally reborn when two small hands reached up around his neck, when feeble fingers clutched his hand – that happiness that Sé-só-Kah understood, chirping to his brooding mate – that Ta-mdóka knew, licking his dappled fawns – that happiness gave him heart to meet grief calmly, in dreams or in the forest depths, and it helped him to look into the hollow eyes of fear.
He often thought of the camp now; of Bates, his blanket mate; of Dyce, whose wrist he had broken with a blow; of Tully, whose brother he had shot. He even seemed to hear the shot, the sudden report among the hemlocks; again he saw the haze of smoke, he caught a glimpse of a tall form falling through the bushes.
He remembered every minute incident of the trial: Bates’s hand laid on his shoulder; Tully, red-bearded and wild-eyed, demanding his death; while Dyce spat and spat and smoked and kicked at the blackened log-ends projecting from the fire. He remembered, too, the verdict, and Tully’s terrible laugh; and the new jute rope that they stripped off the market-sealed gum packs.
He thought of these things, sometimes wading out on the shoals, shell-tipped fish spear poised: at such times he would miss his fish. He thought of it sometimes when he knelt by the forest stream listening for Ta-hinca’s splash among the cresses: at such moments the feathered shaft whistled far from the mark, and Ta-mdóka stamped and snorted till even the white fisher, stretched on a rotting log, flattened his whiskers and stole away into the forest’s blackest depths.
When the child was a year old, hour for hour notched at sunset and sunrise, it prattled with the birds, and called to Ne-Kâ, the wild goose, who called again to the child from the sky: ‘Northward! northward, beloved!’
When winter came – there is no frost on the Island of Grief – Ne-Kâ, the wild goose, passing high in the clouds, called: ‘Southward! southward, beloved!’ And the child answered in a soft whisper of an unknown tongue, till the mother shivered, and covered it with her silken hair.
‘O beloved!’ said the girl, ‘Chaské calls to all things living – to Kaug, the porcupine, to Wabóse, to Kay-óshk, the gray gull – he calls, and they understand.’
Kent bent and looked into her eyes.
‘Hush, beloved; it is not that I fear.’
‘Then what, beloved?’
‘His shadow. It is white as surf foam. And at night – I – I have seen—’
‘Oh, what?’
‘The air about him aglow like a pale rose.’
‘Ma cânté maséca. The earth alone lasts. I speak as one dying – I know, O beloved!’
Her voice died away like a summer wind.
‘Beloved!’ he cried.
But there before him she was changing; the air grew misty, and her hair wavered like shreds of fog, and her slender form swayed, and faded, and swerved, like the mist above a pond.
In her arms the babe was a figure of mist, rosy, vague as a breath on a mirror.
‘The earth alone lasts. Inâh! It is the end, O beloved!’
The words came from the mist – a mist as formless as the ether – a mist that drove in and crowded him, that came from the sea, from the clouds from the earth at his feet. Faint with terror, he staggered forward calling, ‘Beloved! And thou, Chaské, O beloved! Aké u! Aké u!’
Far out at sea a rosy star glimmered an instant in the mist and went out.
A sea bird screamed, soaring over the waste of fog-smothered waters. Again he saw the rosy star; it came nearer; its reflection glimmered in the water.
‘Chaské!’ he cried.
He heard a voice, dull in the choking mist.
‘O beloved, I am here!’ he called again.
There was a sound on the shoal, a flicker in the fog, the flare of a torch, a face white, livid, terrible – the face of the dead.
He fell upon his knees; he closed his eyes and opened them. Tully stood beside him with a coil of rope.
Ihó! Behold the end! The earth alone lasts. The sand, the opal wave on the golden beach, the sea of sapphire, the dusted starlight, the wind, and love, shall die. Death also shall die, and lie on the shores of the skies like the bleached skull there on the Key to Grief, polished, empty, with, its teeth embedded in the sand.
THE
MESSENGER
I
‘The bullet entered here,’ said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle finger over a smooth hole exactly in the centre of the forehead.
I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece.
The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first with his middle finger, then with his thumb.
‘Let me see the skull again,’ said I.
Max Fortin picked it up from the sod. ‘It’s like all the others,’ he observed. I nodded, without offering to take it from him. After a moment he thoughtfully replaced it upon the grass at my feet.
‘It’s like all the others,’ he repeated, wiping his glasses on his handkerchief. ‘I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so I brought this over from the gravel pit. The men from Bannalec are digging yet. They ought to stop.’
‘How many skulls are there altogether?’ I inquired.
‘They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the list. They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan’s wheat field. The men are at work yet. Le Bihan is going to stop them.’
‘Let’s go over,’ said I; and I picked up my gun and started across the cliffs, Fortin on one side, Mome on the other.
‘Who has the list?’ I asked, lighting my pipe. ‘You say there is a list?’
‘The list was found rolled up in a brass cylinder,’ said the little chemist. He added, ‘You should not smoke here. You know that if a single spark drifted into the wheat—’
‘Ah, but I have a cover to my pipe,’ said I, smiling.
Fortin watched me as I closed the pepper-box arrangement over the glowing bowl of the pipe. And then he continued:
‘The list was made out on thick yellow paper; the brass tube has preserved it. It is as fresh today as it was in 1760. You shall see it.’
‘Is that the date?’
‘The list is dated “April, 1760”. The Brigadier Durand has it. It is not written in French.’
‘Not written in French!’ I exclaimed.
‘No,’ replied Fortin solemnly, ‘it is written in Breton.’
‘But,’ I protested, ‘the Breton language was never written or printed in 1760.’
‘Except by priests,’ said the chemist.
‘I have heard of but one priest who ever wrote the Breton language,’ I began.
Fortin stole a glance at my face.
‘You mean – the Black Priest?’ he asked.
I nodded.
Fortin opened his mouth to speak again, hesitated, and finally shut his teeth obstinately over the wheat stem that he was chewing.
‘And the Black Priest?’ I suggested encouragingly. But I knew it was useless; for it is easier to move the stars from their courses than to make an obstinate Breton talk. We walked on for a minute or two in silence.
‘Where is the Brigadier Durand?’ I asked, motioning Mome to come out of the wheat, which he was trampling as though it was heather. As I spoke we came in sight of the farther edge of the wheat field and the dark, wet mass of cliffs beyond.
‘Durand is down there – you can see him; he stands just behind the Mayor of St Gildas.’
‘I see,’ said I; and we struck straight down, following a sun-baked cattle path across the heather.
When we reached the edge of the wheat field, Le Bihan, the Mayor of St Gildas, called to me, and I tucked my gun under my arm and skirted the wheat to where he stood.
‘Thirty-eight skulls,’ he said in his thin, high-pitched voice; ‘there is but one more, and I am opposed to further search. I suppose Fortin told you?’
I shook hands with him, and returned the salute of the Brigadier Durand.
‘I am opposed to further search,’ repeated Le Bihan, nervously picking at the mass of silver buttons which covered the front of his velvet and broadcloth jacket like a breastplate of scale armor.
Durand pursed up his lips, twisted his tremendous moustache, and hooked his thumbs in his sabre belt.
‘As for me,’ he said, ‘I am in favour of further search.’
‘Further search for what – for the thirty-ninth skull?’ I asked.
Le Bihan nodded. Durand frowned at the sunlit sea, rocking like a bowl of molten gold from the cliffs to the horizon. I followed his eyes. On the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea, sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised towards heaven.
‘Where is that list, Durand?’ I asked.
The gendarme rummaged in his despatch pouch and produced a brass cylinder about a foot long. Very gravely he unscrewed the head and dumped out a scroll of thick yellow paper closely covered with writing on both sides. At a nod from Le Bihan he handed me the scroll. But I could make nothing of the coarse writing, now faded to a dull brown.
‘Come, come, Le Bihan,’ I said impatiently, ‘translate it, won’t you? You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems.’
Le Bihan went to the edge of the pit where the three Bannalec men were digging, gave an order or two in Breton, and turned to me.
As I came to the edge of the pit the Bannalec men were removing a square piece of sail-cloth from what appeared to be a pile of cobblestones.
‘Look!’ said Le Bihan shrilly. I looked. The pile below was a heap of skulls. After a moment I clambered down the gravel sides of the pit and walked over to the men of Bannalec. They saluted me gravely, leaning on their picks and shovels, and wiping their sweating faces with sunburned hands.
‘How many?’ said I in Breton.
‘Thirty-eight,’ they replied.
I glanced around. Beyond the heap of skulls lay two piles of human bones. Beside these was a mound of broken, rusted bits of iron and steel. Looking closer, I saw that this mound was composed of rusty bayonets, sabre blades, scythe blades, with here and there a tarnished buckle attached to a bit of leather as hard as iron.
I picked up a couple of buttons and a belt plate. The buttons bore the royal arms of England; the belt plate was emblazoned with the English arms, and also with the number ‘27’.
‘I have heard my grandfather speak of the terrible English regiment, the 27th Foot, which landed and stormed the fort up there,’ said one of the Bannalec men.
‘Oh!’ said I; ‘then these are the bones of English soldiers?’
‘Yes,’ said the men of Bannalec.
Le Bihan was calling to me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the excavation.
‘Well,’ said I, trying to prevent Mome from leaping up and licking my face as I emerged from the pit, ‘I suppose you know what these bones are. What are you going to do with them?’
‘There was a man,’ said Le Bihan angrily, ‘an Englishman, who passed here in a dogcart on his way to Quimper about an hour ago, and what do you suppose he wished to do?’
‘Buy the relics?’ I asked, smiling.
‘Exactly – the pig!’ piped the Mayor of St Gildas. ‘Jean Marie Tregunc, who found the bones, was standing there where Max Fortin stands, and do you know what he answered? He spat upon the ground, and said, “Pig of an Englishman, do you take me for a desecrator of graves?”’
I knew Tregunc, a sober, blue-eyed Breton, who lived from one year’s end to the other without being able to afford a single bit of meat for a meal.
‘How much did the Englishman offer Tregunc?’ I asked.
‘Two hundred francs for the skulls alone.’
I thought of the relic hunters and the relic buyers on the battlefields of our civil war.
‘Seventeen hundred and sixty is long ago,’ I said.
‘Respect for the dead can never die,’ said Fortin.
‘And the English soldiers came here to kill your fathers and burn your homes,’ I continued.
‘They were murderers and thieves, but – they are dead,’ said Tregunc, coming up from the beach below, his long sea rake balanced on his dripping jersey.
‘How m
uch do you earn every year, Jean Marie?’ I asked, turning to shake hands with him.
‘Two hundred and twenty francs, monsieur.’
‘Forty-five dollars a year,’ I said. ‘Bah! You are worth more, Jean. Will you take care of my garden for me? My wife wished me to ask you. I think it would be worth one hundred francs a month to you and to me. Come on, Le Bihan – come along, Fortin – and you, Durand. I want somebody to translate that list into French for me.’
Tregunc stood gazing at me, his blue eyes dilated.
‘You may begin at once,’ I said, smiling, ‘if the salary suits you?’
‘It suits,’ said Tregunc, fumbling for his pipe in a silly way that annoyed Le Bihan.
‘Then go and begin your work,’ cried the mayor impatiently; and Tregunc started across the moors towards St Gildas, taking off his velvet-ribboned cap to me and gripping his sea rake very hard.
‘You offer him more than my salary,’ said the mayor, after a moment’s contemplation of his silver buttons.
‘Pooh!’ said I, ‘what do you do for your salary except play dominoes with Max Fortin at the Groix Inn?’
Le Bihan turned red, but Durand rattled his sabre and winked at Max Fortin, and I slipped my arm through the arm of the sulky magistrate, laughing.
‘There’s a shady spot under the cliff,’ I said; ‘come on, Le Bihan, and read me what is in the scroll.’
In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.
The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his moustache into needlelike points. Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan, the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and tucking it under his arm.
‘First of all,’ he began in a shrill voice, ‘I am going to light my pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about the attack on the fort yonder. My father told me; his father told him.’
He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls. Then he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay. To fill such a pipe requires ten minutes’ close attention. To smoke it to a finish takes but four puffs. It is very Breton, this Breton pipe. It is the crystallization of everything Breton.
Out of the Dark Page 18
