Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I am looking,” said I, “for the crest.”

  “The crest, dear? It is a priest’s head with an arrow-shaped mark on the forehead, on a field — —”

  I sat up and stared at my wife.

  “Dick, whatever is the matter?” she smiled. “The story is there in that book. Do you care to read it? No? Shall I tell it to you? Well, then: It happened in the third crusade. There was a monk whom men called the Black Priest. He turned apostate, and sold himself to the enemies of Christ. A Sieur de Trevec burst into the Saracen camp, at the head of only one hundred lances, and carried the Black Priest away out of the very midst of their army.”

  “So that is how you come by the crest,” I said quietly; but I thought of the branded skull in the gravel pit, and wondered.

  “Yes,” said Lys. “The Sieur de Trevec cut the Black Priest’s head off, but first he branded him with an arrow mark on the forehead. The book says it was a pious action, and the Sieur de Trevec got great merit by it. But I think it was cruel, the branding,” she sighed.

  “Did you ever hear of any other Black Priest?”

  “Yes. There was one in the last century, here in St. Gildas. He cast a white shadow in the sun. He wrote in the Breton language. Chronicles, too, I believe. I never saw them. His name was the same as that of the old chronicler, and of the other priest, Jacques Sorgue. Some said he was a lineal descendant of the traitor. Of course the first Black Priest was bad enough for anything. But if he did have a child, it need not have been the ancestor of the last Jacques Sorgue. They say this one was a holy man. They say he was so good he was not allowed to die, but was caught up to heaven one day,” added Lys, with believing eyes.

  I smiled.

  “But he disappeared,” persisted Lys.

  “I’m afraid his journey was in another direction,” I said jestingly, and thoughtlessly told her the story of the morning. I had utterly forgotten the masked man at her window, but before I finished I remembered him fast enough, and realized what I had done as I saw her face whiten.

  “Lys,” I urged tenderly, “that was only some clumsy clown’s trick. You said so yourself. You are not superstitious, my dear?”

  Her eyes were on mine. She slowly drew the little gold cross from her bosom and kissed it. But her lips trembled as they pressed the symbol of faith.

  II.

  About nine o’clock the next morning I walked into the Groix Inn and sat down at the long discoloured oaken table, nodding goodday to Marianne Bruyere, who in turn bobbed her white coiffe at me.

  “My clever Bannalec maid,” said I, “what is good for a stirrup-cup at the Groix Inn?”

  “Schist?” she inquired in Breton.

  “With a dash of red wine, then,” I replied.

  She brought the delicious Quimperlé cider, and I poured a little Bordeaux into it. Marianne watched me with laughing black eyes.

  “What makes your cheeks so red, Marianne?” I asked. “Has Jean Marie been here?”

  “We are to be married, Monsieur Darrel,” she laughed.

  “Ah! Since when has Jean Marie Tregunc lost his head?”

  “His head? Oh, Monsieur Darrel — his heart, you mean!”

  “So I do,” said I. “Jean Marie is a practical fellow.”

  “It is all due to your kindness — —” began the girl, but I raised my hand and held up the glass.

  “It’s due to himself. To your happiness, Marianne;” and I took a hearty draught of the schist. “Now,” said I, “tell me where I can find Le Bihan and Max Fortin.”

  “Monsieur Le Bihan and Monsieur Fortin are above in the broad room. I believe they are examining the Red Admiral’s effects.”

  “To send them to Paris? Oh, I know. May I go up, Marianne?”

  “And God go with you,” smiled the girl.

  “When I knocked at the door of the broad room above little Max Fortin opened it. Dust covered his spectacles and nose; his hat, with the tiny velvet ribbons fluttering, was all awry.

  “Come in, Monsieur Darrel,” he said; “the mayor and I are packing up the effects of the Purple Emperor and of the poor Red Admiral.”

  “The collections?” I asked, entering the room. “You must be very careful in packing those butterfly cases; the slightest jar might break wings and antenna, you know.”

  Le Bihan shook hands with me and pointed to the great pile of boxes.

  “They’re all cork lined,” he said, “but Fortin and I are putting felt around each box. The Entomological Society of Paris pays the freight.”

  The combined collections of the Red Admiral and the Purple Emperor made a magnificent display.

  I lifted and inspected case after case set with gorgeous butterflies and moths, each specimen carefully labelled with the name in Latin. There were cases filled with crimson tiger moths all aflame with colour; cases devoted to the common yellow butterflies; symphonies in orange and pale yellow; cases of soft gray and dun-coloured sphinx moths; and cases of garish nettle-bred butterflies of the numerous family of Vanessa.

  All alone in a great case by itself was pinned the purple emperor, the Apatura Iris, that fatal specimen that had given the Purple Emperor his name and quietus.

  I remembered the butterfly, and stood looking at it with bent eyebrows.

  Le Bihan glanced up from the floor where he was nailing down the lid of a box full of cases.

  “It is settled, then,” said he, “that madame, your wife, gives the Purple Emperor’s entire collection to the city of Paris?”

  I nodded.

  “Without accepting anything for it?”

  “It is a gift,” I said.

  “Including the purple emperor there in the case? That butterfly is worth a great deal of money,” persisted Le Bihan.

  “You don’t suppose that we would wish to sell that specimen, do you?” I answered a trifle sharply.

  “If I were you I should destroy it,” said the mayor in his high-pitched voice.

  “That would he nonsense,” said I— “like your burying the brass cylinder and scroll yesterday.”

  “It was not nonsense,” said Le Bihan doggedly, “and I should prefer not to discuss the subject of the scroll.”

  I looked at Max Fortin, who immediately avoided my eyes.

  “You are a pair of superstitious old women,” said I, digging my hands into my pockets; “you swallow every nursery tale that is invented.”

  “What of it?” said Le Bihan sulkily; “there’s more truth than lies in most of ‘em.”

  “Oh!” I sneered, “does the Mayor of St. Gildas and St. Julien believe in the Loup-garou?”

  “No, not in the Loup-garou.”

  “In what, then — Jeanne-la-Flamme?”

  “That,” said Le Bihan with conviction, “is history.”

  “The devil it is!” said I; “and perhaps, monsieur the mayor, your faith in giants is unimpaired?”

  “There were giants — everybody knows it,” growled Max Fortin.

  “And you a chemist!” I observed scornfully.

  “Listen, Monsieur Darrel,” squeaked Le Bihan; “you know yourself that the Purple Emperor was a scientific man. Now suppose I should tell you that he always refused to include in his collection a Death’s Messenger?”

  “A what?” I exclaimed.

  “You know what I mean — that moth that flies by night; some call it the Death’s Head, but in St. Gildas we call it ‘Death’s Messenger.’”

  “Oh!” said I, “you mean that big sphinx moth that is commonly known as the ‘death’s-head moth.’ Why the mischief should the people here call it death’s messenger?”

  “For hundreds of years it has been known as death’s messenger in St. Gildas,” said Max Fortin. “Even Froissart speaks of it in his commentaries on Jacques Sorgue’s Chronicles. The book is in your library.”

  “Sorgue? And who was Jacques Sorgue? I never read his book.”

  “Jacques Sorgue was the son of some unfrocked priest — I forget. It was during the crusades.”


  “Good Heavens!” I burst out, “I’ve been hearing of nothing but crusades and priests and death and sorcery ever since I kicked that skull into the gravel pit, and I am tired of it, I tell you frankly. One would think we lived in the dark ages. Do you know what year of our Lord it is, Le Bihan?”

  “Eighteen hundred and ninety-six,” replied the mayor.

  “And yet you two hulking men are afraid of a death’s-head moth.”

  “I don’t care to have one fly into the window,” said Max Fortin; “it means evil to the house and the people in it.”

  “God alone knows why he marked one of his creatures with a yellow death’s head on the back,” observed Le Bihan piously, “but I take it that he meant it as a warning; and I propose to profit by it,” he added triumphantly.

  “See here, Le Bihan,” I said; “by a stretch of imagination one can make out a skull on the thorax of a certain big sphinx moth. What of it?”

  “It is a bad thing to touch,” said the mayor, wagging his head.

  “It squeaks when handled,” added Max Fortin.

  “Some creatures squeak all the time,” I observed, looking hard at Le Bihan.

  “Pigs,” added the mayor.

  “Yes, and asses,” I replied. “Listen, Le Bihan: do you mean to tell me that you saw that skull roll uphill yesterday?”

  The mayor shut his mouth tightly and picked up his hammer.

  “Don’t be obstinate,” I said; “I asked you a question.”

  “And I refuse to answer,” snapped Le Bihan. “Fortin saw what I saw; let him talk about it.”

  I looked searchingly at the little chemist.

  “I don’t say that I saw it actually roll up out of the pit, all by itself,” said Fortin with a shiver, “but — but then, how did it come up out of the pit, if it didn’t roll up all by itself?”

  “It didn’t come up at all; that was a yellow cobblestone that you mistook for the skull again,” I replied. “You were nervous, Max.”

  “A — a very curious cobblestone, Monsieur Darrel,” said Fortin.

  “I also was a victim to the same hallucination,” I continued, “and I regret to say that I took the trouble to roll two innocent cobble stones into the gravel pit, imagining each time that it was the skull I was rolling.”

  “It was,” observed Le Bihan with a morose shrug.

  “It just shows,” said I, ignoring the mayor’s remark, “how easy it is to fix up a train of coincidences so that the result seems to savour of the supernatural. Now, last night my wife imagined that she saw a priest in a mask peer in at her window — —”

  Fortin and Le Bihan scrambled hastily from their knees, dropping hammer and nails.

  “W-h-a-t — what’s that?” demanded the mayor.

  I repeated what I had said. Max Fortin turned livid.

  “My God!” muttered Le Bihan, “the Black Priest is in St. Gildas!”

  “D-don’t you — you know the old proph ecy?” stammered Fortin; “Froissart quotes it from Jacques Sorgue:

  “When the Black Priest rises from the dead,

  St. Gildas folk shall shriek in bed;

  When the Black Priest rises from his grave,

  May the good God St. Gildas save!”

  “Aristide Le Bihan,” I said angrily, “and you, Max Fortin, I’ve got enough of this nonsense! Some foolish lout from Bannalec has been in St. Gildas playing tricks to frighten old fools like you. If you have nothing better to talk about than nursery legends I’ll wait until you come to your senses. Good-morning.” And I walked out, more disturbed than I cared to acknowledge to myself.

  The day had become misty and overcast.

  Heavy, wet clouds hung in the east. I heard the surf thundering against the cliffs, and the gray gulls squealed as they tossed and turned high in the sky. The tide was creeping across the river sands, higher, higher, and I saw the seaweed floating on the beach, and the lançons springing from the foam, silvery thread like flashes in the gloom. Curlew were flying up the river in twos and threes; the timid sea swallows skimmed across the moors toward some quiet, lonely pool, safe from the coming tempest. In every hedge field birds were gathering, huddling together, twittering restlessly.

  When I reached the cliffs I sat down, resting my chin on my clenched hands. Already a vast curtain of rain, sweeping across the ocean miles away, hid the island of Groix. To the east, behind the white semaphore on the hills, black clouds crowded up over the horizon. After a little the thunder boomed, dull, distant, and slender skeins of lightning unravelled across the crest of the coming storm. Under the cliff at my feet the surf rushed foaming over the shore, and the lançons jumped and skipped and quivered until they seemed to be but the reflections of the meshed lightning. I turned to the east. It was raining over Groix, it was raining at Sainte Barbe, it was raining now at the semaphore. High in the storm whirl a few gulls pitched; a nearer cloud trailed veils of rain in its wake; the sky was spattered with lightning; the thunder boomed.

  As I rose to go, a cold raindrop fell upon the back of my hand, and another, and yet another on my face. I gave a last glance at the sea, where the waves were bursting into strange white shapes that seemed to fling out menacing arms toward me. Then something moved on the cliff, something black as the black rock it clutched — a filthy cormorant, craning its hideous head at the sky.

  Slowly I plodded homeward across the sombre moorland, where the gorse stems glimmered with a dull metallic green, and the heather, no longer violet and purple, hung drenched and dun-coloured among the dreary rocks. The wet turf creaked under my heavy boots, the black-thorn scraped and grated against knee and elbow. Over all lay a strange light, pallid, ghastly, where the sea spray whirled across the landscape and drove into my face until it grew numb with the cold. In broad bands, rank after rank, billow on billow, the rain burst out across the endless moors, and yet there was no wind to drive it at such a pace.

  Lys stood at the door as I turned into the garden, motioning me to hasten; and then for the first time I became conscious that I was soaked to the skin.

  “How ever in the world did you come to stay out when such a storm threatened?” she said. “Oh, you are dripping! Go quickly and change; I have laid your warm underwear on the bed, Dick.”

  I kissed my wife, and went upstairs to change my dripping clothes for something more comfortable.

  When I returned to the morning room there was a driftwood fire on the hearth, and Lys sat in the chimney corner embroidering.

  “Catherine tells me that the fishing fleet from Lorient is out. Do you think they are in danger, dear?” asked Lys, raising her blue eyes to mine as I entered.

  “There is no wind, and there will be no sea,” said I, looking out of the window. Far across the moor I could see the black cliffs looming in the mist.

  “How it rains!” murmured Lys; “come to the fire, Dick.”

  I threw myself on the fur rug, my hands in my pockets, my head on Lys’s knees.

  “Tell me a story,” I said. “I feel like a boy of ten.”

  Lys raised a finger to her scarlet lips. I always waited for her to do that.

  “Will you be very still, then?” she said.

  “Still as death.”

  “Death,” echoed a voice, very softly.

  “Did you speak, Lys?” I asked, turning so that I could see her face.

  “No; did you, Dick?”

  “Who said ‘death’?” I asked, startled.

  “Death,” echoed a voice, softly.

  I sprang up and looked about. Lys rose too, her needles and embroidery falling to the floor. She seemed ahout to faint, leaning heavily on me, and I led her to the window and opened it a little way to give her air. As I did so the chain lightning split the zenith, the thunder crashed, and a sheet of rain swept into the room, driving with it something that fluttered — something that flapped, and squeaked, and beat upon the rug with soft, moist wings.

  We bent over it together, Lys clinging to me, and we saw that it was a death’s
-head moth drenched with rain.

  The dark day passed slowly as we sat beside the fire, hand in hand, her head against my breast, speaking of sorrow and mystery and death. For Lys believed that there were things on earth that none might understand, things that must be nameless forever and ever, until God rolls up the scroll of life and all is ended. We spoke of hope and fear and faith, and the mystery of the saints; we spoke of the beginning and the end, of the shadow of sin, of omens, and of love. The moth still lay on the floor, quivering its sombre wings in the warmth of the fire, the skull and ribs clearly etched upon its neck and body.

  “If it is a messenger of death to this house,” I said, “why should we fear, Lys?”

  “Death should be welcome to those who love God,” murmured Lys, and she drew the cross from her breast and kissed it.

  “The moth might die if I threw it out into the storm,” I said after a silence.

  “Let it remain,” sighed Lys.

  Late that night my wife lay sleeping, and I sat beside her bed and read in the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue. I shaded the candle, but Lys grew restless, and finally I took the book down into the morning room, where the ashes of the fire rustled and whitened on the hearth.

  The death’s-head moth lay on the rug before the fire where I had left it. At first I thought it was dead, but, when I looked closer I saw a lambent fire in its amber eyes. The straight white shadow it cast across the floor wavered as the candle flickered.

  The pages of the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue were damp and sticky; the illuminated gold and blue initials left flakes of azure and gilt where my hand brushed them.

  “It is not paper at all; it is thin parchment,” I said to myself; and I held the discoloured page close to the candle flame and read, translating laboriously:

  “I, Jacques Sorgue, saw all these things. And I saw the Black Mass celebrated in the chapel of St. Gildas-on-the-Cliff. And it was said by the Abbé Sorgue, my kinsman: for which deadly sin the apostate priest was seized by the most noble Marquis of Plougastel and by him condemned to be burned with hot irons, until his seared soul quit its body and fly to its master the devil. But when the Black Priest lay in the crypt of Plougastel, his master Satan came at night and set him free, and carried him across land and sea to Mahmoud, which is Soldan or Saladin. And I, Jacques Sorgue, travelling afterward by sea, beheld with my own eyes my kinsman, the Black Priest of St. Gildas, borne along in the air upon a vast black wing, which was the wing of his master Satan. And this was seen also by two men of the crew.”