Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I am going to test it,” said Fortin, “at the request of Monsieur le Maire. I am not anxious for the job, however.”

  “See,” said Le Bihan, holding out the scroll to me, “it is signed, ‘L’Abbé Sorgue.’”

  I glanced curiously over the paper.

  “It must be the Black Priest,” I said. “He was the only man who wrote in the Breton language. This is a wonderfully interesting discovery, for now, at last, the mystery of the Black Priest’s disappearance is cleared up. You will, of course, send this scroll to Paris, Le Bihan?”

  “No,” said the mayor obstinately, “it shall be buried in the pit below where the rest of the Black Priest lies.”

  I looked at him and recognized that argument would be useless. But still I said, “It will be a loss to history, Monsieur Le Bihan.”

  “All the worse for history, then,” said the enlightened Mayor of St. Gildas.

  We had sauntered back to the gravel pit while speaking. The men of Bannalec were carrying the bones of the English soldiers toward the St. Gildas cemetery, on the cliffs to the east, where already a knot of white-coiffed women stood in attitudes of prayer; and I saw the somber robe of a priest among the crosses of the little graveyard.

  “They were thieves and assassins; they are dead now,” muttered Max Fortin.

  “Respect the dead,” repeated the Mayor of St. Gildas, looking after the Bannalec men.

  “It was written in that scroll that Marie Trevec, of Groix Island, was cursed by the priest — she and her descendants,” I said, touching Le Bihan on the arm. “There was a Marie Trevec who married an Yves Trevec of St. Gildas — —”

  “It is the same,” said Le Bihan, looking at me obliquely.

  “Oh!” said I; “then they were ancestors of my wife.”

  “Do you fear the curse?” asked Le Bihan.

  “What?” I laughed.

  “There was the case of the Purple Emperor,” said Max Fortin timidly.

  Startled for a moment, I faced him, then shrugged my shoulders and kicked at a smooth bit of rock which lay near the edge of the pit, almost embedded in gravel.

  “Do you suppose the Purple-Emperor drank himself crazy because he was descended from Marie Trevec?” I asked contemptuously.

  “Of course not,” said Max Fortin hastily.

  “Of course not,” piped the mayor. “I only — Hellow! what’s that you’re kicking?”

  “What?” said I, glancing down, at the same time involuntarily giving another kick. The smooth bit of rock dislodged itself and rolled out of the loosened gravel at my feet.

  “The thirty-ninth skull!” I exclaimed. “By jingo, it’s the noddle of the Black Priest! See! there is the arrowhead branded on the front!”

  The mayor stepped back. Max Fortin also retreated. There was a pause, during which I looked at them, and they looked anywhere but at me.

  “I don’t like it,” said the mayor at last, in a husky, high voice. “I don’t like it! The scroll says he will come back to St. Gildas when his remains are disturbed. I — I don’t like it, Monsieur Darrel—”

  “Bosh!” said I; “the poor wicked devil is where he can’t get out. For Heaven’s sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the year of grace 1896?”

  The mayor gave me a look.

  “And he says ‘Englishman.’ You are an Englishman, Monsieur Darrel,” he announced.

  “You know better. You know I’m an American.”

  “It’s all the same,” said the Mayor of St. Gildas, obstinately.

  “No, it isn’t!” I answered, much exasperated, and deliberately pushed the skull till it rolled into the bottom of the gravel pit below.

  “Cover it up,” said I; “bury the scroll with it too, if you insist, but I think you ought to send it to Paris. Don’t look so gloomy, Fortin, unless you believe in werewolves and ghosts. Hey! what the — what the devil’s the matter with you, anyway? What are you staring at, Le Bihan?”

  “Come, come,” muttered the mayor in a low, tremulous voice, “it’s time we got out of this. Did you see? Did you see, Fortin?”

  “I saw,” whispered Max Fortin, pallid with fright.

  The two men were almost running across the sunny pasture now, and I hastened after them, demanding to know what was the matter.

  “Matter!” chattered the mayor, gasping with exasperation and terror. “The skull is rolling up hill again,” and he burst into a terrified gallop, Max Fortin followed close behind.

  I watched them stampeding across the pasture, then turned toward the gravel pit, mystified, incredulous. The skull was lying on the edge of the pit, exactly where it had been before I pushed it over the edge. For a second I stared at it; a singular chilly feeling crept up my spinal column, and I turned and walked away, sweat starting from the root of every hair on my head. Before I had gone twenty paces the absurdity of the whole thing struck me. I halted, hot with shame and annoyance, and retraced my steps.

  There lay the skull.

  “I rolled a stone down instead of the skull,” I muttered to myself. Then with the butt of my gun I pushed the skull over the edge of the pit and watched it roll to the bottom; and as it struck the bottom of the pit, Môme, my dog, suddenly whipped his tail between his legs, whimpered, and made off across the moor.

  “Môme!” I shouted, angry and astonished; but the dog only fled the faster, and I ceased calling from sheer surprise.

  “What the mischief is the matter with that dog!” I thought. He had never before played me such a trick.

  Mechanically I glanced into the pit, but I could not see the skull. I looked down. The skull lay at my feet again, touching them.

  “Good heavens!” I stammered, and struck at it blindly with my gunstock. The ghastly thing flew into the air, whirling over and over, and rolled again down the sides of the pit to the bottom. Breathlessly I stared at it, then, confused and scarcely comprehending, I stepped back from the pit, still facing it, one, ten, twenty paces, my eyes almost starting from my head, as though I expected to see the thing roll up from the bottom of the pit under my very gaze. At last I turned my back to the pit and strode out across the gorse-covered moorland toward my home. As I reached the road that winds from St. Gildas to St. Julien I gave one hasty glance at the pit over my shoulder. The sun shone hot on the sod about the excavation. There was something white and bare and round on the turf at the edge of the pit. It might have been a stone; there were plenty of them lying about.

  II

  When I entered my garden I saw Môme sprawling on the stone doorstep. He eyed me sideways and flopped his tail.

  “Are you not mortified, you idiot dog?” I said, looking about the upper windows for Lys.

  Môme rolled over on his back and raised one deprecating forepaw, as though to ward off calamity.

  “Don’t act as though I was in the habit of beating you to death,” I said, disgusted. I had never in my life raised whip to the brute. “But you are a fool dog,” I continued. “No, you needn’t come to be babied and wept over; Lys can do that, if she insists, but I am ashamed of you, and you can go to the devil.”

  Môme slunk off into the house, and I followed, mounting directly to my wife’s boudoir. It was empty.

  “Where has she gone?” I said, looking hard at Môme, who had followed me. “Oh! I see you don’t know. Don’t pretend you do. Come off that lounge! Do you think Lys wants tan-colored hairs all over her lounge?”

  I rang the bell for Catherine and Fine, but they didn’t know where “madame” had gone; so I went into my room, bathed, exchanged my somewhat grimy shooting clothes for a suit of warm, soft knickerbockers, and, after lingering some extra moments over my toilet — for I was particular, now that I had married Lys — I went down to the garden and took a chair out under the fig-trees.

  “Where can she be?” I wondered, Môme came sneaking out to be comforted, and I forgave him for Lys’s sake, whereupon he frisked.

  “You bounding cur,” said I, “now what on earth started
you off across the moor? If you do it again I’ll push you along with a charge of dust shot.”

  As yet I had scarcely dared think about the ghastly hallucination of which I had been a victim, but now I faced it squarely, flushing a little with mortification at the thought of my hasty retreat from the gravel pit.

  “To think,” I said aloud, “that those old woman’s tales of Max Fortin and Le Bihan should have actually made me see what didn’t exist at all! I lost my nerve like a schoolboy in a dark bedroom.” For I knew now that I had mistaken a round stone for a skull each time, and had pushed a couple of big pebbles into the pit instead of the skull itself.

  “By jingo!” said I, “I’m nervous; my liver must be in a devil of a condition if I see such things when I’m awake! Lys will know what to give me.”

  I felt mortified and irritated and sulky, and thought disgustedly of Le Bihan and Max Fortin.

  But after a while I ceased speculating, dismissed the mayor, the chemist, and the skull from my mind, and smoked pensively, watching the sun low dipping in the western ocean. As the twilight fell for a moment over ocean and moorland, a wistful, restless happiness filled my heart, the happiness that all men know — all men who have loved.

  Slowly the purple mist crept out over the sea; the cliffs darkened; the forest was shrouded.

  Suddenly the sky above burned with the afterglow, and the world was alight again.

  Cloud after cloud caught the rose dye; the cliffs were tinted with it; moor and pasture, heather and forest burned and pulsated with the gentle flush. I saw the gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar, their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering the surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm reflections of the clouds. The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining side above tidewater.

  The interminable monotone of the ocean intensified the silence. I sat motionless, holding my breath as one who listens to the first low rumor of an organ. All at once the pure whistle of a nightingale cut the silence, and the first moonbeam silvered the wastes of mist-hung waters.

  I raised my head.

  Lys stood before me in the garden.

  When we had kissed each other, we linked arms and moved up and down the gravel walks, watching the moonbeams sparkle on the sand bar as the tide ebbed and ebbed. The broad beds of white pinks about us were atremble with hovering white moths; the October roses hung all abloom, perfuming the salt wind.

  “Sweetheart,” I said, “where is Yvonne? Has she promised to spend Christmas with us?”

  “Yes, Dick; she drove me down from Plougat this afternoon. She sent her love to you. I am not jealous. What did you shoot?”

  “A hare and four partridges. They are in the gun room. I told Catherine not to touch them until you had seen them.”

  Now I suppose I knew that Lys could not be particularly enthusiastic over game or guns; but she pretended she was, and always scornfully denied that it was for my sake and not for the pure love of sport. So she dragged me off to inspect the rather meager game bag, and she paid me pretty compliments, and gave a little cry of delight and pity as I lifted the enormous hare out of the sack by his ears.

  “He’ll eat no more of our lettuce,” I said attempting to justify the assassination.

  “Unhappy little bunny — and what a beauty! O Dick, you are a splendid shot, are you not?”

  I evaded the question and hauled out a partridge.

  “Poor little dead things’” said Lys in a whisper; “it seems a pity — doesn’t it, Dick? But then you are so clever — —”

  “We’ll have them broiled,” I said guardedly, “tell Catherine.”

  Catherine came in to take away the game, and presently ‘Fine Lelocard, Lys’s maid, announced dinner, and Lys tripped away to her boudoir.

  I stood an instant contemplating her blissfully, thinking, “My boy, you’re the happiest fellow in the world — you’re in love with your wife’”

  I walked into the dining-room, beamed at the plates, walked out again; met Tregunc in the hallway, beamed on him; glanced into the kitchen, beamed at Catherine, and went up stairs, still beaming.

  Before I could knock at Lys’s door it opened, and Lys came hastily out. When she saw me she gave a little cry of relief, and nestled close to my breast.

  “There is something peering in at my window,” she said.

  “What!” I cried angrily.

  “A man, I think, disguised as a priest, and he has a mask on. He must have climbed up by the bay tree.”

  I was down the stairs and out of doors in no time. The moonlit garden was absolutely deserted. Tregunc came up, and together we searched the hedge and shrubbery around the house and out to the road.

  “Jean Marie,” said I at length, “loose my bulldog — he knows you — and take your supper on the porch where you can watch. My wife says the fellow is disguised as a priest, and wears a mask.”

  Tregunc showed his white teeth in a smile. “He will not care to venture in here again, I think, Monsieur Darrel.”

  I went back and found Lys seated quietly at the table.

  “The soup is ready, dear,” she said. “Don’t worry; it was only some foolish lout from Bannalec. No one in St. Gildas or St. Julien would do such a thing.”

  I was too much exasperated to reply at first, but Lys treated it as a stupid joke, and after a while I began to look at it in that light.

  Lys told me about Yvonne, and reminded me of my promise to have Herbert Stuart down to meet her.

  “You wicked diplomat!” I protested. “Herbert is in Paris, and hard at work for the Salon.”

  “Don’t you think he might spare a week to flirt with the prettiest girl in Finistere?” inquired Lys innocently.

  “Prettiest girl! Not much!” I said.

  “Who is, then?” urged Lys.

  I laughed a trifle sheepishly.

  “I suppose you mean me, Dick,” said Lys, coloring up.

  “Now I bore you, don’t I?”

  “Bore me? Ah, no, Dick.”

  After coffee and cigarettes were served I spoke about Tregunc, and Lys approved.

  “Poor Jean! He will be glad, won’t he? What a dear fellow you are!”

  “Nonsense,” said I; “we need a gardener; you said so yourself, Lys.”

  But Lys leaned over and kissed me, and then bent down and hugged Môme — who whistled through his nose in sentimental appreciation.

  “I am a very happy woman,” said Lys.

  “Môme was a very bad dog to-day,” I observed.

  “Poor Môme!” said Lys, smiling.

  When dinner was over and Môme lay snoring before the blaze — for the October nights are often chilly in Finistere — Lys curled up in the chimney corner with her embroidery, and gave me a swift glance from under her dropping lashes.

  “You look like a schoolgirl, Lys,” I said teasingly. “I don’t believe you are sixteen yet.”

  She pushed back her heavy burnished hair thoughtfully. Her wrist was as white as surf foam.

  “Have we been married four years? I don’t believe it,” I said.

  She gave me another swift glance and touched the embroidery on her knee, smiling faintly.

  “I see,” said I, also smiling at the embroidered garment. “Do you think it will fit?”

  “Fit?” repeated Lys. Then she laughed

  “And,” I persisted, “are you perfectly sure that you — er — we shall need it?”

  “Perfectly,” said Lys. A delicate color touched her cheeks and neck. She held up the little garment, all fluffy with misty lace and wrought with quaint embroidery.

  “It is very gorgeous,” said I; “don’t use your eyes too much, dearest. May I smoke a pipe?”

  “Of course,” she said selecting a skein of pale blue silk.

  For a while I sat and smoked in silence, watching her slender fingers among the tinted silks and thread of gold.

  Presently she spoke: “What did
you say your crest is, Dick?”

  “My crest? Oh, something or other rampant on a something or other — —”

  “Dick!”

  “Dearest?”

  “Don’t be flippant.”

  “But I really forget. It’s an ordinary crest; everybody in New York has them. No family should be without ‘em.”

  “You are disagreeable, Dick. Send Josephine upstairs for my album.”

  “Are you going to put that crest on the — the — whatever it is?”

  “I am; and my own crest, too.”

  I thought of the Purple Emperor and wondered a little.

  “You didn’t know I had one, did you?” she smiled.

  “What is it?” I replied evasively.

  “You shall see. Ring for Josephine.”

  I rang, and, when ‘Fine appeared, Lys gave her some orders in a low voice, and Josephine trotted away, bobbing her white-coiffed head with a “Bien, Madame!”

  After a few minutes she returned, bearing a tattered, musty volume, from which the gold and blue had mostly disappeared.

  I took the book in my hands and examined the ancient emblazoned covers.

  “Lilies!” I exclaimed.

  “Fleur-de-lis,” said my wife demurely.

  “Oh!” said I, astonished, and opened the book.

  “You have never before seen this book?” asked Lys, with a touch of malice in her eyes.

  “You know I haven’t. Hello! What’s this? Oho! So there should be a de before Trevec? Lys de Trevec? Then why in the world did the Purple Emperor — —”

  “Dick!” cried Lys.

  “All right,” said I. “Shall I read about the Sieur de Trevec who rode to Saladin’s tent alone to seek for medicine for St. Louise? Or shall I read about — what is it? Oh, here it is, all down in black and white — about the Marquis de Trevec who drowned himself before Alva’s eyes rather than surrender the banner of the fleur-de-lis to Spain? It’s all written here. But, dear, how about that soldier named Trevec who was killed in the old fort on the cliff yonder?”

  “He dropped the de, and the Trevecs since then have been Republicans,” said Lys— “all except me.”

  “That’s quite right,” said I; “it is time that we Republicans should agree upon some feudal system. My dear, I drink to the king!” and I raised my wine glass and looked at Lys.