The Mystery of Choice

by Robert W. Chambers

  PASSEUR.

  Because man goeth to his long home, And the mourners go about the streets.

  When he had finished his pipe he tapped the brier bowl against thechimney until the ashes powdered the charred log smouldering acrossthe andirons. Then he sank back in his chair, absently touching the hotpipe-bowl with the tip of each finger until it grew cool enough to bedropped into his coat pocket.

  Twice he raised his eyes to the little American clock ticking upon themantel. He had half an hour to wait.

  The three candles that lighted the room might be trimmed to advantage;this would give him something to do. A pair of scissors lay openupon the bureau, and he rose and picked them up. For a while he stooddreamily shutting and opening the scissors, his eyes roaming about theroom. There was an easel in the corner, and a pile of dusty canvasesbehind it; behind the canvases there was a shadow--that gray, menacingshadow that never moved.

  When he had trimmed each candle he wiped the smoky scissors on a paintrag and flung them on the bureau again. The clock pointed to ten; hehad been occupied exactly three minutes.

  The bureau was littered with neckties, pipes, combs and brushes,matches, reels and fly-books, collars, shirt studs, a new pair ofScotch shooting stockings, and a woman's workbasket.

  He picked out all the neckties, folded them once, and hung them overa bit of twine that stretched across the looking-glass; the shirtstuds he shovelled into the top drawer along with brushes, combs, andstockings; the reels and fly-books he dusted with his handkerchiefand placed methodically along the mantel shelf. Twice he stretched outhis hand toward the woman's workbasket, but his hand fell to his sideagain, and he turned away into the room staring at the dying fire.

  Outside the snow-sealed window a shutter broke loose and bangedmonotonously, until he flung open the panes and fastened it. The soft,wet snow, that had choked the window-panes all day, was frozen hardnow, and he had to break the polished crust before he could find therusty shutter hinge.

  He leaned out for a moment, his numbed hands resting on the snow, theroar of a rising snow-squall in his ears; and out across the desolategarden and stark hedgerow he saw the flat black river spreading throughthe gloom.

  A candle sputtered and snapped behind him; a sheet of drawing-paperfluttered across the floor, and he closed the panes and turned backinto the room, both hands in his worn pockets.

  The little American clock on the mantel ticked and ticked, but thehands lagged, for he had not been occupied five minutes in all. He wentup to the mantel and watched the hands of the clock. A minute--longerthan a year to him--crept by.

  Around the room the furniture stood ranged--a chair or two of yellowpine, a table, the easel, and in one corner the broad curtained bed;and behind each lay shadows, menacing shadows that never moved.

  A little pale flame started up from the smoking log on the andirons;the room sang with the sudden hiss of escaping wood gases. After alittle the back of the log caught fire; jets of blue flared up here andthere with mellow sounds like the lighting of gas-burners in a row, andin a moment a thin sheet of yellow flame wrapped the whole charred log.

  Then the shadows moved; not the shadows behind the furniture--theynever moved--but other shadows, thin, gray, confusing, that came andspread their slim patterns all around him, and trembled and trembled.

  He dared not step or tread upon them, they were too real; they meshedthe floor around his feet, they ensnared his knees, they fell acrosshis breast like ropes. Some night, in the silence of the moors, whenwind and river were still, he feared these strands of shadow mighttighten--creep higher around his throat and tighten. But even then heknew that those other shadows would never move, those gray shapes thatknelt crouching in every corner.

  When he looked up at the clock again ten minutes had straggled past.Time was disturbed in the room; the strands of shadow seemed entangledamong the hands of the clock, dragging them back from their rotation.He wondered if the shadows would strangle Time, some still night whenthe wind and the flat river were silent.

  There grew a sudden chill across the floor; the cracks of the boardslet it in. He leaned down and drew his sabots toward him from theirplace near the andirons, and slipped them over his chaussons; and as hestraightened up, his eyes mechanically sought the mantel above, wherein the dusk another pair of sabots stood, little, slender, delicatesabots, carved from red beech. A year's dust grayed their surface; ayear's rust dulled the silver band across the instep. He said this tohimself aloud, knowing that it was within a few minutes of the year.

  His own sabots came from Mort-Dieu; they were shaved square and bandedwith steel. But in days past he had thought that no sabot in Mort-Dieuwas delicate enough to touch the instep of the Mort-Dieu passeur. So hesent to the shore lighthouse, and they sent to Lorient, where the womenare coquettish and show their hair under the coiffe, and wear daintysabots; and in this town, where vanity corrupts and there is much laceon coiffe and collarette, a pair of delicate sabots was found, bandedwith silver and chiselled in red beech. The sabots stood on the mantelabove the fire now, dusty and tarnished.

  There was a sound from the window, the soft murmur of snow blottingglass panes. The wind, too, muttered under the roof eaves. Presently itwould begin to whisper to him from the chimney--he knew it--and he heldhis hands over his ears and stared at the clock.

  In the hamlet of Mort-Dieu the pines sing all day of the sea secrets,but in the night the ghosts of little gray birds fill the branches,singing of the sunshine of past years. He heard the song as he sat,and he crushed his hands over his ears; but the gray birds joined withthe wind in the chimney, and he heard all that he dared not hear, andhe thought all that he dared not hope or think, and the swift tearsscalded his eyes.

  In Mort-Dieu the nights are longer than anywhere on earth; he knewit--why should he not know? This had been so for a year; it wasdifferent before. There were so many things different before; days andnights vanished like minutes then; the pines told no secrets of thesea, and the gray birds had not yet come to Mort-Dieu. Also, there wasJeanne, passeur at the Carmes.

  When he first saw her she was poling the square, flat-bottomed ferryskiff from the Carmes to Mort-Dieu, a red handkerchief bound across hersilky black hair, a red skirt fluttering just below her knees. The nexttime he saw her he had to call to her across the placid river, "Ohe!Ohe, passeur!" She came, poling the flat skiff, her deep blue eyesfixed pensively on him, the scarlet skirt and kerchief idly flapping inthe April wind. Then day followed day when the far call "Passeur!" grewclearer and more joyous, and the faint answering cry, "I come!" rippledacross the water like music tinged with laughter. Then spring came,and with spring came love--love, carried free across the ferry from theCarmes to Mort-Dieu.

  The flame above the charred log whistled, flickered, and went out ina jet of wood vapour, only to play like lightning above the gas andrelight again. The clock ticked more loudly, and the song from thepines filled the room. But in his straining eyes a summer landscape wasreflected, where white clouds sailed and white foam curled under thesquare bow of a little skiff. And he pressed his numbed hands tighterto his ears to drown the cry, "Passeur! Passeur!"

  And now for a moment the clock ceased ticking. It was time to go--whobut he should know it, he who went out into the night swinging hislantern? And he went. He had gone each night from the first--from thatfirst strange winter evening when a strange voice had answered himacross the river, the voice of the new passeur. He had never heard_her_ voice again.

  So he passed down the windy wooden stairs, lantern hanging lighted inhis hand, and stepped out into the storm. Through sheets of driftingsnow, over heaps of frozen seaweed and icy drift he moved, shifting hislantern right and left, until its glimmer on the water warned him. Thenhe called out into the night, "Passeur!" The frozen spray spatteredhis face and crusted the lantern; he heard the distant boom of breakersbeyond the bar, and the noise of mighty winds among the seaward cliffs.

  "Passeur!"

  Across the broad flat river, b
lack as a sea of pitch, a tiny lightsparkled a moment. Again he cried, "Passeur!"

  "I come!"

  He turned ghastly white, for it was her voice--or was he crazy?--andhe sprang waist deep into the icy current and cried out again, but hisvoice ended in a sob.

  Slowly through the snow the flat skiff took shape, creeping nearerand nearer. But she was not at the pole--he saw that; there was only atall, thin man, shrouded to the eyes in oilskin; and he leaped into theboat and bade the ferryman hasten.

  Halfway across he rose in the skiff, and called, "Jeanne!" But the roarof the storm and the thrashing of icy waves drowned his voice. Yet heheard her again, and she called to him by name.

  When at last the boat grated upon the invisible shore, he lifted hislantern, trembling, stumbling among the rocks, and calling to her, asthough his voice could silence the voice that had spoken a year agothat night. And it could not. He sank shivering upon his knees, andlooked out into the darkness, where an ocean rolled across a world.Then his stiff lips moved, and he repeated her name; but the hand ofthe ferryman fell gently upon his head.

  And when he raised his eyes he saw that the ferryman was Death.

  THE KEY TO GRIEF.

  The moving finger writes, and, having writ, Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

  FITZGERALD.