Clearly outlined in the mire as though engraved with a sculptor’s tool was the imprint of a tiny, mocassined foot, so small it could have been made only by a child or a daintily formed woman.
“Well—” I began, then paused for lack of further comment.
“Well, indeed, good friend,” de Grandin assented with a vigorous nod. “Do not you understand its significance?”
“U’m—can’t say I do,” I confessed.
“Ah bah, you are stupid!” he shot back. “Consider: There is no sign of a boat having been beached here; there is nothing to which a boat could have been tied within ten feet of the water’s edge. We have searched the island, we know we are alone here. What then? How came the possessor of this so lovely foot here, and how did she leave?”
“Hanged if I know,” I returned.
“Agreed,” he acquiesced, “but is it not fair to assume that she waded through yonder water to that strip of land? I think so. Let us test it.”
We stepped into the foul marsh-water, felt the mud sucking at our boots, then realized that the bottom was firm enough to hold us. Tentatively, step by cautious step, we forded the forty-foot channel, finding it nowhere more than waist-deep, and, bedraggled, mud-caked and thoroughly uncomfortable, finally clambered up the loamy bank of the low peninsula which jutted into the marsh-lake opposite the island of our adventure.
“Tiens, it seems I was right, as usual, Friend Trowbridge,” the Frenchman announced as we floundered up the bank to solid ground. Again, limned in the soft, moist earth, was a tiny, slender footprint, followed by others leading toward the rank-growing woods.
“I may be wrong,” he admitted, surveying the trail, “but unless I am more mistaken than I think, we have but to follow our noses and these shapely tracks to extricate ourselves. Come; allez vous en!”
Simple as the program sounded, it was difficult of accomplishment. The guiding footprints trailed off and lost themselves among the dead, crackling leaves with which the wood was paved, and the thick-set trees and thicker undergrowth disclosed nothing like a path. Beating the hampering bushes aside with our guns, staggering and crashing through thorny thickets by main strength and direct assault, we forced our way, turning aside from time to time as the land became spongy with seeping bogwater or an arm of the green, stagnant swamp barred our advance. We progressed slowly, striving to attain open country before darkness overtook us, but before we realized it twilight fell and we were obliged to admit ourselves hopelessly lost.
“No use, old chap,” I advised. “The more we struggle, the deeper in we get; with night coming on our chances of being mired in the swamp are a hundred to one. Best make camp and wait for daylight. We can build a fire and—”
“May Satan bake me in his oven if we do!” de Grandin interrupted. “Are we the Babes in the Woods that we should lie down here and wait for death and the kindly ministrations of the robin-redbreasts! Come away, my friend; we shall assuredly win through!”
He returned to the assault with redoubled vigor, beat his way some twenty yards farther through the underbrush, then gave a loud, joyous hail.
“See what is arrived, Friend Trowbridge!” he called. “Cordieu, did I not promise we should find it?”
Heavy-footed, staggering with fatigue, I dragged myself to where he stood, and stared in amazement at the barrier barring our path.
Ten feet away stood an ancient wall, gray with weather and lichen-spotted with age. Here and there patches of the stucco with which it had originally been dressed had peeled away, exposing the core of antique firebrick.
“Right or left?” de Grandin asked, drawing a coin from his pocket. “Heads we proceed right; tails, left.” He spun the silver disk in the air and caught it between his palms. “Bon, we go right,” he announced, shouldering his gun and turning on his heel to follow the wall.
A few minutes’ walk brought us to a break in the barrier where four massive posts of roughly dressed stone stood sentry. There should have been gates between them, but only ancient hand-wrought hinges, almost eaten away with rust, remained. Graven in the nearest pillar was an escutcheon on which had been carved some sort of armorial device, but the moss of many decades had smothered the crest so that its form was indistinguishable.
Beyond the yawning gateway stood a tiny, box-like gatekeeper’s lodge, like the wall, constructed of brick faced with stucco. Tiles had scuffed from its antiquated roof, the panes of old, green bottle-glass were smashed from its leaded casements; the massive door of age-discolored oak leaned outward drunkenly, its sole support, a single lower hinge with joints long since solidified with rust.
Before us stretched the avenue, a mere unkept, overgrown trail straggling between two rows of honey locusts. Alternating shafts of moonlight and shadow barred its course like stripes upon a convict’s clothes. Nothing moved among the trees, not even a moth or a bird belated in its homeward flight. Despite myself, I shivered as I gazed on the desolation of this place of bygone splendor. It was as if the ghosts of ten generations of long-dead gentlefolk rose up and bade us stay our trespassing steps.
“Eh bien, it is not cheerful,” de Grandin admitted with a somewhat rueful grin, “but there is the promise of four walls and at least the remnant of a roof beyond. Let us see what we shall see, Friend Trowbridge.”
We passed between the empty gate-pillars and strode up the driveway, traversing perhaps a hundred yards before we saw the house—a low, age-ravaged building of rough gray stone set in the midst of a level, untended grass plot and circled by a fourteen-foot moat filled with green, stagnant water in which floated a few despondent-looking lily pads. The avenue continued to a crumbling causeway, broke abruptly at the moat’s lip, then took up its course to the grilled entrance of the house. Two tumbledown pillars reared astride the driveway at the farther side of the break, and swung between them, amazingly, was a mediæval drawbridge of stout oaken planks held up by strands of strong, almost new Manila hawser.
“Grand diable,” the Frenchman murmured wonderingly, “a château fort—here! How comes it?”
“I don’t know,” I responded, “but here it is, and it’s in tolerable repair—what’s more, someone lives in it. See, there’s a light behind that window.”
He looked, then nodded briefly. “My friend,” he assured me, “I damnation think we shall eat and sleep within walls tonight.
“Allo,” he shouted through cupped hands, “holà, là-haut; we hunger, we thirst, we are lost; we are miserable!”
Twice more he hailed the silent house before lights stirred behind the narrow windows piercing its walls. Finally the iron grille guarding the door swung slowly outward and an elderly, stoop-shouldered man shuffled out, an old-fashioned bull’s-eye lantern dangling in his left hand, a modern and efficient-looking repeating rifle cradled in the crook of his right elbow.
“Who calls?” he asked, peering through the darkness and pausing to flash his smoky lantern in our direction. “Who is it?”
“Mordieu, two weary, wayworn travelers, no more,” de Grandin answered. “All afternoon we have battled with this sacré woodland, and lost ourselves most thoroughly. We are tired, Monsieur, we are enervated, and the magnitude of our hunger is matched only by that of our thirst.”
“Where are you from?” the other challenged, placing his lamp on the ground and surveying us suspiciously.
“From the hunting-lodge of Monsieur Wardman Gregory. In a fortuneless moment we accepted his invitation to come South and hunt the detestable little birds which frequent these morasses. This afternoon our seventy-times-damned traitor of a guide fled from us, leaving us to perish in a wilderness infested by snakes and devil-faced monsters of the woods. Surely, you will not deny us shelter?”
“If you’re Gregory’s guests it’s all right,” the other returned, “but if you come from him—you needn’t look for mercy if I find it out.”
“Monsieur,” de Grandin assured him, “half of what you say is intelligible, the other half is meaningless. The ‘him’
of whom you speak is a total stranger to us; but our hunger and fatigue is a real and present thing. Permit that we enter, if you please.”
The master of the house eyed us suspiciously a second time; then he turned from his inspection and drew back the ratchet which held the hawser-drum. Creakingly, the drawbridge descended and bumped into place against its stone sill. “Come over,” the old man called, taking up his gun and holding it in readiness, “but remember, the first false move you make means a bullet.”
“Parbleu, he is churlish, this one,” de Grandin whispered as we strode across the echoing planks.
Arrived beyond the moat, we assisted our unwilling host to rewind the ropes operating the bridge, and in compliance with a gesture containing more of suspicion than courtesy preceded him to the house.
THE BUILDING’S GRAY, BARE rooms were in keeping with its gray, dilapidated exterior; age and lack of care had more than softened the antique furnishings, it had reduced them to a dead level of tonelessness, without accent, making the big, stone-paved hall in which they stood seem empty and monotonous.
Our host put down his lantern and gun, then called abruptly: “Minerva—Poseidon—we have guests, prepare some food, make haste!”
Through a swinging door connecting with a rear apartment an ancient, wrinkled little yellow woman sidled, paused at the threshold and looked about her uncertainly. “Did yuh say we all has guests, Marse Jawge?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes,” replied her master, “they’ve been traveling all day, too. Shake up something to eat, quickly.”
“Yas, suh,” she returned and scuttled back to her kitchen like a frightened rabbit scurrying into its burrow.
She reappeared in a few minutes, followed by an aged and intensely black little man, each of them bearing a tray on which were slices of cold roast fowl, fresh white bread, preserved fruits, coffee and decanters of red, home-made wine. These they set on the massive table occupying the center of the room, and spread fresh napkins of coarse but carefully bleached linen, then stood waiting attentively.
A certain fumbling ineptness in their movements made me glance sharply at them a second time. Realization was slow in coming, but when it burst upon me I could hardly repress an exclamation. Both the aged servants were stone-blind; only the familiarity of long association enabled them to move about the room with the freedom of those possessing vision. I glanced hastily at de Grandin, and noted that his narrow, expressive face was alight with curiosity as he beheld the expressionless, sightless eyes of the servants.
Our host accompanied us to table and poured a cup of coffee and a glass of wine for himself as soon as we began our attack on the more substantial portions of the menu. He was a man well advanced in years, thin-faced, lean and sun-burned almost to the point of desiccation. Time had not dealt gently with him; his long, high-cheeked face, rendered longer by the drooping gray mustache and imperial he affected, seemed to have been beaten into angularity by merciless hammer-blows of unkind fortune. His lips were thin, almost colorless and exceedingly bitter in expression; his deep-set, dark eyes glowed and smoldered with a light of perpetual anger mingled with habitual distrust. He wore a suit of coarse linen crash, poorly tailored but spotlessly clean; his white-cotton shirt had seen better days, though not recently, for its wristbands were frayed and tattered: at the edges, though it, too, was immaculate as though fresh from the laundress’s hands.
Ravenous from his fast and the exhausting exercise of the afternoon de Grandin did voracious justice to the meal, but though his mouth was too full for articulate speech, his little, round blue eyes looked eloquent curiosity as they roved round the big, stone-floored hall, rested on the ancient, moldering tapestries and the dull Flemish oak furniture, and finally took minute inventory of our host.
The other noted the little Frenchman’s wondering eyes and smiled with a sort of mournful pride. “The house dates from Jean Ribault’s unfortunate attempt to colonize the coast,” he informed us. “Georges Ducharme, an ancestor of mine, accompanied one of the unsuccessful expeditions to the New World, and when the colonists rose against their leaders at Port Royal, he and a few companions beat a path through the wilderness and finally settled here. This place was old when the foundations of Jamestown were laid. For almost four hundred years the Ducharmes have lived here, serving neither French king nor English, Federal Government nor Confederate States—they are and have always been a law unto themselves, accountable to none but their own consciences and God, sirs.”
“U’m?” de Grandin cleared his mouth of roast pheasant and bread with a prodigious swallow, then helped himself to a generous stoup of home-made wine. “And you are the last of the Ducharmes, Monsieur?”
Quick suspicion was reborn in the other’s dark, deep-set eyes as he regarded the Frenchman. For a moment he paused as a man may pause for breath before diving into a chilling stream; then, “Yes,” he answered shortly. “I am the last of an ancient line. With me the house of Ducharme ceases to exist.”
De Grandin tweaked the waxed ends of his tiny blond mustache after the manner of a well-fed tom-cat combing his whiskers. “Tell me, Monsieur Ducharme,” he demanded as he chose a cigarette from his case with deliberate care and set it alight in the flame of one of the tall candles flickering on the table, “you have, presumably, passed the better part of your life here; of a certainty you are familiar with the neighborhood and its traditions. Have you, by any fortunate chance, heard of a certain monstrosity, a thing of infinite hideousness of appearance, which traverses the trackless wastes of these swamps? Today at noon I was all but exterminated by a venomous serpent, but a timely arrow—an arrow, mind you—shot from a near-by thicket, saved my life. Immediately I would have given thanks to the unknown archer who delivered me from the reptile, but when I turned to make acknowledgment, I beheld a face so vilely ugly, so exceedingly hideous, that it startled me to silence. Eh bien, it did more than that to our superstitious Negro guide. He shrieked something about a specter which haunts the swampland and fled incontinently, leaving us to face the wilderness alone—may seven foul fiends torment his spirit unceasingly in the world to come!
“Thereafter we did search for some trace of the ill-favored one, but nothing could we find save only a few footprints—parbleu, such footprints as a princess might have boasted to possess!” He bunched his slender fingers at his lips and wafted an ecstatic kiss toward the vaulted stone ceiling.
Ducharme made a queer, choking noise in his throat. “You—you found footprints! You—traced—them—here?” he asked in an odd, dry voice, rising and gripping his chair till the tendons showed in lines of high, white relief against the backs of his straining hands.
“By no means,” de Grandin answered. “Though we did struggle like flies upon the papier des mouches to extricate ourselves from this detestable morass, we found neither sign nor trace of human thing until we were stopped by the wall which girdles your estate, for which last the good God be devoutly thanked!”
Ducharme bent a long, questioning look on the little Frenchman, then shrugged his shoulders. “No matter,” he murmured as though speaking to himself; “if you’re his messengers I’ll know it soon enough, and I’ll know how to deal with you.”
Aloud he announced: “You are probably tired after the day’s exertions. If you’ve quite finished your repast, we may as well retire—we sleep early at Ducharme Hall.”
Beside the newel-post of the wide, broad-stepped staircase curving upward from the hall stood a small oaken table bearing several home-dipped candles in standards of antique silver. Taking one of these, our host lit it from the candelabrum on the dining-table, handed it to me, then repeated the process and supplied de Grandin with a taper. “I’ll show you to your room,” he offered with a courteous bow.
We trooped up the stairs, turned down a narrow, stone-paved corridor and, at Ducharme’s invitation, entered a high-celled, stone-floored chamber lighted by a single narrow window with leaded panes of ancient greenish glass and furnished with a
four-post canopied bed, a massive chest of deep-carven oak and two straight-backed cathedral chairs which would have brought their weight in gold at a Madison Avenue antique dealer’s.
“I’ll have Poseidon wait on you in the morning,” our host promised. “In spite of his natural handicaps he makes an excellent valet.” What seemed to me a cruel smile flickered across the thin, pale lips beneath his drooping mustache as he concluded the announcement, bowed politely and backed from the room, drawing the door soundlessly shut behind him.
For a moment I stood in the center of the little, narrow room, striving to make a survey of our surroundings by the light of our tallow dips; then, moved by a sudden impulse, I ran on tiptoe to the door, seized its ancient, hand-wrought handle and pulled with all my might. Firm as though nailed to its easing, it resisted my strongest effort. As I gave over the attempt to force the panels open and turned in panic to de Grandin I thought I heard the muted echo of a low, malicious chuckle in the darkened corridor outside.
“I say, de Grandin,” I whispered, “do you realize we’re caught here like flies in a spider-web?”
“Very probably,” he replied, smothering a yawn. “What of it? If they slit our throats while we sleep we shall at least have the advantage of a few minutes’ repose before bidding Saint Peter bonjour. Come, let us sleep.”
But despite his assumed indifference I noticed that he placed one of the great carved chairs before the door in such manner that anyone entering the apartment would do so at imminent peril of barked shins, perhaps of a broken leg, and that he removed only his boots and jacket and lay down with his vicious little automatic pistol ready to his hand.
“TROWBRIDGE, MON VIEUX, AWAKE, arise and behold!” de Grandin’s sharp whisper cut through my morning sleep. The early October day was well advanced, for a patch of warm golden sunlight lay in a prism-mottled field on the stone pavement of the room, little half-moons of opalescent coloring marking the curved lenses of the green bottle-glass of the casement through which the beams came. Gazing with fixed intensity at some object below, the little Frenchman stood at the half-opened window and motioned me to join him.”
The Devil's Rosary Page 28
