Four Weird Tales

by Algernon Blackwood

  VI

  And at once into his mind passed the hush and softness of the snow--yetwith it a searching, crying wildness for the heights. He knew by someincalculable, swift instinct she would not meet him in the villagestreet. It was not there, amid crowding houses, she would speak to him.Indeed, already she had disappeared, melted from view up the white vistaof the moonlit road. Yonder, he divined, she waited where the highwaynarrowed abruptly into the mountain path beyond the chalets.

  It did not even occur to him to hesitate; mad though it seemed, andwas--this sudden craving for the heights with her, at least for openspaces where the snow lay thick and fresh--it was too imperious to bedenied. He does not remember going up to his room, putting the sweaterover his evening clothes, and getting into the fur gauntlet gloves andthe helmet cap of wool. Most certainly he has no recollection offastening on his ski; he must have done it automatically. Some facultyof normal observation was in abeyance, as it were. His mind was outbeyond the village--out with the snowy mountains and the moon.

  Henri Defago, putting up the shutters over his _cafe_ windows, saw himpass, and wondered mildly: "Un monsieur qui fait du ski a cette heure!Il est Anglais, done ...!" He shrugged his shoulders, as though a man hadthe right to choose his own way of death. And Marthe Perotti, thehunchback wife of the shoemaker, looking by chance from her window,caught his figure moving swiftly up the road. She had other thoughts,for she knew and believed the old traditions of the witches andsnow-beings that steal the souls of men. She had even heard, 'twas said,the dreaded "synagogue" pass roaring down the street at night, and now,as then, she hid her eyes. "They've called to him ... and he must go,"she murmured, making the sign of the cross.

  But no one sought to stop him. Hibbert recalls only a single incidentuntil he found himself beyond the houses, searching for her along thefringe of forest where the moonlight met the snow in a bewilderingfrieze of fantastic shadows. And the incident was simply this--that heremembered passing the church. Catching the outline of its tower againstthe stars, he was aware of a faint sense of hesitation. A vagueuneasiness came and went--jarred unpleasantly across the flow of hisexcited feelings, chilling exhilaration. He caught the instant'sdiscord, dismissed it, and--passed on. The seduction of the snowsmothered the hint before he realised that it had brushed the skirts ofwarning.

  And then he saw her. She stood there waiting in a little clear space ofshining snow, dressed all in white, part of the moonlight and theglistening background, her slender figure just discernible.

  "I waited, for I knew you would come," the silvery little voice of windybeauty floated down to him. "You _had_ to come."

  "I'm ready," he answered, "I knew it too."

  The world of Nature caught him to its heart in those few words--thewonder and the glory of the night and snow. Life leaped within him. Thepassion of his pagan soul exulted, rose in joy, flowed out to her. Heneither reflected nor considered, but let himself go like the veriestschoolboy in the wildness of first love.

  "Give me your hand," he cried, "I'm coming ...!"

  "A little farther on, a little higher," came her delicious answer. "Hereit is too near the village--and the church."

  And the words seemed wholly right and natural; he did not dream ofquestioning them; he understood that, with this little touch ofcivilisation in sight, the familiarity he suggested was impossible. Onceout upon the open mountains, 'mid the freedom of huge slopes andtowering peaks, the stars and moon to witness and the wilderness of snowto watch, they could taste an innocence of happy intercourse free fromthe dead conventions that imprison literal minds.

  He urged his pace, yet did not quite overtake her. The girl kept alwaysjust a little bit ahead of his best efforts.... And soon they left thetrees behind and passed on to the enormous slopes of the sea of snowthat rolled in mountainous terror and beauty to the stars. The wonder ofthe white world caught him away. Under the steady moonlight it was morethan haunting. It was a living, white, bewildering power thatdeliciously confused the senses and laid a spell of wild perplexity uponthe heart. It was a personality that cloaked, and yet revealed, itselfthrough all this sheeted whiteness of snow. It rose, went with him, fledbefore, and followed after. Slowly it dropped lithe, gleaming arms abouthis neck, gathering him in....

  Certainly some soft persuasion coaxed his very soul, urging him everforwards, upwards, on towards the higher icy slopes. Judgment andreason left their throne, it seemed, completely, as in the madness ofintoxication. The girl, slim and seductive, kept always just ahead, sothat he never quite came up with her. He saw the white enchantment ofher face and figure, something that streamed about her neck flying likea wreath of snow in the wind, and heard the alluring accents of herwhispering voice that called from time to time: "A little farther on, alittle higher.... Then we'll run home together!"

  Sometimes he saw her hand stretched out to find his own, but each time,just as he came up with her, he saw her still in front, the hand and armwithdrawn. They took a gentle angle of ascent. The toil seemed nothing.In this crystal, wine-like air fatigue vanished. The sishing of the skithrough the powdery surface of the snow was the only sound that brokethe stillness; this, with his breathing and the rustle of her skirts,was all he heard. Cold moonshine, snow, and silence held the world. Thesky was black, and the peaks beyond cut into it like frosted wedges ofiron and steel. Far below the valley slept, the village long sincehidden out of sight. He felt that he could never tire.... The sound ofthe church clock rose from time to time faintly through the air--moreand more distant.

  "Give me your hand. It's time now to turn back."

  "Just one more slope," she laughed. "That ridge above us. Then we'llmake for home." And her low voice mingled pleasantly with the purring oftheir ski. His own seemed harsh and ugly by comparison.

  "But I have never come so high before. It's glorious! This world ofsilent snow and moonlight--and _you_. You're a child of the snow, Iswear. Let me come up--closer--to see your face--and touch your littlehand."

  Her laughter answered him.

  "Come on! A little higher. Here we're quite alone together."

  "It's magnificent," he cried. "But why did you hide away so long? I'velooked and searched for you in vain ever since we skated--" he was goingto say "ten days ago," but the accurate memory of time had gone fromhim; he was not sure whether it was days or years or minutes. Histhoughts of earth were scattered and confused.

  "You looked for me in the wrong places," he heard her murmur just abovehim. "You looked in places where I never go. Hotels and houses kill me.I avoid them." She laughed--a fine, shrill, windy little laugh.

  "I loathe them too--"

  He stopped. The girl had suddenly come quite close. A breath of icepassed through his very soul. She had touched him.

  "But this awful cold!" he cried out, sharply, "this freezing cold thattakes me. The wind is rising; it's a wind of ice. Come, let us turn ...!"

  But when he plunged forward to hold her, or at least to look, the girlwas gone again. And something in the way she stood there a few feetbeyond, and stared down into his eyes so steadfastly in silence, madehim shiver. The moonlight was behind her, but in some odd way he couldnot focus sight upon her face, although so close. The gleam of eyes hecaught, but all the rest seemed white and snowy as though he lookedbeyond her--out into space....

  The sound of the church bell came up faintly from the valley far below,and he counted the strokes--five. A sudden, curious weakness seized himas he listened. Deep within it was, deadly yet somehow sweet, and hardto resist. He felt like sinking down upon the snow and lying there....They had been climbing for five hours.... It was, of course, the warningof complete exhaustion.

  With a great effort he fought and overcame it. It passed away assuddenly as it came.

  "We'll turn," he said with a decision he hardly felt. "It will be dawnbefore we reach the village again. Come at once. It's time for home."

  The sense of exhilaration had utterly left him. An emotion that was akinto fear swept coldly through
him. But her whispering answer turned itinstantly to terror--a terror that gripped him horribly and turned himweak and unresisting.

  "Our home is--_here_!" A burst of wild, high laughter, loud and shrill,accompanied the words. It was like a whistling wind. The wind _had_risen, and clouds obscured the moon. "A little higher--where we cannothear the wicked bells," she cried, and for the first time seized himdeliberately by the hand. She moved, was suddenly close against hisface. Again she touched him.

  And Hibbert tried to turn away in escape, and so trying, found for thefirst time that the power of the snow--that other power which does notexhilarate but deadens effort--was upon him. The suffocating weaknessthat it brings to exhausted men, luring them to the sleep of death inher clinging soft embrace, lulling the will and conquering all desirefor life--this was awfully upon him. His feet were heavy and entangled.He could not turn or move.

  The girl stood in front of him, very near; he felt her chilly breathupon his cheeks; her hair passed blindingly across his eyes; and thaticy wind came with her. He saw her whiteness close; again, it seemed,his sight passed through her into space as though she had no face. Herarms were round his neck. She drew him softly downwards to his knees. Hesank; he yielded utterly; he obeyed. Her weight was upon him,smothering, delicious. The snow was to his waist.... She kissed himsoftly on the lips, the eyes, all over his face. And then she spoke hisname in that voice of love and wonder, the voice that held the accent oftwo others--both taken over long ago by Death--the voice of his mother,and of the woman he had loved.

  He made one more feeble effort to resist. Then, realising even while hestruggled that this soft weight about his heart was sweeter thananything life could ever bring, he let his muscles relax, and sank backinto the soft oblivion of the covering snow. Her wintry kisses bore himinto sleep.