November Night Tales

by Henry Chapman Mercer

  “But the shocking part of the story,” he added, rising from his seat to blow out one of the guttering candles, “rests on the evidence of the sentinels and an old woman, who rearranged the child’s shroud before the funeral next day. Consequently, it can’t be proved, without exhuming the body. The lamps around the little dead girl in the shed had blown out. When they came to relight them, they declared that one of her legs was missing, cut off (or bitten off) close to the hip. Your thief, therefore, according to them, was a werwolf.”

  “Yet, the body was that of a man. Do you mean that these people would say that the wolf had regained its human form at the time of death?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I have understood that the change is said to work in exactly the other way.”

  “It works both ways, according to these fanatics, depending on circumstances, charms, and so forth. The whole thing is hypnotic, if you will; a jumble of contradictions. If it were not so horrible and fatal, it would be ridiculous. But what I could not realize before is the association of the thing with your manuscript. What are we to make of that?”

  “Curious, of course,” said the professor. “But if we leave out the doubtful mutilation of the little girl, I can’t see anything supernatural about it. The man killed is one of the Gipsies I met at Golubacz. The others escaped. Why wolves? Why not dogs? The whole thing happened in the dark. Of course it is a coincidence.”

  “Too many coincidences,” objected the general, who, again walking up and down the terrace, denounced the hellish dementia, as he called it, which for centuries had fixed its fatal blight upon the surrounding region. “Leave out the supernatural,” he continued. “These grave robberies, kidnappings, and domestic outrages that defy the law and the efforts of the Church have never yet been explained. Nine times out of ten there is no motive. The victims are children, whether by natural death, as in this case, or murder or infanticide. In other words, cannibalism in its most frightful form.”

  “Who proves these things?” asked the professor.

  “The priests. They tell us of whole villages at times depopulated of children. If they exaggerate, half of what they say would be terrible enough.”

  As over their cigars they discussed the possibilities and theories of lycanthropy, the higher interpretation of the manuscript was forgotten, and the conversation, in spite of themselves, narrowed itself to the details of the ghastly tale, which the general himself refused to believe.

  It had grown late. The Tokay stood untasted on the table, while associations more and more sinister gathered around the gorgeous object that glowed and flashed in the candlelight, until the professor, shrinking from the task of escaping from the country with such a thing in his possession, almost regretted that he had found it.

  To circumvent the latter difficulty, the general proposed a special passport, under the seal of the International River Navigation Treaty, and the talk ended.

  viii

  “These dinners! These dinners!” exclaimed the hospitable soldier, with a touch of sadness in his sonorous voice, as he greeted the professor the next day. “Friends made at night, and lost in the morning! I’m afraid I am getting a little too old for that.”

  He explained that the promised passport, lying on his writing table, though available at large river ports and at the Turkish frontier, would not be comprehended by country officials, nor by the truculent Roumanian sentries. Then he conspicuously stamped it with the Imperial Seal.

  “Jason’s adventures were dangerous,” he laughed, as the professor turned away. “Keep clear of the peasants. If you take my advice, you will not land at any of the river villages.”

  Again the magic sweep of the current seemed to reverse the laws of motion, while, as if they stood still, it was the world that moved backward. The professor had recovered his spirits. Standing on the cabin-roof, in his life-preserver, with his precious canister slung over his shoulder, he heard without fear the threatening roar of waters. The “Iron Gates” were open, and away they went, dancing, trembling, leaping, whirled from shore to shore, till by oar-plunge and rudder-sweep they had cleared the last reef and whirlpool. Then suddenly, unaccountably, just as they drifted into smooth water, the rudder broke.

  As the boat became at once unmanageable, several vexatious delays followed. But they soon found that their makeshift splicings of the highly-efficient, enormous oar, balanced by a rope-twist on the stern-post, failed to insure their safety when, in island channels, they contended with shoals, eddies, or the branches of submerged trees.

  The Carpathians were fading away to the westward, their foothills sinking into the great Dacian plain, where the Danube, broadening like a lake, seems to lose its current. Jom-palanka and Rakoviza had come and gone when, at last, the professor, compelled to disregard the general’s warning for the sake of a thing obtainable at most of the river towns, worked carefully out of the main stream and, hugging the shore for about a mile, gained the village of Borobassa, just below several large moored barges.

  ix

  The boat had grounded on a muddy beach, under overhanging acacia trees, where a few cows stood knee-deep in the shallow water. They heard the cackle of unseen chickens, and then the clang of an anvil, but saw no one till they had stepped ashore, when a gaunt heavily-built man in gray uniform and wearing a sword suddenly came out from behind the barges, and seeming surprised at the professor’s explanation, led him up the beach, into a wattled enclosure littered with boat wreckage.

  “Who told you to come here?” he asked, stopping to look at the stranger, with a troubled gleam in his swollen eyes. “You can get oars at Cusjak, or Provo, or Rakovisa. There’s a fire-feast here today. You know what for?”

  “No.”

  The man paused at a faint howling noise from beyond the trees.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “I am not afraid of dogs,” laughed the professor, holding up his heavy walking-stick.

  A frown crossed the haggard face of the man as he nodded his head contemptuously. “It’s none of my business,” he added. Then, pointing to a thatched shed and leaving his puzzled hearer, he hurried off.

  “What did that man tell you?” asked an old blacksmith, who was standing near a forge-fire by the open shed-door when the professor approached.

  “He said I could get oars across the river.”

  “So you can; but I can make oars too.”

  “He warned me against your dogs.”

  “Dogs? We have no dogs. He knows that.”

  “Is he a customs officer?” asked the traveler.

  “Yes, poor devil,—till they get rid of him. He is crazy.”

  Learning that the job of finding and dressing the new rudder would take an hour or more, and having made his bargain with the old man, the professor stepped out of the smithy.

  By way of a vegetable garden, a gate led into a wide, shady lane, where a group of peasant laundresses, in Bulgarian village fashion, were at work around the public well; and, as he went by, he stopped to notice that several of them were in holiday costume. One, a tall, athletic young woman, in a red-embroidered jacket, had just manipulated the pole of the great well-sweep and, without acknowledging the stranger’s greeting, had swung two buckets of water upon her shoulder-yoke, when her headdress, a red cap, set sidewise on her black hair-braids, lost its pin or balance, and whirled off in the wind.

  As it fell and rolled near the professor’s feet, he leaped forward, picked it up, took off his hat, and reaching it out to the approaching woman, placed her cap upon his head while, apparently more astonished than amused, the other laundresses looked on. He stepped backwards. The woman threw his hat contemptuously on the ground and followed his evasive retreat until at last he stopped and, with a polite bow, returned her cap. She snatched it from his hand and stood awhile looking angrily at him. Then suddenly, t
o his amazement, the young Amazon sprung upon him and, seizing the tin box hanging upon his shoulder, wrenched it from its strap. The professor ran after her, caught the flying end of the broken strap, and, with a quick jerk, pulled the box out of her hands.

  The woman turned and again stared at him. Something inhuman gleamed in the green eyes, while a singular distortion of the mouth so disfigured the handsome face that the professor, repelled if not startled, turned away. His hat had rolled down the hill, and he had just found it and picked it up, when he heard the voice of the blacksmith close by his side. The old man was speaking low.

  “Excuse me, my gentleman, you are a stranger, sir. Will you take Hungrian man’s advice?”

  “What is it?” asked the traveler, surprised at the question.

  “We are not in my country. I am from Semlin. But here, in Borobassa,” he added, with a whisper, “we let such a woman alone.”

  “Is she married?”

  “God knows! But she is a very bad woman. Excuse me, my gentleman, it is not safe.”

  The professor had followed the old man into his garden.

  “Turkish jealousy!” he muttered. “More and more of it, I suppose, as we go eastward.”

  His critic seemed anxious to say something else. But without waiting to hear what it was, the professor thanked him, left the garden through another gate, and by way of a narrow lane walked slowly up the hill.

  x

  Unlike the river-villages thus far seen, the whole extent of Borobassa’s huts, gardens, and lanes seemed buried in trees, a young forest, in which the scholar saw no sign of life, until the solitude began to astonish him. Then, at last, came a faint, resonant hum of voices, interrupted by the ringing of a bell. The cause of the noise was explained at the end of a lane, where, through an opening in the leaves, the sunlight caught the sheepskin caps and white shoulders of a dense crowd of men.

  They were sitting upon the ground and, as the professor found on drawing near, along a narrow, circular row of planks, set with earthen bowls and dishes. He saw a black-robed Greek priest upon a platform, and opposite him, over the swarthy faces, a sheep, garlanded with flowers, held close to the table by two crouching men. Fastened to the animal’s horns, two burning candles, shielded by several extended hands, flickered in the draft. Presently the singing ceased. The priest raised his hands in prayer, and the approaching professor, with the uneasy feeling of an intruder, took off his hat. He had stepped backward into the lane and was walking away when, at the touch of a hand softly laid upon his arm, he turned to look, with amazement, upon the woman he had offended at the well.

  “You will not go away,” said she gently.

  The handsome face had lost all trace of anger as, with a laughing apology for what had happened, she held toward him a bunch of pink flowers. He took them, listened with surprise to her invitation to what she described as a public feast, and then followed her out of the lane into the crowded square. They had walked by the noisy table, where several of the peasants turned to look at them, when she laid her hand upon his tin box. “What do you carry in it?” she asked.

  “Flowers. I am a botanist.”

  Passing a pile of faggots, partly covered with a black cloth, which he had not before noticed, he and his guide entered what he took to be the kitchen, a long thatched shed, open in front, and extending backward into a roofless bakery, in which several fires were burning and where a group of peasants seated around a bowl of broth politely made room for them.

  The stranger sat down on a stool and took his turn with a wooden spoon at a highly-seasoned stew, while the villagers, some of whom wore brightly-colored vests and had the swarthy look of Gipsies, examined his carved walking-stick, and would have entertained him had they meddled less with his tin box, which he had again tied to its strap. They came and went, laughed and drank, until when several earthen wine bottles had been emptied, one by one, they left him, and he found himself alone with a solemn blue-eyed old peasant woman, who had been stirring the soup.

  Her light, sun-bleached hair had begun to turn grey, and her brown mantle, open at the throat, showed a triple-strung necklace of red berries, knotted upon little silver coins.

  “Have you a saint for today?” he asked, as the woman, who held a rosary in her hand, laid it on the table.

  “For our Holy Saint Basil,” said she devoutly,—“the friend of children. It is a fire-feast.”

  “What is that?”

  “You are a stranger, sir,”—she paused. “But you must know that we have no children here.”

  “No children!” repeated the astonished visitor. “Where are your children?”

  With a strange expression, the woman looked at him a moment in silence. “What! Have you not heard?” she whispered. Then, glancing suddenly over her shoulder, she stopped.

  The other woman had come back, bringing a wine bottle, and, without sitting down, stood looking at them. Her peculiar greenish eyes had a slightly supercilious look as she turned them from the professor to his companion.

  “I have brought you some wine,” she said, placing the earthen bottle on the table and laying her hand on the old woman’s shoulder; “to drink her health. Did she tell you who she is?”

  “No,” replied the professor.

  “She is my grandmother.”

  The old woman grasped her rosary and looked up. Her face flushed with anger, and she rose from her stool.

  “She tells you a lie,” said she angrily; “I am no Gipsy.”

  While the indignant peasant walked away, the offender laughed mischievously and sat down at the table.

  “Why did you do that?” inquired the puzzled scholar.

  Without answering, the woman drew her stool nearer.

  “Did you show her your flowers?”

  “No.”

  She laid her hand on the tin canister. “But you will show them to me, my friend?”

  “I have only roots,” said he, “not flowers.”

  Leaning forward, his companion clutched the tin box. Again he saw the threatening glitter in the green eyes. He started. For an instant the masked Gipsy at Golubacz flashed upon his sight and vanished.

  “Let us see the roots,” said she.

  He grasped her hand, pushed it away, and, following the example of the old woman, walked hastily off into the crowd.

  xi

  In clouds of steam, among the hurrying cooks and waiters, the professor wandered awhile. At length, noticing his late aged companion near the entrance, he stopped. She was sitting on a bench with the customs officer he had met at the beach. The singular man, who was holding a white package on his knees and gesticulating violently as if in a rage, got up, thrust the bundle into his pocket, and walked away. The professor hesitated a moment, then sat down.

  “Why did you leave us?” he asked gently, looking into the still angry blue eyes. “You knew it was not my fault.”

  “No, you are a stranger, sir. It is that Gipsy woman.” The old peasant pointed to the uncouth, haggard man who was standing outside near the wood pile. “Did you hear what he said about her?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see what he was showing me in a handkerchief? He carries it about in his pocket.”

  “No.”

  She leaned forward, lowering her voice to a whisper: “It is his child’s foot.”

  “Good Heavens! Is he crazy?”

  “Yes. Mary and Joseph! It would make you sick.” Again she suddenly stopped. He looked up. The remarkable woman they talked about was standing before them.

  The professor was still holding her pink bouquet.

  “Are we friends?” she asked, pointing to the flowers, with a laugh. “Come, I will show you my garden.”

  Near the open window he caught the glow of her red cap and underdress. Her
gold earrings sparkled in the sun.

  The professor would have risen, but the old woman clutched his arm.

  “Don’t look at her,” she whispered.

  “Come,” urged the Gipsy.

  Her green eyes fixed upon him seemed to expand with a dull, whitish glitter and lose their pupils.

  “Don’t look at her,” repeated the old woman.

  With sudden anger at the continued arm-clutch, the scholar felt an irresistible impulse to break away. Just then a bell rang outside, and the Gipsy glanced over her shoulder.

  “Come! I must go,” said she.

  But as the professor sat still, she turned away, and waving her hand, walked quickly across the square.

  “I am afraid I have treated her badly,” he muttered nervously, holding up his pink flowers; “she gave me these.”

  “Throw them away! They will bring you bad luck.”

  “What! The Orpine? I thought it was a fortunate plant.”

  “You will see, my friend. Do you know what she wants?”

  “No.”

  “It is your tin box. Are you afraid of her?”

  Without answering, the professor tightened his grasp upon the canister.

  “I will tell you something.” The old woman leaned toward him and again lowered her voice to a whisper. “She is a wolf-woman.”

  Once more the bell rang outside.