“I cherish the theory,” Gifford had said, “that the soul sometimes lingers in the body after death. During madness, of course, it is an impotent prisoner, albeit a conscious one. Fancy its agony, and its horror! What more natural than that, when the life-spark goes out, the tortured soul should take possession of the vacant skull and triumph once more for a few hours while old friends look their last? It has had time to repent while compelled to crouch and behold the result of its work, and it has shrived itself into a state of comparative purity. If I had my way, I should stay inside my bones until the coffin had gone into its niche, that I might obviate for my poor old comrade the tragic impersonality of death. And I should like to see justice done to it, as it were—to see it lowered among its ancestors with the ceremony and solemnity that are its due. I am afraid that if I dissevered myself too quickly, I should yield to curiosity and hasten to investigate the mysteries of space.”
“You believe in the soul as an independent entity, then—that it and the vital principle are not one and the same?”
“Absolutely. The body and soul are twins, life comrades—sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, but always loyal in the last instance. Someday, when I am tired of the world, I shall go to India and become a mahatma, solely for the pleasure of receiving proof during life of this independent relationship.”
“Suppose you were not sealed up properly, and returned after one of your astral flights to find your earthly part unfit for habitation? It is an experiment I don’t think I should care to try, unless even juggling with soul and flesh had palled.”
“That would not be an uninteresting predicament. I should rather enjoy experimenting with broken machinery.”
The high wild roar of water smote suddenly upon Weigall’s ear and checked his memories. He left the wood and walked out on the huge slippery stones which nearly close the River Wharfe at this point, and watched the waters boil down into the narrow pass with their furious untiring energy. The black quiet of the woods rose high on either side. The stars seemed colder and whiter just above. On either hand the perspective of the river might have run into a rayless cavern. There was no lonelier spot in England, nor one which had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were.
Weigall was not a coward, but he recalled uncomfortably the tales of those that had been done to death in the Strid.[1] Wordsworth’s Boy of Egremond had been disposed of by the practical Whitaker; but countless others, more venturesome than wise, had gone down into that narrow boiling course, never to appear in the still pool a few yards beyond. Below the great rocks which form the walls of the Strid was believed to be a natural vault, on to whose shelves the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination. Weigall stood, visioning skeletons, uncoffined and green, the home of the eyeless things which had devoured all that had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man’s mortality; then fell to wondering if any one had attempted to leap the Strid of late. It was covered with slime; he had never seen it look so treacherous.
He shuddered and turned away, impelled, despite his manhood, to flee the spot. As he did so, something tossing in the foam below the fall—something as white, yet independent of it—caught his eye and arrested his step. Then he saw that it was describing a contrary motion to the rushing water—an upward backward motion. Weigall stood rigid, breathless; he fancied he heard the crackling of his hair. Was that a hand? It thrust itself still higher above the boiling foam, turned sidewise, and four frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the black rock beyond.
Weigall’s superstitious terror left him. A man was there, struggling to free himself from the suction beneath the Strid, swept down, doubtless, but a moment before his arrival, perhaps as he stood with his back to the current.
He stepped as close to the edge as he dared. The hand doubled as if in imprecation, shaking savagely in the face of that force which leaves its creatures to immutable law; then spread wide again, clutching, expanding, crying for help as audibly as the human voice.
Weigall dashed to the nearest tree, dragged and twisted off a branch with his strong arms, and returned as swiftly to the Strid. The hand was in the same place, still gesticulating as wildly; the body was undoubtedly caught in the rocks below, perhaps already half-way along one of those hideous shelves. Weigall let himself down upon a lower rock, braced his shoulder against the mass beside him, then, leaning out over the water, thrust the branch into the hand. The fingers clutched it convulsively. Weigall tugged powerfully, his own feet dragged perilously near the edge. For a moment he produced no impression, then an arm shot above the waters.
The blood sprang to Weigall’s head; he was choked with the impression that the Strid had him in her roaring hold, and he saw nothing. Then the mist cleared. The hand and arm were nearer, although the rest of the body was still concealed by the foam. Weigall peered out with distended eyes. The meagre light revealed in the cuffs links of a peculiar device. The fingers clutching the branch were as familiar.
Weigall forgot the slippery stones, the terrible death if he stepped too far. He pulled with passionate will and muscle. Memories flung themselves into the hot light of his brain, trooping rapidly upon each other’s heels, as in the thought of the drowning. Most of the pleasures of his life, good and bad, were identified in some way with this friend. Scenes of college days, of travel, where they had deliberately sought adventure and stood between one another and death upon more occasions than one, of hours of delightful companionship among the treasures of art, and others in the pursuit of pleasure, flashed like the changing particles of a kaleidoscope. Weigall had loved several women; but he would have flouted in these moments the thought that he had ever loved any woman as he loved Wyatt Gifford. There were so many charming women in the world, and in the thirty-two years of his life he had never known another man to whom he had cared to give his intimate friendship.
He threw himself on his face. His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was life in them yet.
Suddenly something gave way. The hand swung about, tearing the branch from Weigall’s grasp. The body had been liberated and flung outward, though still submerged by the foam and spray.
Weigall scrambled to his feet and sprang along the rocks, knowing that the danger from suction was over and that Gifford must be carried straight to the quiet pool. Gifford was a fish in the water and could live under it longer than most men. If he survived this, it would not be the first time that his pluck and science had saved him from drowning.
Weigall reached the pool. A man in his evening clothes floated on it, his face turned towards a projecting rock over which his arm had fallen, upholding the body. The hand that had held the branch hung limply over the rock, its white reflection visible in the black water. Weigall plunged into the shallow pool, lifted Gifford in his arms and returned to the bank. He laid the body down and threw off his coat that he might be the freer to practise the methods of resuscitation. He was glad of the moment’s respite. The valiant life in the man might have been exhausted in that last struggle. He had not dared to look at his face, to put his ear to the heart. The hesitation lasted but a moment. There was no time to lose.
He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange and disagreeable smote his senses. For a half-moment he did not appreciate its nature. Then his teeth clacked together, his feet, his outstretched arms pointed towards the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and bent down and peered into his face. There was no face.
[1] “This striding place is called the ‘Strid,’
A name which it took of yore;
A thousand years hath it borne the name,
And it shall a thousand more.”
SISTER SERAPHINE, by Edna W. Underwood
We were sitting upon the terrace of Chateau Chateauroux in the early evening—the old Comtesse M——, Mischna Stepanoff, and myself. It was the time of the first soft warmth of spring. Two blossoming fruit trees beside us were sweet
ghosts in the early night. About them white butterflies fluttered.
In the west there were great piled clouds edged with a pink as rare and as wonderful as that which Watteau created for his frail creatures of joy. And this pink was reflected in soft broken ribbons in the gently moving surface of the Loire.
“What a night for love!” sighed Mischna Stepanoff, in whose life the passion had played no unimportant part.
“Yes,” I replied, “love and youth and spring; they are earth’s immortal trinity.”
“That reminds me of a story a true story of spring and youth and love,” sighed reminiscently the old Comtesse, who had been a famous beauty in her day.
“Tell it to us,” urged Mischna Stepanoff. “Next to being in love oneself is the pleasure of listening to the stories of other people who have been in love.”
“But I feel that I cannot do justice to it,” objected the old Comtesse. “It is a story for the pen of Maupassant, who wrote of the tress of hair. It might have been included among the pagan and Oriental dreams of Gautier, or such fragile and dainty reminiscences of youth as De Nerval occasionally indulged in. What could I do with a fancy like that?”
“Tell it, anyway,” we insisted.
“Well, what I lack, your own greater imaginative skill must supply,”—smiling and waving deprecatingly toward us a tiny jeweled hand. “It is the strangest, the most interesting story in the world. And it is true.
“Over there where the hills step aside to make room for the passing of the Loire, is the ruin of a convent which you have probably noticed. In my youth it was inhabited by Les Soeurs Blanches, a well-conducted and aristocratic order of nuns, who educated the daughters of the old noblesse.
“One day I paid a visit there and for the first time saw Sister Seraphine. She was about eighteen then, I should judge, although she had already taken the final vows. I was at once attracted by her face and her strange beauty. The upper part of the face—the brow, the eyes, the nose—were those of an ascetic, a dreamer, an intellectual. The brow was nobly formed and broad; the nose chastely chiseled and modeled to an artist’s taste; and the eyes were the spiritual gray-blue of the mystic. The eyes were very beautiful, too mistily humid, like the valley of our Loire here on a morning of spring.
“But the mouth! How can I tell you what it was like! There will never be another in the world like it. In its color alone there were hidden all the sins of earth. Such a color might have been born from the conflagration of a world, or in the feverish brain of some sightless dreamer. In its curves there was all the resistless languor of a mediaeval mondaine, or a voluptuous Roman woman who had idled in the villas of Baiae. Imagine, if you will, such a mouth beneath that ascetic brow! It was the cause of her undoing, too—and her ruin.
“It contradicted the rest of her face so sharply that it was as if she were two persons in one. It threw the beholder into a sort of stupefaction. It made him feel as if he had stumbled awkwardly upon some unguarded secret. It was that rarest of all features—a perfect mouth! And yet, perchance, I think its perfection was a trifle over-accented. It was, I think, a shade too red, too alluring, too sensuous. It was a veritable Cupid’s bow set about with mocking dimples that changed like light on the mobile surface of the Loire.
“No one could have known less of the world than Sister Seraphine. She had been placed with Les Soeurs Blanches when she was four years old. And she had never once left their sheltering care. She was of noble blood, too, although the bar sinister blackened her birth record. On her father’s side, it was whispered, she came of that royal blood of old France that had never known the meaning of fear. And her mother was the gay Comtesse of Marny.
“Now in all her young life Sister Seraphine had never seen a man except the village priests and those who sat on Sundays beyond the grating in the church. Think of it! Can you even imagine such a condition! Every holiday and fête day before her final vows were taken, plans had been made to give her an outing in the great world, to introduce her to that society to which by birth she belonged. But, some way or other, each time the plans miscarried. Some other person’s welfare and happiness intervened, had to be considered first. The result was that she had never left the convent walls.
“Shortly after this first visit of mine, the Duchesse de St. Loisy presented to the convent two long mirrors for the reception room. About this same time Sister Seraphine was put in charge of the room to receive guests and the relatives of the jeunes demoiselles on visiting days. Callers at the convent were not very frequent in those days. Traveling facilities were not what they have come to be since, so Sister Seraphine was left alone for hours in the great room.
“Here she acquired the habit of looking at herself in one of the mirrors. At first eyes stared blankly back at eyes. She could not see herself. It is difficult, always, to get acquainted with oneself. That to me, Mischna Stepanoff, has been one of the pleasures of living—to find within me things that I did not dream were there. Sister Seraphine after a while discovered her mouth. She was sur prised, as you may imagine. It was as if it were the mouth of some strange unknown person who dwelled within her. It was—the other—made visible!
“Soon she sensed, rather than reasoned, that it was in harmony with the fragrant creative spring outside; that she was part of an universal nature that lived and laughed. It seemed to her that even in repose her mouth laughed. It was like the pagan sunshine, which always laughed. She became interested in her mouth. She became fascinated with the many things that it expressed, with its color, its flexibility, and its capacity for joyous sensation, if by chance she touched it to a flower.
“One night, just before she closed and left the great room for the night, she leaned long by the mirror’s edge looking up at the stars through a near-by window. They were merry that night, the stars. It was spring, which is youth in the world, and they laughed. They laughed so gayly, so alluringly, that she turned impulsively and kissed her own mouth in the mirror.
“For days after this Sister Seraphine was meditative and beyond her habit thoughtful. She could not look at the mirrors. Her cheeks flushed with shame. She felt disgraced and dishonored. Every time she was obliged to pass by the great mirrors, she carefully turned her eyes away.
“During these days it seemed as if Spring, like a bandit, broke through the ponderous convent walls. Its murmur and its mystery and its fragrance and its buoyant life were everywhere. They poured invisibly through the somber, painted windows. They swept enticingly down the long bare halls. All night they sang beneath the casements of the penitential chambers. They awoke with the first penetrating sweetness of the dawn.
“Each morning, in the opening flower cups, Sister Seraphine found other mouths that looked like hers. She saw there the same desirous, satiny lips. The same brilliant color burned upon them, the same dewy ripeness. One night, unable to sleep, so many and so mighty were the voices that called her, she got up softly and tiptoed down the long bare corridors to the reception room. It was not ever really night anywhere that spring, it seems to me as I recall it. The frail gray shadows of summer made instead a sort of semi-day.
“She knelt down on the floor in front of one of the mirrors. There she saw a white face under an aureole of short gold hair, two eyes that shone like stars, and a mouth that was red as a wound. Again she kissed it. When she crept back to her room, she found it lonelier than before. Something, she knew not what, was missing. The world was empty. Some joy had gone out of life.
“The next day she asked for permission to see Father Richards, the aged priest of the parish.
“‘Father,’ she began, ‘you know that I have never left the convent walls, do you not?’
“‘Yes, my daughter.’
“‘You know that I have no other home.’
“‘Yes, my daughter.’
“‘That I have read only my breviary and the books of the saints. And yet, Father, I have sinned, sinned grievously—’
“‘How, my daughter?’
“‘I h
ave kissed—’
“‘Kissed?’
“‘Yes, Father. I have kissed a mouth, because I wanted to; because it was red and sweet, like the flowers outside in the spring.’
“‘What! You say— Explain, my daughter!’ said the aged priest, greatly puzzled.
“‘I kissed my own mouth, Father. I kissed it in the mirror, not once, Father, but twice. And I am not sorry. It gave me pleasure, Father. Were not mouths made to kiss? And the pleasure was not that which I have felt when I kissed the white feet of the Virgin. And I am not sorry, Father.’
“‘It is your youth, my daughter; spring, too, in the blood. You must pray and fast—especially fast. That will subdue evil.’
“‘No, Father. I think differently. I will not. I am going away. The great mirrors in the drawing-room there have shown me my mouth, Father. And it has told me of another life a life to which I belong! Do you know what made it so red, so wonderful, so faultless, Father, this mouth of mine? It was the splendid, free, pleasure-loving, tempestuous lives that they lived who made me. There is not in this mouth of mine one servile curve, one penitential or humiliating line, one touch of pleading or regret. Although I have not seen them, I know that it must have been a great race that bore me. They did not even leave me a name to which I have a just claim. But right here, on my mouth, Father, they set the red seal of their pleasures, their aristocratic arrogance, their fearlessness, and their power.
The Second Macabre Megapack Page 12