“And while you are waiting,” she said, “you can read this. My father left it for you, and I forgot about it till now.”
Lewellyn took from her a sealed letter, which he read slowly and with much emotion. He had been thinking over it for some minutes when he was summoned to supper.
“Come out,” he said.
Miss Penpergwyn obeyed.
“Stand by me while I read this to you. There is no date. ‘You will be beginning to understand by this time. I had a long struggle with myself; but my life would soon have ended and hers was just beginning. I felt sure I would find you. I had known your father, and had seen you in your boyhood; I knew your character, and that you must be a strong and handsome man. The world begins again with you two.’ That is all. What is your name, Miss Penpergwyn?”
“Lynden.”
“Lynden! A strange name.”
“My father was a strange man.”
He took both her hands, and drew her towards him.
“Lynden Westaway,” he said.
She trembled; then, dropping her head on his shoulder, whispered between a sob and a laugh: “My husband.”
*
Next morning, Lewellyn said, “I’ve been thinking over all you did yesterday, and there are two things I don’t understand. Why did you sigh so deeply and gladly when I said I supposed your father had drunk the other half of the remedy?”
“Because I was glad that you hadn’t taken it knowingly from him.”
“And why did you stand with your back to me when I landed, and then sigh so happily when I turned round?”
“I stood with my back to you because I was afraid you might not be easy to love; and I sighed with happiness when I saw how handsome you were. Oh! how bold you must have thought me! I imagined that my father would have told you about me, and all he meant, and that was why I was so frank. I wanted to put you at your ease, my dear—to meet you half way, love.”
* * *
1 Presumably the Scottish National Gallery, situated on The Mound, first opened to the public in 1859.
TORNADRES
J.-H. ROSNY
J.-H. Rosny was the pseudonym of Joseph-Henri Boëx (1856–1940), who was hailed by French critics enthused by the work of H. G. Wells as the nearest native equivalent, largely because of two stories published in the late 1880s: the extraordinary novelette “Les Xipéhuz” (1887; tr. as “The Xipehuz”) in which a prehistoric human civilization is briefly invaded by extremely exotic alien beings apparently displaced from another dimension, and “Tornadres” (1888; published in the February issue of the Revue indépendante; also known as “Le Cataclysme”). Rosny made various other attempts to develop fiction based on an adventurous philosophical essay in fictional form “La Légende sceptique” (tr. as “The Skeptical Legend”) also published in 1888 but written earlier, and most of his scientific romance consists of extrapolations of ideas broached therein.
Joseph Boëx shared his pseudonym for a while with his younger brother Justin, and when they fell out again he began signing his work J.-H. Rosny aîné [i.e. the elder], but all the speculative fiction published under the name is Joseph’s. His other important works in the genre include the novella “La Mort de la terre” (1910; tr. as “The Death of the Earth”) and the novels La Force mystérieuse (1913; tr. as The Mysterious Force) and Les Navigateurs de l’infini (1922; tr. as “Navigators of Space”). Almost all of his relevant works are available in English in a six-volume set published by Black Coat Press in 2010.
Like most of his important contributions to the genre, Rosny’s “Tornadres” is an account of an encounter with the alien—which is, in Rosny’s most adventurous work, always extremely peculiar and mysterious, radically different from the organic life with which we are familiar.
I.
Symptoms
On the Tornadre plateau, for several weeks, nature palpitated and equivocated in anguish, the whole of its delicate vegetable organism shot through by intermittent electricity, symbolic signs of a great material event. The free beasts on the farms and in the chestnut plantations were not as quick to flee quotidian perils; they seemed to want to get closer to human beings, wandering around the tenancies. Then they came to an extraordinary decision, sounding an alarm: they emigrated, going deep into the valley of the Iaraze.
As the nights fell, in the gloom of forests and thickets, there was a drama of nervous animals furtively quitting their lairs with hesitant steps, often pausing and stopping, melancholy to be fleeing their native land. The somber and languid howling of wolves alternated with the muffled grunts of wild boars and the sobbing of ruminants. Ashy silhouettes were gliding everywhere, generally toward the south-west, over cultivated ground beneath the open sky: great antlered skulls, heavy tapir-like bodies with short legs, and slimmer beasts, carnivores and herbivores alike—hares, moles, rabbits, foxes and squirrels. The batrachians followed, the reptiles and the wingless insects, and a week ensued in which the south-western direction was flooded with inferior organisms, a frightful vermicular population, from the hopping silhouettes of frogs to slugs and snails, through the marvelous wing-cases of carabid beetles and horrible crustaceans that live under stones in eternal darkness, to worms, leeches and larvae.
Soon, nothing remained but winged creatures. Then the birds, filled with unease, increasingly clinging on to branches, fearful of flying, saluted the twilights with more subdued songs, often leaving the locality for a large part of the day. The crows and the owls held great assemblies; the swifts gathered together as if for their autumnal migration; the magpies became agitated, cawing all day long.
The mysterious terror spread to the slaves: the sheep, the cattle, the horses, even the dogs. Resigned, in the confidence of their humble serfdom, all expecting salvation from Humankind, they stayed on the Tornadre plateau—except for the cats, which had fled in the early days, returning to savage liberty.
As the evenings went by, a confused sadness, an asphyxia of the soul, took possession of the inhabitants of the tenancies and the proprietors of the estate known as the Corne: the confused anticipation of a cataclysm—which, however, the topography of Tornadre belied. Being distant from volcanic regions and the ocean, insubmersible—having only a few streams—and compact in texture, what form could the threat possibly take?
It was felt nevertheless, electrically, in the rigidity of small branches and blades of grass at certain morning hours, in the singular attitudes of foliage, in subtle and suffocating effluvia, unusual phosphorescences and the prickling of flesh by night, which caused the eyelids to rise, condemning the individual to insomnia, in the extraordinary behavior of livestock, often stiffening, their nostrils open and tremulous, and turning their heads toward the north.
II.
The Astral Downpour
One evening, at the Corne, Sévère and his wife were finishing dinner next to the half-closed window. A crescent moon was wandering near the Zenith, pale and full of grace, above the vast perspectives, and rising mists decorated the western frontier. A troubling spell—an ardor of the nervous system, a suddenly awakened obscure commotion—kept them silent, impregnating them with a particular aesthetic sensibility, a profound wonderment relative to the nocturnal splendors.
A harmonious tremor welled up from the trees in the garden; at the rear, visible through the gate to the avenue, there was an enchantment of confused objects, the crop-fields of the Tornadre, the blanched farmhouses, the friendly mystery of human lights and the vague slate-covered steeple of the rustic church. The masters of the Corne were moved by that, troubled by the vibration of their nerves. The commotion being keener along the spinal column, however, the wife dropped the bunch of grapes that she was plucking, her lip trembling.
“My God! Is it going to go on forever?”
Sévère looked at her, with a strong desire to give her courage—but his own soul was in a stupor, obscured by an imponderable force.
Sévère Lestang was one of those grave intellectuals slowly seeking the se
cret of things, studying nature without impatience, disinterested in glory—but he was a man as well as an intellectual; his eyes were gentle and courageous, and he had a desire to live his life as well as developing his faculties. His wife, Luce, was a nervous mountain Celt, delicately graceful, amorous and captivating, but a trifle somber. Under the calm and attentive protection of her husband, she was like certain infinitely frail flowers that live in the inlets of great rivers, between large shady leaves.
“If you want,” said Sévère, “we can leave tomorrow.”
“Yes, please!”
She came closer to him, seeking refuge, murmuring: “They say that one can’t keep a foothold any longer, you know, especially in the evening . . . that something takes hold of you and carries you away! Well, I don’t dare walk quickly any longer, my steps draw me on so . . . and one climbs stairs effortlessly, but with a constant fear of falling. . . .”
“You’re mistaken, Luce. It’s a nervous illusion.” He smiled, pressing her to him—but he too, with a terrible malaise, had perceived that incomprehensible lightness. Sometimes, before dusk, had he not wanted to walk more rapidly, to get back to the Corne, and found his stride lengthening, transformed into bounds, launching him forward with frightening speed? With his equilibrium lost, having difficulty in remaining vertical, experiencing a sensation of ataxia at each footfall, he had reverted to a slow pace, clinging to the ground, solidly, seeking large patches of sticky ground.
“You think it’s an illusion?” she said.
“I’m sure of it, Luce.”
She looked at him, while he stroked the fringe of her hair, and she suddenly realized that he was as nervous as she was, electrified by a profound anguish: no longer a refuge for her, but a poor frail creature confronted by enigmatic powers.
Then she went paler, her teeth chattering.
“The coffee will settle you,” he said.
“Perhaps.”
But they sensed the deceit in their words, the poverty of any tonic, or any human remedy against the approaching Unknowable—against that vast metamorphosis of phenomena, in which terrestrial life no longer participated, which had been troubling the flora and fauna, the animals and the plants, for weeks already.
They sensed the deceit. They did not dare look at one another, instinctively afraid of communicating their presentiments, of doubling their distress by nervous induction. And for long minutes, they listened inwardly, in their flesh, to the dull and confused echo of Mystery.
A fearful housemaid brought the coffee; they watched her leave, unsteadily, not daring to question that anxiety, similar to their own.
“Did you see how Marthe was walking?” asked Luce.
He did not reply, looking in surprise at the little silver spoon that he had just picked up. Perceiving his fixed stare, she looked at it in her turn, and exclaimed: “It’s green!”
The little spoon was, indeed, green, with a pale emerald gleam—and they suddenly noticed the same tint on the other spoons, and all of the silverware.
“Oh, my God!” cried the young woman. Raising her finger, she began to recite, in a low voice, whispering painfully:
“When the Silver goes green,
“The Roge Aigue will come
“Devouring the moon and stars . . .”1
These words, an ancient and vague prophecy that the peasants of the Tornadre plateau had handed down through the ages, made Sévère shudder. They both had an impression of darkness and fatality, colorless and soundless, beyond all anthropomorphism. Where had the poor rustics obtained that oracle, now so serious? What science, what observations of remote eras, what cataclysmic memories, did it symbolize?
Sévère had an immense desire to be far away from Tornadre, remorseful at not having obeyed the sure instincts of the animals, at having dared to follow poor cerebral logic rather than the warning of Nature. “Do you want to leave this evening?” he asked Luce, ardently.
“I’d never dare leave the house before morning returns!”
He thought that it might be as perilous to venture out by night as to stay at the Corne; he resigned himself to it, thoughtfully. A great lamentation interrupted his thoughts: feverish whinnying, the dull banging of horses struggling against the stable-door. The dog howled, and the clamor spread along the length of the Tornadre plateau, echoed by other animals, terrified ruminants and braying donkeys. At the same time, there was a greenish glow in the sky, and a shooting star passed over, huge, with a resplendent tail.
“Look!” said Luce.
Other meteors welled up, isolated at first, then in small groups, all with bright nuclei and leaving long trails, miraculously beautiful.
“It’s the night of August the tenth,” said Sévère, “and the star-showers will increase . . . there’s nothing abnormal about it.”2
“Why, then, are our lamps growing dimmer?”
The Lamps were, in fact, lowering their flames; a superior electrical density enveloped everything, a terror, not of death, but of exasperated life, of supernatural dilatation—so that Sévère and Luce clung on to the furniture in order to weigh more, in order to perceive contact with solid material. A strange pressure lifted them up, robbing them of their sense of balance. They felt that they were in a new atmosphere, in which the ether acted with a living power, in which something organic—extra-terrestrially organic—was disturbing every drop of blood, orientating every molecule, intruding into the very marrow of their bones, and gradually stiffening every hair on their bodies.
In addition, as Sévère had predicted, the stellar downpour accelerated, the entire concavity of the firmament filling with bolides. By degrees, it was mingled with an unknown phenomenon, persistent and increasing: voices. Faint, distant, musical voices, a symphony of tiny strings in the celestial depths, a sometimes almost human whisper, reminiscent of the ancient Pythagorean harmony of the spheres.
“They’re souls!” she murmured.
“No,” he said. “No, they’re Forces!”
Souls or forces, however, it was the same Unknown, the same hermetic threat, the pressure of a prodigious event, the blackest of human fears: the Shapeless and the Unforeseeable. And the voices went on, above the murmur of things, frightfully gentle, essential and subtle, taking Luce back to the Humility of childhood, to Worship, to Prayer:
“Our Father, who art in Heaven. . . .”
He did not dare smile, the beating of his heart increasing as if to burst his arteries, while his masculine mind—more curious about causation than his wife’s—tried to imagine what magnetism, what extraterrestrial polarities, were working upon this corner of the globe, and whether it was the same in the valley of the Iaraze.
Outside the plateau, however, since the commencement of the phenomenon—and Sévère had gone down to the river again that very day—no one had perceived the unfamiliar symptoms. The animals and people there were living tranquilly. Life preserved its normal form there. Why, though? What correlation was there between the sky and the plateau, what cycle of phenomena—for the prophecy of the peasants of Tornadre implied a cycle—regulated this great Drama?
A misfortune occurred: a triumphant assault by the animals against the old stable door. The Corne’s three horses appeared, bucking and foaming at the mouth beneath the pale rays of the sinking moon.
“Here, Clairon!” called Sévère.
One of the horses approached, the others following. Never had there been a scene as phantasmagoric as the three long heads hollowed out in the light and shadow, in front of the window, their large eyes bulging, sniffing Luce and Sévère, visibly questioning, with a return of vague confidence in the Master, a troubled idea of the power of the person who fed them. Then, for no obvious reason—perhaps an increase in the meteor shower—with absolute terror in the depths of their large eyes, their nostrils more cavernous, the mad panic of their race took hold, and they tore themselves away from the window whinnying, and fled.
“Oh, how they’re leaping!” said Luce.
They w
ere, in truth, running with an amazing gait, in enormous bounds. Suddenly, at the far end of the garden, confronted by the iron gate, the most impetuous rose up like a winged creature, and cleared the obstacle.
“You see! You see!” cried Luce. “He too has no more weight!”
“Nor the two others,” he added, involuntarily.
Indeed the other two black shadows, rising up, without even brushing the bars, leapt more than four meters high. Their agile silhouettes, carried vertiginously across the fields, diminished, evaporated and disappeared. At the same time, a manservant appeared outside, alone and timid, hardly daring to come forward with the fearful step of a little child.
Sévère felt an infinite pity for the poor devil, realizing that everyone else at the Corne must have shut themselves up in their rooms, prey to the same increase in terror as the Masters.
“Let them go, Victor!” he called. “We’ll find them later.”
Victor came closer, holding on to trees, then the wall, and the shutter. “Is it true, Master,” he asked, “that the roge aigue has come back?”
Sévère hesitated, preserving the modesty of his intelligence and his doubt in the midst of the sinister events, but Luce could not be silent.
“Yes, Victor.”
A bleak silence fell, the three individuals equalized by the sensation of the supernatural—but Sévère was still examining, questioning himself about the connection between the phenomenon and the meteorites. He studied the increasing rain of stars, the stream of supreme beauty from the depths of the Imponderable. A new observation alarmed him: that the sad fragment of the moon sinking toward the horizon could not be providing the light that persisted over the landscape. Looking westwards, he watched the satellite disappearing, its convexity ready to collapse, adjacent to the western horizon.
Scientific Romance Page 17