The old fellow regarded me unwinkingly with his beady eyes, wrinkling his age-yellowed forehead for all the world like an elderly baboon inspecting a new sort of edible. ‘M’sieur goes out alone much at nights, n’est-ce pas?’ he asked, at length.
‘Yes, Monsieur goes out alone much at night,’ I echoed, ‘but what Monsieur particularly desires to know is what sort of tales you have been telling Mademoiselle Leahy. Comprenez vous?’
The network of wrinkles about his lips multiplied as he smiled enigmatically, regarding me askance from the corners of his eyes.
‘M’sieur is Anglais,’ he replied. ‘He would not understand—or believe.’
‘Never mind what I’d believe,’ I retorted. ‘What is this story about murder and robbery being committed in those woods? Who were the murderers, and where did they live? Hein?’
For a few seconds he looked fixedly at me, chewing the cud of senility between his toothless gums; then, glancing carefully about, as if he feared being overheard, he tiptoed up to me and whispered:
‘M’sieur mus’ stay indoors these nights. W’en the moon, she shine, yes; w’en she not show her face, no. There are evil things abroad at the dark of the moon, M’sieur. Evan las’ night they keel t’ree of my bes’ sheep. Remembair, M’sieur, the loup-garou, he is out when the moon hide her light.’
And with that he turned and left me; nor could I get another word from him save his cryptic warning, ‘Remembair, M’sieur, the loup-garou. Remembair.’
In spite of my annoyance, I could not get rid of the unpleasant sensation the old man’s words left with me. ‘The loup-garou—werewolf’—he had said, and to prove his goblin-wolf’s presence, he had cited the death of his three sheep.
As I paced the rain-washed porch I thought of the scene I had witnessed the night before, when the sheep-killers were at their work.
‘Well,’ I reflected, ‘I’ve seen the loup-garou on his native heath at last. From causes as slight as this, no doubt, the horrible legend of the werewolf had sprung. Time was when all France quaked at the sound of the loup-garou’s hunting-call and the bravest knights in Christendom trembled in their castles and crossed themselves fearfully because some renegade shepherd dog quested his prey in the night. On such a foundation are the legends of people built.’
Whistling a snatch from Pinafore and looking skyward in search of a patch of blue in the clouds, I felt a tug at my raincoat sleeve, such as a neglected terrier might give. It was Geronte again.
‘M’sieur,’ he began in the same mysterious whisper, ‘the loup-garou is a verity, certainly. I, myself, have nevair seen him’—he paused to bless himself—‘but my cousin, Baptiste, was once pursued by him. Yes.
‘It was near the shrine of the good Sainte Anne that Baptiste lived. One night he was sent to fetch the curé for a dying woman. They rode fast through the trees, the curé and my cousin Baptiste, for it was at the dark of the moon, and the evil forest folk were abroad. And as they galloped, there came a loup-garou from the woods, with eyes as bright as hell-fire. It followed hard, this tailless hound from the devil’s kennel; but they reached the house before it, and the curé put his book, with the Holy Cross on its cover, at the doorstep. The loup-garou wailed under the windows like a child in pain until the sun rose; then it slunk back to the forest.
‘When my cousin Baptiste and the curé came out, they found its hand marks in the soft earth around the door. Very like your hand, or mine, they were, M’sieur, save that the first finger was longer than the others.’
‘And did they find the loup-garou?’ I asked, something of the old man’s earnestness communicated to me.
‘Yes, M’sieur; but of course,’ he replied gravely. ‘T’ree weeks before, a stranger, drowned in the river, had been buried without the office of the Church. W’en they opened his grave they found his fingernails as red as blood, and sharp. Then they knew. The good curé read the burial office over him, and the poor soul that had been snatched away in sin slept peacefully at last.’
He looked quizzically at me, as if speculating whether to tell me more; then, apparently fearing I would laugh at his outburst of confidence, he started away toward the kitchen.
‘Well, what else, Pierre?’ I asked, feeling he had more to say.
‘Non, non, non,’ he replied. ‘There is nothing more, M’sieur. I did but want M’sieur should know my own cousin, Baptiste Geronte, had seen the loup-garou with his very eyes.’
‘Hearsay evidence,’ I commented, as I went in to dinner.
During the rainy week that followed I chafed at my confinement like a privileged convict suddenly deprived of his liberties, and looked as wistfully down the south road as any prisoned gipsy ever gazed upon the open trail.
The quiet home circle at the farmhouse, the unforced conversation of the old folks, Mildred’s sweet companionship, all beckoned me with an almost irresistible force. For in this period of enforced separation I discovered what I had dimly suspected for some time—I loved Mildred Squires. And, loving her, I longed to tell her of it.
No lad intent on visiting his first sweetheart ever urged his feet more eagerly than I when, the curtains of rain at last drawn up, I hastened toward the house at the turn of the road.
As I hoped, yet hardly dared expect, Mildred was standing at the gate to meet me as I rounded the curve, and I yearned toward her like a humming-bird seeking its nest.
She must have read my heart in my eyes, for her greeting smile was as tender as a mother’s as she bends above her babe.
‘At last you have come, my friend,’ she said, putting out both hands in welcome. ‘I am very glad.’
We walked silently up the path, her fingers still resting in mine, her face averted. At the steps she paused, a little embarrassment in her voice as she explained, ‘Father and Mother are out; they have gone to a —meeting. But you will stay?’
‘Surely,’ I acquiesced. And to myself I admitted my gratitude for this chance of Mildred’s unalloyed company.
We talked but little that night. Mildred was strangely distrait, and, much as I longed to, I could not force a confession of my love from my lips. Once, in the midst of a long pause between our words, the cry of the sheep-killers came faintly to us, echoed across the fields and woods, and as the weird, shrill sound fell on our ears she threw back her head with something of the gesture of a hunting dog scenting its quarry.
Toward midnight she turned to me, a panic of fear having apparently laid hold of her.
‘You must go,’ she exclaimed, rising and laying her hand on my shoulder.
‘But your father and mother have not returned,’ I objected. ‘Won’t you let me stay until they get back?’
‘Oh, no, no!’ she answered, her agitation increasing. ‘You must go at once—please.’ She increased her pressure on my shoulder, almost as if to shove me from the porch.
Taken aback by her sudden desire to be rid of me, I was picking up my hat, when she uttered a stifled scream and ran quickly to the edge of the porch, interposing herself between me and the yard. At the same moment I heard a muffled sound from the direction of the front gate, a sound like a growling and snarling of savage dogs.
I leaped forward, my first thought being that the sheep-killers I had seen the other night had strayed to the Squires place. Crazed with blood I knew they would be almost as dangerous to men as to sheep, and every nerve in my sickness-weakened body cried out to protect Mildred.
To my blank amazement, as I looked from the porch I beheld Mr and Mrs Squires walking sedately up the path, talking composedly together. There was no sign of the dogs or any other animals about.
As the elderly couple neared the porch I noticed that Mr Squires walked with a pronounced limp, and that both their eyes shone very brightly in the moonlight, as though they were suffused with tears.
They greeted me pleasantly enough; but Mildred’s anxiety seemed increased, rather than diminished, by their presence, and I took my leave after a brief exchange of civilities.
&nb
sp; On my way back I looked intently in the woods bordering the road for some sign of the house of which Pierre had told Miss Leahy; but everywhere the pines grew as thickly as though neither ax nor fire had ever disturbed them.
‘Geronte is in his second childhood,’ I reflected, ‘and like an elder child, he loves to terrify his juniors with fearsome witch-tales.’
Yet an uncomfortable feeling was with me till I saw the gleam of the sanitarium’s lights across the fields; and as I walked toward them it seemed to me that more than once I heard the baying of the sheep-killers in the woods behind me.
A buzz of conversation, like the sibilant arguments of a cloud of swarming bees, greeted me as I descended the stairs to breakfast next morning.
It appeared that Ned, one of the pair of great mastiffs attached to the sanitarium, had been found dead before his kennel, his throat and brisket torn open and several gaping wounds in his flanks. Boris, his fellow, had been discovered whimpering and trembling in the extreme corner of the dog house, the embodiment of canine terror.
Speculation as to the animal responsible for the outrage was rife, and, as usual, it ran the gamut of possible and impossible surmises. Every sort of beast from a grizzly bear to a lion escaped from the circus was in turn indicted for the crime, only to have a complete alibi straightway established.
The only one having no suggestion to offer was old Geronte, who stood sphinxlike in the outskirts of the crowd, smiling sardonically to himself and wagging his head sagely. As he caught sight of me he nodded sapiently, as if to include me in the joint tenancy to some weighty secret.
Presently he worked his way through the chattering group and whispered, ‘M’sieur, he was here last night—and with him was the other tailless one. Come and see.’
Plucking me by the sleeve, he led me to the rear of the kennels, and, stooping, pointed to something in the moist earth. ‘You see?’ he asked, as if a printed volume lay for my reading in the mud.
‘I see that someone has been on his hands and knees here,’ I answered, inspecting the hand prints he indicated.
‘Something,’ he corrected, as if reasoning with an obstinate child. ‘Does not M’sieur behol’ that the first finger is the longest?’
‘Which proves nothing,’ I defended. ‘There are many hands like that.’
‘Oh—yes?’ he replied with that queer upward accent of his. ‘And where has M’sieur seen hands like that before?’
‘Oh, many times,’ I assured him somewhat vaguely, for there was a catch at the back of my throat as I spoke. Try as I would, I could recall only three pairs of hands with that peculiarity.
His little black eyes rested steadily on me in an unwinking stare, and the corners of his mouth curved upward in a malicious grin. It seemed, almost, as if he found a grim pleasure in thus driving me into a corner.
‘See here, Pierre,’ I began testily, equally annoyed at myself and him, ‘you know as well as I that the loup-garou is an old woman’s tale. Someone was looking here for tracks, and left his own while doing it. If we look among the patients here we shall undoubtedly find a pair of hands to match these prints.’
‘God forbid!’ he exclaimed, crossing himself. ‘That would be an evil day for us, M’sieur.
‘Here, Bor-ees,’ he snapped his fingers to the surviving mastiff, ‘come and eat.’
The huge beast came wallowing over to him with the ungainly gait of all heavily muscled animals, stopping on his way to make a nasal investigation of my knees. Scarcely had his nose come into contact with my trousers when he leaped back, every hair in his mane and along his spine stiffly erect, every tooth in his great mouth bared in a savage snarl. But instead of the mastiff’s fighting growl, he emitted only a low, frightened whine, as though he were facing some animal of greater power than himself, and knew his own weakness.
‘Good heavens!’ I cried, thoroughly terrified at the friendly brute’s sudden hostility.
‘Yes, M’sieur,’ Geronte cut in quickly, putting his hand on the dog’s collar and leading him a few paces away. ‘It is well you should call upon the heavenly ones; for surely you have the odor of hell upon your clothes.’
‘What do you mean?’ I demanded angrily. ‘How dare you——’
He raised a thin hand deprecatingly.
‘M’sieur knows that he knows,’ he replied evenly, ‘and that I also know.’
And leading Boris by the collar, he shuffled to the house.
Mildred was waiting for me at the gate that evening, and again her father and mother were absent at one of their meetings.
We walked silently up the path and seated ourselves on the porch steps, where the waning moon cast oblique rays through the pine branches.
I think Mildred felt the tension I was drawn to, for she talked trivialities with an almost feverish earnestness, stringing her sentences together, and changing her subjects as a Navajo rug-weaver twists and breaks her threads.
At last I found an opening in the abattis of her small talk.
‘Mildred,’ I said, very simply, for great emotions tear the ornaments from our speech, ‘I love you, and I want you for my wife. Will you marry me, Mildred?’ I laid my hand on hers. It was cold as lifeless flesh, and seemed to shrink beneath my touch.
‘Surely, dear, you must have read the love in my eyes,’ I urged, as she averted her face in silence. ‘Almost from the night I first saw you, I’ve loved you, dear. I——’
‘O-o-h, don’t,’ her interruption was a strangled moan, as if wrung from her by my words.
I leaned nearer her. ‘Don’t you love me, Mildred?’ I asked. As yet she had not denied it.
For a moment she trembled, as if a sudden chill had come on her; then, leaning to me, she clasped my shoulders in her arms, hiding her face against my jacket.
‘John, John, you don’t know what you say,’ she whispered disjointedly, as though a sob had torn the words before they left her lips. Her breath was on my cheek, moist and cold as air from a vault.
I could feel the litheness of her through the thin stuff of her gown, and her body was as devoid of warmth as a dead thing.
‘You’re cold,’ I told her, putting my arms shieldingly about her. ‘The night has chilled you.’
A convulsive sob was her only answer.
‘Mildred,’ I began again, putting my hand beneath her chin and lifting her face to mine, ‘tell me, dear, what is the matter?’ I lowered my lips to hers.
With a cry that was half scream, half weeping, she thrust me suddenly from her, pressing her hands against my breast and lowering her head until her face was hidden between her outstretched arms. I, too, started back, for in the instant our lips were about to meet, hers had writhed back from her teeth, like a dog’s when he is about to spring, and a low, harsh noise, almost a growl, had risen in her throat.
‘For God’s sake,’ she whispered hoarsely, agony in every note of her shaking voice, ‘never do that again! Oh, my dear, dear love, you don’t know how near to a horror worse than death you were.’
‘A—horror—worse—than—death?’ I echoed dully, pressing her cold little hands in mine. ‘What do you mean, Mildred?’
‘Loose my hands,’ she commanded with a quaint reversion to the speech of our ancestors, ‘and hear me. I do love you. I love you better than life, better than death. I love you so I have overcome something stronger than the walls of the grave for your sake; but John, my very love, this is our last night together. We can never meet again. You must go, now, and not come back until tomorrow morning.’
‘Tomorrow morning?’ I repeated blankly. What wild talk was this?
Heedless of my interruption, she hurried on. ‘Tomorrow morning, just before the sun rises over those trees, you must be here, and have your prayer-book with you.’
I listened speechless, wondering which of us was mad.
‘By that corncrib there,’ she waved a directing hand, ‘you will find three mounds. Stand beside them and read the office for the burial of the dead. Come quickly, and p
ause for nothing on the way. Look back for nothing; heed no sound from behind you. And for your own safety, come no sooner than to allow yourself the barest time to read your office.’
Bewildered, I attempted to reason with the madwoman; begged her to explain this folly; but she refused all answer to my fervid queries, nor would she suffer me to touch her.
Finally, I rose to go. ‘You will do what I ask?’ she implored.
‘Certainly not,’ I answered firmly.
‘John, John, have pity!’ she cried, flinging herself to the earth before me and clasping my knees. ‘You say you love me. I only ask this one favor of you—only this. Please, for my sake, for the peace of the dead and the safety of the living, promise you will do this thing for me.’
Shaken by her abject supplication, I promised, though I felt myself a figure in some grotesque nightmare as I did it.
‘Oh, my love, my precious love,’ she wept, rising and taking both my hands. ‘At last I shall have peace and you shall bring it to me. No,’ she forbade as I made to take her in my arms at parting. ‘The most I can give you, dear, is this.’ She held her icy hands against my lips. ‘It seems so little, dear; but oh! it is so much.’
Like a drunkard in his cups I staggered along the south road, my thoughts gone wild with the strangeness of the play I had just acted.
Across the clearing came the howls of the sheep-killers, a sound I had grown used to of late. But tonight there was a deeper, fiercer timbre in their bay, a note that boded ill for man as well as beast. Louder and louder it swelled; it was rising from the field itself, now, drawing nearer and nearer the road.
I turned and looked. The great beasts I had seen pursuing the luckless sheep the other night were galloping toward me. A cold finger seemed traced down my spine; the scalp crept and tingled beneath my cap. There was no other object of their quest in sight. I was their elected prey.
My first thought was to turn and run, but a second’s reasoning told me this was worse than useless. Weakened with long illness, with an uphill road to the nearest shelter, I should soon be run down.
Night Creatures Page 37