Out of the Dark

by Robert W. Chambers

  By the fireplace in the large room at the foot of the stairs an old Breton woman sat spinning with a distaff. She looked up at me when I appeared, and, smiling frankly, wished me health in the Breton language, to which I laughingly replied in French. At the same moment my hostess appeared and returned my salutation with a grace and dignity that sent a thrill to my heart. Her lovely head with its dark curly hair was crowned with a head-dress which set all doubts as to the epoch of my own costume at rest. Her slender figure was exquisitely set off in the homespun hunting-gown edged with silver, and on her gauntlet-covered wrist she bore one of her petted hawks. With perfect simplicity she took my hand and led me into the garden in the court, and seating herself before a table invited me very sweetly to sit beside her. Then she asked me in her soft quaint accent how I had passed the night and whether I was very much inconvenienced by wearing the clothes which old Pelagie had put there for me while I slept. I looked at my own clothes and shoes, drying in the sun by the garden-wall, and hated them. What horrors they were compared with the graceful costume which I now wore! I told her this laughing, but she agreed with me very seriously.

  ‘We will throw them away,’ she said in a quiet voice. In my astonishment I attempted to explain that I not only could not think of accepting clothes from anybody, although for all I knew it might be the custom of hospitality in that part of the country, but that I should cut an impossible figure if I returned to France clothed as I was then.

  She laughed and tossed her pretty head, saying something in old French which I did not understand, and then Pelagie trotted out with a tray on which stood two bowls of milk, a loaf of white bread, fruit, a platter of honey-comb, and a flagon of deep red wine. ‘You see I have not yet broken my fast because I wished you to eat with me. But I am very hungry,’ she smiled.

  ‘I would rather die than forget one word of what you have said!’ I blurted out while my cheeks burned. ‘She will think me mad,’ I added to myself, but she turned to me with sparkling eyes.

  ‘Ah!’ she murmured. ‘Then Monsieur knows all that there is of chivalry—’

  She crossed herself and broke bread – I sat and watched her white hands, not daring to raise my eyes to hers.

  ‘Will you not eat,’ she asked; ‘why do you look so troubled?’

  Ah, why? I knew it now. I knew I would give my life to touch with my lips those rosy palms – I understood now that from the moment when I looked into her dark eyes there on the moor last night I had loved her. My great and sudden passion held me speechless.

  ‘Are you ill at ease?’ she asked again.

  Then like a man who pronounces his own doom I answered in a low voice: ‘Yes, I am ill at ease for love of you.’ And as she did not stir nor answer, the same power moved my lips in spite of me and I said, ‘I, who am unworthy of the lightest of your thoughts, I who abuse hospitality and repay your gentle courtesy with bold presumption, I love you.’

  She leaned her head upon her hands, and answered softly, ‘I love you. Your words are very dear to me. I love you.’

  ‘Then I shall win you.’

  ‘Win me,’ she replied.

  But all the time I had been sitting silent, my face turned toward her. She also silent, her sweet face resting on her upturned palm, sat facing me, and as her eyes looked into mine, I knew that neither she nor I had spoken human speech; but I knew that her soul had answered mine, and I drew myself up feeling youth and joyous love coursing through every vein. She, with a bright color in her lovely face, seemed as one awakened from a dream, and her eyes sought mine with a questioning glance which made me tremble with delight. We broke our fast, speaking of ourselves. I told her my name and she told me hers, the Demoiselle Jeanne d’Ys.

  She spoke of her father and mother’s death, and how the nineteen of her years had been passed in the little fortified farm alone with her nurse Pelagie, Glemarec René the piqueur, and the four falconers, Raoul, Gaston, Hastur, and the Sieur Piriou Louis, who had served her father. She had never been outside the moorland – never even had seen a human soul before, except the falconers and Pelagie. She did not know how she had heard of Kerselec; perhaps the falconers had spoken of it. She knew the legends of Loup Garou and Jeanne la Flamme from her nurse Pelagie. She embroidered and spun flax. Her hawks and hounds were her only distraction. When she had met me there on the moor she had been so frightened that she almost dropped at the sound of my voice. She had, it was true, seen ships at sea from the cliffs, but as far as the eye could reach the moors over which she galloped were destitute of any sign of human life. There was a legend which old Pelagie told, how anybody once lost in the unexplored moorland might never return, because the moors were enchanted. She did not know whether it was true, she never had thought about it until she met me. She did not know whether the falconers had even been outside or whether they could go if they would. The books in the house which Pelagie the nurse had taught her to read were hundreds of years old.

  All this she told me with a sweet seriousness seldom seen in any one but children. My own name she found easy to pronounce and insisted, because my first name was Philip, I must have French blood in me. She did not seem curious to learn anything about the outside world, and I thought perhaps she considered it had forfeited her interest and respect from the stories of her nurse.

  We were still sitting at the table and she was throwing grapes to the small field birds which came fearlessly to our very feet.

  I began to speak in a vague way of going, but she would not hear of it, and before I knew it I had promised to stay a week and hunt with hawk and hound in their company. I also obtained permission to come again from Kerselec and visit her after my return.

  ‘Why,’ she said innocently, ‘I do not know what I should do if you never came back’; and I, knowing that I had no right to awaken her with the sudden shock which the avowal of my own love would bring to her, sat silent, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘You will come very often?’ she said.

  ‘Very often,’ I said.

  ‘Every day?’

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘Oh,’ she sighed, ‘I am very happy – come and see my hawks.’

  She rose and took my hand again with a childlike innocence of possession, and we walked through the garden and fruit trees to a grassy lawn which was bordered by a brook. Over the lawn were scattered fifteen or twenty stumps of trees – partially imbedded in the grass – and upon all of these except two sat falcons. They were attached to the stumps by thongs which were in turn fastened with still rivets to their legs just above the talons. A little stream of pure spring water flowed in a winding course within easy distance of each perch.

  The birds set up a clamor when the girl appeared, but she went from one to another caressing some, taking others for an instant upon her wrist, or stooping to adjust their jesses.

  ‘Are they not pretty?’ she said. ‘See, here is a falcon-gentil. We call it “ignoble”, because it takes the quarry in direct chase. This is a blue falcon. In falconry we call it “noble” because it rises over the quarry, and wheeling, drops upon it from above. This white bird is a gerfalcon from the north. It is also “noble”! Here is a merlin, and this tiercelet is a falcon-heroner.’

  I asked her how she had learned the old language of falconry. She did not remember, but thought her father must have taught it to her when she was very young.

  Then she led me away and showed me the young falcons still in the nest. ‘They are termed niais in falconry,’ she explained. ‘A branchier is the young bird which is just able to leave the nest and hop from branch to branch. A young bird which has not yet moulted is called a sors, and a mué is a hawk which has moulted in captivity. When we catch a wild falcon which has changed its plumage we term it a hagard. Raoul first taught me to dress a falcon. Shall I teach you how it is done?’

  She seated herself on the bank of the stream among the falcons and I threw myself at her feet to listen.

  Then the Demoiselle d’Ys held up one rosy-tip
ped finger and began very gravely.

  ‘First one must catch the falcon.’

  ‘I am caught,’ I answered.

  She laughed very prettily and told me my dressage would perhaps be difficult as I was noble.

  ‘I am already tamed,’ I replied; ‘jessed and belled.’

  She laughed, delighted. ‘Oh, my brave falcon; then you will return at my call?’

  ‘I am yours,’ I answered gravely.

  She sat silent for a moment. Then the color heightened in her cheeks and she held up a finger again saying,’Listen; I wish to speak of falconry—’

  ‘I listen, Countess Jeanne d’Ys.’

  But again she fell into the reverie, and her eyes seemed fixed on something beyond the summer clouds.

  ‘Philip,’ she said at last.

  ‘Jeanne,’ I whispered.

  ‘That is all – that is what I wished,’ she sighed – ‘Philip and Jeanne.’

  She held her hand toward me and I touched it with my lips.

  ‘Win me,’ she said, but this time it was the body and soul which spoke in unison.

  After a while she began again: ‘Let us speak of falconry’.

  ‘Begin,’ I replied; ‘we have caught the falcon.’

  Then Jeanne d’Ys took my hand in both of hers and told me how with infinite patience the young falcon was taught to perch upon the wrist, how little by little it became used to the belled jesses and the chaperon à cornette.

  ‘They must first have a good appetite,’ she said, ‘then little by little I reduce their nourishment which in falconry we call pât. When after many nights passed au bloc as these birds are now, I prevail upon the hagard to stay quietly on the wrist, then the bird is ready to be taught to come for its food. I fix the pât to the end of a thong or leurre, and teach the bird to come to me as soon as I begin to whirl the cord in circles about my head. At first I drop the pât when the falcon comes, and he eats the food on the ground. After a little he will learn to seize the leurre in motion as I whirl it around my head, or drag it over the ground. After that it is easy to teach the falcon to strike at game, always remembering to faire courtoisie à l’oiseau, that is, to allow the bird to taste the quarry.’

  A squeal from one of the falcons interrupted her, and she arose to adjust the longe which had become whipped about the bloc, but the bird still flapped its wings and screamed.

  ‘What is the matter?’ she said; ‘Philip, can you see?’

  I looked around and at first saw nothing to cause the commotion which was now heightened by the screams and flappings of all the birds. Then my eye fell upon the flat rock beside the stream from which the girl had risen. A gray serpent was moving slowly across the surface of the boulder, and the eyes in its flat triangular head sparkled like jet.

  ‘A couleuvre,’ she said quickly.

  ‘It is harmless, is it not?’ I asked.

  She pointed to the black V-shaped figure on the neck.

  ‘It is certain death,’ she said; ‘it is a viper.’

  We watched the reptile moving slowly over the smooth rock to where the sunlight fell in a broad warm patch.

  I started forward to examine it, but she clung to my arm crying, ‘Don’t, Philip, I am afraid.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘For you, Philip – I love you.’

  Then I took her in my arms and kissed her on the lips, but all I could say was: ‘Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne’. And as she lay trembling on my breast, something struck my foot in the grass below, but I did not heed it. Then again something struck my ankle, and a sharp pain shot through me. I looked into the sweet face of Jeanne d’Ys and kissed her, and with all my strength lifted her in my arms and flung her from me. Then bending, I tore the viper from my ankle, and set my heel upon its head. I remember feeling weak and numb – I remember falling to the ground. Through my slowly glazing eyes I saw Jeanne’s white face bending close to mine, and when the light in my eyes went out I still felt her arms about my neck, and her soft cheek against my drawn lips.

  When I opened my eyes, I looked around in terror. Jeanne was gone. I saw the stream and the flat rock; I saw the crushed viper in the grass beside me, but the hawks and the blocs had disappeared. I sprang to my feet. The garden, the fruit trees, the drawbridge and the walled court were gone. I stared stupidly at a heap of crumbling ruins, ivy-covered and gray, through which great trees had pushed their way. I crept forward, dragging my numbed foot, and as I moved, a falcon sailed from the tree-tops among the ruins and soaring, mounting in narrowing circles, faded and vanished in the clouds above.

  ‘Jeanne, Jeanne,’ I cried, but my voice died on my lips and I fell on my knees among the weeds. And as God willed it, I, not knowing, had fallen kneeling before a crumbling shrine carved in stone for our Mother of Sorrows. I saw the sad face of the Virgin wrought in the cold stone. I saw the cross and thorns at her feet, and beneath it I read:

  ‘PRAY FOR THE SOUL OF THE

  DEMOISELLE JEANNE D’YS,

  WHO DIED

  IN HER YOUTH FOR LOVE OF

  PHILIP, A STRANGER.

  A.D. 1573.’

  But upon the icy slab lay a woman’s glove still warm and fragrant.

  THE KEY TO GRIEF

  ‘The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky

  The deer to the wholesome wold,

  And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,

  As it was in the days of old.’

  KIPLING

  I

  They were doing their work very badly. They got the rope around his neck, and tied his wrists with moose-bush withes, but again he fell, sprawling, turning, twisting over the leaves, tearing up everything around him like a trapped panther.

  He got the rope away from them; he clung to it with bleeding fists; he set his white teeth in it, until the jute strands relaxed, unravelled, and snapped, gnawed through by his white teeth.

  Twice Tully struck him with a gum hook. The dull blows fell on flesh rigid as stone.

  Panting, foul with forest mold and rotten leaves, hands and face smeared with blood, he sat up on the ground, glaring at the circle of men around him.

  ‘Shoot him!’ gasped Tully, dashing the sweat from his bronzed brow; and Bates, breathing heavily, sat down on a log and dragged a revolver from his rear pocket. The man on the ground watched him; there was froth in the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Git back!’ whispered Bates, but his voice and hand trembled. ‘Kent,’ he stammered, ‘won’t ye hang?’

  The man on the ground glared.

  ‘Ye’ve got to die, Kent,’ he urged; ‘they all say so. Ask Lefty Sawyer; ask Dyce; ask Carrots – He’s got to swing fur it – ain’t he, Tully? – Kent, fur God’s sake, swing fur these here gents!’

  The man on the ground panted; his bright eyes never moved.

  After a moment Tully sprang on him again. There was a flurry of leaves, a crackle, a gasp and a grunt, then the thumping and thrashing of two bodies writhing in the brush. Dyce and Carrots jumped on the prostrate men. Lefty Sawyer caught the rope again, but the jute strands gave way and he stumbled. Tully began to scream, ‘He’s chokin’ me!’ Dyce staggered out into the open, moaning over a broken wrist.

  ‘Shoot!’ shouted Lefty Sawyer, and dragged Tully aside. ‘Shoot, Jim Bates! Shoot straight, b’God!’

  ‘Git back!’ gasped Bates, rising from the fallen log.

  The crowd parted right and left; a quick report rang out – another – another. Then from the whirl of smoke a tall form staggered, dealing blows – blows that sounded sharp as the crack of a whip.

  ‘He’s off! Shoot straight!’ they cried.

  There was a gallop of heavy boots in the woods. Bates, faint and dazed, turned his head.

  ‘Shoot!’ shrieked Tully.

  But Bates was sick; his smoking revolver fell to the ground; his white face and pale eyes contracted. It lasted only a moment; he started after the others, plunging, wallowing through thickets of osier and hemlock underbrush.

  Far ahead he
heard Kent crashing on like a young moose in November, and he knew he was making for the shore. The others knew too. Already the gray gleam of the sea cut a straight line along the forest edge; already the soft clash of the surf on the rocks broke faintly through the forest silence.

  ‘He’s got a canoe there!’ bawled Tully. ‘He’ll be into it!’

  And he was into it, kneeling in the bow, driving his paddle to the handle. The rising sun gleamed like red lightning on the flashing blade; the canoe shot to the crest of a wave, hung, bows dripping in the wind, dropped into the depths, glided, tipped, rolled, shot up again, staggered, and plunged on.

  Tully ran straight out into the cove surf; the water broke against his chest, bare and wet with sweat. Bates sat down on a worn black rock and watched the canoe listlessly.

  The canoe dwindled to a speck of gray and silver; and when Carrots, who had run back to the gum camp for a rifle, returned, the speck on the water might have been easier to hit than a loon’s head at twilight. So Carrots, being thrifty by nature, fired once, and was satisfied to save the other cartridges. The canoe was still visible, making for the open sea. Somewhere beyond the horizon lay the keys, a string of rocks bare as skulls, black and slimy where the sea cut their base, white on the crests with the excrement of sea birds.