She held out both hands.
“I was lonely,” she said, “and I went to the glade, but the forest is full of frightened creatures and they frightened me. Has anything happened in the woods? The deer are running toward the heights.”
Her hand still lay in mine as we moved along the shore, and the lapping of the water on rock and shallow was no lower than our voices.
“Why did you leave me without a word, there at the fountain in the glade?” she said.
“I leave you!—”
“Indeed you did, running swiftly with your dog, plunging through thickens and brush, — oh — you frightened me.”
“Did I leave you so?”
“Yes — after—”
“After?”
“You had kissed me—”
Then we leaned down together and looked into the black water set with stars, just as we had bent together over the fountain in the glade.
“Do you remember?” I asked.
“Yes. See, the water is inlaid with silver stars, — everywhere whine lilies floating and the stars below, deep, deep down.”
“What is the flower you hold in your hand?”
“White water-lotus.”
“Tell me about Yue-Laou, Dzil-Nbu of the Kuen-Yuin,” I whispered, lifting her head so I could see her eyes.
“Would it please you to hear?”
“Yes, Ysonde.”
“All than I know is yours, now, as I am yours, all than I am. Bend closer. Is it of Yue-Laou you would know? Yue-Laou is Dzil-Nhu of the Kuen-Yuin. He lived in the Moon. He is old — very, very old, and once, before he came to rule the Kuen-Yuin, he was the old man who unites with a silken cord all predestined couples, after which nothing can prevent their union. But all that is changed since he came to rule the Kuen-Yuin. Now he has perverted the Xin, — the good genii of China, — and has fashioned from their warped bodies a monster which he calls the Xin. This monster is horrible, for it not only lives in its own body, but it has thousands of loathsome satellites, — living creatures without mouths, blind, that move when the Xin moves, like a mandarin and his escort. They are part of the Xin although they are not attached. Yet if one of these satellites is injured the Xin writhes with agony. It is fearful — this huge living bulk and these creatures spread out like severed fingers that wriggle around a hideous hand.”
“Who told you this?”
“My step-father.”
“Do you believe it?”
“Yes. I have seen one of the Xin’s creatures.
“Where, Ysonde?”
“Here in the woods.”
“Then you believe there is a Xin here?”
“There must be, — perhaps in the lake—”
“Oh, Xins inhabit lakes?”
“Yes, and the seven seas. I am not afraid here.”
“Why?”
“Because I wear the symbol of the Kuen-Yuin.”
“Then I am not safe,” I smiled.
“Yes you are, for I hold you in my arms. Shall I tell you more about the Xin? When the Xin is about to do to death a man, the Yeth-hounds gallop through the night—”
“What are the Yeth-hounds, Ysonde?”
“The Yeth-hounds are dogs without heads. They are the spirits of murdered children, which pass through the woods at night, making a wailing noise.”
“Do you believe this?”
“Yes, for I have worn the yellow lotus—”
“The yellow lotus—”
“Yellow is the symbol of faith—”
“Where?”
“In Yian,” she said faintly.
After a while I said, “Ysonde, you know there is a God?”
“God and Xangi are one.”
“Have you ever heard of Christ?”
“No,” she answered softly.
The wind began again among the tree tops. I felt her hands closing in mine.
“Ysonde,” I asked again, “do you believe in sorcerers?”
“Yes, the Kuen-Yuin are sorcerers; Yue-Laou is a sorcerer.
“Have you seen sorcery?”
“Yes, the reptile satellite of the Xin—”
“Anything else?”
“My charm, — the golden ball, the symbol of the Kuen-Yuin. Have you seen it change, — have you seen the reptiles writhe — ?”
“Yes,” I said shortly, and then remained silent, for a sudden shiver of apprehension had seized me. Barris also had spoken gravely, ominously of the sorcerers, the Kuen-Yuin, and I had seen with my own eyes the graven reptiles turning and twisting on the glowing globe.
“Still,” said I aloud, “God lives and sorcery is but a name.”
“Ah,” murmured Ysonde, drawing closer no me, “they say, in Yian, the Kuen-Yuin live; God is but a name.”
“They lie,” I whispered fiercely.
“Be careful,” she pleaded, “they may hear you. Remember that you have the mark of the dragon’s claw on your brow.”
“What of it?” I asked, thinking also of the white mark on Barris’ arm.
“Ah don’t you know that those who are marked with the dragon’s claw are followed by Yue-Laou, for good or for evil, — and the evil means death if you offend him?”
“Do you believe that!” I asked impatiently...”I know it,” she sighed.
“Who told you all this? Your step-father? What in Heaven’s name is he then, — a Chinaman!”
“I don’t know; he is not like you.”
“Have — have you told him anything about me?”
“He knows about you — no, I have told him nothing, — ah what is this — see — it is a cord, a cord of silk about your neck — and about mine!”
“Where did that come from?” I asked astonished.
“It must be — in must be Yue-Laou who binds me to you, — it is as my step-father said — he said Yue-Laou would bind us—”
“Nonsense,” I said almost roughly, and seized the silken cord, but to my amazement it melted in my hand like smoke.
“What is all this damnable jugglery!” I whispered angrily, but my anger vanished as the words were spoken, and a convulsive shudder shook me to the feet. Standing on the shone of the lake, a stone’s throw away, was a figure, twisted and bent, — a little old man, blowing sparks from a live coal which he held in his naked hand. The coal glowed with increasing radiance, lighting up the skull-like face above it, and threw a red glow oven the sands at his feet. But the face! — the ghastly Chinese face on which the light flickered, — and the snaky slitted eyes, sparkling as the coal glowed hotter. Coal! It was not a coal but a golden globe staining the night with crimson flames — it was the symbol of the Kuen-Yuin.
“See! See!” gasped Ysonde, trembling violently, “see the moon rising from between his fingers! Oh I thought it was my step-father and it is Yue-Laou the Maker of Moons — no! no! it is my step-father — ah God! they are the same!”
Frozen with terror I stumbled to my knees, groping for my revolver which bulged in my coat pocket; but something held me — something which bound me like a web in a thousand strong silky meshes. I struggled and turned but the web grew tighter; it was over us — all around us, drawing, pressing us into each other’s arms until we lay side by side, bound hand and body and foot, palpitating, panting like a pair of netted pigeons.
And the creature on the shore below! What was my horror to see a moon, huge, silvery, rise like a bubble from between his fingers, mount higher, higher into the still air and hang aloft in the midnight sky, while another moon rose from his fingers, and another and yet another until the vast span of Heaven was set with moons and the earth sparkled like a diamond in the white glare.
A great wind began to blow from the east and it bore to our ears a long mournful howl, — a cry so unearthly that for a moment our hearts stopped.
“The Yeth-hounds!” sobbed Ysonde, “do you hear! — they are passing through the forest! The Xin is near!”
Then all around us in the dry sedge grasses came a rustle as if some small animals we
re creeping, and a damp acrid odor filled the air. I knew the smell, I saw the spidery crablike creatures swarm out around me and drag their soft yellow hairy bodies across the shrinking grasses. They passed, hundreds of them, poisoning the air, rumbling, writhing, crawling with their blind mouthless heads raised. Birds, half asleep and confused by the darkness, fluttered away before them in helpless fright, rabbits sprang from their forms, weasels glided away like flying shadows. What remained of the forest creatures rose and fled from the loathsome invasion; I heard the squeak of a terrified hare, the snort of stampeding deer, and the lumbering gallop of a bear; and all the time I was choking, half suffocated by the poisoned air.
Then, as I struggled no free myself from the silken snare about me, I cast a glance of deadly fear at the sorcerer below, and at the same moment I saw him turn in his tracks...”Halt!” cried a voice from the bushes.
“Barris!” I shouted, half leaping up in my agony.
I saw the sorcerer spring forward, I heard the bang! bang! bang! of a revolver, and, as the sorcerer fell on the water’s edge, I saw Barris jump out into the white glare and fire again, once, twice, three times, into the writhing figure at his feet.
Then an awful thing occurred. Up out of the black lake reared a shadow, a nameless shapeless mass, headless, sightless, gigantic, gaping from end to end.
A great wave struck Barris and he fell, another washed him up on the pebbles, another whirled him back into the water and then, — and then the thing fell over him, — and I fainted.
* * *
This, then, is all that I know concerning Yue-Laou and the Xin. I do not fear the ridicule of scientists or of the press for I have told the truth. Barris is gone and the thing that killed him is alive to-day in the Lake of the Stars while the spider-like satellites roam through the Cardinal Woods. The game has fled, the forests around the lake are empty of any living creatures save the reptiles than creep when the Xin moves in the depths of the lake.
General Drummond knows what he has lost in Barris, and we, Pierpont and I, know what we have lost also. His will we found in the drawer, the key of which he had handed me. It was wrapped in a bit of paper on which was written:
“Yue-Laou the sorcerer is here in the Cardinal Woods. I must kill him or he will kill me. He made and gave to me the woman I loved, — he made her, — I saw him, — he made her out of a white water-lotus bud. When our child was born, he came again before me and demanded from me the woman I loved. Then, when I refused, he went away, and that night my wife and child vanished from my side, and I found upon her pillow a white lotus bud. Roy, the woman of your dream, Ysonde, may be my child. God help you if you love her for Yue-Laou will give, — and take away, as though he were Xangi, which is God. I will kill Yue-Laou before I leave this forest, — or he will kill me.
“FRANKLYN BARRIS.”
Now the world knows what Barris thought of the Kuen-Yuin and of Yue-Laou. I see than the newspapers are just becoming excited over the glimpses that Li-Hung-Chang has afforded them of Black Cathay and the demons of the Kuen-Yuin. The Kuen-Yuin are on the move.
Pierpont and I have dismantled the shooting box in the Cardinal Woods. We hold ourselves ready at a moment’s notice to join and lead the first Government party to drag the Lake of Stars and cleanse the forest of the crab reptiles. But it will be necessary that a large force assembles, and a well-armed force, for we never have found the body of Yue-Laou, and, living or dead, I fear him. Is he living?
Pierpont, who found Ysonde and myself lying unconscious on the lake shore, the morning after, saw no trace of corpse or blood on the sands. He may have fallen into the lake, but I fear and Ysonde fears than he is alive. We never were able to find either her dwelling place or the glade and the fountain again. The only thing that remains to her of hen former life is the gold serpent in the Metropolitan Museum and her golden globe, the symbol of the Kuen-Yuin; but the latter no longer changes color.
David and the dogs are waiting for me in the count yard as I write. Pierpont is in the gun room loading shells, and Howlett brings him mug after mug of my ale from the wood. Ysonde bends oven my desk, — I feel her hand on my arm, and she is saying, “Don’t you think you have done enough to-day, dear? How can you write such silly nonsense without a shadow of truth or foundation?”
THE SILENT LAND.
“There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is how.”
WALT WHITMAN.
THE SILENT LAND.
“And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God.”
I.
FERRIS and I had had a dispute, a bitter one, and, as usual, Ferris had pushed his cap over his eyes until the hair on the back of his head stuck out.
“You can’t do it,” he said, shoving both hands up to the wrists in his canvas fishing-coat.
“I’ll prove it,” said I. “What a stubborn mule you are, Ferris!”
“Stubborn nothing,” he retorted, “you and your theories must have your little airing, I suppose, but I don’t intend to assist.”
“I’m right sometimes,” I said.
“Sometimes you’re wrong, too,” said Ferris. Then he walked off toward the cliffs, whistling, uncompromising, untidy.
“There’s a hole in your leggings!” I called after him, but he did not deign to answer me.
“Obstinate ass,” I thought, for we were very fond of each other, “if he wastes his time with the Silver Doctor he’ll rue it.” Then I looked at Solomon and lighted a cigarette.
Solomon was a bird, an enervating bird of the Ibis species, wrinkled and wizened, like the mummies of his native land, which was Egypt. The bird was mine, a sarcastic tribute from Ferris, and the bird and the sarcasm both bore directly on the only disputes which ever arose between Ferris and myself. The cause of these disputes was a trout-fly, an innocent toy of scarlet and tinsel, known to anglers as the “Red Ibis.” I swore by it, Ferris swore at it. In the long winter nights when the streams gurgled under the frozen forests and the lake was a sheet of soggy snow, Ferris and I loafed before the fire pulling tangled masses of leaders and flies about and dragging the silken lines over the rugs to hear the reels click. Every fly known to the brethren of the angle was discussed — every fly except the Red Ibis. We both honestly tried to avoid this bone of contention. We talked of Duns and Hackles, and Spinners and Gnats, but in spite of every precaution the Red Ibis would occasionally rise like a fiery spectre between us, and then we disputed vehemently.
“No angler with a rag of self-respect would use the Ibis,” said Ferris, with that obstinate shrug which added gall to the insult, and I — well, the crowning insult came when Ferris sent to Cairo and imported a live Egyptian Ibis for me.
“Pull out his tail feathers when you’re short of Red Ibis,” gasped Ferris, weak with laughter, as I stood silently inspecting the bird in my studio.
“I’ll send him to Central Park,” said I, swallowing my wrath; but I thought better of it, and Solomon, the wizened, became an important member of my household.
The bird was a mystery. I never cared to encounter his filmy eyes. Centuries seemed to roll away when he unclosed them, visions of tombs and obelisks filled my mind — glimpses of desert sunsets and the warm waters of lazy rivers. His black shrivelled head, bare as a skull, lay like a withered gourd among the garish flame-coloured feathers on his breast.
“Solly,” said I, when Ferris disappeared below the cliff, “do you want a frog?”
The bird unclosed one eye. I went to a pail of water in which I kept minnows, and Solomon followed me, solemnly hopping.
“Help yourself, Solly,” said I, uncovering the pail.
I called him Solly because I wished to put myself at ease with this relic of Egyptian Royalty. The splendour of Pharo’s court had not dimmed this hoary prophet’s eye, wh
ich was piercing when the sleepy film left it — piercing enough to make me feel thousands of years young, and very bourgeois. In vain I addressed him as Solly, in vain I gave him chocolate creams, — he was the aristocrat, the venerable high-priest of an Empire dead — and I was his man-servant, his ass, and his ox.
Solomon dabbed once or twice at a sportive minnow, pecked pensively at the handle of the pail, swallowed a pebble or two, and then, ruffling his scarlet feathers, sidled aimlessly back into the sedge by the frog-pond. I watched him for awhile, brooding dreamily among the rushes, but he paid no further attention either to me or to the small green frogs that squatted on the lily-pads or floated half submerged, watching him with enormous eyes.
A noisy blue-jay flitted through the orchard and alighted on a crab-apple tree solely to insult Solomon. He of course was unsuccessful, and his language became so utterly unfit for publication that I moved away, shocked and annoyed.
The sun was very hot. It glittered with a blinding light across the rippling pond, where dragon-flies darted and sailed and chased each other over the water, or flitted among the clouds of dancing midges, searching for prey.
A sweet smell came to me from orchard and sedge; there was an odour of scented rushes in the air, and the lingering summer wind bore puffs of perfume from clover-fields and meadows fragrant with flowering mint. I looked again toward the cliffs. Ferris was not in sight.
“Obstinate mule,” I thought, and, picking up my rod and fly-book, I sauntered toward the forest.
“Ferris,” said I to myself, “is after that big trout by the Red Rock Rapids, but he’ll never raise him with a Silver Doctor, and he’ll come home in a devil of a temper.”
I sat down in a clump of sweet fern and joined my rod. When I had run the silk through the guides and had fastened the nine-foot leader, I opened my fly-book and sought for a Red Ibis fly. There was not one in the book.
“I must send to New York to-morrow,” I thought, turning the aluminium leaves impatiently; “fancy my being out of Red Ibis!” I selected a yellow Oak fly for the dropper and a nameless Gnat for the hand-fly, and, drawing the leader down to the reel, started on again, carrying my rod with the tip behind me.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1058