'Twixt Dog and Wolf (Valancourt Classics) Read online

  At this moment, he was passing along the little street of St. Étienne des Grès, near the church of that name. He vaguely remembered that some years before some antiquarian studies which he had been making on pre-Roman Paris and its neighbourhood had given him a special interest in the site of this little church of St. Étienne; and that he had always meant to go into it, but had never done so. Since then he had forgotten his wish. He had no doubt passed the insignificant building a hundred times in his walks, but had never thought of entering. Religion had now been abolished, and the churches were all closed. Raynaud presumed so at least, but he thought he might at any rate try this one. He found to his surprise that the handle would turn,—after an effort, rustily. The door swung complainingly open and he went in.

  The place had not been used for a year. It was colder than the tomb. Spiders and dust in partnership had hung ropes from pillar to pillar; rats had been busy with the woodwork; a bat or two had found its way through a broken pane in the windows and built nests in the organ-loft and the rood-screen: Raynaud walked forward toward the apse in whose windows the light was beginning to fade. What a pity that he had not happened to have looked up his old notes, so as to know why he had once specially wished to stand inside this church of St. Étienne des Grès. But how curious that he should have so utterly forgotten those antiquarian studies of three years gone, and that they should come back to him now. Quite a flood of things seemed to be coming back to him. Was he in a dream now, or had he been in one through these last three years? Only give him time and he would remember everything.

  ‘I am,’ it said.

  It said—what said? Raynaud could have sworn that no one spoke. And yet there again, ‘I am and I was;’ and it was as if the air laughed silently. ‘Who are you?’ he cried. But there was no answer, and he expected none. For he knew that he had heard no sound.

  Then he gave a sudden start, and his heart beat against his ribs, and the sweat gathered on his forehead. For almost as if in answer to his invocation there came a sound from far off, a sound of footsteps drawing nearer and nearer. Raynaud cowered down, suddenly unnerved; and yet there was nothing supernatural in what he heard. The steps came nearer and nearer, and a crowd of men and women (passing by chance that way from a day spent in the Place de la Révolution) burst into the church,—figures not to be seen to-day save in a nightmare: haggard, long-toothed women with black hair or grey, tangled and lank, streaming down beside their cheeks; blear-eyed men, drunk, not with wine, but with a new intoxication to which men had not yet given a name, the intoxication of blood. They had come that way by chance, and seeing the church-door open had run in. But as they advanced up the aisle their step changed into a dance. They caught hold of one another and danced up the aisle, up to the chancel, up to the altar itself, throwing up their feet, their arms, clasping one another, whirling and whirling round. They shook the rood-screen, shook down ropes of cobwebs from the high roof, shook the organ loft, till the organ itself emitted a dull sound, half-groan, half-wail. Then they danced out, and silence, as ghost-like as before, fell on the deserted church. But the dance which had seized upon them there went with them out into the street. It was caught up by others and grew, and grew into a wild infection, a Dance of Death. It was called the Carmagnole.[5]

  Raynaud was left once more alone. And again the Air spake: ‘Swaying and whirling,’ it said, ‘whirling and swaying;’ and then again, ‘I did it;’ and once again the Silence laughed.

  Raynaud could bear it no longer, and he cried out in a tone which surprised even himself,—‘Speak! Who are you? I command you to speak!’ But there was no answer.

  Then it was as if a wind blew through the church, and, yes, Raynaud heard the rustling of boughs above, and it seemed as if the moon were struggling to shine through branches far overhead. It was but a momentary vision; again he was alone in the church, and grey evening was changing into night.

  ‘Ye Spirits of the Earth,’ said Raynaud half mechanically, as the old conjuration came into his head; ‘I call and conjure you! Be ye my aiders and confederates, and fulfil whatsoever I demand!’

  ‘I am and I was,’ said the voiceless Voice, and laughed again. But Raynaud no longer wondered what it meant, for the voice was within him.

  [1]truckle-beds: low beds, moveable on castors (truckles).

  [2]Ja, Pa, Asmodai, Aleph, Beleph, Adonai, Gormo, Mormo, Sadaï, Galzael, Asrael, Tangon, Mangon, Porphrael!: a doggerel approximation of the litanies of demonic names typical of books of black magic. It is a combination of words invented by Keary and those drawn from various mythological sources. The phrase ‘Gormo, Mormo’ is reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘Gorgo, Mormo, Thousand-face moon’ formulation in ‘The Horror of Red Hook’ (1927). It is conceivable that Lovecraft could have encountered Keary’s story, which was published in the U.S. in the Eclectic Magazine in 1892.

  [3]chouan: old French for the tawny owl.

  [4]métayers: agricultural labourers engaged in return for a proportion of the produce; sharecroppers.

  [5]Carmagnole: La Carmagnole was a revolutionary song, with an accompanying wild dance, said to be of Piedmontese origin. It is also mentioned by Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities (1859).

  IV

  In the morning, long before dawn, Raynaud left his lodging. The porter was nodding by the door, and one man was asleep in the wine-shop with his head upon the table and a candle guttering in its iron saucer close beside him, sending forth much smoke and an evil smell. Raynaud undid the fastenings of the door softly and stole out. A bitter wind met him; some moist snow was lying thinly between the cobble-stones, and a few flakes were still falling. He passed with quick footsteps down the echoing Rue des Postes into the Rue St. Jacques, down and down, to places he had not trodden for years, over the Petit Pont into the Cité, and thence to the north side of the river. It was years since he had been there, and many things were new to him. The Quai de la Grève had been reconstructed since the conflagration; the last building on the Petit Pont had fallen. But Raynaud paid little heed to these things, nor yet to the river which he had not seen for so long, nor to the numberless barges laden chiefly with wood which lay upon the stream, nor the piles of wood all along its southern bank. From the Quai de la Grève he passed along the Quai de la Mégisserie, then along the Quai du Louvre, the Quai des Tuileries, until finally the Quai du Conférence brought him to the goal of his steps, the Place de la Révolution.

  The Place was never free from loiterers night or day. Bitter as was the morning many were there now, sitting upon the steps which led up to the terrace of the Tuileries. In the faint moonlight they looked more like black shadows than men. For a moon far gone in the wane gleamed faintly over the trees to the north of the Place. And now, from where Raynaud paused for a moment to look about him, an object which he had never seen before stood between him and the moon, a square open scaffolding mounted upon a sort of rostrum. It was the guillotine! All round the rostrum hung a little group of men. There were some guards between them and the erection itself, but not many, and they did not exercise their authority with much vigour to keep men from perching themselves upon the lower posts and under the bars of the construction. Raynaud without further pause pushed straight for this crowd, and tried to elbow his way as near as might be to the guillotine. His dress was undistinguished from that of any other member of the crowd. He wore a rough black coat of a sort of shag or frieze, black breeches of the same material. His waistcoat was red, with a blue and white stripe across it; his feet were shod with sabots,[1] and he wore a red cotton nightcap on his head. That was the safest dress for any man to wear in those times. When however Raynaud set to work to elbow his way too pertinaciously to a good place near the guillotine, the crowd began to murmur, and as their eyes lighted upon his delicate white hands they began to bandy jests upon him in which an ear accustomed to the times would have recognized dang
er.

  ‘It is well to be a good patriot, citizen,’ said a little man standing beside a large fat woman; ‘but let others be good patriots too.’ ‘ ’Cré nom, oui,’ growled another. ‘Some come to la mère for one thing, some for another,’ said the fat woman enigmatically. ‘The citizen has not come expecting to meet a friend, par exemple?’ said a fourth speaker, setting himself directly in Raynaud’s way. ‘Not a ci-devant,[2] for instance?’ ‘Not come to pay respects to the head of his family?’ ‘Ou bien à la chef de la chef de sa famille,’ said a dullard, thinking that he had seen the pun for the first time and laughing heavily at his own wit. ‘Bon jour, monsieur! monsieur!! monsieur!!!’ cried many voices in which shrill ones predominated, after Raynaud, who despite of all, and apparently not knowing what was said to him, had pushed and squeezed his way some yards nearer the machine, he was just at the corner of the scaffold. He contrived to settle himself on one of its under-beams in a sort of squatting attitude which rested him a little, and there he remained quiet and awaited the day. Some of the citizens who had joined in the gibes upon him continued for a while to growl threateningly. Then something else attracted their attention and they left him in peace.

  It was bitterly cold, though nobody seemed very sensible of it. Now and then flakes of snow still drifted lazily through the air. The moonlight faded in the sky, and the grey sad face of dawn began to look forth through the curtains of the east. At last she blushed a little; and between two black bars, like the bars of a prison-window, the sun himself shot a beam or two across the world.

  By this time the Place de la Révolution was densely packed. Almost immediately after the sunrise there arose from all the mass a great sigh of satisfaction which shaped itself into the words ‘On vient—on vient—they are coming!’ Then a regiment of soldiers marched up and formed round the scaffold. The crowd swayed backward, crushing and swearing. Raynaud seemed to be unaware of what was going on till a soldier rather roughly pulled him from his seat and threw him forward into the crowd. The people, who had jeered at him before, laughed and began to jeer at him again. But now a cruel sound was heard in the distance, the roar of an angry multitude. The excitement round the guillotine grew keener every moment; people pushed and swore and tried to raise themselves above their neighbours. One tall man who held a six-year-old child upon his shoulders was very conspicuous.

  At the first sound of the distant roar Raynaud had raised his head; an eager light shone in his eyes as if he was listening to catch some definite words, and presently his own mouth opened and gave forth in a monotonous chant the old invocation: ‘Ja, Pa, Adonai, Aleph, Beleph, Asmodai. . . .’

  ‘What is he saying? He is mad,’ said the citizens immediately round him, eyeing him askance. ‘He is giving a signal; it is a plot,’ said another. His life at that moment hung upon a thread; but he wist not of it.

  The roar had been deepening all this time. Every throat in the Place de la Révolution began to take up the cries, which had been running like flame down the streets and quays. ‘A bas les tyrans!’ was the usual cry, alternating here and there with ‘Vive la guillotine!’ ‘Vive la République!’ Some people gave a lyrical turn to the noise by chanting a stanza of the Marseillaise—‘Aux armes, citoyens! . . .’

  The first tumbril reached the scaffold, which the executioner mounted the moment after, greeted by vehement cries of ‘Vive Samson!’ and the process of reading out the names began, which to any one but those quite close to the performers seemed like an inexplicable dumb show. With his eyes almost bursting from his head with wild excitement Raynaud pushed and squeezed and sweated to get nearer still to the fatal engine. For now the first bound figure was brought forward and laid face downward upon the block. Suddenly the noise in the crowd died down, and men held their breaths to watch the final act of this man’s life-comedy. There was always a special interest felt in the first execution of each day. Men made bets upon it; whether the head would leap off straight into the sack, or whether it would just touch the woodwork first, and so forth. What is stranger still, the superstitious drew auguries from this event; as if the world (which in the Place de la Révolution it had done) had rolled two thousand years backward in its course.

  Raynaud was one of the very few in the crowd who beheld an execution for the first time. His heart stood still, but not with fear, to wait for the sound of the descending steel. And then—then it came. Men spoke often in those days of the executed man sneezing in the sack of sawdust. It was not merely a fanciful metaphor. The truth is that the sound which Raynaud’s ears now heard for the first time had some grim resemblance to a sneeze. It was made partly by the swift hiss of the descending steel, checked for a moment as it shore through the victim’s neck, partly by the head falling into the sack of sawdust, partly by the gush of the blood rushing forth when the head was severed. Such was the sound which followed the moment’s pause of the listening crowd, and which Raynaud heard for the first time. And as he heard it the blood coursed again through his veins, his eye glistened with a preternatural brightness, and he seemed to drink in new life.

  The day wore on; Raynaud had eaten nothing since the previous night, but he seemed to feel no hunger. One after another the tumbrils discharged their burdens and the bloody sacrifice went on. Sacrifice! yes, that was the word which flashed into his mind. A sacrifice to whom or what? An answer to that too seemed to lie somewhere in the back of his thoughts, but he could not seize it then. The crowd around him, which had been formerly so suspicious, could not help being struck by his look of exultation, and repented itself of its suspicions. And one man, who had not been noticed before, with a dark face and a peculiarly acute cast of countenance, was so pleased that he placed his hand on Raynaud’s shoulder with the usual compliment, ‘I see you are a good patriot, citizen!’

  At length the last cart had been emptied and a blankness fell over Raynaud’s soul. It was again dark. Quickly the crowd began to disperse, not without wild cries and fraternal embraces and dancing of the new carmagnole. The acute faced man came up and spoke to Raynaud, who listened as if he understood, but understood nothing. The other gave him a piece of his bread and a fragment of sausage. Then they nodded and exchanged ‘good-night,’ and Raynaud walked away.

  V

  Raynaud passed again along the quays and over the Petit Pont toward his home. Suddenly he found himself once more in the little church of St. Étienne des Grès. The day had been long gone, and it was colder than ever. But the night was clear, and the starlight stole in, muffled and shadowy, through the east window of the church.

  Through the east window,—but why did the groining of the window seem to shake and sway from side to side? Why did the air blow so cold through the church? There was an answer to this, Raynaud knew, but could not lay hold of it. From the organ-loft (if it was an organ-loft) came a sad sound like that which the wind makes through pine trees. Raynaud looked and looked into the recesses—of what?—the church? Nay; but they stretched far beyond the limits of the church. It was as if he were in the midst of a vast forest. Dim star-lit stems seemed to catch his eye from far distances girt round by shadow; and now over his head boughs were certainly waving to and fro.

  Then a wild sort of half-chant filled his ears, wild but very faint. He could dimly fancy he caught the voices of his old comrades, Gavaudun, Sommarel, Tourret, in it; at any rate the chant brought them in some way into his mind. And the sound grew nearer and nearer, wilder and harsher. Figures came in sight, fierce in gesture, with unkempt locks streaming down their faces, clad in skins, brandishing spears on high, marching or dancing forward in a strange dance. Then there was a crashing among the branches and heavy-wheeled carts rumbled into sight, each drawn by two bullocks. Beside them walked men in white apparel, with fillets[3] round their hair. The carts were full of men and women, who all had their hands bound behind them, in some cases bound so tightly that the withes had cut through the flesh and a streak of blood
trickled downward over their hands. Some opened their mouths from time to time, but whether to sigh or cry out Raynaud could not tell, for the shouting and screaming of the crowd would have drowned their voices. And now, as each cart came to the stopping place, the bound men were one by one brought down, a white-robed priest plunged a knife into each one’s cart, and the blood flowed out upon the ground. The cries and chanting grew louder and louder; people danced in ecstasy round the pool of blood, which was swelling almost into a rivulet, and flowed away among the trees. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it all ceased; and Raynaud saw the dark church round him with a faint light struggling in through the window. And within him the silent Voice spoke,—‘I am the spirit of the place. I did it. Two thousand years ago, and yesterday and—’ Thereupon the whole air seemed to be filled with pale faces of slaughtered victims, who moved round as in a procession. Raynaud saw at last the faces of his three old comrades of the Rue Pot-de-Fer following one after the other, and at the end of all a fourth face,—his own!

  VI

  He returned to his lodging. Citoyenne Fourmisson met him on his way to his room, and poured upon him a torrent of abuse and threats. But he only stared at her and passed on. What had that past life to do with him now? The world had begun to live anew, and all the new life was coursing through his veins. Fourmisson was away; he had been sent with Tallien to sharpen the sword of the Revolutionary Committee at Bordeaux and stamp out the last embers of Girondinism.