countless moving forms, shifting thick andfast between the openings of the trees; while overhead, like leavesdriven by the wind, he discerned flying shapes that hovered darkly onemoment against the sky and then settled down with cries and weirdsinging through the branches into the region that was aflame.
Spellbound, he stood and stared for a time that he could not measure.And then, moved by one of the terrible impulses that seemed to controlthe whole adventure, he climbed swiftly upon the top of the broadcoping, and balanced a moment where the valley gaped at his feet. But inthat very instant, as he stood hovering, a sudden movement among theshadows of the houses caught his eye, and he turned to see the outlineof a large animal dart swiftly across the open space behind him, andland with a flying leap upon the top of the wall a little lower down. Itran like the wind to his feet and then rose up beside him upon theramparts. A shiver seemed to run through the moonlight, and his sighttrembled for a second. His heart pulsed fearfully. Ilse stood besidehim, peering into his face.
Some dark substance, he saw, stained the girl's face and skin, shiningin the moonlight as she stretched her hands towards him; she was dressedin wretched tattered garments that yet became her mightily; rue andvervain twined about her temples; her eyes glittered with unholy light.He only just controlled the wild impulse to take her in his arms andleap with her from their giddy perch into the valley below.
"See!" she cried, pointing with an arm on which the rags fluttered inthe rising wind towards the forest aglow in the distance. "See wherethey await us! The woods are alive! Already the Great Ones are there,and the dance will soon begin! The salve is here! Anoint yourself andcome!"
Though a moment before the sky was clear and cloudless, yet even whileshe spoke the face of the moon grew dark and the wind began to toss inthe crests of the plane trees at his feet. Stray gusts brought thesounds of hoarse singing and crying from the lower slopes of the hill,and the pungent odour he had already noticed about the courtyard of theinn rose about him in the air.
"Transform, transform!" she cried again, her voice rising like a song."Rub well your skin before you fly. Come! Come with me to the Sabbath,to the madness of its furious delight, to the sweet abandonment of itsevil worship! See! the Great Ones are there, and the terrible Sacramentsprepared. The Throne is occupied. Anoint and come! Anoint and come!"
She grew to the height of a tree beside him, leaping upon the wall withflaming eyes and hair strewn upon the night. He too began to changeswiftly. Her hands touched the skin of his face and neck, streaking himwith the burning salve that sent the old magic into his blood with thepower before which fades all that is good.
A wild roar came up to his ears from the heart of the wood, and thegirl, when she heard it, leaped upon the wall in the frenzy of herwicked joy.
"Satan is there!" she screamed, rushing upon him and striving to drawhim with her to the edge of the wall. "Satan has come. The Sacramentscall us! Come, with your dear apostate soul, and we will worship anddance till the moon dies and the world is forgotten!"
Just saving himself from the dreadful plunge, Vezin struggled to releasehimself from her grasp, while the passion tore at his reins and all butmastered him. He shrieked aloud, not knowing what he said, and then heshrieked again. It was the old impulses, the old awful habitsinstinctively finding voice; for though it seemed to him that he merelyshrieked nonsense, the words he uttered really had meaning in them, andwere intelligible. It was the ancient call. And it was heard below. Itwas answered.
The wind whistled at the skirts of his coat as the air round himdarkened with many flying forms crowding upwards out of the valley. Thecrying of hoarse voices smote upon his ears, coming closer. Strokes ofwind buffeted him, tearing him this way and that along the crumbling topof the stone wall; and Ilse clung to him with her long shining arms,smooth and bare, holding him fast about the neck. But not Ilse alone,for a dozen of them surrounded him, dropping out of the air. Thepungent odour of the anointed bodies stifled him, exciting him to theold madness of the Sabbath, the dance of the witches and sorcerers doinghonour to the personified Evil of the world.
"Anoint and away! Anoint and away!" they cried in wild chorus about him."To the Dance that never dies! To the sweet and fearful fantasy ofevil!"
Another moment and he would have yielded and gone, for his will turnedsoft and the flood of passionate memory all but overwhelmed him,when--so can a small thing after the whole course of an adventure--hecaught his foot upon a loose stone in the edge of the wall, and thenfell with a sudden crash on to the ground below. But he fell towards thehouses, in the open space of dust and cobblestones, and fortunately notinto the gaping depth of the valley on the farther side.
And they, too, came in a tumbling heap about him, like flies upon apiece of food, but as they fell he was released for a moment from thepower of their touch, and in that brief instant of freedom there flashedinto his mind the sudden intuition that saved him. Before he couldregain his feet he saw them scrabbling awkwardly back upon the wall, asthough bat-like they could only fly by dropping from a height, and hadno hold upon him in the open. Then, seeing them perched there in a rowlike cats upon a roof, all dark and singularly shapeless, their eyeslike lamps, the sudden memory came back to him of Ilse's terror at thesight of fire.
Quick as a flash he found his matches and lit the dead leaves that layunder the wall.
Dry and withered, they caught fire at once, and the wind carried theflame in a long line down the length of the wall, licking upwards as itran; and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded row of forms upon thetop melted away into the air on the other side, and were gone with agreat rush and whirring of their bodies down into the heart of thehaunted valley, leaving Vezin breathless and shaken in the middle of thedeserted ground.
"Ilse!" he called feebly; "Ilse!" for his heart ached to think that shewas really gone to the great Dance without him, and that he had lost theopportunity of its fearful joy. Yet at the same time his relief was sogreat, and he was so dazed and troubled in mind with the whole thing,that he hardly knew what he was saying, and only cried aloud in thefierce storm of his emotion....
The fire under the wall ran its course, and the moonlight came outagain, soft and clear, from its temporary eclipse. With one lastshuddering look at the ruined ramparts, and a feeling of horrid wonderfor the haunted valley beyond, where the shapes still crowded and flew,he turned his face towards the town and slowly made his way in thedirection of the hotel.
And as he went, a great wailing of cries, and a sound of howling,followed him from the gleaming forest below, growing fainter and fainterwith the bursts of wind as he disappeared between the houses.
VI
"It may seem rather abrupt to you, this sudden tame ending," said ArthurVezin, glancing with flushed face and timid eyes at Dr. Silence sittingthere with his notebook, "but the fact is--er--from that moment mymemory seems to have failed rather. I have no distinct recollection ofhow I got home or what precisely I did.
"It appears I never went back to the inn at all. I only dimly recollectracing down a long white road in the moonlight, past woods and villages,still and deserted, and then the dawn came up, and I saw the towers of abiggish town and so came to a station.
"But, long before that, I remember pausing somewhere on the road andlooking back to where the hill-town of my adventure stood up in themoonlight, and thinking how exactly like a great monstrous cat it laythere upon the plain, its huge front paws lying down the two mainstreets, and the twin and broken towers of the cathedral marking itstorn ears against the sky. That picture stays in my mind with the utmostvividness to this day.
"Another thing remains in my mind from that escape--namely, the suddensharp reminder that I had not paid my bill, and the decision I made,standing there on the dusty highroad, that the small baggage I had leftbehind would more than settle for my indebtedness.
"For the rest, I can only tell you that I got coffee and bread at a cafeon the outskirts of this town I had come to, and soon after found my wayto the station and
caught a train later in the day. That same evening Ireached London."
"And how long altogether," asked John Silence quietly, "do you think youstayed in the town of the adventure?"
Vezin looked up sheepishly.
"I was coming to that," he resumed, with apologetic wrigglings of hisbody. "In London I found that I was a whole week out in my reckoning oftime. I had stayed over a week in the town, and it ought to have beenSeptember 15th,--instead of which it was only September 10th!"
"So that, in reality, you had only stayed a night or two in the inn?"queried the doctor.
Vezin hesitated before replying. He shuffled upon the mat.
"I must have gained time somewhere," he said at length--"somewhere orsomehow. I certainly had a week to my credit. I can't explain it. I canonly give you the fact."
"And this happened to you last