The Ultimate Weird Tales Collection - 133 stories - Clark Ashton Smith (Trilogus Classics) (4 page)

Dimly I became aware that someone was at my elbow. With eyes still intent on the bier, I asked:

'Who is it that lies yonder, for whom these masses are being said and these bells are rung?' And a slow, sepulchral voice replied:

'It is the lady Mariel, who died yesterday and who will be interred tomorrow in the vaults of her ancestors. If you wish, you may go forward and gaze upon her.'

So I went down the cathedral aisle, even to the side of the bier, whose opulent fabrics trailed on the cold flags. And the face of her who lay thereon, with a tranquil smile upon the lips, and tender shadows upon the shut eyelids, was the face of the Mariel I had loved and of none other. The tides of time were frozen in their flowing; and all that was or had been or could be, all of the world that existed aside from her, became as fading shadows; and even as once before (was it eons or instants ago?) my soul was locked in the marble hell of its supreme grief and regret. I could not move, I could not cry out nor even weep, for my very tears were turned to ice. And now I knew with a terrible certitude that this one event, the death of the lady Mariel, had drawn apart from all other happenings, had broken away from the sequence of time and had found for itself a setting of appropriate gloom and solemnity; or perhaps had even built around itself the whole enormous maze of that spectral city, in which to abide my destined return among the mists of a deceptive oblivion.

At length, with an awful effort of will, I turned my eyes away; and leaving the cathedral with steps that were both hurried and leaden, I sought to find an egress from the dismal labyrinth of Malnéant to the gate by which I had entered. But this was by no means easy, and I must have roamed for hours in alleys blind and stifling as tombs, and along the tortuous, self-reverting thoroughfares, ere I came to a familiar street and was able henceforward to direct my paces with something of surety. And a dull and sunless daylight was dawning behind the mists when I crossed the bridge and came again to the road that would lead me away from that fatal city.

Since then, I have wandered long and in many places. But never again have I cared to revisit those old-world realms of fog and mist, for fear that I should come once more to Malnéant, and find that its people are still busied with their preparations for the obsequies of the lady Mariel.

A PLATONIC ENTANGLEMENT

They were sitting a fairly proper distance apart, on their favorite moss-grown boulder, at the end of the leaf-strewn autumn trail they had taken so often.

"Do you know that people are talking about us?" Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, failing on a mournful cadence almost unaudible, and he moved nearer, to catch the faint silver of its tones . As always, he found something vaguely pleasurable in the nearness of the plump olive neck under its coil of unbobbed hair, and the tender oval cheek that was exquisitely innocent of rouge.

"We have been seen together too often," she continued, with trouble and sadness in the droop of her eyelids, in the fall of her voice. "This town is full of cats, like all villages, and they are all the more willing to tear me in shreds because I am living apart from my husband. I am sorry, Geoffry... because our friendship has meant so much to me."

"It has meant much to me, too, Anita," he responded. He felt disturbed and even a little conscience-striken. It had been very pleasant, in his loneliness, to call upon her with increasing frequency throughout the summer, and to take these little walks in the autumn woods, now that the air was cooling and the leaves were aflame with saffron and crimson. It had all been so harmless and platonic, he assured himself — the natural drifting together of two lonely people with certain tastes in common. But assuredly he was not in love with her nor she with him: his attitude toward her had always been rather shy and respectful, and it was she who had somehow increased the familiarity of their friendship by subtle and imperceptible degrees. Indeed, had she not urged him, he would never have had the boldness to call her by her first name. She was a little the older and much the maturer of the two.

"Those horrid tattle-cats!" she went on, raising her voice in a silver burst of indignation. "If they would only be content to do their ripping and rending and clawing behind my back! But some of them must always come and tell me about it — 'My dear, I think you ought to know what people are saying!'" She made an exquisite little moue of disgust. He reflected, not for the first time, that her mouth was eminently kissable; but, being a somewhat shy and modest young man, and not at all in love with her, he put the thought away as speedily as he could.

"What will your husband do if he hears the gossip?" he queried cautiously.

"Oh, George wouldn't care." Her tone was reckless, with an undertone of contempt. "As long as I leave him alone, he will leave me alone. · .. He wouldn't have the decency to give me a divorce; but, on the other hand, he is too indifferent to make trouble. George doesn't matter, one way or the other: what I hate and dread is this dirty small-town gossip; I feel as if unclean hands were pawing me all the time."

Shuddering a little, she pressed against him, ever so gently . Her mournful eyelids fluttered, and she gave him a brief and almost furtive glance, in which he could read nothing but sadness. She lowered her eyes hastily, as tears crept out and hung on the thick lashes.

"Oh! it is hateful hateful!" There was a melodious break in her voice. "I don't know what to do .... But I can't give up seeing you, Geoffry; and you don't want to give me up, do you?"

"Of course not," he hastened to reassure her. "But I can't see what all the excitement is about. We are good friends, of course, but — " He broke off, for she was sobbing openly, seeming not to hear him. Somehow — he never quite knew how it all happened — her head fell on his shoulder, and her white arms, clinging forlornly and tenaciously, were about his neck. Slightly terrified, in a turmoil of sensations that were by no means unpleasant, he returned the embrace and kissed her. It seemed to be the thing to do.

Afterwards, as she rearranged the coil of her disordered hair, she murmured:

"I have always loved you, Geoffry .... It simply had to happen, I suppose .... Do you love me?"

"Of course I love you." He put the correct period to his reply with another kiss. After all, what else could he say or do?

A RENDEZVOUS IN AVEROIGNE

Gerard de l'Automne was meditating the rimes of a new ballade in honor of Fleurette, as he followed the leaf-arrased pathway toward Vyones through the woodland of Averoigne. Since he was on his way to meet Fleurette, who had promised to keep a rendezvous among the oaks and beeches like any peasant girl, Gerard himself made better progress than the ballade. His love was at that stage which, even for a professional troubadour, is more productive of distraction than inspiration; and he was recurrently absorbed in a meditation upon other than merely verbal felicities.

The grass and trees had assumed the fresh enamel of a mediaeval May; the turf was figured with little blossoms of azure and white and yellow, like an ornate broidery; and there was a pebbly stream that murmured beside the way, as if the voices of undines were parleying deliciously beneath its waters. The sun-lulled air was laden with a wafture of youth and romance; and the longing that welled from the heart of Gerard seemed to mingle mystically with the balsams of the wood.

Gerard was a trouvère whose scant years and many wanderings had brought him a certain renown. After the fashion of his kind he had roamed from court to court, from chateau to chateau; and he was now the guest of the Comte de la Frênaie, whose high castle held dominion over half the surrounding forest. Visiting one day that quaint cathedral town, Vyones, which lies so near to the ancient wood of Averoigne, Gerard had seen Fleurette, the daughter of a well-to-do mercer named Guillaume Cochin; and had become more sincerely enamored of her blonde piquancy than was to be expected from one who had been so frequently susceptible in such matters. He had managed to make his feelings known to her; and, after a month of billets-doux, ballades, and stolen interviews contrived by the help of a complaisant waiting-woman, she had made this woodland tryst with him in the absence of her father from Vyones. Accompanied by her maid and a man-servant, she was to leave the town early that afternoon and meet Gerard under a certain beech-tree of enormous age and size. The servants would then withdraw discreetly; and the lovers, to all intents and purposes, would be alone. It was not likely that they would be seen or interrupted; for the gnarled and immemorial wood possessed an ill repute among the peasantry. Somewhere in this wood there was the ruinous and haunted Chateau des Faussesflammes; and, also, there was a double tomb, within which the Sieur Hugh du Malinbois and his chatelaine, who were notorious for sorcery in their time, had lain unconsecrated for more than two hundred years. Of these, and their phantoms, there were grisly tales; and there were stories of loup-garous and goblins, of fays and devils and vampires that infested Averoigne. But to these tales Gerard had given little heed, considering it improbable that such creatures would fare abroad in open daylight. The madcap Fleurette had professed herself unafraid also; but it had been necessary to promise the servants a substantial pourboire, since they shared fully the local superstitions.

Gerard had wholly forgotten the legendry of Averoigne, as he hastened along the sun-flecked path. He was nearing the appointed beech-tree, which a turn of the path would soon reveal; and his pulses quickened and became tremulous, as he wondered if Fleurette had already reached the trysting-place. He abandoned all effort to continue his ballade, which, in the three miles he had walked from La Frenaie, had not progressed beyond the middle of a tentative first stanza.

His thoughts were such as would befit an ardent and impatient lover. They were now interrupted by a shrill scream that rose to an unendurable pitch of fear and horror, issuing from the green stillness of the pines beside the way. Startled, he peered at the thick branches; and as the scream fell back to silence, he heard the sound of dull and hurrying footfalls, and a scuffling as of several bodies. Again the scream arose. It was plainly the voice of a woman in some distressful peril. Loosening his dagger in its sheath, and clutching more firmly a long hornbeam staff which he had brought with him as a protection against the vipers which were said to lurk in Averoigne, he plunged without hesitation or premeditation among the low-hanging boughs from which the voice had seemed to emerge.

In a small open space beyond the trees, he saw a woman who was struggling with three ruffians of exceptionally brutal and evil aspect. Even in the haste and vehemence of the moment, Gerard realized that he had never before seen such men or such a woman. The woman was clad in a gown of emerald green that matched her eyes; in her face was the pallor of dead things, together with a faery beauty; and her lips were dyed as with the scarlet of newly flowing blood. The men were dark as Moors, and their eyes were red slits of flame beneath oblique brows with animal-like bristles. There was something very peculiar in the shape of their feet; but Gerard did not realize the exact nature of the peculiarity till long afterwards. Then he remembered that all of them were seemingly club-footed, though they were able to move with surpassing agility. Somehow, he could never recall what sort of clothing they had worn.

The woman turned a beseeching gaze upon Gerard as he sprang forth from amid the boughs. The men, however, did not seem to heed his coming; though one of them caught in a hairy clutch the hands which the woman sought to reach toward her rescuer.

Lifting his staff, Gerard rushed upon the ruffians. He struck a tremendous blow at the head of the nearest one a blow that should have levelled the fellow to earth. But the staff came down on unresisting air, and Gerard staggered and almost fell headlong in trying to recover his equilibrium. Dazed and uncomprehending, he saw that the knot of struggling figures had vanished utterly. At least, the three men had vanished; but from the middle branches of a tall pine beyond the open space, the death-white features of the woman smiled upon him for a moment with faint, inscrutable guile ere they melted among the needles.

Gerard understood now; and he shivered as he crossed himself. He had been deluded by phantoms or demons, doubtless for no good purpose; he had been the gull of a questionable enchantment. Plainly there was something after all in the legends he had heard, in the ill-renown of the forest of Averoigne.

He retraced his way toward the path he had been following. But when he thought to reach again the spot from which he had heard that shrill unearthly scream, he saw that there was no longer a path; nor, indeed, any feature of the forest which he could remember or recognize. The foliage about him no longer displayed a brilliant verdure; it was sad and funereal, and the trees themselves were either cypress-like, or were already sere with autumn or decay. In lieu of the purling brook there lay before him a tarn of waters that were dark and dull as clotting blood, and which gave back no reflection of the brown autumnal sedges that trailed therein like the hair of suicides, and the skeletons of rotting osiers that writhed above them.