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Pub One Info - Joseph Capes Bernard Edward

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95 pages

English

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It so fell that one dark evening in the month of June I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed - as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth - to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road, dipping and climbing toilfully against the shouldering of great tumbled boulders, or winning for itself but narrow foothold over slippery ridges, was thawed clear of snow; but the cold soft peril yet lay upon its flanks thick enough for a wintry plunge of ten feet, or may be fifty where the edge of the causeway fell over to the lower furrows of the ravine. It was a matter of policy to go with caution, and a thing of some moment to hear the thud and splintering of little distant icefalls about one in the darkness. Now and again a cold arrow of wind would sing down from the frosty peaks above or jerk with a squiggle of laughter among the fallen slabs in the valley

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Short story

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819901051
Langue	English

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THE MOON STRICKEN
It so fell that one dark evening in the month ofJune I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook metoiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a mostdesolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed – as the daysucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth – to closeabout me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road,dipping and climbing toilfully against the shouldering of greattumbled boulders, or winning for itself but narrow foothold overslippery ridges, was thawed clear of snow; but the cold soft perilyet lay upon its flanks thick enough for a wintry plunge of tenfeet, or may be fifty where the edge of the causeway fell over tothe lower furrows of the ravine. It was a matter of policy to gowith caution, and a thing of some moment to hear the thud andsplintering of little distant icefalls about one in the darkness.Now and again a cold arrow of wind would sing down from the frostypeaks above or jerk with a squiggle of laughter among the fallenslabs in the valley. And these were the only voices to prick me onthrough a dreariness lonely as death.
I knew the road, but not its night terrors. Passingalong it some days before in the glory of sunshine, broad paddocksand islands of green had comforted the shattered white ruin of theplace, and I had traversed it merely as a magnificent episode inthe indifferent history of my life. Now, as it seemed, I became onewith it – an awful waif of solemnity, a thing apart from mankindand its warm intercourse and ruddy inn doors, a spectral anomaly,whose austere epitaph was once writ upon the snow coating somefallen slab of those glimmering about me. I thought the whole gorgesmelt of tombs, like the vault of a cathedral. I thought, in theincomprehensible low moaning sound that ever and again seemed toeddy about me when the wind had swooped and passed, that Irecognised the forlorn voices of brother spirits long since deadand forgotten of the world.
Suddenly I felt the sweat cold under the knapsackthat swung upon my back; stopped, faced about and became humanagain. Ridge over ridge to my right the mountain summits fell awayagainst a fathomless sky; and topping the furthermost was a littleparing of silver light, the coronet of the rising moon. But theglory of the full orb was in the retrospect; for, closing thesavage vista of the ravine, stood up far away a cluster of jaggedpinnacles – opal, translucent, lustrous as the peaks of icebergsthat are the frozen music of the sea.
It was the toothed summit of the Aiguille Verte, nowprosaically bathed in the light of the full moon; but to me,looking from that grim and passionless hollow, it stood for thewhite hand of God lifted in menace to the evil spirits of theglen.
I drank my fill of the good sight, and then turnedme to my tramp again with a freshness in my throat as though it hadgulped a glass of champagne. Presently I knew myself descending,leaving, as I felt rather than saw, the stark horror of the gorgeand its glimmering snow patches above me. Puffs of a warmer airpurred past my face with little friendly sighs of welcome, and thehum of a far-off torrent struck like a wedge into the induratedfibre of the night. As I dropped, however, the mountain heads grewup against the moon, and withheld the comfort of her radiance; andit was not until the whimper of the torrent had quickened about meto a plunging roar, and my foot was on the striding bridge thattook its waters at a step, that her light broke through a topmostcleft in the hills, and made glory of the leaping thunder thatcrashed beneath my feet.
Thereafter all was peace. The road led downwardsinto a broadening valley, where the smell of flowers came about me,and the mountain walls withdrew and were no longer overwhelming.The slope eased off, dipping and rising no more than a groundswell; and by-and-by I was on a level track that ran straight as astretched ribbon and was reasonable to my tired feet.
Now the first dusky châlets of the hamlet ofBel-Oiseau straggled towards me, and it was music in my ears tohear the cattle blow and rattle in their stalls under the sleepinglofts as I passed outside in the moonlight. Five minutes more, andthe great zinc onion on the spire of the church glistened towardsme, and I was in the heart of the silent village.
From the deep green shadow cast by the graveyardwall, heavily buttressed against avalanches, a form wriggled outinto the moonlight and fell with a dusty thud at my feet, mowingand chopping at the air with its aimless claws. I started back witha sudden jerk of my pulses. The thing was horrible by reason of itsinarticulate voice, which issued from the shapeless folds of itswrithings like the wet gutturizing of a back-broken horse. Instinctwith repulsion, I stood a moment dismayed, when light flashed froman open doorway a dozen yards further down the street, and a womanran across to the prostrate form. "Up, graceless one!" she cried;"and carry thy seven devils within doors!"
The figure gathered itself together at her voice,and stood in an angle of the buttresses quaking and shielding itseyes with two gaunt arms. "Can I not exchange a word with MèrePettit," scolded the woman, "but thou must sneak from behind myback on thy crazed moon-hunting?" "Pity, pity," moaned the figure;and then the woman noticed me, and dropped a curtsy. "Pardon," shesaid; "but he has been affronting Monsieur with his antics?" "He isstricken, Madame?" "Ah, yes, Monsieur. Holy Mother, but howstricken!" "It is sad." "Monsieur knows not how sad. It is soalways, but most a great deal when the moon is full. He was a goodlad once."
Monsieur puts his hand in his pocket. Madame hearsthe clink of coin and touches the enclosed fingers with her owndelicately. Monsieur withdraws his hand empty. "Pardon, Madame.""Monsieur has the courage of a gentleman. Come, Camille, littlefool! a sweet good-night to Monsieur." "Stay, Madame. I have walkedfar and am weary. Is there an hotel in Bel-Oiseau?" "Monsieur isjesting. We are but a hundred of poor châlets." "An auberge, then –a cabaret – anything?" " Les Trois Chèvres . It is not forsuch as you." "Is it, then, that I must toil onwards to Châtelard?""Monsieur does not know? The Hôtel Royal was burned to thewalls six months since." "It follows that I must lie in thefields."
Madame hesitates, ponders, and makes up her mind. "Ikeep Monsieur talking, and the night wind is sharp from the snow.It is ill for a heated skin, and one should be indoors. I have abedroom that is at Monsieur's disposition, if Monsieur willcondescend?"
Monsieur will condescend. Monsieur would condescendto a loft and a truss of straw, in default of the neat littlechilly chamber that is allotted him, so sick are his very limbswith long tramping, and so uninviting figures the further stretchin the moonlight to Châtelard, with its burnt-out carcase of anhotel.
This is how I came to quarter myself on MadameBarbière and her idiot son, and how I ultimately learned from thelips of the latter the strange story of his own immediate fall fromreason and the dear light of intellect. *
By day Camille Barbière proved to be a young man,some five and twenty years of age, of a handsome and impressiveexterior. His dark hair lay close about his well-shaped head; hisfeatures were regular and cut bold as an Etruscan cameo; his limbswere elastic and moulded into the supple finish of one whose lifehas not been set upon level roads. At a speculative distance heappeared a straight specimen of a Burgundian youth – sinewy,clean-formed, and graceful, though slender to gauntness; and it wasonly on nearer contact that one marvelled to see the soul die outof him, as a face set in the shadow of leafage resolves itself intosome accident of twisted branches as one approaches the billowingtree that presented it.
The soul of Camille, the idiot, had warped longafter its earthly tabernacle had grown firm and fair to look upon.Cause and effect were not one from birth in him; and the result wasa most wistful expression, as though the lost intellect were forever struggling and failing to recall its ancient mastery. Mostlyhe was a gentle young man, noteworthy for nothing but theuncomplaining patience with which he daily observed the monotonousroutine of simple duties that were now all-sufficient for the poorlife that had "crept so long on a broken wing." He milked the big,red, barrel-bodied cow, and churned industriously for butter; hekept the little vegetable garden in order and nursed the Savoysinto fatness like plumping babies; he drove the goats to pasture onthe mountain slopes, and all day sat among the rhododendrons, theforgotten soul behind his eyes conning the dead language of fate,as a foreigner vainly interrogates the abstruse complexity of anidiom.
By-and-by I made it an irregular habit to accompanyhim on these shepherdings; to join him in his simple midday meal ofsour brown bread and goat-milk cheese; to talk with himdesultorily, and study him the while, inasmuch as he wakened aninterest in me that was full of speculation. For his was not animbecility either hereditary or constitutional. From the firstthere had appeared to me something abnormal in it – a suspension ofintelligence only, a frost-bite in the brain that presently someApril breath of memory might thaw out. This was not merelyconjectural, of course. I had the story of his mental collapse fromhis mother in the early days of my sojourn in Bel-Oiseau; for itcame to pass that a fitful caprice induced me to prolong my stay inthe swart little village far into the gracious Swiss summer.
The "story" I have called it; but it was none. Hewas out on the hills one moonlight night, and came home in theearly morning mad. That was all.
This had happened some eight years before, when hewas a lad of seventeen – a strong, beautiful lad, his mother toldme; and with a dreamy "poet's corner" in his brain, she added, butin her own better way of putting it. She