Out of the Dark: Tales of Terror by Robert W. Chambers. Robert W. Chambers
dried leaves, and settled back with a sigh.
I looked lazily around, and for the first time noticed what a wonderfully beautiful spot I had chosen for a nap. It was an oval glade in the heart of the forest, level and carpeted with green grass. The trees that surrounded it were gigantic; they formed one towering circular wall of verdure, blotting out all except the turquoise blue of the sky-oval above. And now I noticed that in the center of the greensward lay a pool of water, crystal clear, glimmering like a mirror in the meadow grass, beside a block of granite. It scarcely seemed possible that the symmetry of tree and lawn and lucent pool could have been one of nature’s accidents. I had never before seen this glade nor had I ever heard it spoken of by either Pierpont or Barris. It was a marvel, this diamond-clear basin, regular and graceful as a Roman fountain, set in the gem of turf. And these great trees – they also belonged, not in America but in some legend-haunted forest of France, where moss-grown marbles stand neglected in dim glades, and the twilight of the forest shelters fairies and slender shapes from shadow-land.
I lay and watched the sunlight showering the tangled thicket where masses of crimson cardinal flowers glowed, or where one long dusty sunbeam tipped the edge of the floating leaves in the pool, turning them to palest gilt. There were birds too, passing through the dim avenues of trees like jets of flame – the gorgeous cardinal bird in his deep stained crimson robe – the bird that gave to the woods, to the village fifteen miles away, to the whole country, the name of Cardinal.
I rolled over on my back and looked up at the sky. How pale – paler than a robin’s egg – it was. I seemed to be lying at the bottom of a well, walled with verdure, high towering on every side. And, as I lay, all about me the air became sweet scented. Sweeter and sweeter and more penetrating grew the perfume, and I wondered what stray breeze, blowing over acres of lilies could have brought it. But there was no breeze; the air was still. A gilded fly alighted on my hand – a honey fly. It was as troubled as I by the scented silence.
Then, behind me, my dog growled.
I sat quite still at first, hardly breathing, but my eyes were fixed on a shape that moved along the edge of the pool among the meadow grasses. The dog had ceased growling and was now staring, alert and trembling.
At last I rose and walked rapidly down to the pool, my dog following close to heel.
The figure, a woman’s, turned slowly toward us.
IV
She was standing still when I approached the pool. The forest around us was so silent that when I spoke the sound of my own voice startled me.
‘No,’ she said – and her voice was smooth as flowing water, ‘I have not lost my way. Will he come to me, your beautiful dog?’
Before I could speak, Voyou crept to her and laid his silky head against her knees.
‘But surely,’ said I, ‘you did not come here alone.’
‘Alone? I did come alone.’
‘But the nearest settlement is in Cardinal, probably nineteen miles from where we are standing.’
‘I do not know Cardinal,’ she said.
‘Ste. Croix in Canada is forty miles at least – how did you come into the Cardinal Woods?’ I asked amazed.
‘Into the woods?’ she repeated a little impatiently.
‘Yes.’
She did not answer at first but stood caressing Voyou with gentle phrase and gesture.
‘Your beautiful dog I am fond of, but I am not fond of being questioned,’ she said quietly. ‘My name is Ysonde and I came to the fountain here to see your dog.’
I was properly quenched. After a moment or two I did say that in another hour it would be growing dusky, but she neither replied nor looked at me.
‘This,’ I ventured, ‘is a beautiful pool – you call it a fountain – a delicious fountain: I have never before seen it. It is hard to imagine that nature did all this.’
‘Is it?’ she said.
‘Don’t you think so?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t thought; I wish when you go you would leave me your dog.’
‘My – my dog?’
‘If you don’t mind,’ she said sweetly, and looked at me for the first time in the face.
For an instant our glances met, then she grew grave, and I saw that her eyes were fixed on my forehead. Suddenly she rose and drew nearer, looking intently at my forehead. There was a faint mark there, a tiny crescent, just over my eyebrow. It was a birthmark.
‘Is that a scar?’ she demanded drawing nearer.
‘That crescent-shaped mark? No.’
‘No? Are you sure?’ she insisted.
‘Perfectly,’ I replied, astonished.
‘A—a birthmark?’
‘Yes – may I ask why?’
As she drew away from me, I saw that the color had fled from her cheeks. For a second she clasped both hands over her eyes as if to shut out my face, then slowly dropping her hands, she sat down on a long square block of stone which half encircled the basin, and on which to my amazement I saw carving. Voyou went to her again and laid his head in her lap.
‘What is your name?’ she asked at length.
‘Roy Cardenhe.’
‘Mine is Ysonde. I carved these dragonflies on the stone, these fishes and shells and butterflies you see.’
‘You! They are wonderfully delicate – but those are not American dragonflies—’
‘No – they are more beautiful. See, I have my hammer and chisel with me.’
She drew from a queer pouch at her side a small hammer and chisel and held them toward me.
‘You are very talented,’ I said, ‘where did you study?’
‘I? I never studied – I knew how. I saw things and cut them out of stone. Do you like them? Some time I will show you other things that I have done. If I had a great lump of bronze I could make your dog, beautiful as he is.’
Her hammer fell into the fountain and I leaned over and plunged my arm into the water to find it.
‘It is there, shining on the sand,’ she said, leaning over the pool with me.
‘Where,’ said I, looking at our reflected faces in the water. For it was only in the water that I had dared, as yet, to look her long in the face.
The pool mirrored the exquisite oval of her head, the heavy hair, the eyes. I heard the silken rustle of her girdle, I caught the flash of a white arm, and the hammer was drawn up dripping with spray.
The troubled surface of the pool grew calm and again I saw her eyes reflected.
‘Listen,’ she said in a low voice, ‘do you think you will come again to my fountain?’
‘I will come,’ I said. My voice was dull; the noise of water filled my ears.
Then a swift shadow sped across the pool; I rubbed my eyes. Where her reflected face had bent beside mine there was nothing mirrored but the rosy evening sky with one pale star glimmering. I drew myself up and turned. She was gone. I saw the faint star twinkling above me in the afterglow, I saw the tall trees motionless in the still evening air, I saw my dog slumbering at my feet.
The sweet scent in the air had faded, leaving in my nostrils the heavy odor of fern and forest mould. A blind fear seized me, and I caught up my gun and sprang into the darkening woods. The dog followed me, crashing through the undergrowth at my side. Duller and duller grew the light, but I strode