Randalls Round (8 page)

“
’Clamabo et exaudiet me’.
’I will call and he will hear.’ That might be any prayer. Sounds rather like a psalm.
’Quoniam iste qui venire potest’
– ah! -
’qui peuct venir!
– what’s this?
’sacrificium hominum’
- Heavens!
What’s that?”

Far off across the heath he heard a faint cry – the distant howling of the thing he had seen on the beach…

He listened intently. He could hear nothing more.

“Some dog howling,” he said to himself. “I’m getting jumpy. Where was I?”

He turned back to the manuscript; but even during the few moments of distraction the light had faded, and he had to strain his eyes to see anything of the words.

“‘E paludinis ubi est habitaculum tuum ego te convoco’”,
he read slowly aloud, spelling out the worn writing. “I don’t think there’s anything in the painting to correspond with that. How odd it is! ’From the marshes where thy dwelling is I call thee.’ Why from the
marshes,
I wonder? ’E
paludinis ubi est habitaculum tuum ego te convoco -’.”

He broke off abruptly. Again there came that dreadful howl – and it certainly was not the howl of a dog. It was quite close…

Maddox did not stop to consider. He leapt up, ran through the yard into the presbytery, and locked the door behind him. He went to the front door and locked that too; and he bolted every window in the tiny house. Then, and not till then, did he pause to wonder at his own precipitate flight. He was trembling violently, his breath coming in painful gasps. He told himself that he had acted like a hysterical old maid – like a schoolgirl. And yet he could not bring himself to open a window. He went into the little sitting-room and made up the fire to an unwonted size; then he tried to take an interest in Father Vétier’s library of devotional books until the little curé himself should return. He was nervous and uneasy; it seemed to him that he could hear some creature (he told himself that it must be a large dog, or perhaps a goat) snuffling about the walls and under the door… He was inexpressibly relieved when at last he heard the short, decided step of the curé coming up the path to the house.

Maddox was restless that night. He had short, heavy snatches of sleep in which he was haunted by dreams of pursuit by that flat, hooded being; and once he woke with a strangled cry and a cold shudder of disgust from a dream that, in his flight, he had stumbled and fallen face downwards on something soft and cold which moved beneath him – a mass of toads… He lay awake for a long time after that dream; but he eventually slipped into a drowsy state, half waking and half sleeping, in which he had an uncomfortable impression that he was not alone in the room – that something was breathing close beside him, moving about in a fumbling, stealthy way. And his nerves were so overwrought that he simply had not the courage to put out a hand and feel for the matches lest his fingers should close on – something else. He did not try to imagine what.

Towards dawn he fell into an uneasy doze, and awoke with a start. Some sound had awakened him – a melancholy howling cry rang in his ears; but whether it had actually sounded or whether it was part of his memories and evil dreams he could not tell.

He looked ill and worn at breakfast, and gave his bad night as an excuse for failing to continue his work on the old wall. He spent a wretched, moping day; he could settle to nothing indoors.

At last, tempted by the mellow October sun, he decided to go for a brisk, short walk. He would return before dusk – he was quite firm about that – and he would avoid the lonely reaches of the shore.

The afternoon was delicious. The rich scent of the gorse and heather, warm in the sun, and the cool touch from the sea that just freshened the breeze, soothed and calmed Maddox wonderfully. He had almost forgotten his terrors of the night before – at least, he was able to push them into a back corner of his mind. He turned homewards contentedly – even in his new calm he was not going to be out after sundown – when his eyes happened to fall on the white road where the declining sun threw his shadow, long and thin, before him. As he saw that shadow, his heart gave a sudden heavy
thud;
for a second shadow walked beside his own.

He spun round. No mortal creature was in sight. The road stretched empty behind him, and on either hand the moorland spread its breast to the wide sky. He ran to the presbytery like a hunted thing.

That evening Father Vétier ventured to speak to him.

“Monsieur,” he said, rather timidly, “I do not wish to intrude myself into your affairs. That understands itself. But I have promised my very good friend M. Foster that I will take care of you. You are not a Catholic, I know; but – will you wear this?”

As he spoke he took from his own neck a thin silver chain to which was attached a little medal, black with age, and held it out to his guest.

“Thank you, father,” said Maddox simply, slipping the chain about his neck.

“Ah! That is well,” said the little curé with satisfaction. “And now, monsieur, I venture to ask you – will you let me change your room? I have one, not as good as yours, I admit it, but which has in it a small opening into the church. You will perhaps repose yourself better there. You will permit?”

“With the greatest pleasure,” said Maddox fervently. “You are very kind to me, father.”

The little man patted his hand.

“It is that I like you very much, monsieur,” he said naively. “And – I am not altogether a fool. We of Brittany see much that we do not look at, and hear much to which we do not listen.”

“Father,” said Maddox awkwardly, “I want to ask you something. When I began to read out that paper – you remember? -” (The curé nodded uneasily) – “you said that it was an invocation – that it summoned
celui-là.
Did you mean – the devil?”

“No, my son. I-I cannot tell you; It has no name with us of Kerouac. We say, simply,
celui-là.
You will not, if you please, speak of it again. It is not good to speak of it.”

“No, I can imagine it isn’t,” said Maddox; and the conversation dropped. Maddox certainly slept better that night. In the morning he told himself that this might be for more than one reason. The bed might be more comfortable (but he knew it was not that); or he might have overtired himself the day before, or the little curé’s offerings might somehow have given him a kind of impression of safety and protection without really having the least power to guard him. His feeling of security increased when the priest announced:

“Tomorrow we have another guest, monsieur. M. Foster has done me the honour to accept my invitation for a visit.”

“ Foster? Really? Excellent,” cried Maddox. He felt that the doctor stood for science and civilisation and sanity and all the comfortable reassuring things of life that were so utterly lacking in the desolate wildness of Kerouac. Sure enough Foster came next day, and was just as stolid and ugly and completely reassuring as Maddox had hoped he would be and half feared he would not. He seemed to be ignoring his friend’s physical condition at first, but on the day after his arrival he got to business.

“Maddox, I don’t know how you expect to get fit again,” he said. “You came here for the air as much as anything. I said you were to take moderate exercise. Yet here you stick moping about this poky little house.” (Needless to say Father Vetier was not present when this conversation took place.) “What’s wrong with the place, eh? I’d have said it was excellent walking country.”

Maddox flushed a little. “It’s a bit boring, walking alone,” he said evasively, well aware that “boring” was not the right word.

“Perhaps… Yes. But you can get out a bit more now I’m here to come along. You might take me out this afternoon; the cure’s going off to some kind of conference.”

Maddox wondered uneasily how much Foster knew. Had he come by chance, off his own bat? Or had Father Vetier been worried about his first guest and sent for him? If that were so, what exactly had the priest said? He thought he’d soon get that out of Foster.

They walked along the beach, farther than Maddox had yet been. He had avoided the shore of late, and he had not felt up to going so far when he first came to Kerouac; yet, though he knew he had never been on that particular reach of shore, the place seemed familiar. It is, of course, a common thing to feel that one knows a place which one is now seeing for the first time; but the impression was so extremely vivid that Maddox couldn’t help remarking on it to his companion.

“Rot, my dear man,” said Foster bluntly. “You haven’t been in Brittany before, and you say you’ve never been as far as this. It’s not such uncommon country, you know; it’s like lots of other places.”

“I know,” said Maddox; but he was not satisfied. He was poor company for the rest of the walk, and was very silent on the way home. No amount of chaff from Foster could rouse him, and at last the doctor abandoned the effort. The men reached the presbytery in silence.

The next day was close, threatening rain, though the downpour held off from hour to hour. Neither of the two Englishmen felt inclined to walk under that lowering sky. Father Vétier had a second urgent summons from his sick parishioner at Cap Morel, and set off, wrapped in a curious garment of tarpaulin, soon after the second déjeuner. He remarked that he might take the occasion of being so near to Prénoeuf to pay some visits there, and that he probably would not be in until nightfall.

“If monsieur should feel disposed,” he said rather shyly to Maddox before he left, “M. Foster might be interested to see the alterations I propose for the church. He has taste, M. Foster. It might amuse him…”

He was so clearly keen to display his decorations, and yet a little afraid of appearing vain if he showed them himself, that Maddox smiled.

“I’m sure he’d like to see them,” he said gently.

Yet, though he could have given no possible reason for it, he felt strongly disinclined to go near that half-ruined wall with its stretch of painting only half displayed. He knew it was absurd. He had worked there till he was tired; he had been startled by the howling of a dog. That was all. No doubt, when he came to look at it again, he would find that the fresco was the merest clumsy daub, and that his own overwrought nerves, together with the uncanny light of the gloaming and the beastly dog, had exaggerated it into something sinister and horrible. He declared to himself that if he had the courage to go and look again, he would simply laugh at himself and his terrors. But at the back of his mind he knew that he would never have gone alone; and it was a mixture of bravado and a kind of hope that Foster’s horse-sense would lay his terror for him that finally induced him to propose a visit to the place.

Foster was interested, mildly, by what Maddox told him of the painting on the ruined wall. He went out first to the rough little churchyard; Maddox, half reluctantly, went to fetch down the little case he had picked up on the beach in order that Foster might with his own eyes compare the two inscriptions; and when he did go out to join his friend he could hardly bring himself to go over to the wall he had worked on. It took quite an effort to force his feet over to it.

The decoration was not quite as he had remembered it. The figures were so indistinct and faint that they were hardly visible. In fact, Maddox could well believe that a stranger would not recognise the daub as representing figures at all. His relief at this discovery was quite absurd. He felt as if an immense and crushing weight had been lifted from his spirit; and, his first anxiety over, he bent to examine the rest of the painting more attentively. That was nearly exactly as he remembered it – the pile of stones with the half-illegible words; the tumbled huddle of seaweed or rags lying before it; the long reach of shore – ah! that was it!

“Foster! Come and look here,” he said.

“Where?” asked the doctor, strolling over.

“Look – this fresco or whatever it is. I said that bit of shore we saw yesterday was familiar. This is where I saw it.”

“Mmmm. Might be… All very much alike, though, this part of the beach. I don’t see anything to get worked up about.”

“Oh! If you’re going to take that line!” cried Maddox, exasperated. “You doctors are all alike – ’Keep calm’ – ’Don’t get excited’ – ’Nothing to worry about’!… ”

He broke off, gulping with sheer rage.

“My dear Maddox!” said Foster, startled by his silent friend’s outburst. “I’m awfully sorry. I wasn’t trying to snub you in the least. I simply thought-” He too broke off. Then he decided to risk another annoyance. “What have you got on your mind?” he asked, rather urgently. “Tell me, Maddox, there’s a good chap. What is it?”

He paused hopefully; but Maddox had dried up. He could not explain. He knew that his solid, comfortable friend would never,
could
never understand that his terror was not imaginary; he could not bear to watch him soothing down his friend, to see the thought “hysteria” in his mind… Yet it would be a relief to tell…

“Look at this,” he said at last. He took from his pocket the case he had found on the beach. “What do you make of that paper?” he asked.

Foster moved out of the shadow of the wall so that the pale, watery sunlight, struggling through the clouds, fell on the parchment. Maddox, a little relieved by the serious way he took it, turned back to examine the painting again. It was certainly very odd that the figures, which he remembered so clearly and which had seemed so very distinct, should now appear so dim that he doubted their reality. They seemed even fainter now than they had when he had looked at them a few minutes ago. And that heap flung beneath the hillock – what did that represent? He began to wonder whether that, too, were a figure – a drowned man, perhaps. He bent closer, and, as he stooped, he was aware that someone beside him was looking over his shoulder, almost leaning on him.

“Odd, Foster, isn’t it?” he said. “What do you make of that huddled thing under the stones?”

There was no answer, and Maddox turned. Then he sprang to his feet with a shuddering cry that died in his throat. The thing so close to him was not his friend. It was the hooded creature of the beach…