THE BRAZEN CROSS
I LAUGHED at her vivacious display of fear, and went a space further into the wood. I called to her, but she stood irresponsive on the white road. I retraced my way to the verge of the open, and took hold of her hand.
'Come,' I said, 'this superstition is ridiculous. You have gone this path many a time; it is the shortest track to the village.'
'It is Christmas Eve,' she returned with a nervous shiver.
'What of that?' I answered lightly. 'A wood is all one at Christmas or midsummer.'
She shook her head, but I could see she was plainly yielding to my persuasion.
'It was an ancient place of burial,' she said, 'where are still the disfigured bones of those that lived before Christ.'
'Every foot of green earth covers some decay,' I said. 'Come; the white road takes a tedious circuit into the valley.'
'They say,' she went on, and a thin tremble ran in her voice—'they say that evil spirits take possession of this place on this night. They must vanish with the midnight bells for a twelve-month; on Christmas Eve alone are they abroad.
'I see,' I answered, laughing; 'it is their protest against a Saviour. But come; for the wind is rising, and a gale is growing on the moor.'
Her eyes shifted fearfully as she regarded me, and her skirts were fluttering in the fern. As she stood thus silent, there entered into my heart that fierce desire of her which had so long been beating about my soul. I snatched her hand, and, bending to her, held that wondering gaze with mine. A still peace stole into her face; the warm blood trembled in her fingers; I knew her for my captive, as she knew me for hers. We were thus for some short seconds, and then a sigh, as it were the distant voice of some encaged spirit, escaped her lips; and my own mind followed the course of her thoughts. I loosened my grasp of her hand, but ere it fell from me a thrill started through her body, and the fingers closed upon mine with a little convulsive catch. In an instant an ecstasy had taken me, and she was swaying in my arms, passive and unafraid. The supreme delight of that moment touches me even now to the very quick of my being. I strained her to me, my voice murmuring words of endearment. She withdrew herself from me, watching my eyes with a troubled gaze.
'You will marry in this New Year,' she said earnestly. 'It is laid upon you. What would she think? You have your honour. You have been mad, and you have infected me with madness. It is the evil spirits of this field;' and she shuddered.
'I will be no slave to a preposterous notion of honour,' I cried. 'Is a man bound from his childhood? What our fathers have declared to us—shall we take that upon the mere statement? I have lived as a fool'
'But you shall die as a man of honour,' she broke in upon my fervour.
'Rather,' said I, 'as a man of taste.' I took her into my arms again, and her reluctant body yielded to my strenuous passion.
'Remember,' she murmured. 'Ah, remember.'
'There is nothing irreparable,' I answered. 'All will wear a gay face in a week. She cares nothing for me; and I, even at this hour, have seen the folly of obedience. Your love has turned the stream of my life from a smooth and narrow channel. That is all. Better the contentment of two hearts than of a very giddy vanity.'
She made no sign, but it seemed to me that she surrendered herself to my pleading,
'We will take the track through the wood?' I said, caressing her.
'Yes,' she whispered faintly.
The grey clouds were flying in troops over the moon, and the wind clapped boisterously about our ears as we passed into the shelter of the pines. Over the moor, which stretched solitary to the black hills, it scudded and romped towards the back parts of the valley; and as I turned upon the very threshold of the wood it seemed as though the plain was in the possession of many roystering tenants—so much of stir and motion was visible among the bracken and the gorse. On the outset of the forest the straight columns of the firs were creaking, but the inner recesses lay hushed and dark, secluded in a shelving bottom. I think that the noises of the fierce wind, which blew with an icy breath, had restored to her a sense of security; for though we might not now be heard without shouting, she clung restfully to my arm, and the short snatches of light that blinked through the flying clouds revealed a soft and happy smile moving on her face. As for myself, I had now my world, and was become its veritable captain. The wood roared in our ears; we slipped from the embrace of the gale, and dropped down into the silent close which had been the ancient sepulchre of ancient peoples. And here a great change befell. In the quiet of that place I could hear the wind howling on the moor, and the sound of our footsteps struck harshly on the stillness. I had scant room but for the one burning thought; yet for a moment the strangeness of this unspeakable stillness flashed through my mind, and I perceived with an ignoble joy that her old fears were recurring to her. She will press closer to me, I thought; and was filled with an extravagant delight of her touch. Suddenly, and when we were about the heart of the thicket, little noises got up among the dead leaves, and a thin whistling in the skeleton branches. She clutched me in a quick terror, and I soothed her gently.
'It is nothing, my love,' I said; 'the wind has broken into the valley.'
'It is the graves,' she gasped. 'The spirits are come out.'
She turned her face aslant towards the growing noises, which appeared to creep along the ground; the dead leaves hissed and slithered. Her body bent across me, and her arms went round my neck; but she held her eyes towards that crawling noise.
'Sweetheart,' I said, 'be brave.'
But on that instant a rushing fury filled the air, and a great wind tore through the trees; vacancy shrieked and moaned at us; and the gabble of a thousand voices mocked us in the branches. In my sight was nothing save the stirless wood and the empty sky; in my ears were outrageous sounds innumerable. At the first outset of these strange presences she gave a low cry and tightened upon me; and then a flash swept over my eyes, and in that second her arms were ript from my neck, and with a long wail of fear she fled down the deep paths and vanished with the noises into the wood.
When I returned to the full possession of my wits I drew myself together and sped after her. The way she had taken led over a heavy slope, down which I was plunged into an infernal blackness where the underwood rose thick and sheer upon all sides. Informed with a pricking dread I called to her at the top of my voice, and clamours awoke in the gully; but I could see no sign of her, and the copse was now as empty and as silent as a churchyard under the moon. In this desperate mood I ran along the track, crying to the night without response, and presently burst out upon the meadows that lay at the back of the village. Here, too, all was silent, though the wrack was racing in the sky, and the frosty lights twinkled in the distant cottages. I had stood irresolute and fearful for some minutes, the subject of a rising horror, when there was a sudden crackle of branches, and I saw her fleeting upon me out of the dense brushwood. The apparition was so abrupt that I momentarily started aback, but, as quickly recovering, rushed to meet her with a thrill of gladness. She made a weird figure in her flight; her hair streaming at her back, her dress disordered on her bosom, her hands clenching in the air. She would have swung by me in her panic, had I not arrested her with my arm. She stayed, panting and wide-orbed, gazing at me with a distraught look, as it were of exultation.
'Sweetheart,' I said, 'you have been very foolish to allow this terror,' and made to take her in my arms.
She broke into laughter, murmurous and sweet, staring at me still from between her unblinking lids. The thought that came to me then was fraught with unspeakable horror, and I watched her in awe. The eyes shone spectrally on mine; the lips parted, as it seemed, in a mocking smile; and the dishevelled hair was curving and heaving in ragged waves on her head. Her face was the face of a mænad aflame. 'My heart,' I said, all agitation, 'be mine, be mine again. In the name of God,' I cried, 'close those eyes and come to me! Remember, we have been in love's land this night.'
'I remember,' she answered, and her voice rang shrilly in the air, 'that this night we have been with the dead.'
She threw herself back, and laughed, and I saw the tresses jigging on her head, screwing and whirling like the snakes in the head of a Medusa. Her laughter shook her, and, breaking from me she danced over the meadows into the night. And then I knew that the vulgar superstition of this place was true, and that the devils of the immemorial graveyard had crept into her hair and were gnawing at her brain.
That Christmas Day was a time of doubt and agony to me. I had no word of her whom I loved, and from her who was to be my wife came many weary messages. Impatiently between the thought of both I stood in the balance, unable to resolve my mind. My course had seemed plain before—plain and troublesome; to disengage myself from an arduous contract was clearer wisdom than to go shuffling through an unlovely marriage.
But now I could be sure of nothing, for she that had divorced me from my duty was in the possession of an Evil so gross as to withhold her humanity from her. And as the week wore on towards the New Year I was in no better case. Everywhere I heard of the visitation that had fallen upon her family, and all the countryside had pity on her. All day, I heard, she would keep the house, singing (they whispered) profane and hideous catches, the anxious care of her parents; but at nights, when the stars were full, she was abroad, riotous and mad, in the copses. The thought was too grievous for me, and I haunted the park at moonrise to get some more certain knowledge of her. On these excursions I saw her once, and the sight was pitiful and abhorrent. It was not that her awful tenants had robbed her of her beauty; that was unchanged—nay, rather raised to an unnatural glory by her madness. But to see her flying wildly through the trees, her large and mocking eyes sparkling under the stars, and the devils jigging in her hair, took me with such a sense of horror that I fled, ashamed and sick. She dangled an arm to me as she flashed past, tossing up her face and screaming at the sky. Thereafter I had no hope of her, but, schooling myself to the straight lines of duty, began with a poor heart to prepare against my wedding.
It was on the first day of the New Year that I was finally to resign from my dearest hope and open a fresh and uninspiring life with my cold bride. The thing had got thus far, and must reach the end. It was a bright, white morning (for the snow had fallen betimes) when I entered the little church, dumb to the fate arranged for me. As the service proceeded, the pitiable pretence, both of her and of myself, grew well-nigh intolerable, and I think never marriage has been imposed upon such indifferent auditors. But within a little of the end, and while we were yet upon the precincts of the altar, there came a sharp sound from the lower part of the church, and turning swiftly I perceived her coming up the aisle. She moved slowly, as though each step were made against an invisible resistance; her hair was twisting and coiling on her bare head; her wintry eyes were fastened upon me. I gave a short cry, but she took no notice, merely gazing from her wild and struggling eyes as she dragged herself towards the chancel. The church rose in a mutter of fear. I made a step to her. But at the chancel rails, and where the great Brazen Cross uplifts itself below the oriel windows, she fell suddenly to her knees. I watched her face. The devils jigged in her hair; it stirred gently, and then flowed soft and rich about her neck; a shudder rushed through her; she hid her face in her hands. And when she raised it again, and her eyes sought mine, they were filled with a quiet smile of love, dewy with tears, and desolate with a sad and hopeless pain.