The First Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK ®. Algernon Blackwood
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extraordinarily beautiful—”
“It attracts you more than it does me, I think,” was the short reply.
“The picturesque superstitions still survive here,” observed the older man. “They touch the imagination in spite of one’s self.”
A pause followed during which the other tried to increase the pace. the subject evidently made him impatient for some reason.
“Perhaps,” he said presently. “Though I think myself it’s due to the curious loneliness of the place. I mean, we’re in the middle of tourist-Europe here, yet so utterly remote. It’s such a neglected little corner of the world. the contradiction bewilders. Then, being so near the frontier, too, with the clock changing an hour a mile from the village, makes one think of time as unreal and imaginary.”
He laughed. He produced several other reasons as well. His friend admitted their value, and agreed half-heartedly. He still turned occasionally to look back. the mountain ridge where they had climbed was clearly visible in the moonlight.
“Odd,” he said, “but I don’t see that farmhouse where we got the milk anywhere. It ought to be easily visible from here.”
“Hardly—in this light. It was a queer place rather, I thought,” he added. He did not deny the curiously suggestive atmosphere of the region, he merely wanted to find satisfactory explanations. “A case in point, I mean. I didn’t like it quite—that farmhouse—yet I’m hanged if I know why. It made me feel uncomfortable. That girl appeared so suddenly, although the place seemed deserted. And her silence was so odd. Why in the world couldn’t she answer a single question? I’m glad I didn’t take the milk. I spat it out. I’d like to know where she got it from, for there was no sign of a cow or a goat to be seen anywhere!”
“I swallowed mine—in spite of the taste,” said the other, half smiling at his companion’s sudden volubility.
Very abruptly, then, the big man turned and faced his friend. Was it merely an effect of the moonlight, or had his skin really turned pale beneath the sunburn?
“I say, old man,” he said, his face grave and serious, “What do you think she was? What made her seem like that, and why the devil do you think she followed us?”
“I think,” was the slow reply, “it was me she was following.”
The words, and particularly the tone of conviction in which they were spoken, clearly were displeasing to the big man, who already regretted having spoken so frankly what was in his mind. With a companion so imaginative, so impressionable, so nervous, it had been foolish and unwise. He led the way home at a pace that made the other arrive five minutes in his rear, panting, limping and perspiring as if he had been running.
“I’m rather for going on into Switzerland tomorrow, or the next day,” he ventured that night in the darkness of their two-bedded room. “I think we’ve had enough of this place. Eh? What do you think?”
But there was no answer from the bed across the room, for its occupant was sound asleep and snoring.
“Dead tired, I suppose!” he muttered to himself, and then turned over to follow his friend’s example.
But for a long time sleep refused him. Queer, unwelcome thoughts and feelings kept him awake—of a kind he rarely knew, and thoroughly disliked. It was rubbish, yet it made him uncomfortable so that his nerves tingled. He tossed about in the bed.
“I’m over-tired,” he persuaded himself, “that’s all.”
The strange feelings that kept him thus awake were not easy to analyse, perhaps, but their origin was beyond all question: they grouped themselves about the picture of that deserted, tumble-down châlet on the mountain ridge where they had stopped for refreshment a few hours before. It was a farmhouse, dilapidated and dirty, and the name stood in big black letters against a blue background on the wall above the door: “La Chenille.” Yet not a living soul was to be seen anywhere about it; the doors were fastened, windows shuttered; chimneys smokeless; dirt, neglect and decay everywhere in evidence.
Then, suddenly, as they had turned to go, after much vain shouting and knocking at the door, a face appeared for an instant at a window, the shutter of which was half open. His friend saw it first, and called aloud. the face nodded in reply, and presently a young girl came round the corner of the house, apparently by a back door, and stood staring at them both from a little distance.
And from that very instant, so far as he could remember, these queer feelings had entered his heart—fear, distrust, misgiving. the thought of it now, as he lay in bed in the darkness, made his hair rise. There was something about that girl that struck cold into the soul. Yet she was a mere slip of a thing, very pretty, seductive even, with a certain serpent-like fascination about her eyes and movements; and although she only replied to their questions as to refreshment with a smile, uttering no single word, she managed to convey the impression that she was a managing little person who might make herself very disagreeable if she chose. In spite of her undeniable charm there was about her an atmosphere of something sinister. He himself did most of the questioning, but it was his older friend who had the benefit of her smile. Her eyes hardly ever left his face, and once she had slipped quite close to him and touched his arm.
The strange part of it now seemed to him that he could not remember in the least how she was dressed, or what was the coloring of her eyes and hair. It was almost as though he had felt, rather than seen, her presence.
The milk—she produced a jug and two wooden bowls after a brief disappearance round the corner of the house—was—well, it tasted so odd that he had been unable to swallow it, and had spat it out. His friend, on the other hand, savage with thirst, had drunk his bowl to the last drop too quickly to taste it even, and, while he drank, had kept his eyes fixed on those of the girl, who stood close in front of him.
And from that moment his friend had somehow changed. On the way down he said things that were unusual, talking chiefly about the “Chenille,” and the girl, and the delicious, delicate flavor of the milk, yet all phrased in such a way that it sounded singular, unfamiliar, unpleasant even.
Now that he tried to recall the sentences the actual words evaded him; but the memory of the uneasiness and apprehension they caused him to feel remained. And night ever italicizes such memories!
Then, to cap it all, the girl had followed them. It was wholly foolish and absurd to feel the things he did feel; yet there the feelings were, and what was the good of arguing? That girl frightened him; the change in his friend was in some way or other a danger signal. More than this he could not tell. An explanation might come later, but for the present his chief desire was to get away from the place and to get his friend away, too.
And on this thought sleep overtook him—heavily.
* * * *
The windows were wide open; outside was a garden with a rather high enclosing wall, and at the far end a gate that was kept locked because it led into private fields and so, by a back way, to the cemetery and the little church. When it was open the guests of the inn made use of it and got lost in the network of fields and vines, for there was no proper route that way to the road or the mountains. They usually ended up prematurely in the cemetery, and got back to the village by passing through the church, which was always open, or by knocking at the kitchen doors of the other houses and explaining their position. Hence the gate was locked now to save trouble.
After several hours of hot, unrefreshing sleep the big man turned in his bed and woke. He tried to stretch, but couldn’t; then sat up panting with a sense of suffocation. And by the faint starlight of the summer night, he saw next that his friend was up and moving about the room.
Remembering that sometimes he walked in his sleep, he called to him gently:
“Morton, old chap,” he said in a low voice, with a touch of authority in it, “go back to bed! You’ve walked enough for one day!”
And the figure, obeying as sleep-walkers often will, passed across the room and disappeared among the shadows over his bed. the other