The Werewolf Blood Trail: Tales of Gore, Terror & Hunt. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг
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ah!” he thought to himself, “this no doubt is what the good doctor spoke about as delirium;” and, for the while at least, this was his last lucid idea.
His whole life—and his life had really only existed since his first acquaintance with the black wolf—passed before him. He saw himself following, and failing to hit the buck; saw himself tied to the oak-tree, and the blows of the strap falling on him; saw himself and the black wolf drawing up their compact; saw himself trying to pass the devil’s ring over Agnelette’s finger; saw himself trying to pull out the red hairs, which now covered a third of his head. Then he saw himself on his way to pay court to the pretty Madame Polet of the mill, meeting Landry, and getting rid of his rival; pursued by the farm servants, and followed by his wolves. He saw himself making the acquaintance of Madame Magloire, hunting for her, eating his share of the game, hiding behind the curtains, discovered by Maître Magloire, flouted by the Baron of Vez, turned out by all three. Again he saw the hollow tree, with his wolves couching around it and the owls perched on its branches, and heard the sounds of the approaching violins and hautboy and saw himself looking, as Agnelette and the happy wedding party went by. He saw himself the victim of angry jealousy, endeavouring to fight against it by the help of drink, and across his troubled brain came the recollection of François, of Champagne, and the Inn-keeper; he heard the galloping of Baron Raoul’s horse, and he felt himself knocked down and rolling in the muddy road. Then he ceased to see himself as Thibault; in his stead arose the figure of the handsome young rider whose form he had taken for a while. Once more he was kissing Lisette, once more his lips were touching the Countess’s hand; then he was wanting to escape, but he found himself at a cross-road where three ways only met, and each of these was guarded by one of his victims: the first, by the spectre of a drowned man, that was Marcotte; the second, by a young man dying of fever on a hospital bed, that was Landry; the third, by a wounded man, dragging himself along on one knee, and trying in vain to stand up on his mutilated leg, that was the Comte de Mont-Gobert.
He fancied that as all these things passed before him, he told the history of them one by one, and that the priest, as he listened to this strange confession, looked more like a dying man, was paler and more trembling than the man whose confession he was listening to; that he wanted to give him absolution, but that he, Thibault, pushed him away, shaking his head, and that he cried out with a terrible laugh: “I want no absolution! I am damned! damned! damned!”
And in the midst of all this hallucination, this delirious madness, the spirit of Thibault could hear the priest’s clock striking the hours, and as they struck he counted them. Only this clock seemed to have grown to gigantic proportions and the face of it was the blue vault of heaven, and the numbers on it were flames; and the clock was called eternity, and the monstrous pendulum, as it swung backwards and forwards called out in turn at every beat: “Never! For ever!” And so he lay and heard the long hours of the day pass one by one; and then at last the clock struck nine. At half past nine, he, Thibault, would have been Raoul, and Raoul would have been Thibault, for just four and twenty hours. As the last stroke of the hour died away, Thibault felt the fever passing from him, it was succeeded by a sensation of coldness, which almost amounted to shivering. He opened his eyes, all trembling with cold, and saw the priest at the foot of the bed saying the prayers for the dying, and the hands of the actual clock pointing to a quarter past nine.
His senses had become so acute, that, imperceptible as was their double movement, he could yet see both the larger and smaller one slowly creeping along; they were gradually nearing the critical hour; half past nine! Although the face of the clock was in darkness, it seemed illuminated by some inward light. As the minute hand approached the number 6, a spasm becoming every instant more and more violent shook the dying man; his feet were like ice, and the numbness slowly, but steadily, mounted from the feet to the knees, from the knees to the thighs, from the thighs to the lower part of the body. The sweat was running down his forehead, but he had no strength to wipe it away, nor even to ask to have it done. It was a sweat of agony which he knew every moment might be the sweat of death. All kinds of strange shapes, which had nothing of the human about them, floated before his eyes; the light faded away; wings as of bats seemed to lift his body and carry it into some twilight region, which was neither life nor death, but seemed a part of both. Then the twilight itself grew darker and darker; his eyes closed, and like a blind man stumbling in the dark, his heavy wings seemed to flap against strange and unknown things. After that he sank away into unfathomable depths, into bottomless abysses, but still he heard the sound of a bell.
The bell rang once, and scarcely had it ceased to vibrate when the dying man uttered a cry. The priest rose and went to the side of the bed; with that cry the Baron Raoul had breathed his last: it was exactly one second after the half hour after nine.
CHAPTER XIX
THE DEAD AND THE LIVING
At the same moment that the trembling soul of the young Baron passed away, Thibault, awaking as if from an agitated sleep full of terrible dreams, sat up in his bed. He was surrounded by fire, every corner of his hut was in flames; at first he thought it was a continuation of his nightmare, but then he heard cries of, “Death to the wizard! death to the sorcerer! death to the were-wolf!” and he understood that some terrible attack was being made upon him.
The flames came nearer, they reached the bed, he felt their heat upon him; a few seconds more and he would be burned alive in the midst of the flaming pile. Thibault leaped from his bed, seized his boar-spear, and dashed out of the back door of his hut. No sooner did his enemies see him rush through the fire and emerge from the smoke than their cries of “death to him!” “death!” were redoubled. One or two shots were fired at him; Thibault heard the bullets whizz past; those who shot at him wore the livery of the Grand Master, and Thibault recalled the menace of the lord of Vez, uttered against him a few days before.
He was then beyond the pale of the law; he could be smoked out of his hole like a fox; he could be shot down like a buck. Luckily for Thibault, not one of the bullets struck him, and as the circle of fire made by the burning hut was not a large one, he was soon safely beyond it, and once again in shelter of the vast and gloomy forest, where, had it not been for the cries of the menials who were burning down his house, the silence would have been as complete as the darkness. He sat down at the foot of a tree and buried his head in his hands. The events of the last forty-eight hours had succeeded each other with such rapidity, that there was no lack of matter to serve as subjects of reflection to the shoe-maker.
The twenty-four hours, during which he had lived another existence than his own, seemed to him like a dream, so much so, that he would not have dared to take his oath that all this recent affair between the Baron, and the Countess Jane, and the Comte de Mont-Gobert had really taken place. The church clock of Oigny struck ten, and he lifted his head. Ten o’clock! and only half-an-hour before he had been still in the body of the Baron Raoul, as he lay dying in the house of the Curé of Puiseux.
“Ah!” he exclaimed “I must find out for certain what has happened! It is not quite three miles to Puiseux and I shall be there in half-an-hour; I should like to ascertain if the Baron is really dead.” A melancholy howl made answer to his words; he looked round; his faithful body-guards were back again; he had his pack about him once more.
“Come, wolves! come, my only friends!” he cried, “let us be off!” And he started with them across the forest in the direction of Puiseux. The huntsmen of the Lord of Vez, who were poking up the remaining embers of the ruined hut, saw a man pass, as in a vision, running at the head of a dozen or more wolves. They crossed themselves, and became more convinced than ever that Thibault was a wizard. And anybody else who had seen Thibault, flying along as swiftly as his swiftest wolf, and covering the ground between Oigny and Puiseux in less than a quarter of an hour, would certainly have thought so too.
He stopped at the entrance to the village, and turning to his wolves, he said:
“Friend wolves, I have no further need of you to-night, and indeed, I wish to be alone. Amuse yourselves with the stables in the neighbourhood, I give you leave to do just what you