THE TERRACES OF NIGHT Read online

  ‘Jeanne, Jeanne—at last I come! At last!’

  I saw her turn her head swiftly. Saw her smile a moment with those bright brave eyes across the heads of the howling mob—then with a red gust of fury the flames rose high, a thin cry with them, to the Heaven whose gates were already opening to let her in . . . and as I fell swiftly into oblivion I dimly heard a young gay voice singing, and saw in the distance a great and wonderful light. . . .

  * * * * *

  I didn’t go back to the inn. Mom and Pop came on in the car and found me asleep beside the spring. The old Witch told them where I’d gone. . . . Mom said I was crying out terribly in my sleep, but I couldn’t tell her anything. I felt all in—I couldn’t say a word, I just let Mom talk; only one thing she said interested me rather—why, I didn’t tell her, of course.

  It seems that Arquières is only a few miles from Domrémy, where Joan of Arc was born . . . and the Shrine at the cross-roads is said to have been built by a boy-lover of hers whom she left in the village when she went to save France.

  He followed her and tried to save her. . . . But of course, he couldn’t. Then he came back and spent the rest of his life carving this statue of her as he knew her, just a sturdy little peasant girl, with her loose hair and her staff.

  That was why it was so clumsy, because he wasn’t an artist. He only loved her so much that he wanted to do something for her. I didn’t know that, when I called it clumsy . . . but she would understand, of course.

  The Witch told Mom another thing—Mom said she couldn’t make head nor tail of this, but I understood all right. The old lady said that ‘André’ died, and was buried in the little old churchyard in the valley—and that they say in the village, that if a girl can be found to drink from Jeanne’s Well on Midsummer Day, the little saint herself will appear and beg her to take her place for an hour at the shrine, so that she may go to place flowers upon her faithful lover’s grave. This her Saints granted to her and to André in reward of their faithful love and courage. Only a young girl, and a girl who loves truly, can work the spell, and the girl who does it must for that hour face the endurance of Jeanne’s memories—those terrible memories that I passed through, that I shall never forget if I live to be a hundred. The village girls know this and fear it, so the little grave goes flowerless most Midsummer Days . . . the old Witch told Mom that she herself endured it once, for the sake of love and of Jeanne, and that, I know now, was why she sent me. And I’m glad I went, because I know it will bring luck to Bud and me. . . . And for another reason: for the little saint’s sake, who loved a boy like Bud. You see, as we swept down through the valley en route for Nice once more, we passed a tiny deserted churchyard; and in the corner next the road, laid tenderly upon an ancient grave almost one with the mossy ground, I saw a mass of pink syringa and white elder-flowers.

  Sources

  The twelve stories in this collection appear to have been originally conceived as stand-alone pieces. Earlier magazine publication has been traced for the following:

  ‘The Crystal Snuff-box’

  (as ‘The Mystery of the Crystal Snuff-box’)

  Nash’s Pall Mall, June 1929

  ‘Mare Amore’

  (as ‘Storm’)

  Cassell’s Magazine of Fiction, December 1931

  ‘The Portrait of Comtesse X’

  Pall Mall Magazine, July 1927

  ‘Nannory House’

  (as ‘The Curse of Nannory House’)

  The New London Magazine, May 1931

  ‘The Room at the Rosenhaus’

  Britannia & Eve, August 1930

  ‘The Dogs of Pemba’

  The Tatler, 26 November 1926 (Christmas Number)

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