‘I don’t for a moment expect to you take my advice,’ said Dr Foster, looking shrewdly at his patient, ‘but I’ll give it all the same. It’s this. Pack a bag with a few things and go off tomorrow to some tiny seaside or mountain place, preferably out of England, so that you won’t meet a soul you know. Live there absolutely quietly for three or four weeks, taking a reasonable amount of exercise, and then write and tell me that you’re all night again.’
‘Easier said than done,’ growled Maddox. ‘There aren’t any quiet places left that I know of, and if there were there wouldn’t be any digs to be had at no notice.’
Foster considered.
‘I know the very thing,’ he cried suddenly. ‘There’s a little place on the Breton coast—fishing village, very small and scattered, with a long stretch of beach, heath and moor inland, quiet as can be. I happen to know the curé there quite fairly well, and he’s an extremely decent, homely little chap. Vétier his name is. He’d take you in. I’ll write to him tonight.’
After that, Maddox couldn’t in decency hold out. Old Foster had been very good, really, over the whole thing; besides, it was nearly as much bother to fight him as it was to go. In less than a week Maddox was on his way to Kerouac.
Foster saw him off with relief. He knew Maddox well, and knew that he was suffering from years of overwork and worry; he understood how very repugnant effort of any kind was to him—or thought he did; but in reality no one can quite understand the state of exasperation or depression that illness can produce in someone else. Yet as the absurd little train that Maddox took at Lamballe puffed serenely along between tiny rough orchards, the overwrought passenger began to feel soothed; and then, as the line turned north and west, and the cool wind came in from across the dim stretches of moorland, he grew content and almost serene.
Dusk had fallen when he got out at the shed that marked the station at Kerouac. The curé, a short, plump man, in soutane and broad-brimmed hat, met him with the kind, almost effusive, greeting that Breton peasants give to a guest, and conducted the stumbling steps of his visitor to a rough country lane falling steeply downhill between two high, dark banks that smelt of gorse and heather and damp earth. Maddox could just see the level line of sea lying before him, framed by the steep banks of the moor on either hand. Above, a few pale stars glimmered in the dim sky. It was very peaceful.
Maddox fell into the simple life of the Kerouac presbytery at once. The curé was, as Foster had said, a very homely, friendly little man, always serene and nearly always busy, for he had a large and scattered flock and took a very real interest in the affairs of each member of it. Also, Maddox gathered, money was none too plentiful, for the curé did all the work of the church himself, even down to the trimming of the grass and shrubs that surrounded the little wind-swept building.
The country also appealed very strongly to the visitor. It was at once desolate and friendly, rough and peaceful. He particularly liked the long reaches of the shore, where the tangle of heath and whin gave place to tufts of coarse, whitish grass and then to a belt of shingle and the long level stretches of smooth sand. He liked to walk there when evening had fallen, the moorland on his left rising black to the grey sky, the sea, smooth and calm, stretching out infinitely on his right, a shining ripple lifting here and there. Oddly enough, M. le Curé did not seem to approve of these evening rambles; but that, Maddox told himself, was common among peasants of all races; and he idly wondered whether this were due to a natural liking for the fireside after a day in the open, or whether there were in it some ancient fear of the spirits and demons that country people used to fear in the dim time entre le chien et le loup. Anyhow, he wasn’t going to give up his evening strolls for a superstition of someone else’s!
It was near the end of October, but very calm weather for the time of year; and one evening the air was so mild and the faint shine of the stars so lovely that Maddox extended his walk beyond its usual limits. He had always had the beach to himself at that time of the evening; and he felt a natural, if quite unjustifiable, annoyance when he first noticed that there was someone else on the shore.
The figure was perhaps fifty yards away. At first he thought it was a peasant woman, for it had some sort of hood drawn over the head, and the arms, which it was waving or wringing, were covered by long, hanging sleeves. Then, as he drew nearer, he saw that it was far too tall for a woman, and jumped to the conclusion that it must be a monk or wandering friar of quite exceptional height.
The light was very dim, for the new moon had set, and the stars showed a faint diffused light among thin drifts of cloud; but even so Maddox could not help noticing that the person before him was behaving very oddly. It—he could not determine the sex—moved at an incredible speed up and down a short stretch of beach, waving its draped arms; then suddenly, to his horror, it broke out into a hideous cry, like the howl of a dog. There was something in that cry that turned Maddox cold. Again it rose, and again—an eerie, wailing, hooting sound, dying away over the empty moor. And then the creature dropped on its knees and began scratching at the sand with its hands. A memory, forgotten until now, flashed into Maddox’s mind—a memory of that rather horrible story in Hans Andersen about Anne Lisbeth and the drowned child . . .
The thin cloud obscured the faint light for a moment. When Maddox looked again the figure was still crouching on the shore, scrabbling with its fingers in the loose sand; and this time it gave Maddox the impression of something else—a horrible impression of an enormous toad. He hesitated, and then swallowing down his reluctance with an effort, walked towards the crouching, shrouded figure.
As he approached it suddenly sprang upright, and with a curious, gliding movement, impossible to describe, sped away inland at an incredible speed, its gown flapping as it went. Again Maddox heard the longdrawn mournful howl.
Maddox stood gazing through the thickening dusk.
‘Of course it’s impossible to tell in this light,’ he muttered to himself, ‘but it certainly did look extraordinarily tall—and what an odd look it had of being flat. It looked like a scarecrow, with no thickness . . .’
He wondered at his own relief that the creature had gone. He told himself that it was because he loathed any abnormality, and there could be no doubt that the person he had seen, whether it were woman or monk, was crazed, if not quite insane.
He walked to the place where it had crouched. Yes, there was the patch of disturbed sand, rough among the surrounding smoothness. It occurred to him to look for the footprints made by the flying figure to see if they bore out his impression of abnormal height; but either the light was too bad for him to find them, or the creature had leapt straight on to the belt of shingle. At any rate, there were no footmarks visible.
Maddox knelt beside the patch of disturbed sand and half idly, half in interest, began himself to sift it through his fingers. He felt something hard and smooth—a stone perhaps? He took it up.
It was not a stone, anyhow, though the loose, damp sand clung to it so that he could not clearly distinguish what it was. He got to his feet, cleaning it with his handkerchief; and then he saw that it was a box or case, three or four inches long, covered with some kind of rude carving. It fell open of itself as he turned it about, and he saw that inside was a wrapping of something like, yet unlike, leather; inside again was something that crackled like paper.