Brooding deeply as he went about his daily toils and devotions, Louis confided this intention to no one. Wild whispers were circulating among the monks; and it was said that several others besides the eight culprits had been drawn to touch the sorcerous marble in secret, and would succumb anon to the overpowering nympholepsy which they had incurred. It was said also that the image was no mere lifeless lump of stone, but had sought to entice with wanton smiles and harlot gestures those who had labored in the garden after Paul, Pierre and Hughues. Hearing these whispers, Louis was confirmed in his resolution.
Visiting on some pretext or other the workshop of the abbey at twilight, he concealed an iron hammer beneath his robe and carried it away with him to his cell. Then, toiling patiently at the Latin manuscript by candle-light, while a holy wrath and ardor mounted within him, he waited till most of the Brothers had retired to their dormitory.
A rosy-tinted moon that was slightly past the full had climbed above the neighboring forest when Louis stole forth into the garden by a postern door. The blackish clods of freshly-spaded loam were topped with an eerie silver; and Louis had not gone far on the open ground when he discerned the Venus, whose nude limbs and bosom startled him as if they had been those of a living woman.
Indeed, as he went nearer, he could not persuade himself that the figure was a mere statue. The full, wan breasts appeared to quiver in the moonlight as with the rise and fall of a breathing bosom; the drooping eyelids seemed to lift in a captious coquetry; the doubtfully smiling lips assumed a more seductive curve; the delicate fingers stirred a little, as if to beckon him. Aware, however, that this illusion might well be part of the baneful enchantment whose cause he had come forth to destroy, Louis strove to resist the insidious impressions that troubled him more and more.
Sinking into the soft and thoroughly spaded soil at each step, he went boldly forward till he stood face to face with the Venus on the verge of the dark hole from which she had been exhumed. Without delay, with a feeling of imperative haste, he tried to lift the ponderous hammer; but it seemed that his arm, though sustained by a righteous anger, a holy indignation, would no longer obey him.
He knew not how the change had been wrought, nor how the spell had fallen; but he felt the impotence of a dreamer, helpless in the thrall of some strange dream. A subtly clinging web was upon his senses. Wildly, with dying horror and rebellion, he stared at the immemorial temptress who seemed to proffer her divine beauty; and staring, he forgot his wrath, his purpose, his fear and horror—and his cenobitic vows.
The hammer fell unheeded from his fingers. Bathed in a perilous light, and swathed with alluring shadows, the Venus appeared to live and palpitate—to lift comely hands that implored his mercy—to open fair eyes and delicious lips that claimed his love.
An unleashed delirium, sudden and irresistible, sang triumphantly in his brain, exulted madly in his blood. Stepping across the forgotten hammer, he embraced the Venus.... Her arms and bosom were cool as marble to his feverous touch, but they seemed to offer the firm softness and resilience of living flesh....
IV
The absence of Brother Louis, together with that of three others, was noted by the monks at early dawn with much alarm and consternation. Sorrowfully, it was surmised that they had fallen under the spell of the statue, and would be apprehended in the same manner and for the same sinful deeds as their predecessors.
Later, two of the missing monks returned to the abbey of their own will; and a third was caught with the charcoal-burner’s wife whom he had seduced into mad elopement. All made the same confession: laboring in the garden on the previous day, they had been prompted by a fatal curiosity to finger the forbidden image; and had been seized, as a result, by the pagan madness.
Brother Louis, however, was not found; and his fate remained a mystery for several hours. Then it happened that one of the older monks, on some errand or other, had occasion to cross the garden. Peering fearfully in the direction of the Venus, he was surprised and mystified to see that she had disappeared.
With much trepidation, deeming the vanishment an act of sorcery or Satanry, he went forward to the place where the status had stood. There, with unspeakable horror, he found the solution of the riddle.
Somehow, the Venus had been overturned and had fallen back into the huge pit. The body of Brother Louis, with a shattered skull and lips bruised to a bloody pulp, was lying crushed beneath her marble breasts. His arms were clasped about her in a stiff embrace, to which death had now added its own rigidity; and later, when the horrified Brothers had been summoned to consider the problem, it was deemed inadvisable to make any effort toward his removal. The iron hammer, lying beside the pit, was proof of the righteous intention with which he had gone forth—but certain other matters, putting him beyond all redemption, were equally evident.
So, by the order of Augustin, the pit was filled hastily to its rim with earth and stones; and the very spot where it had been, being left without mound or other mark, was quickly overgrown by grass and weeds along with the rest of the abandoned garden.
THE WHITE SYBIL
Tortha, the poet, with strange austral songs in his heart, and the dark umber of high and heavy suns on his face, had come back to his native city of Cerngoth, in Mhu Thulan, by the Hyperborean sea. Far had he wandered since early youth in the quest of that alien beauty which had fled always before him like the horizon. Beyond Commoriom of the white, numberless spires, and beyond the marsh-grown jungles to the south of Commoriom, he had floated on nameless rivers, and had crossed the half-legendary realm of Tscho Vulpanomi, upon whose diamond-sanded, ruby-gravelled shore an ignescent ocean was said to beat forever with fiery spume.
Many marvels had he beheld, and things incredible to relate: the uncouthly carven gods of the South, to whom blood was spilt on sun-approaching towers; the plumes of the huusim, which were many ells in length and had the color of pure flame; the mailed monsters of the austral swamps; the proud argosies of Mu and Antillia, which moved by enchantment, without oar or sail; the fuming peaks that were shaken perpetually by the struggles of imprisoned demons. But, walking at noon on the familiar streets of Cerngoth, he met a stranger marvel than these. Idly, with no thought or expectation of other than homely things, he beheld the White Sybil of Polarion.
He knew not whence she had come, but suddenly she was before him in the noontide throng. Amid the tawny girls of Cerngoth with their russet hair and blue-black eyes, she was like an apparition descended from the boreal moon. Goddess or ghost or woman, he knew not which, she passed fleetly to some unknowable bourn: a creature of snow and ice and norland light, with unbound hair of wannest silver-gold, with eyes that were like moon-pervaded pools, and lips that were smitten with the same pallor as the brow and bosom. Her gown was of some filmy white fabric, pure and ethereal as her person.
In wonder that turned to startled rapture, Tortha gazed at the miraculous being, and sustained for a moment the strangely thrilling light of her chill eyes, in which he seemed to find an obscure recognition, such as a long-veiled divinity, appearing at last, would vouchsafe to her worshipper.
Somehow, she seemed to bring with her the infrangible solitude of remote places, the death-deep hush of lonely plateaus and mountains. A silence, such as might dwell in some abandoned city, fell on the chaffering, chattering crowd as she went by; and the people drew back from her in sudden awe. Before the silence could break into gossiping murmurs, Tortha had guessed her identity.
He knew that he had seen the White Sybil, that mysterious being who was rumored to come and go as if by some preterhuman agency in the cities of Hyperborea. No man had ever learned her name, her nativity, or her dwelling-place; but she was said to descend like a spirit from the bleak mountains to the north of Cerngoth; from the desert land of Polarion, where the oncoming glaciers crept in valleys that had once been fertile with fern and cycad, and passes that had been the highways of busy traffic.