Part 37 (1/2)

Always at night the clock-drum was to be wound.

She had no a.s.sistant. The town maintained none, and her salary as Mistress of the Bells of Sainte Lesse did not permit her to engage anybody to help her.

So she oiled and wound all the machinery herself, adjusted and cared for the clock, swept the keyboard clean, inspected and looked after the wires leading to the tiers of bells overhead.

Then there was work to do in the garden--a few minutes s.n.a.t.c.hed between other duties. And when night arrived at last she was rather tired--quite weary on this night in particular, having managed to fulfill all the duties of the sick youth as well as her own.

The night was warm and fragrant. She sat in the dark at her open window for a while, looking out into the north where, along the horizon, heat lightning seemed to play. But it was only the reflected flashes of the guns. When the wind was right, she could hear them.

She had even managed to write to her lover. Now, seated beside the open window, she was thinking of him. A dreamy, happy lethargy possessed her; she was on the first delicate verge of slumber, so close to it that all earthly sounds were dying out in her ears. Then, suddenly, she was awake, listening.

A window had been opened in the room overhead.

She went to the stars and called:

”Karl!”

”What?” came the impatient reply.

”Are you ill?”

”No. N-no, I thank you--” His voice became urbane with an apparent effort.

”Thank you for inquiring----”

”I heard your window open--” she said.

”Thank you. I am quite well. The air is mild and grateful.... I thank mademoiselle for her solicitude.”

She returned to her room and lighted her candle. On the white plaster wall sat the Death's Head moth.

She had not been in her room all day. She was astonished that the moth had not left.

”Shall I have to put you out?” she thought dubiously. ”Really, I can not keep my window closed for fear of visitors for you, Madam Death! I certainly shall be obliged to put you out.”

So she found a sheet of paper and a large gla.s.s tumbler. Over the moth she placed the tumbler, then slipped the sheet of paper under the gla.s.s between moth and wall.

The thing cried and cried, beating at the gla.s.s with wings as powerful as a bird's, and the girl, startled and slightly repelled, placed the moth on her night table, imprisoned under the tumbler.

For a while it fluttered and flapped and cried out in its strange, uncanny way, then settled on the sheet of paper, quivering its wings, both eyes like living coals.

Seated on the bedside, Maryette looked at it, schooling herself to think of it kindly as one of G.o.d's creatures before she released it at her open window.

And, as she sat there, something came whizzing into the room through her window, circled around her at terrific speed with a humming, whispering whirr, then dropped with a solid thud on the night table beside the imprisoned female moth.

It was the first suitor arrived from outer darkness--a big, powerful Death's Head moth with eyes aglow, the yellow skull displayed in startling contrast on his velvet-black body.

The girl watched him, fascinated. He scrambled over to the tumbler, tested it with heavy antennae; then, ardent and impatient, beat against the gla.s.s with muscular wings that clattered in the silence.

But it was not the amorous fury of the creature striking the tumbler with resounding wings, not the glowing eyes, the strong, clawed feet, the Death's Head staring from its funereal black thorax that held the girl's attention. It was something else; something entirely different riveted her eyes on the creature.