He touched his
forehead awkwardly as I went by, and I heard him answering the gardener
in a queer, harsh voice that caught my attention; it gave me the
impression of some one speaking deep below under the earth, and there
was a strange sibilance, like the hissing of the phonograph as the
pointer travels over the cylinder. I heard that he seemed anxious to do
what he could, and was quite docile and obedient, and Morgan the
gardener, who knew his mother, assured me he was perfectly harmless. "He's always been a bit queer," he said, "and no wonder, after what his
mother went through before he was born. I did know his father, Thomas
Cradock, well, and a very fine workman he was too, indeed. He got
something wrong with his lungs owing to working in the wet woods, and
never got over it, and went off quite sudden like. And they do say as
how Mrs. Cradock was quite off her head; anyhow, she was found by Mr.
Hillyer, Ty Coch, all crouched up on the Gray Hills, over there, crying
and weeping like a lost soul. And Jervase he was born about eight months
afterwards, and as I was saying, he was a bit queer always; and they do
say when he could scarcely walk he would frighten the other children
into fits with the noises he would make." A word in the story had stirred up some remembrance within me, and
vaguely curious, I asked the old man where the Gray Hills were. "Up there," he said, with the same gesture he had used before; "you go
past the Fox and Hounds, and through the forest, by the old ruins. It's
a good five mile from here, and a strange sort of a place. The poorest
soil between this and Monmouth, they do say, though it's good feed for
sheep. Yes, it was a sad thing for poor Mrs. Cradock." The old man turned to his work, and I strolled on down the path between
the espaliers, gnarled and gouty with age, thinking of the story I had
heard, and groping for the point in it that had some key to my memory. In an instant it came before me; I had seen the phrase "Gray Hills" on
the slip of yellowed paper that Professor Gregg had taken from the
drawer in his cabinet. Again I was seized with pangs of mingled
curiosity and fear; I remembered the strange characters copied from the
limestone rock, and then again their identity with the inscription on
the age-old seal, and the fantastic fables of the Latin geographer. I
saw beyond doubt that, unless coincidence had set all the scene and
disposed all these bizarre events with curious art, I was to be a
spectator of things far removed from the usual and customary traffic and
jostle of life. Professor Gregg I noted day by day. He was hot on his
trail, growing lean with eagerness; and in the evenings, when the sun
was swimming on the verge of the mountain, he would pace the terrace to
and fro with his eyes on the ground, while the mist grew white in the
valley, and the stillness of the evening brought far voices near, and
the blue smoke rose a straight column from the diamond-shaped chimney of
the gray farmhouse, just as I had seen it on the first morning. I have
told you I was of sceptical habit; but though I understood little or
nothing, I began to dread, vainly proposing to myself the iterated
dogmas of science that all life is material, and that in the system of
things there is no undiscovered land even beyond the remotest stars,
where the supernatural can find a footing. Yet there struck in on this
the thought that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, that
science itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more than
a glimpse of the wonders of the inner place. There is one day that stands up from amidst the others as a grim red
beacon, betokening evil to come. I was sitting on a bench in the garden,
watching the boy Cradock weeding, when I was suddenly alarmed by a harsh
and choking sound, like the cry of a wild beast in anguish, and I was
unspeakably shocked to see the unfortunate lad standing in full view
before me, his whole body quivering and shaking at short intervals as
though shocks of electricity were passing through him, and his teeth
grinding, and foam gathering on his lips, and his face all swollen and
blackened to a hideous mask of humanity. I shrieked with terror, and
Professor Gregg came running; and as I pointed to Cradock, the boy with
one convulsive shudder fell face forward, and lay on the wet earth, his
body writhing like a wounded blind-worm, and an inconceivable babble of
sounds bursting and rattling and hissing from his lips; he seemed to
pour forth an infamous jargon, with words, or what seemed words, that
might have belonged to a tongue dead since untold ages, and buried deep
beneath Nilotic mud, or in the inmost recesses of the Mexican forest. For a moment the thought passed through my mind, as my ears were still
revolted with that infernal clamor, "Surely this is the very speech of
hell," and then I cried out again and again, and ran away shuddering to
my inmost soul. I had seen Professor Gregg's face as he stooped over the
wretched boy and raised him, and I was appalled by the glow of
exultation that shone on every lineament and feature. As I sat in my
room with drawn blinds, and my eyes hidden in my hands, I heard heavy
steps beneath, and I was told afterwards that Professor Gregg had
carried Cradock to his study, and had locked the door. I heard voices
murmur indistinctly, and I trembled to think of what might be passing
within a few feet of where I sat; I longed to escape to the woods and
sunshine, and yet I dreaded the sights that might confront me on the
way. And at last, as I held the handle of the door nervously, I heard
Professor Gregg's voice calling to me with a cheerful ring: "It's all
right now, Miss Lally," he said. "The poor fellow has got over it, and I
have been arranging for him to sleep here after to-morrow. Perhaps I may
be able to do something for him." "Yes," he said later, "it was a very painful sight, and I don't wonder
you were alarmed. We may hope that good food will build him up a little,
but I am afraid he will never be really cured;" and he affected the
dismal and conventional air with which one speaks of hopeless illness,
and yet beneath it I detected the delight that leapt up rampant within
him, and fought and struggled to find utterance. It was as if one
glanced down on the even surface of the sea, clear and immobile, and saw
beneath raging depths, and a storm of contending billows. It was indeed
to me a torturing and offensive problem that this man, who had so
bounteously rescued me from the sharpness of death, and showed himself
in all the relations of life full of benevolence and pity and kindly
forethought, should so manifestly be for once on the side of the demons,
and take a ghastly pleasure in the torments of an afflicted
fellow-creature.