_II_
THE PLAIN OF SILENCE
I am an old man. I live here in this ancient house, surrounded by huge,unkempt gardens.
The peasantry, who inhabit the wilderness beyond, say that I am mad.That is because I will have nothing to do with them. I live here alonewith my old sister, who is also my housekeeper. We keep no servants--Ihate them. I have one friend, a dog; yes, I would sooner have old Pepperthan the rest of Creation together. He, at least, understands me--andhas sense enough to leave me alone when I am in my dark moods.
I have decided to start a kind of diary; it may enable me to recordsome of the thoughts and feelings that I cannot express to anyone; but,beyond this, I am anxious to make some record of the strange things thatI have heard and seen, during many years of loneliness, in this weirdold building.
For a couple of centuries, this house has had a reputation, a bad one,and, until I bought it, for more than eighty years no one had livedhere; consequently, I got the old place at a ridiculously low figure.
I am not superstitious; but I have ceased to deny that things happenin this old house--things that I cannot explain; and, therefore, I mustneeds ease my mind, by writing down an account of them, to the best ofmy ability; though, should this, my diary, ever be read when I am gone,the readers will but shake their heads, and be the more convinced thatI was mad.
This house, how ancient it is! though its age strikes one less,perhaps, than the quaintness of its structure, which is curious andfantastic to the last degree. Little curved towers and pinnacles, withoutlines suggestive of leaping flames, predominate; while the body ofthe building is in the form of a circle.
I have heard that there is an old story, told amongst the countrypeople, to the effect that the devil built the place. However, that isas may be. True or not, I neither know nor care, save as it may havehelped to cheapen it, ere I came.
I must have been here some ten years before I saw sufficient to warrantany belief in the stories, current in the neighborhood, about thishouse. It is true that I had, on at least a dozen occasions, seen,vaguely, things that puzzled me, and, perhaps, had felt more than I hadseen. Then, as the years passed, bringing age upon me, I became oftenaware of something unseen, yet unmistakably present, in the empty roomsand corridors. Still, it was as I have said many years before I saw anyreal manifestations of the so-called supernatural.
It was not Halloween. If I were telling a story for amusement's sake, Ishould probably place it on that night of nights; but this is a truerecord of my own experiences, and I would not put pen to paper to amuseanyone. No. It was after midnight on the morning of the twenty-first dayof January. I was sitting reading, as is often my custom, in my study.Pepper lay, sleeping, near my chair.
Without warning, the flames of the two candles went low, and thenshone with a ghastly green effulgence. I looked up, quickly, and as Idid so I saw the lights sink into a dull, ruddy tint; so that the roomglowed with a strange, heavy, crimson twilight that gave the shadowsbehind the chairs and tables a double depth of blackness; and whereverthe light struck, it was as though luminous blood had been splashedover the room.
Down on the floor, I heard a faint, frightened whimper, and somethingpressed itself in between my two feet. It was Pepper, cowering under mydressing gown. Pepper, usually as brave as a lion!
It was this movement of the dog's, I think, that gave me the firsttwinge of _real_ fear. I had been considerably startled when the lightsburnt first green and then red; but had been momentarily under theimpression that the change was due to some influx of noxious gas intothe room. Now, however, I saw that it was not so; for the candles burnedwith a steady flame, and showed no signs of going out, as would havebeen the case had the change been due to fumes in the atmosphere.
I did not move. I felt distinctly frightened; but could think ofnothing better to do than wait. For perhaps a minute, I kept my glanceabout the room, nervously. Then I noticed that the lights had commencedto sink, very slowly; until presently they showed minute specks of redfire, like the gleamings of rubies in the darkness. Still, I satwatching; while a sort of dreamy indifference seemed to steal over me;banishing altogether the fear that had begun to grip me.
Away in the far end of the huge old-fashioned room, I became consciousof a faint glow. Steadily it grew, filling the room with gleams ofquivering green light; then they sank quickly, and changed--even as thecandle flames had done--into a deep, somber crimson that strengthened,and lit up the room with a flood of awful glory.
The light came from the end wall, and grew ever brighter until itsintolerable glare caused my eyes acute pain, and involuntarily I closedthem. It may have been a few seconds before I was able to open them. Thefirst thing I noticed was that the light had decreased, greatly; so thatit no longer tried my eyes. Then, as it grew still duller, I was aware,all at once, that, instead of looking at the redness, I was staringthrough it, and through the wall beyond.
Gradually, as I became more accustomed to the idea, I realized that Iwas looking out on to a vast plain, lit with the same gloomy twilightthat pervaded the room. The immensity of this plain scarcely can beconceived. In no part could I perceive its confines. It seemed tobroaden and spread out, so that the eye failed to perceive anylimitations. Slowly, the details of the nearer portions began to growclear; then, in a moment almost, the light died away, and the vision--ifvision it were--faded and was gone.
Suddenly, I became conscious that I was no longer in the chair.Instead, I seemed to be hovering above it, and looking down at a dimsomething, huddled and silent. In a little while, a cold blast struckme, and I was outside in the night, floating, like a bubble, up throughthe darkness. As I moved, an icy coldness seemed to enfold me, so thatI shivered.
After a time, I looked to right and left, and saw the intolerableblackness of the night, pierced by remote gleams of fire. Onward,outward, I drove. Once, I glanced behind, and saw the earth, a smallcrescent of blue light, receding away to my left. Further off, the sun,a splash of white flame, burned vividly against the dark.
An indefinite period passed. Then, for the last time, I saw theearth--an enduring globule of radiant blue, swimming in an eternity ofether. And there I, a fragile flake of soul dust, flickered silentlyacross the void, from the distant blue, into the expanse of the unknown.
A great while seemed to pass over me, and now I could nowhere seeanything. I had passed beyond the fixed stars and plunged into the hugeblackness that waits beyond. All this time I had experienced little,save a sense of lightness and cold discomfort. Now however the atrociousdarkness seemed to creep into my soul, and I became filled with fear anddespair. What was going to become of me? Where was I going? Even as thethoughts were formed, there grew against the impalpable blackness thatwrapped me a faint tinge of blood. It seemed extraordinarily remote, andmistlike; yet, at once, the feeling of oppression was lightened, and Ino longer despaired.
Slowly, the distant redness became plainer and larger; until, as I drewnearer, it spread out into a great, somber glare--dull and tremendous.Still, I fled onward, and, presently, I had come so close, that itseemed to stretch beneath me, like a great ocean of somber red. I couldsee little, save that it appeared to spread out interminably in alldirections.
In a further space, I found that I was descending upon it; and, soon, Isank into a great sea of sullen, red-hued clouds. Slowly, I emerged fromthese, and there, below me, I saw the stupendous plain that I had seenfrom my room in this house that stands upon the borders of the Silences.
Presently, I landed, and stood, surrounded by a great waste ofloneliness. The place was lit with a gloomy twilight that gave animpression of indescribable desolation.
Afar to my right, within the sky, there burnt a gigantic ring ofdull-red fire, from the outer edge of which were projected huge,writhing flames, darted and jagged. The interior of this ring wasblack, black as the gloom of the outer night. I comprehended, at once,that it was from this extraordinary sun that the place derived itsdoleful light.
From that str
ange source of light, I glanced down again to mysurroundings. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but the same flatweariness of interminable plain. Nowhere could I descry any signs oflife; not even the ruins of some ancient habitation.
Gradually, I found that I was being borne forward, floating across theflat waste. For what seemed an eternity, I moved onward. I was unawareof any great sense of impatience; though some curiosity and a vastwonder were with me continually. Always, I saw around me the breadth ofthat enormous plain; and, always, I searched for some new thing to breakits monotony; but there was no change--only loneliness, silence,and desert.
Presently, in a half-conscious manner, I noticed that there was a faintmistiness, ruddy in hue, lying over its surface. Still, when I lookedmore intently, I was unable to say that it was really mist; for itappeared to blend with the plain, giving it a peculiar unrealness, andconveying to the senses the idea of unsubstantiality.
Gradually, I began to weary with the sameness of the thing. Yet, it wasa great time before I perceived any signs of the place, toward which Iwas being conveyed.
"At first, I saw it, far ahead, like a long hillock on the surface ofthe Plain. Then, as I drew nearer, I perceived that I had been mistaken;for, instead of a low hill, I made out, now, a chain of great mountains,whose distant peaks towered up into the red gloom, until they werealmost lost to sight."