Short Fiction

down there along the edge of the pasture appeared two shadows walking side by side under the arched roof of the trees all soaked in glittering mist.

The man was the taller, and had his arm about his sweetheart’s neck; from time to time he kissed her on the forehead. They suddenly animated the lifeless landscape, which enveloped them like a divine frame made expressly for them. They seemed, these two, a single being, the being for whom this calm and silent night was destined; and they approached the priest like a living answer, the answer vouchsafed by his Master to his question.

He stood stock-still, overwhelmed, and with a beating heart. He fancied he was witnessing some Bible story, such as the loves of Ruth and Boaz, the accomplishment of the will of the Lord in one of those great scenes talked of in holy writ. Through his head ran the verses of the Song of Songs, the ardent cries, the calls of the body, all the passionate poetry of that poem burning with tenderness and love. And he said to himself, “God perhaps has made such nights as this to clothe with ideals the loves of men.”

He withdrew before the embracing couple, who went on arm in arm. And yet it was his niece; and now he wondered if he would not disobey the Lord. For does not God permit love, since He surrounds it visibly with splendour such as this?

And he fled, in distraction, almost ashamed, as if he had penetrated into a temple where he had no right to enter.

Fear

We went on deck after dinner. There was not a ripple on the whole Mediterranean, whose smooth surface shone like silver under the great moon. The big steamer glided along, throwing up a curling column of thick black smoke toward the starlit sky and in our wake the white water churned up by the screw and the rapid movement of the huge ship, foamed and twisted, gleaming with such phosphorus as though it were nothing but bubbling moonlight.

Our party consisted of six or eight men, all of whom were gazing admiringly and in rapt silence at the distant shores of Africa, whither we were bound. The captain, who was smoking an after-dinner cigar with us, suddenly took up the conversation where it had been left off during dinner.

“Yes,” he said, “that day I was badly frightened. My ship stayed on the rocks six hours beaten by the sea. Luckily, we were picked up toward evening by an English collier that saw our plight.”

Then a tall man with sunburned face and dignified bearing, one of those men who have been in strange lands and have braved terrible dangers and whose eyes seem to have retained in their depths something of the fantastic sights they have seen, spoke for the first time:

“Captain, you say that you were frightened. I do not believe it. You use a wrong word and the sensation you felt was not that of fear. An energetic man never feels afraid before actual danger. He may be anxious, he may be restless, but fear is something entirely different.”

Laughingly, the captain replied:

“Well, by Jove, I can tell you I was frightened.”

Then the man with the sunburned face said in a slow voice:

“Allow me to explain my meaning. Fear (and the bravest men can experience it) is sometimes terrible, a dreadful sensation; it can be compared to the decomposition of the soul, and is a frightful spasm of the heart and mind, the mere recollection of which sends shudders through our frame. But, if a man is courageous, that never happens in the face of certain death, nor in the face of any known form of peril; it only occurs in certain abnormal instances, when a person is labouring under some strange influence, or when in the face of vague and unknowable dangers. Real fear is like a reminiscence of the fantastic terrors of past ages. A man who believes in ghosts and who imagines that he sees one, must experience the sensation of fear in all its atrocious horror.

“As for myself, I got an idea of what it must be like, in broad daylight, about ten years ago, and I experienced the full sensation of it last winter, during a night in December.

“I’ve taken many chances in my life and have had any number of adventures that were desperate enough. I’ve had may duels, I’ve been attacked and almost beaten to death by robbers. In America, once, I was sentenced to be hanged as a rebel, while another time I was thrown overboard by mutineers off the Chinese coast. Each time I thought that my last hour had come, and I made up my mind quickly to face the inevitable. I scarcely felt any emotion or regret.

“But fear is something very different.

“I have had a presentiment of it in Africa, although it is the offspring of the North; the sun makes it vanish like mist. You know, gentlemen, that the Orientals place little value on life; if one of them has to die, he makes up his mind at once; their nights are as free and void of legends as their souls are void of the morbid anxieties which haunt the brains of northern men. A panic may occur in the East, but fear is unknown there!

“Well, this is what happened to me in that weird country of Africa:

“I was crossing the downs that lie to the south of Ouargla. It is one of the strangest places in the world. Of course you all know the smooth, flat sand of ocean beaches? Well, just imagine the ocean changed into sand during a hurricane; imagine a silent storm with motionless waves of yellow dust, as high as mountains, as irregular, varying, and tumultuous as real breakers, but larger and streaked like watered silk. The blazing southern sun sheds its full glare on this raging but silent and motionless sea. You have to climb up one