The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton | Page 6

that they knew what was passing through my mind, and pitied
me for my frivolity. But even that feeling probably reached them
through a thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea that their distance from
me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. In the last analysis,
the impression they produced was that of having in common one
memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was
worth either a growl or a wag.
"I say," I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb circle, "do
you know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look as if
you'd seen a ghost--that's how you look! I wonder if there IS a ghost
here, and nobody but you left for it to appear to?" The dogs continued
to gaze at me without moving. . .
It was dark when I saw Lanrivain's motor lamps at the cross-
roads--and I wasn't exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having
escaped from the loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking
loneliness--to that degree--as much as I had imagined I should. My
friend had brought his solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and
seated beside a fat and affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk of
Kerfol. . .
But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in the
study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the
drawing-room.
"Well--are you going to buy Kerfol?" she asked, tilting up her gay chin
from her embroidery.

"I haven't decided yet. The fact is, I couldn't get into the house," I said,
as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to go back for
another look.
"You couldn't get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to sell
the place, and the old guardian has orders--"
"Very likely. But the old guardian wasn't there."
"What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter--?"
"There was nobody about. At least I saw no one."
"How extraordinary! Literally nobody?"
"Nobody but a lot of dogs--a whole pack of them--who seemed to have
the place to themselves."
Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and folded
her hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully.
"A pack of dogs--you SAW them?"
"Saw them? I saw nothing else!"
"How many?" She dropped her voice a little. "I've always wondered--"
I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be familiar to
her. "Have you never been to Kerfol?" I asked.
"Oh, yes: often. But never on that day."
"What day?"
"I'd quite forgotten--and so had Herve, I'm sure. If we'd remembered,
we never should have sent you today--but then, after all, one doesn't
half believe that sort of thing, does one?"
"What sort of thing?" I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to the

level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: "I KNEW there was
something. . ."
Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring
smile. "Didn't Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his
was mixed up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story;
and some of them are rather unpleasant."
"Yes--but those dogs?" I insisted.
"Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants say
there's one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and that day
the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The
women in Brittany drink dreadfully." She stooped to match a silk; then
she lifted her charming inquisitive Parisian face: "Did you REALLY
see a lot of dogs? There isn't one at Kerfol," she said.

II
Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the back
of an upper shelf of his library.
"Yes--here it is. What does it call itself? A History of the Assizes of the
Duchy of Brittany. Quimper, 1702. The book was written about a
hundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I believe the account is
transcribed pretty literally from the judicial records. Anyhow, it's queer
reading. And there's a Herve de Lanrivain mixed up in it--not exactly
MY style, as you'll see. But then he's only a collateral. Here, take the
book up to bed with you. I don't exactly remember the details; but after
you've read it I'll bet anything you'll leave your light burning all night!"
I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it was chiefly
because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. The account of
the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol, was long and
closely printed. It was, as my friend had said,