Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/33

 it; but do not be mistaken, Jules de Grandin is no one's imbecile."

wedding took place in the rectory of St. Chrysostom's. Robed in stole and surplice, Doctor Bentley glanced benignly from Dennis to Arabella, then to de Grandin and me as he began: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. . . ." His round and ruddy face grew slightly stern as he continued: "If any man can show just cause why they should not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."

He paused the customary short, dramatic moment, and I thought I saw a hard, grim look spread on Jules de Grandin's face. Very faint and far-off seeming, so faint that we could scarcely hear it, but gaining steadily in strength, there came a high, thin, screaming sound. Curiously, it seemed to me to resemble the long-drawn, wailing shriek of a freight train's whistle heard from miles away upon a still and sultry summer night, weird, wavering and ghastly. Now it seemed to grow in shrillness, though its volume was no greater. High, so high the human ear could scarcely register it, it beat upon our consciousness with a frightful, piercing sharpness. It was like a sick, shrill scream of hellish torment that set the tortured air to quivering till we could not say if we were really hearing it, or if it were but a subjective ringing in our heads.

I saw a look of haunted fright leap into Arabella's eyes, saw Dennis' pale face go paler as the strident whistle sounded shriller and more shrill; then, as it seemed I could endure the stabbing of that needle-sound no longer, it ceased abruptly, giving way to blessed, comforting silence. And through the silence came a peal of chuckling laughter, half breathless, half hysterical, wholly devilish: Huh—hu-u-uh—hu-u-u-u-uh! the final syllable drawn out until it seemed almost a groan.

"The wind, Monsieur le Curé, it is the wind," said Jules de Grandin sharply. "Proceed to marry them, if you will be so kind."

"The wind?" Doctor Bentley echoed incredulously. "Why, I could have sworn I heard somebody laugh, but——" "It is the wind, Monsieur; it plays strange tricks at times," the little Frenchman answered, his small, blue eyes as hard as frozen iron. "Proceed, if you will be so kind; we wait on you."

"Forasmuch as Dennis and Arabella have consented to be joined together in holy wedlock ... I pronounce them man and wife," concluded Doctor Bentley, and de Grandin, ever gallant, kissed the bride upon the lips, and, before we could restrain him, planted kisses upon both of Dennis' cheeks.

"Parbleu, I thought that we might have the trouble, for a time," he told me as we left the rectory. "What was that awful, shrieking noise we heard?" I asked.

"It was the wind, my friend," he answered in a hard, fiat, toneless voice. "The ten times damned, but wholly ineffectual wind."

, little sinner, weep and wail for the burden of mortality that has befallen thee; weep, wail, cry and breathe, my little wrinkled one. Ha, you will not? Pardieu, I say you shall!"

Gently, but smartly, Jules de Grandin W. T.—2