The Eye of Dread

by Payne Erskine

Then Madam Manovska began repeating in her strong, deep tones the lines:––

“Lorsque avec ses enfants vetus de peaux de bêtes, Echevele, livide au milieu des tempètes, Cain se fut enfui de devant Jehovah, “Comme le soir tombait, l’homme sombre arriva Au bas d’une montagne en une grande plaine; Sa femme fatiguée et ses fils hors d’haleine; Lui dire: ‘Couchons-nous sur la terre et dormons.’”

“Oh, mamma, that is so sad, that poem,––but continue––I will make it in English so well as I can, and for the mistakes––errors––of my telling you will forgive?

“This is the story of the terrible man, Cain, how he go with his children all in the skins of animals dressed. His hairs so wild, his face pale,––he runs in the midst of the storms to hide himself from God,––and, at last, in the night to the foot of a mountain on a great plain he arrive, and his wife and sons, with no breath and very tired, say to him, let us here on the earth lie down and sleep.” Thus, as Madam Manovska recited, Amalia told the story in her own words, and Harry King listened rapt and tense to the very end, while the fire burned low and the shadows closed around them.

“But Cain did not sleep, lying there by the mountain, for he saw always in the far shadows the fearful Eye of the condemning power fixed with great sorrow upon him. Then he cried, ‘I am too near!’ and with trembling he awoke his children and his wife, and began to run furiously into space. So for thirty days and thirty nights he walked, always pale 316 and silent, trembling, and never to see behind him, without rest or sleeping, until they came to the shore of a far country, named Assur.

“‘Now rest we here, for we are come to the end of the world and are safe,’ but, as he seated himself and looked, there in the same place on the far horizon he saw, in the sorrowful heavens, the Eye. Then Cain called on the darkness to hide him, and Jabal, his son, parent of those who live in tents, extended about him on that side the cloth of his tent, and Tsilla, the little daughter of his son, asked him, ‘You see now nothing?’ and Cain replied, ‘I see the Eye, encore!’

“Then Jubal, his son, father of those who live in towns and blow upon clarions and strike upon tambours, cried, ‘I will make one barrier, I will make one wall of bronze and put Cain behind it.’ But even still, Cain said, ‘The Eye regards me always!’

“Then Henoch said: ‘I will make a place of towers so terrible that no one dare approach to him. Build we a city of citadels. Build we a city and there fasten––shut––close.’

“Then Tubal Cain, father of men who make of iron, constructed one city––enormous––superhuman; and while that he labored, his brothers in the plain drove far away the sons of Enos and the children of Seth, and put out the eyes of all who passed that way, and the night came when the walls of covering of tents were not, and in their place were walls of granite, every block immense, fastened with great nails of iron, and the city seemed a city of iron, and the shadow of its towers made night upon the plain, and about the city were walls more high than mountains, and 317 when all was done, they graved upon the door, ‘Defense a Dieu d’entrer,’ and they put the old father Cain in a tower of stone in the midst of this city, and he sat there somber and haggard.

“‘Oh, my father, the Eye has now disappeared?’ asked the child, Tsilla, and Cain replied: ‘No, it is always there! I will go and live under the earth, as in his sepulcher, a man alone. There nothing can see me more, and I no more can see anything.’