KERFOL (Stories)

KERFOL (Stories) by Edith Wharton

Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain of Kerfol in Brittany, marries young Anne de Barrigan after meeting her at the pardon of Locronan, and the marriage is content at first, though the childless Anne is kept virtually a prisoner at Kerfol, never allowed to accompany her husband on his journeys to Rennes, Morlaix, or Quimper, and never permitted to walk unaccompanied. To ease her loneliness he brings her, from a sailor who had gotten it from a pilgrim who had stolen it from a Chinese nobleman's wife, a small golden-brown Chinese dog, which she loves deeply. At the pardon of Ste. Barbe, where she has gone with her husband's aunt, she meets Herve de Lanrivain, a young nobleman, and they exchange only a few words, but he tells her to call for him when she needs him. Over three later brief meetings she says little more, and when he must leave on a mission abroad, she gives him the jeweled collar her husband had let her put on the dog's neck. Yves notices the collar missing; that night she finds the little dog strangled on her pillow with the very necklet she had given Lanrivain. She says nothing, buries the dog, and hides the necklet. Over the following months she secretly takes in and cares for a series of stray dogs — another small dog bought from gypsies, a lean greyhound, a lame sheep-dog puppy — and each time, after her husband's return from a journey, she finds the animal strangled on her pillow. She even stops daring to pet the old pointer that guards the gate, and after she is seen doing so once, it too disappears. Months pass with no word of Lanrivain, until a pedlar woman sells Anne a scented pomander containing a hidden note from him, saying he has returned and will be at the courtyard door that night after moonset. That evening Anne tries to be affectionate to her husband, but he retires early, seemingly asleep and breathing heavily. She creeps down the stairs in the dark to unbolt the door, hears her husband's voice above crying her name and cursing her, then a scream and a fall. She warns Lanrivain outside to flee and pushes the door shut, then stands at the foot of the stairs hearing dogs snarling and panting above, sounds of a struggle, moans, then a sound "like the noise of a pack when the wolf is thrown to them." When she goes up with a struck light, she finds her husband dead, covered in blood and gashes as if from claws and teeth, with one leg torn open at the artery — but no dogs anywhere, and Kerfol has had no dogs for months. Anne is tried before the Assizes of the Duchy of Brittany. Herve de Lanrivain is also arrested on suspicion, based on the testimony of disreputable witnesses, but denies everything. Under pressure Anne admits she had gone down to meet Lanrivain and asked him to take her away, out of fear of her husband, though she denies adultery. She recounts the history of the strangled dogs to explain her fear, to the court's impatience and her lawyer's dismay. Pressed by an inquisitive Judge about what killed her husband, she eventually testifies that she heard and recognized the sounds of her own dead dogs, and names them as the cause of his death, before collapsing and being removed from court. Witnesses confirm no dogs had been kept at Kerfol for months, though a surgeon notes wounds resembling bites, and the court argues over witchcraft. The Judges ultimately disagree among themselves and with an ecclesiastical committee; Anne is handed over to her husband's family and confined in the keep of Kerfol, where she dies many years later, described as a harmless madwoman. Lanrivain, cleared for lack of evidence, goes to Paris, joins the circle of Port Royal under M. Arnauld d'Andilly, enters their Order, and lives out an unremarkable life until his death some twenty years later. This account is framed as told to the narrator by his friend Lanrivain (a descendant of Herve), after the narrator visits the now-abandoned, ruined estate of Kerfol and encounters there a silent pack of dogs — a golden-brown Chinese dog, a brindled dog, a white mongrel, an old white pointer with one brown ear, and a shivering black greyhound — who watch him without barking and vanish when he seeks their keeper. Madame de Lanrivain later reveals that no dogs actually live at Kerfol, and that the peasants say phantom dogs appear there on one particular day each year, when the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix to get drunk. The narrator then reads the old trial record overnight, from which the story of Anne de Cornault is reconstructed.

By Edith Wharton · First published 1916 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery · 10,841 words

First lines

I

"You ought to buy it," said my host; "it's just the place for a solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead broke, and it's going for a song -- you ought to buy it."

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KERFOL (Stories) is listed on Textopian as a short story by Edith Wharton, dated 1916 CE.

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Short Stories · American Literature · 20th Century Fiction · Social Commentary · Psychological Insight · Romance · Marriage · Infidelity · Upper Class · New York Society · Gilded Age · Women's Lives

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