"I suppose I owe you both an apology," I said stiffly.
"Oh, that's all right—for both of us! I can see how much store you set by her."
"But what are you going to do with her, man?" I burst forth. "Do you expect to keep her here; sitting at a table in this place and watching you do your turn, making your fellow performers her friends, seeing and learning——?" I checked my outpouring of disgust. "Or do you propose to shut her up in some third-class boarding house day and night while you hang around here? Good heavens, Vere, do you realize what either life would be for an nineteen-year-old girl brought up as she has been?"
He colored.
"As for bringing up," he retorted, "I guess shecouldn't be a lot more miserable than her folks worried her into being. But—you're right about the rest. That's why I was going to leave her with her folks yet a while, until I had a place for her. I mean, while I saved up enough to get the place."
"But I wrote to him when I failed in my exams, Cousin Roger," Phillida broke in. "I told him that I would not go home. I could not bear it. I was coming to him, and he would just have to keep me with him or I shoulddie. Indeed, I do not care about places. I think it will be lovely fun to sit here and watch him, or go behind the scenes with him and make friends with the other people. I—I am surprised that you are so narrow, Cousin Roger, when all your own best friends are theatrical people and artists and you think so highly of them."
I answered nothing to that. The distance between the stage and this class of cabaret show was not to be traversed in a few seven-league words. I looked at Vere, who returned my look squarely and soberly.
"You needn't worry about her being here, Mr. Locke," he said. "I know better than that! But she has to come to me; it's her right, don't you think?I'll promise you to take her to a better place as soon as I can manage."
"What kind of a place?"
"I'm saving to get a place in the country," he answered diffidently. "I'm a countryman, and Phillida thinks she'd like it."
"You?" I exclaimed, unable to smother my derision and unbelief. My glance summed up his fastidious apparel and grooming, the gloss on his curling dark hair and the dubious diamond on his little finger.
He reddened through his clear, dark skin, but his eyes were not those of a man taken in a lie.
"Did you take notice of what I do here?" He asked me, with the first touch of humility I had seen in him. "I couldn't dance or sing or do parlor tricks. I wasn't bred to parlors or indoors. But I learned to skate pretty fancy from a boy up. My folks' farm was on one side of a lake and the schoolhouse on the other. About November that lake used to freeze solid. My brother and I used to skate five miles to school, and back again, before we were six years old. We lived on skates about half the year, I guess. Well—you don't care about the rest; how the farmwas just about big enough to support my elder brother and his family, and I came to New York. Nor how I found New York pretty well filled up with folks who knew considerably more than I did. It was the manager of this place who advertised for expert skaters, who dressed me up like this, and paid me the first living wages I'd had in the city. All the same, I was bred a farmer, and I mean to get back to it. Always have! You're a man, Mr. Locke, and I'd hate you to think I was a shimmy dancer on ice and nothing else, or I wouldn't mention it. My father would have taken the buggy-whip to me, I guess, if he'd lived to see me in this rig. Soon as I've enough put by, I'll shed this perfumed suit and the cheap jewelry and take my wife where she can have a chance to forget I ever wore them."
"But Ilikethem," put in Phillida ardently. "Please do not fuss so, Ethan; because I really do."
"Do you?" I turned upon her. "Are you sure, then, that it is not all this cabaret glamour you really are in love with? Would you care for him as an ordinary, hard-working fellow in a pair of overalls and a flannel shirt? No applause, no lights, no stage?"
She laughed up at me.
"You have forgotten that I met Ethan while he was on a vacation from his work here, and roughing it. When I married him, I had hardly seen him in anything except his Navy flannel shirt, scrubby trousers, and funny blunt-toed shoes."
"You served in the war?" I asked him.
He nodded.
"Yes. On a submarine chaser. Got pneumonia from exposure and was invalided home just before the Armistice."
"And you came back here?"
"I came here," he corrected me. "I enlisted from Maine. I was discharged in New York. That was when I couldn't find anything I could do, until this skating trick came along."
I sat thinking for a time; as long thoughts as I could command. The obvious course was to send for Phillida's father. Yet what could that vague and learned gentleman do that I could not? I visioned the Professor standing in this riotous, gaudy restaurant, swinging his eye-glasses by their silk ribbon and peering at Vere in helpless distaste and consternation. It was practically certain that Phil would refuse to go home with him.
What if she did go home? I could picture the scene there, when the truth came out. The mortification of her people, the gossip in the little town, her outcast position among the girls and boys with whom she had grown up—what a martyrdom for a sensitive spirit! Of course, the only possible thing considered by Aunt Caroline would be a prompt divorce.
If Phillida refused to consent to a divorce, how could she live at home as the wife of a man her parents had pronounced unfit to receive? If she yielded and gave up Vere, would she be much better off? An embarrassment to her family, the heroine of a stolen marriage and Reno freedom, what chance of happiness would she have in her conventional circle? Especially as she neither was a beauty nor the dashing type of girl who might make capital of such a reputation. Probably she would bury herself in nunlike seclusion, stay in her room when callers came, and wear a veil when she went out to walk.
Meanwhile, she would break her heart for Vere.
Could matters be any worse if she tried life with him, even if the experiment eventually proved a failure and ended in a divorce instead of beginningthere? Might not her parents be spared much they most dreaded, if their friends could be told simply that Phillida had made a love match and was with her husband?
Finally, Phillida was a human creature with the right to manage her own life. Had any of us the right to lay hands upon her existence and mould it to our fancy?
I looked up from my revery to find the eyes of both of them fixed on me as if I held their doom balanced upon my palm. Perhaps, in a sense, I did.
"Phil, will you come home to your father and mother, and consider all this a bit more before you decide?" I asked her.
I thought I knew the answer to this, and I did.
"No, Cousin Roger," she refused firmly. "Please forgive me. I know how kind you mean to be, but—no! I shall stay with Ethan. If ever you love anyone, you will understand."
I accepted the decision. There was no reason why I should think of the woman who had spoken to me across the darkness in a voice of melody and power, or why I should seem to feel again the exquisite, live softness of her braid within my hand. But it was so.
"Very well," I said. "Vere, it is to you, then, as Phillida's husband, that I must address any plans. I do not pretend to like the course she has taken. I do not know what action her parents may take, although I believe they will listen to my advice. Putting all that aside, she refuses to come with me and you agree that she cannot stay here.
"I have just bought a farm in Connecticut, intending to use it as a summer home. There are some alterations and repairs being made, but little is to be changed inside the house and it is in perfectly livable shape. Here is my offer. Take Phillida there, and I will make you manager of the place. I will pay all reasonable expenses of putting the land into proper condition and getting such stock and equipment as you judge best; all expenses and up-keep of the house and whatever salary usually is drawn by such managers of small estates. I shall be there, on and off, but you and Phillida must take charge of everything. I am neither a farmer nor a housekeeper, and do not wish to be either. I bought the place only because New York is too hot to work in during three monthsof the year, and I hate summer resorts. Keep my room ready, and you will find I disturb you little. Of course, hire what servants are necessary.
"Now, if you make the place self-supporting inside of five years, I will deed the whole thing to you two. To put it better, if you succeed in making the farm pay a living for yourselves, I will make it over to you and withdraw. If you fail—well, I suppose you will be no worse off than you are now!"
They were stricken speechless. Perhaps my attitude had not pointed to such a conclusion of our interview. Phillida told me long afterward that she expected me to bid them good-evening and abandon them forever, as my mildest course; with alternative possibilities such as summoning a policeman and having Vere haled to prison. Seeing their condition, I rose.
"I will stroll about and leave you a chance to talk it over," I declared; although there are few ordeals I dislike more than displaying my limp about such public rooms.
Vere stopped me, rising as I rose.
"No need of that, for us," he answered, facing me across the little table. "About giving us yourfarm, Mr. Locke, that's for the future! Just now, the manager's job is plenty big enough to thank you for. I wish I could say it better. If you'll stay here with Phillida for ten minutes, until I can get back, I'll be obliged."
"Where are you going?"
"To resign here, and get my outfit into a suitcase."
He had taken up my challenge like a man, at least. There were none of the hesitations and excuses to stay in town that I had half expected. It pleased me that he decided for Phil as well as himself. Some of my ideas about marriage are antiquated, I admit. I nodded to him, and sat down again.
It is unnecessary to record the childish things Phillida tried to say to me, while he was gone.
"I am so happy," was her apology for threatened tears. "I never knew anyone—except Ethan—could be so kind. And—and, will you tell Father and Mother?"
"Yes." I winced, though, at that prospect. "Give me that little bag you carry on your wrist."
She obeyed, wide-eyed.
"You do tote a powder-puff. I did not know whether Aunt Caroline permitted it. Rub it on your nose," I advised, passing the bit of fluff to her.
While she complied, almost like a normally frivolous girl, I used the moment to transfer a few banknotes to the bag, so some need might not find her penniless.
Vere came back in not much more than the promised ten minutes. He had changed to gray street clothes and carried a suitcase. I noted that the diamond had disappeared from his finger and his curly head looked as if it had been held under a water-faucet and vigorously toweled to lessen the brilliantine gloss.
"If you'll tell us where your farm is, Mr. Locke, we'll start," he volunteered.
Phillida looked up at him with eyes of adoring trust.
"I had the porter at the Terminal check my suitcase to be called for. We shall have to get it, dear."
In spite of myself, I smiled at their amazing promptitude. There was both reassurance and pathos in its unconscious youth. All this eagerness pressing forward—where? They did not know, norI. Certainly we did not dream how strange a goal awaited one of us three, or on what weird, desolate path that traveler's foot was already set.
"You had better go to a good hotel for tonight," I modified their plan. "Tomorrow is time enough to go out to the farm, by daylight. Phil has had enough excitement for one day. I will write full directions for the trip, Vere, on the back of this timetable of the railroad you must take."
They were enchanted with this suggestion. Indeed, they were in a state of mind to have assented if I advised them to sit out on a park bench until morning.
Yet, when I had put them and their scanty luggage into a taxicab, I suffered a bad pang of misgiving. What responsibility was I assuming in letting my little-girl cousin go like this? What did I know of this man, or where he would take her? I think Phillida divined something of my trouble, for she leaned out the door to me and held up her face like a child's to be kissed.
"I am sohappy," she whispered.
I turned to Vere; who had a long envelope in readiness to put in my hand.
"I guess you might like to have these for a while, Mr. Locke," he said, with one of his slow, straightforward glances.
With which farewells I had to be content, and watch their taxi swing out into the bright-dark flow of traffic where it was lost from my sight. After which, I entered another taxicab by my unromantic self and was driven to that railroad station where I would find a train bound to the college town that was the home of Aunt Caroline and her husband. One always thought of Phil's parents in that order, although the Professor was a moderately distinguished scientist and his spouse merely masterful in her own limited circle.
The envelope Vere had given me contained their marriage certificate, his release from the Navy, and his membership card in the American Legion.
"Fair speech is more rare than the emerald found by slave maidens on the pebbles."—Ptah-Hotep.
"Fair speech is more rare than the emerald found by slave maidens on the pebbles."—Ptah-Hotep.
At ten o'clock, next morning, I was summoned from my sleep by the bell of the telephone beside my bed. It was not a pleasant sleep, although I had not returned to my apartment until dawn. Nightmare doubts galloped ruthless hoofs over any repose.
Phillida's voice came over the wire to me like the morning song of a bird.
"Good-morning, Cousin Roger. We are going to take the train in a few moments. But I could not leave New York without telling you how happy I am. Are you—did I wake you up? I was afraid that I might, but Ethan said you would like me to call, even so."
"My dear, it was the kindest thought you ever had," I told her fervently.
"Was it?" she hesitated. "Then—were they pretty dreadful to you at home?"
"Quite!"
"Do you suppose they willdoanything dreadful about us?"
"No. Nothing."
It did not seem necessary to tell her that Aunt Caroline did not know where the runaways had gone, and was thereby debarred from hasty action. Phillida's father had privately agreed with me in this.
"I am so very happy, Cousin Roger!"
"I am glad, Phil."
"And you will come to the farm soon?"
"Soon," I promised.
So the nightmares of immediate anxiety for her galloped themselves away, routed for that time. Like my gold-fish when their bowl has been unduly shaken, I sank down again into the quieted waters of my little world and absorption in my own affairs. There have been hours when I wondered if I was of more importance than they, as a matter of cosmic fact.
A month passed before I kept my promise to go to the farm in Connecticut.
As a first reason, I wanted to leave my young couple alone for a period of adjustment. Also, I was curious to see how they would handle the business left to them. I held telephone conversations withPhillida, and with various contractors now and then. I sent out the furnishings for my own room. Everything else I purposely left to the experimenters.
There was a second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic age. My table had been bare of such delicately spiced morsels, and I relished the savor of this one upon my palate. I was not quite ready to find her in the matter-of-fact daughter of some neighbor, who had sought shelter from the storm in that supposedly empty house and probably mistaken me for a tramp.
Perhaps I was equally reluctant to go back and prove that the adventure was ended, that she had been a bird of passage who had gone on with no thought of return.
With all these delays, and the fact that my work really kept me busy in town, April was verging toward May when I finally saw the last of my luggage put into the car and started on my fifty-mile drive to the house by the lake. I did not take this first visit very seriously, or intend it to be over long.To be a constraint upon the household I had established, or assume a right there, was far from the course I planned. It was not certain Vere and I would be comfortable housemates. But to stay away altogether would have hurt Phillida as much as to stay too long, I considered. Probably a week would be about enough for this time.
So lightly, so ignorantly, I stepped from the first great division of my life into the second; not hearing the closing of the gate through which there was no turning back.
"The very room, coz she was in,Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'."—The Courtin'.
"The very room, coz she was in,Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'."—The Courtin'.
I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with yellow sparkles.
The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely walls, deep, arched porches that took the place of the old shallow affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been—all united in giving it the gayest, most modern air imaginable. A gravel drive curved in beneath the new porte-cochère, inviting the wheels of my car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds laid out. The new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its arms to me and laughed an invitation.
As I stepped from my car, I heard running feetand a girl sped around the veranda to meet me. She cast herself into my arms before I fairly realized this was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the house! After the first greetings I held her off to analyze the change.
She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners of her once sad little mouth turned up instead of down and developed—I looked twice—yes, developed a dimple. The dull hair I always had seen brushed plainly back, now was parted on one side and fluffed itself across her forehead and about her cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She was attired in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash knotted in front quite daringly, for Phillida.
"Why, Phil, how pretty we are!" I admired.
She looked up at me like a praised little girl, and smoothed the sash. I noticed she wore above her wedding ring that "diamond" which once had adorned Vere's finger so distastefully to me. It shone bravely in the sunlight with quite a display of fire. Tracing my gaze, she held out her hand for me to see.
"Yes, it was his, Cousin Roger. Of course, we have not very much money yet, and I do not careabout all the engagement rings that ever were thought of. But, I was afraid people up here might notice that I had none and think slightingly of Ethan. So I asked him, and we went to a jeweler, who made it smaller to fit me. It is not a false stone, you know. It is a white topaz, and I love it better than the biggest diamond."
"Then you are still happy?"
"Forever and ever, world without end," she answered solemnly.
We went in.
Sun and sweet wind had worked white magic in the long-closed house. Quaint furniture, no longer dust-grimed but lustrous with cleanliness and polish, had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery in cheerful tints, fresh paper on the walls, good rugs, order and daintiness everywhere changed the interior out of my recognition. Already the atmosphere of home and cheer was established.
"Come see your rooms," Phillida invited, enraptured by my admiration. "They are so pretty!"
She ran up the stairs, around the passage, and ushered me into the room of graceful adventure and grotesque nightmare. I stopped on the threshold.
I had ordered the partition removed between the two chambers on this side, giving me one large room. This, with the little bathroom attached, occupied the entire large frontage of the house. This long, spacious room; floors covered by my Chinese rugs, walls echoing the rugs' smoke-blue, my piano in a bright corner, my special easychairs and writing-table in their due places, welcomed me with such familiar comfort that I could not identify the neglected chamber where I had slept one night in the old bed with the four pineapple-topped posts. The windows were opened, and white curtains with their over-draperies of blue silk were swinging in and out on a fresh breeze where the Horror of my dream had seemed to press itself against the black panes. Decidedly, I must have had a bad attack of indigestion that night!
"See how nice?" Phillida was urging appreciation at my side. "We swung those lovely old hangings from the arch, so they can be drawn across the bedroom end of your room, if you like. Although I do not know why youshouldlike, everything is so pretty! Your long Venetian mirror came safely, and all your darling lamps. And—and I hope youlike it so well, Cousin Roger, that you will stay here always!"
When she left me alone, I walked to the different windows, contemplating the stretches of lawn dotted with budding apple trees and the lake that lay beyond shining in the sun. Was Phillida's charming wish to become a fact, I wondered? Could this rest and calm hold me content here, where I had meant merely to pause and pass on? I looked at the yellow country road meandering past the lake into unseen distance. Should I ever see my Lady of the Beautiful Tresses come that way, or travel that road to where she lived? If I did meet her, would she forgive me the loss of her braid? There would be a test for the sweetness of her disposition!
When a chiming dinner-gong summoned me downstairs, I found Vere awaiting me beside Phillida. We shook hands, and he made some brief, pleasant speech about their having expected me sooner. If pale, timid Phil had become a surprising butterfly, Vere had taken the reverse progress toward the sober grub. I like him better in outing clothes, although he showed even more the unusual good looks which so unreasonably prejudiced me against him. If hefelt any strain in our meeting, his slow, tranquil trick of speech and manner covered it. I hope I did as well! It was then I discovered that his wife's pet name for him fitted like a glove. She called him "Drawls."
The luncheon was good; cooked and served by a middle-aged Swedish woman named Cristina. Afterward, I was conducted into the kitchen by the lady of the house, to view the new fittings and improvements. Most odd and pretty it was to see Phillida in that rôle of housewife, and to watch her pride in Vere and deference to him. Let me record that I never saw the daughter of Aunt Caroline fail in this settled course toward her husband. Whether it was born of revulsion from her mother's hectoring domestic methods, or of consciousness that outsiders might rate Vere below his wife in station and education, so her respect for him must forbid their slight, I do not know. But I never saw her oppose him or speak rudely to him before other people. I suppose they may have had the usual conjugal differings, neither of them being angelic. If so, no outsider ever glimpsed the fact.
We spoke of nothing serious on that first day.They both showed me the various improvements finished or progressing, indoors or out.
We dined as agreeably as we had lunched. Quite early, afterward, I excused myself, and left together the two who were still on their honeymoon.
At the door of my room, I pushed a wall-switch that lighted simultaneously three lamps. In this I had repeated the arrangement used by me for years in my city apartment. I have a demand for light somewhere in my make-up, and no reason for not indulging it. There flashed out of the dusk a large lamp upon my writing-table, a tall floor-lamp beside the piano, and a reading-lamp on a stand beside my bed at the far end of the room. All three were shaded in a smoke-blue and rose-color effect that long since had caught my fancy for night work; the shades inset with imitation semi-precious stones, rough-cut things of sapphire, tourmaline-pink and baroque pearl.
I lay emphasis upon this, to make clear how normal, serene and even familiar in effect was the room into which I came. Yet, as I closed the door behind me and stood in that softly brilliant radiance, a shudder shook me from head to foot with theviolence of an electric shock. A sense of suffocation caught at my throat like an unseen hand.
Both sensations were gone in the time of a drawn breath, leaving only astonishment in their wake. Presently I went on with the purpose that had brought me upstairs; lifting a portfolio to the table and beginning to unpack the work which I had been doing in New York. As I laid out the first sheets of music, there drifted to my ears that vague sound from the lake I had heard on my first night visit here, while I stood on the tumble-down porch. The sound that was like the smack of glutinous lips, or some creature drawing itself out of thick, viscid slime. As before, I wondered what movement of the shallow waters could produce that result. Not the tide, now, for the new dam was up and the lake cut off from Long Island Sound. The pouring of the waterfall flowed on as a reminder of that fact.
The sound was not repeated. The dusk outside the windows offered nothing unusual to be seen. I finished my unpacking and sat down at my writing-table.
I am not accustomed to heed time. There never has been anyone to care what hours I kept, and Iwork best at night. Midnight was long past when I thought of rest.
I declare that I thought of nothing more; not even recalling the vague unease felt on entering the room. A day spent in the fresh air, followed by an evening of hard work and journeyings between the piano and table, had left me utterly weary. When I lay down, it was to sleep at once.
"I have made a story that hath not been heard;A great feat of arms that hath not been seen!"—Amenemhe'et.
"I have made a story that hath not been heard;A great feat of arms that hath not been seen!"—Amenemhe'et.
I woke slowly. It seemed that I struggled to wakefulness as a spent swimmer struggles toward shore. Up, up through deep poles of sleep I dragged myself, driven by some dimly sensed necessity. Peril had stolen upon me in my unconsciousness, a stalking beast. I knew that with nightmare certainty. It was as if my soul stood affrighted beside my brain, wailing upon its ally to arouse and stand with it against the menace. And my brain answered, but with infinite difficulty; like a drugged warrior who hears the clang of battle and forces numbed limbs to stir, arise and grasp the sword.
I was awake. Suddenly; the swimmer reaching the surface!
How shall I describe Fear incarnate? The Horror was at the open window opposite the foot of my bed, staring in upon me with slavering covetousness of the prey It watched. I lay there, and feltIt seek for me across the darkness with tentacles of evil that groped for some part of me upon which It might lay hold.
The room was still. Between the draperies, the window showed nothing to the eye except a dark square faintly tinged with the night luminance of the sky. There was nothing to see; nothing to hear. But gradually I became aware of a hideous odor of mould and mildew, of must and damp decay that loaded the air with disgust.
I lay there, and opposed the approach of the Thing with all the will of resistance in me. The sweat poured from my whole body, so that I lay as in water and the drenched linen of my sleeping-suit clung coldly to me.
It could not pass the defense of my will. I felt the malevolent fury of Its striving. Like the antennæ of some monstrous insect brushing about my body, I felt Its evil desires wavering about my mental self, examining, searching where It might seize. It had not yet found the weakness It sought. If It did——?
The sickening, vault-like air I must breathe fought for It. So did the darkness. All this time,or the time that seemed so long, I had no more command of my body than a cataleptic patient. Every ounce of force in me had rushed to support the two warriors of the battle: the brain and will that opposed the clutching menace. But now, as I grew more and more fully awake, out of very loathing and danger I drew determination. Slowly, painfully, I began to free my right arm and hand from this paralysis.
As I advanced in resolution, the Thing seemed to recoil. Inch by inch, I moved my hand across the bed toward my reading-lamp on the stand beside me. In proportion as I moved, the dreadful tentacles drew back and away. A last effort, and the chain was in my fingers. I jerked spasmodically.
Rosy light from the lamp flashed over the room. All the quiet comfort of the place sprang into view as if to reassure me; the piano open as I had left it, the table strewn with my evening's work, each bit of furniture, each drapery or trinket undisturbed.
The Thing was gone. In the hush I heard my panting breath and the tick of my watch on the stand. It was two o'clock in the morning. As I mechanically read the hour, a cock somewhereshrilled its second call before dawn. The Horror had been true to the legendary time of apparitions.
Weak and chilled, I presently made an attempt to rise. But at the movement, a wave of sickness swept through me. The room seemed to rock and swing. I had just time to recognize the grip of faintness before I fell back on the pillow.
Vivifying sweetness was in my nostrils, which expanded avidly for this new air. Perfume that was a tonic, a subtle elixir; that sparkled upon the senses, sank suavely and healingly through me, so that I seemed to draw refreshment with each breath. Reluctantly, I aroused more and more in response to this unusual stimulant; which somehow gave delicious rest yet drew me from it into life.
I could have sworn someone had touched me. With some exclamation on my lips, I started up; to find myself in darkness. The lamps I had left lighted burned no longer.
This time there was no terror in my awakening. No Thing of nightmare pressed against my window-space. The fragrance persisted; the ghastly smell of mould and corruption was gone. But I wantedlight for all that! Reaching for the lamp beside me on its stand, I found the little chain. I felt the chain draw in my fingers and heard the click that should have meant light; but no answering brightness sprang up.
Instead, across the dark came a voice; a voice low-pitched, soft without weakness, keen with exultation:
"Victory! Victory! You have no need of light—who conquered in darkness! The Enemy has fled. It has covered the Unspeakable Eyes from the eyes of a man. By the will of a man Its will has been forbidden. It has dragged Itself back to the Barrier and cowers there for this time. Oh, soldier on the dreadful Frontier, be proud, putting off your armor tonight! Be proud, and rest."
Those practical people who are never unnerved by the intangible, may gauge if they can the weirdness of this address following my first experience, and then smile their contempt of me. For I confess to a moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that of the woman who had trailed her braid of hair into my grasp, the night I first slept here. But, how did she know of the Thing's visit to me? I had notspoken nor uttered a cry throughout Its visitation. How could she have knowledge of that silent struggle between It and me, or of my escape so narrowly won. How, unless she too——?
I groped for a glass of water left on my stand. I drank, and felt my dry throat relax.
"Who are you?" I asked.
A sigh trembled toward me.
"I am one who stands on the threshold of your beautiful world, as a traveler stands outside a lighted palace, gazing where she may not enter, and feeling the winter about her."
"Do not suppose me quite a superstitious fool," I said bruskly. "You are a woman. The woman who left a very real braid of hair in my hands, not long ago, to save herself from capture!"
"Yes. Yet, I am neither more nor less real than the One which came for you a while since."
"Then my nightmare was real? A thing of flesh and blood, or clever mechanism? You know it. Perhaps you produced it?"
The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless heat against her cool melancholy.
"Real? What is real?" she challenged me."Turn to the sciences that you should understand better than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a million years men have vowed you touch empty air. They saw and felt it empty. But now a child knows air swarms with life. In that thin nothingness, crowd and move the distributors of death, disease, health, vigor—existence itself. The water you have just tasted is pure and clear in the glass? Pure? Each drop is an ocean of inhabitants clean and unclean. I speak commonplaces. But is there no knowledge not yet commonplace? Oh man, with all the unfathomed universe about us,dareyou pronounce what is real?"
"What is natural," I began.
She interrupted me.
"Doubtless what is not natural cannot and does not exist. Have you, then, measured Nature? He was a great thinker, one of deep knowledge, who compared Man to a child wandering on the shore of a vast ocean and picking up a pebble here and there."
"Of what would you convince me? And, why?"
"Of what? Danger! Why? Would you watch a man enter a jungle where some hideous beast crouched in ambush, while you neither warned norarmed him? I am here to turn you back. I am the native of that country who runs to cry warning to a stranger; to put into his hand the weapon of understanding."
So solemn, so urgent a sincerity was in her voice, that again chill touched me. The clammy dampness of my garments hung on my limbs as a reminder of the Thing, real or unreal, that twice had made Its presence felt beyond denial. Wild as her words might be, their incredible suggestion was matched by my experience. I sought with my eyes for her, before answering. The room was dark, yet the darker bulk of furniture loomed out enough to be distinguishable. No figure was visible, even traced by the direction of her voice. I was certain that any movement to seek her would mean her flight.
"Do you mean that you want me to go away from this place?" I questioned.
The sigh came again, just audibly.
"Yes. Why should you die?"
Was I wrong in fancying the sigh regretful? Did I not hear a wistful reluctance in her tone? Excitement ran along my veins like burning oil on flowing water. The woman hidden in the dark, theassociation of her voice with the strange, exquisite fragrance I breathed, the thought of beauty in her born of that lovely braid of hair I had seized—all blended in a spell of human magic. I have said I was a man much alone, and a lame man who craved adventure.
"Just now," I said, "you spoke of some victory. You called me—soldier."
"Is it not victory to have driven back the Dark One? Is he not a soldier who, aroused in the night to meet dreadful assault, sets his face to the enemy and battles front to front? Before the Eyes men and women have died or lost reason, or fled across half the world, broken by fear. What are the wars of man with man, compared with a man's battle against the Unknown? I honor you! I salute you! But—soldier alone on the forbidden Frontier, go! Join your fellows in the world alloted to you; live, nor seek to tread where mankind is not sent."
"How can there be wrong in facing a situation that I did not cause?"
"There is no wrong. There is danger."
"What danger?" I persisted.
"Can you ask me?" she retorted with a hint ofimpatience. "You who have felt Its grope toward your inner spirit?"
I shuddered, remembering the brush of those antennæ, exploring, examining! But I persisted, beyond my every-day nature. Her speech was for me like that liquor distilled from honey that inflamed the Norsemen to war fury.
"You say I came off victor," I reminded her.
"Yes. But can you conquer again, and again, and again? Will you not feel strength fail, health break, madness creep close? Will you not be worn down by the Thing that knows no weariness and fall its prey at last?"
"It will come—often?"
"Until one conquers, It will come."
I forced away a qualm of panic.
"How can you know?" I demanded.
"Ask me not. I do know."
"But, look here!" I argued. "If as you say, this creature was not meant to meet mankind, how can It come after me this way?"
She seemed to pause, finally answering with reluctance:
"Because, two centuries ago one of the raceof man here broke through the awful Barrier that rears a wall between human kind and those dark forms of life to which It belongs. For know that a human will to evil can force a breach in that Barrier, which those on the other side never could pass without such aid."
I neither understood nor believed. At least, I told myself that I did not believe her wild, legendary explanation of the nightmare Thing that visited me. I did not want to believe. Neither did I wish to offend her by saying so!
"You will go," she presently mistook my silence for surrender. "You are wise as well as brave. Good go with you! Good walk beside you in that happy world where you live!"
"Wait!" I cried sharply. Her voice had seemed to recede from me, a retreating whisper at the last word. "No! I will not go. I must—I will know more of you. You are no phantom. Who are you? Where—when can I see you in daylight?"
"Never."
"Why not?"
"I came to hold a light before the dreadful path. The warning is given."
"But you will come again?"
"Never."
"What? The Thing will come, and not you?"
"What have I to do with It, who am more helpless before It than you? Go; and give thanks that you may."
"Listen," I commanded, as firmly as I could. "I am not going away from this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me half-convinced of what I should do."
"I can stay no longer."
"Why can you not come again?"
"You plan to trap me," she reproached.
"No. Word of honor! You shall come and go as you please; I will not make a movement toward you."
"Not try—to see me, even?" she hesitated.
"Not even that, if you forbid."
There was a long pause.
"Perhaps——" drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through my room.
She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise. Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my lights at her entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp, and this time light flashed over the room.
I had known no one would be there, and no one was. Yet I was disappointed.
As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four. Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking foulness of mould and decay.
I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp for the coming of sunrise.