"For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings live upon sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate perfumes."—Oriental Mythology.
"For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings live upon sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate perfumes."—Oriental Mythology.
The breakfast bell, or rather Phillida's Chinese chimes, merrily summoned me to the dining-room; a homely spell to exercise the phantoms of the night.
My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white middy blouse and blue skirt, was already in her place behind the coffeepot. Vere sat opposite her at the round table. They were holding hands across the rolls and bacon and eggs, their glances interlocked in a shining content that made my solitariness rather drab and dull to my own contemplation. At my clumsy step the picture dissolved, of course. Vere rose while Phillida welcomed me to my chair and went into a young housewife's pretty solicitude about my fruit and hot eggs.
The sun glinted across the table. The very servant had a smiling air of enjoying the occasion. I never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big brindle cat purred on the window-sill beside Phillida; nodainty Persian or Angora, but a battered veteran whose nicked ears and scarred tail proved him a battling cat of ring experience.
"I planned to have a wee white kitten," Phil explained, while putting a saucer of milk before the feline tough. "One that would wear a ribbon, you know. You remember, Cousin Roger, how Mother always forbade pets because she believed animals carry germs? I meant to have a puss, if ever I had a home of my own. This one just walked into the kitchen on the first day we came here. Ethan said it was a lucky sign when a cat came to a new home. He gave it the meat out of his sandwiches that we had brought for lunch, and it stayed. So I decided to keep it instead of a kitten. It really is more cat!"
What footing was here for dreary terrors? In a mirror across the room I glimpsed my own countenance looking quite as usual. No over-night white hairs appeared; no upstanding look such as the legend gave to Sir Sintram after he met the Little Master.
After the meal, Vere asked me to walk over to the lake with him.
We strolled through the old orchard toward thedam. This was my side of the house. In passing, I looked up at the window against which the Thing had seemed to press Itself with sickening lust for me. Phillida was framed in the open square, and shook a dustcloth at us by way of greeting and evidence of her busyness.
The wide, shallow lake lay almost without movement, except at the head of the dam. There the water poured over with foam and tumult, an amber-brown cataract some twenty-odd feet across, to rush on below in a winding stream that grew calmer as it flowed.
"We must put our lake in order, Vere," I observed, as we stood on a knoll at the head of the dam. "All this growth of rank vegetation ought to be pulled up, the banks graded and turfed perhaps, the bottom cleaned up. Water-lilies would look better than cat-tails."
To my surprise, he did not assent. Instead, he set his foot on a boulder and rested his arm upon his knee; looking into the clear water.
"Mr. Locke, I just about hate saying what I have to," he told me in his sober, leisurely fashion. "I expect you won't like it; not at all. Well—bestsaid before you get deeper in. I can't see my way to make farming this place pay."
I was bitterly disappointed. Even at the worst estimate of Vere, I had imagined he would stick the thing out a little longer than this. Poor Phillida's time of happiness should have lasted more than these few weeks. But the call of New York, of the "lounge lizard's" ease and unhealthy excitement had won already, it seemed. I said nothing at all. The blow was too sore.
"There are too few acres of arable land, and they're used up," Vere was continuing. "I've seen plenty of impoverished, run-out farms in New England. You could pour money into the soil out of a gold pitcher these five years to come, before it began to pay you back. And then your money might better have been put anywhere in bank, for profit! I saw that, the first week here. Since then I've been looking around for something better to do."
"And have found it, of course," I said bitingly. "Or else you would be drawing your salary as manager and saying nothing to me of all this! Well, where does poor Phil go, and when?"
He turned his dark-curled head and regarded me with calm surprise.
"I didn't exactly know that my wife was going anywhere, Mr. Locke."
"What? You do not mean to leave the farm?"
"Not unless you're tired of our bargain. I've been calculating how to make it pay. That won't be by planting corn and potatoes and taking a wagon-load into town! If you think I'm wrong, call in any practical man who knows this sort of business. We've got to think closer to win here. That's why I'd like to set the lake to work instead of just prettying it up."
"The lake, Vere? There isn't enough water-power over the dam to do any more than run a toy, is there?"
He motioned me nearer to where he stood gazing down.
"Notice what kind of water this is, Mr. Locke? Brown like forest water, sort of green-lighted because the bottom is like turf; neither mud nor sand, but a kind of under-water moss? You see? It's pure and clean, with a little fishy smell about it. Matter of fact, it is forest water! Comes from wayoff yonder, the stream does, before it spreads out into our lake, here. I borrowed a boat and followed back two miles before it got too shallow for me. Boys have caught trout here three times since I've been watching."
"Well?"
"My father was fish-warden in our district. I learned the business. If you're willing, I can start some trout-raising that ought to pay well. You know, the State is glad to help game preserving, free."
He proceeded to give me a brief lecture on the subject, in his quiet, unpretentious manner; producing notes and diagrams from his pockets. He had written to various authorities and exhibited their replies. He knew exactly what the State would do, what he himself must do, and what investment of money would be required. I listened to him in admiration and astonishment.
From fish raising, he went on to discuss each acre of the farm; its best use in view of its situation, condition, and our needs. We could afford so much labor, it appeared, and no more. We must have certain apparatus; methodically listed with prices.If we used a certain sheltered south field for a peach orchard, the trees planted should be such an age and have giant-powder blast deep beds for them in order that they might soon bear fruit.
When at last he ended his deceptive speech that sounded so lazy while implying so much energy, and turned his black eyes from the papers on his knee to my face, I had been routed long since.
"Vere," I said abruptly, "did you know that I thought you were going to desert the farm, when you began to speak?"
He nodded.
"Yes, I guess so. You don't exactly like me; haven't had any occasion to! You don't judge me a fit match for your cousin. Well, neither would anyone else, yet!"
He began to gather his papers together, his attention divided with them while he finished his answer:
"There will be plenty of time before that 'yet' runs out. Mighty pleasant time, thanks to you, Mr. Locke! Phillida and I expect to enjoy building things up as much as we'll enjoy it after they're all built. Meantime, I prize what you're doing all the more because I know how you feel. Now, if you'dbe interested to look over these plans or submit them to someone you've confidence in, for inspection, I'll just turn them over to you."
He had so accurately measured me that I was disconcerted. It was quite true that he was compelling my respect, while my first dislike of him still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind. I felt ungenerous, but I would not lie to him.
"I am a queer fellow, Vere," I said. "Leave that to time, as you say! As for the plans, they are far beyond my scope. A city man, it has been my way to 'phone for an expert when anything was to be done, or to buy what I fancied and pay the bills. In this case, you are the expert. The plans seem brilliant to me. Certainly they are moderate in cost. Keep them, and carry them out as soon as that may be done. You are master here, not I."
We walked back together through the sun and freshness of the early spring morning. As we neared the house Phillida's voice hailed us. She was at my window again, leaning out with her hair wind-ruffled about her face.
"Cousin Roger," she summoned me, "I have found out what makes your room as sweet as agarden of spices. See what it is to be a composer completely surrounded by royalties, able to buy the most gorgeous scents to lay on one's pillow! And all enclosed in antique gold!"
She held up some small object that shone in the sunlight. "Throw it down," I begged, startled into excitement.
She complied, laughing. Vere sprang forward, but I made a quicker step and caught the thing.
It was one of those filigree balls of gold wrought into openwork, about the size of a walnut, that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain or ribbon and call a pomander. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence supposed to be reviving in case miladi felt a swoon or megrim about to overwhelm her; as ladies did in past centuries and do no longer.
Whose gentle pity had brought this pomander to my pillow, to help me from that faintness which had followed my struggle with the Thing? Whose was the exquisite, individual fragrance contained in the ball I held? I had a vision of a figure, surely light and soft of movement, haloed with such matchless hair as the braid I had captured, stealing step by timid step across my room; within my reach whileI lay inert. Perhaps her face had bent near mine in her doubt of my life or death; hidden eyes had studied me in the scanty starlight.
Oh, for Ethan Vere's good looks and athlete's grace, to lure my lady from her masquerade!
"Where did you buy it, Cousin Roger? 'Fess up!" Phillida's merry voice coaxed me.
"It was given to me," I slowly answered. "I cannot offer it to you, Phil. But I will buy any other pretty thing you fancy, instead, next time I go to town."
She made a gesture of disclaim.
"I did not meanthat! Only, do tell me what the perfume is?"
"I was going to ask if you knew."
"No. Something very expensive and imported, I suppose. Perhaps whoever gave it to you had it made for herself alone, as some wealthy women do. It is the most clinging, yet delicately refreshing scent I ever met."
"Tuberose," suggested Vere.
"Drawls, no. How can you? Like an old-fashioned funeral!" she cried.
"Tuberose didn't always go to funerals," hecorrected her teasingly, as she made a face at him. "I remember them growing in my Aunt Bathsheba's garden. Creamy looking posies, kind of kin to a gardenia, seems to me! Thick-petalled, like white plush, and holding their sweet smell everlastingly. But Mr. Locke's perfumery isn't just that, either. There was something else grew in that garden—I can't call to mind what I mean. Basil, maybe?"
"The basil plant, that feeds on dead men's brains," quoted Phil with a mock shiver. "Youarehappy in your ideals, Drawls!"
He laughed.
"Well, that garden smelled pretty fine when the dew was just warming up in the sun, mornings—and so does this little gilt ball! I'll guess Mr. Locke's lady never got it from France. Smells like old New England."
There was no reason why a vague chill should creep over me, or the sunshine seem to darken as if a thin veil drifted between me and the surrounding brightness. Let me say again that no place could have been more unlike the traditional haunted house. There hung about it no sense of morbidity or depression. Yet, what was I to think? I was not sick ormad; and the Thing had come to me twice. I turned from the married lovers and made my way to the veranda, where I might be alone to consider the pomander whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence walking beside me.
Seated there, in one of the deep willow-chairs Phillida had cushioned in peacock chintz and marked especially mine by laying my favorite magazines on its arm, I studied my new trophy of the night. There was a satisfaction in its material solidity. It was real enough, resting in my palm.
Yes; but it was not ordinary among its quaint kind! As I picked out the design of the gold-work, that fact was borne in upon my mind. Here was no pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts. The small sphere was belted with the signs of the Zodiac, beautiful in minute perfection. All the rest of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating one group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange, outcast academies of astrology, alchemy—magic, in short. It contained what appeared to be a pinkish ball; originally a scented paste rolled round anddried, I judged by peering through the interstices of the gold.
Had the old-world trinket been left to bewilder me? Why, and by whom? What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from even the college-bred Phillida's?
She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone associated with her wanted the place left vacant for some reason, why did not the Thing and the warning come to others of our household group? Vere, Phillida, the Swedish woman, Cristina—all had lived here for weeks without any experiences like mine. I had not been told to leave my room, but the house. The danger, then, was only for me?
Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at the first alarm?
The gray cat came purring about me and presently leaped upon my knee. On impulse, I offered the pomander to its nostrils. The unwinking yellow eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and unclosed with convulsive pleasure, it breathed withthat thirsty eagerness for the scent so familiar to my own senses.
"Better than catnip, Bagheera?" I questioned. "You wouldn't bolt from it, either, would you?"
Phillida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed toward the hand I withdrew, and composed itself to sleep. I put the pomander in my waistcoat pocket.
I could not deny as mere nightmare the Thing which had visited me. Better confront that fact! It was real. Only, real in what sense? What human agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion so hideous that I could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight, without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain?
Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation? A truth hinted at by alchemists, Pythagoreans, Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and magnificent charlatans, these many centuries? Were there other races between earth and heaven; strange tribes of the middle spaces whose destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these beings, inimical to man as acobra, intelligent as man, hunting Its victim by methods unknown to us?
Was I a cheated fool, or a pioneer on the borders of a new country?
Could I meet that Thing tonight, and tomorrow night? Could I bear the agony of Its presence, the stench of death and corruption that was Its atmosphere? At the mere memory my forehead grew wet.
The postman's buggy had stopped at our mailbox. Phillida ran down to meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me while she waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the old man to sort our letters from his bags. It did not appear so hard to make a woman happy, I mused. A man might attempt it with hope, if he could but persuade her to try him.
My lady had promised to come again. Perhaps, with patience——?
Phillida came across the lawn with an armful of gaudy-covered catalogues and a handful of letters.
"Catalogues for Ethan; letters for you," she called in advance of her arrival. "What an important person you are, Cousin Roger! It always gives me a quivery thrill to realizewhoyou are as wellas how nice you are. Now, isn't that a jumbled speech to tumble out of me?"
I took her tanned little hand along with the letters; letters that were so many voices summoning me back to pleasant, busy Manhattan.
"It is a fine speech for a humble person to answer, Phil! But does that sort of thing matter to you women? What do you love Vere for, at bottom? Because he is strong and supple and has curly hair? No?" as she shook her head. "Because he has worn the uniform, then; proved his courage in war at sea? Because he had the glamour about him of real adventure and cabaret glitter? Or because he took you away from a life you hated? Or, perhaps, because he is kind and loves you? No! For none of these reasons? Why, then, love Ethan Vere?"
She stopped vigorously shaking her head in repeated denial, and smiled at me triumphantly.
"Because heisEthan Vere," she promptly responded. "Oh, Cousin Roger, you clever people are so stupid! It would not make any difference at all if Drawls were ugly, or never had been a sailor, or could not skate or do things, or had not been able tomake me happy. It is something very much bigger than all that!"
"And all the divorce courts, Phil? The breach of promise suits, and the couples who make each other miserable?"
"But they never had anything," she said. "Perhaps they will have it, some day. Don't you know, Cousin Roger, that the most important things in the world are those most people never know about?"
I was not sure whether I knew that, or not. After last night, I was not sure of many things. Still, if such gifts were given as she believed, if it was merely a question of being Ethan Vere—or Roger Locke——?
But I had never seriously considered leaving the adventure.
"The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it."—Hugo de Anima.
"The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it."—Hugo de Anima.
That evening Vere and I settled the business details of the developments he had planned. Also while we three were quietly together, I launched a discussion that had been gathering in my mind all day while I watched Phillida.
"You are doing as efficient work as Vere," I told her. "In fact, you are a most moderate pair! I gave you an open bank account, Phil; and you have furnished the house for so little that I am amazed. And it is all so gay, so freshly pretty! Being an ignorant man, the details are beyond me. But—one servant? Aren't you working yourself too hard? I had expected you to need several. Of course, we are not counting Vere's outdoor force."
She turned in her low chair beside the lamp and glanced toward the window behind her, before replying. I noticed the action, because a moment before Vere had turned precisely the same way.
"It is good of you to think of those things, Cousin Roger," she declared. "But, I want to be a real wife to Drawls. I do, indeed! And I have it all to learn because I was not brought up for that. Look at this dish-towel I am hemming. Cristina would laugh at the stitches if she dared, yet they are better than when I began. Some day I shall sew fine things. So it is with all my housekeeping. I think we should begin as we mean to go on, so I have furnished the house for—us. Perhaps if it had been for you alone, I should have chosen satin-wood and tapestry instead of willow and cretonne. The same way about Cristina. If Ethan and I are to save and earn this lovely place, as you offered, we cannot afford more than one maid. You understand what I am trying to explain, don't you?"
"Yes," I assented. "Surely! What were you looking for, just now, behind you?"
"I? Oh, nothing! I just fancied someone had passed by the window and stared in. I can't imagine what made me fancy that. Unless the cat——" She hesitated.
"Bagheera is asleep under Mr. Locke's chair," Vere observed casually.
"Truly, Cousin Roger, I love the way we are living," she resumed. "It is very miserable of me, I daresay, not to be more intellectual after all Father and Mother labored with me. But it is so! I want to live this way all my life; to be busy, and plan things with Ethan, and make them come true together."
Under cover of the table she put her hand into Vere's, and silence held us a little while. I watched Bagheera the cat, who sat beside my chair staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window across the room. Did I imagine a slight uneasiness in those eyes, a wary readiness in gathered limbs and muscles bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now the tail twitched with a lashing movement.
Presently Bagheera looked away and relaxed. A moment more, and he curled down, composing himself to sleep.
"You like the place, Phil?" I questioned. "You do not find it lonely here, or in any way depressing?"
The candor of her surprise told me that no dweller between the worlds had visited her.
"Cousin Roger? This darling house? Why?"
I passed that question safely, and after a fewminutes bade them good-night. They had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it a matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone together.
As I made my solitary way upstairs, I will not deny a growing excitement, or that dread fought with my resolution. Who would keep tryst with me tonight? The Horror or the lady? Both; as each time before? If so, which one would come first, and what might be my measure of success or failure? If some trick were being played upon me, I meant to pluck it out of the mystery.
The quietly pleasant room received me without a hint of the unusual. I lighted the lamps and sat down to my work.
The house was still by ten o'clock, all lights out except mine. At midnight I lay down in the dark, the pomander under my pillow. Whether I put the gold ball there from sentiment, or from some absurd fancy about its perfume and mystic carving being somehow a talisman against evil, or because I feared the trinket might be taken from me during the night, I should be troubled to answer. I did place it there, and lay lapped in its sweet odor while the moments dragged past; heavy, slow-footed moments of strainand dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope uneasy as fear.
The cock crowed for the first hour; and for the second. I slept, at last. When I awoke, level sun-rays were striking across the world.
Nothing had happened.
"These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade."—Plutarch.
"These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade."—Plutarch.
Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance where such a woman as my lady could be lodged. However, I made my cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless, resolved to leave no chance untried. No better plan occurred to me than exhibition of the pomander with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young lady with red-gold hair. But nowhere did a native show recognition of the top or the description.
On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained buggy that inspired me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities. Why had I not put my question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning? Surely here was a man who knew everyone and went everywhere!
The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it, then returned to croppingthe young grass by the roadside. The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded to me.
"Morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted. "Now let me get the right stuff into this here box, an' I'll sort your family's right out for you. There's a sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill 'em, for Cliff Brown here, that's gone to the bottom of the bag. I don't know but Cliff's poultry'd thank me to leave it be! Up it's got to come, though!"
"Will it make them lay?" I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering into the sack.
"I guess it might, if Cliff told 'em they'd have to lay or eat it, judgin' from the smell that sample's put in my bag."
"Not as sweet as this?" I suggested, and leaned across to lay the pomander in his gnarled hand.
The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed an elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed in sensation.
"Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?"I asked. "A lady with bright fair hair, colored like copper-bronze?"
"Not I!" he denied briefly.
"No one at all like that—with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold color, and a lot of it?"
"No. Not around here, nor anywhere I've been! What do you call this perfumery, Mr. Locke?"
"I have no idea," I answered, sharply disappointed. "No one knows except the young lady I am trying to find. Are you sure you cannot help me at all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house who might be the one I am looking for?"
He shook his head, giving back the pomander with marked reluctance.
"No one who might be able to tell more than yourself?" I persisted.
A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr. Clifford Brown's mailbox and began to sort out my letters.
"Far as that goes, I guess Mis' Hill don't miss much of what goes on around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband hitch up, and she goes drivin' all day. Ain't a house she knowsthat don't get to hear the whole yarn! You know Mis' Royal Hill? Mis' Vere gets butter and cheese from her. Might ask her!"
I thanked him and drove on.
Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who owned the place next to ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called that morning; inviting me into her parlor to "set," when she had identified me. But she knew nothing of the object of my quest.
"I guessed you must be the new owner up to the Michell place," she observed, her beady, faded brown eyes busy with my appearance, picking up details in avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking crumbs. "Cliff Brown said a lame feller had bought it. I don't see as that little limp cripples you much, the way you can rampus 'round in that fast automobile of yours! Now, I'm perfectly sound, and I wouldn't be paid to drive the thing. You'd ought to get the other fellow to run it for you; the handsome one. I guess you like to do it, though? Writer, ain't you? Books or newspapers?"
I rallied my scattered faculties to answer the machine-gun attack.
"Music?" she echoed, her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness. "They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never heard of havin' a piano upstairs. Most folks like to show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of funny, takin' your company upstairs to play for 'em. But then it's kind of a funny thing for a man to take to, anyhow! I got a niece ten years old next August who can play piano so good there don't seem anythin' left to learn her, so——! But there ain't no use of you drivin' 'round here lookin' for a fair-headed girl, Mr. Locke. The Slav folk down in the shanties by the post road are about the only light-complected ones in this neighborhood. Somehow, we run mostly to plain brown. Senator Allen has two girls, but they're only home from a boardin' school for vacation. How do you like your place?"
"Very much," I assured her. "Only, I do not know a great deal about it, yet. Its history, I mean. Are there any interesting stories about the house? You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghoststory to tell our friends when they come to visit us."
She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered rocking-chair, arms folded on her meagre breast.
"Guess you'll have to make one up! I never heard of none. The Michell family always owned it—and they were so stiff respectable an' upright everyone was scared of 'em! Most of the men were clergymen in their time. The last, Reverend Cotton Mather Michell, went abroad to foreign parts for missionary work with the heathen, twenty-odd years ago; an' died there. He never married, so the family's run out. The Michells were awful hard on women; called 'em vessels of wrath an' beguilers of Adam. Preached it right out of the pulpit—so I guess no girl in these parts could have been hired to wed with him, if he'd wanted. His mother died when he was born, so he'd had no softenin' influence. After news came of his death, the house was shut up 'till you bought it. My, how you've changed it, already! I'd admire to go through it."
When I had invited her to call on Phillida and inspect our domicile, and paid due thanks for information received, she followed me out to the car.
"All this land 'round here is old and full ofIndian relics," she remarked. "Over to the Sound where the swamps used to be, there was lots of fightin' with savages. An' they say a witch was stoned to death where the Catholic convent stands now, on the road up above your place. So I guess you can figure out a story to tell your company, if you like."
"A convent?" I repeated, my attention caught by a new possibility. "Do they, perhaps, have visitors there, ladies in retreat for a time, as convents often do abroad?"
Mrs. Hill laughed, shaking her tightly-combed head.
"No hope of your girl there," she chuckled. "They're the strictest sisterhood in America, folks say. Poor Clares, I think they're called. No one, not even their relations, ever see their faces after they join. They're not allowed to talk to each other, even. Just stay in their cells, an' pray, even in the middle of the night, an' shave their heads an' live on a few vegetables an' dry bread."
I laughed with her. Certainly no convent would harbor my lady of marvelous tresses and magical perfume, of wild fancies and heretical theories. Thatthought of mine was indeed far afield. But where, then, was I next to seek?
I made a detour and used some strategy to gain a view of the Senator's daughters. They proved to be brunettes who wore their locks cropped after the fashion of certain Greenwich villagers. My disappointment was not great; my lady was not suggestive of a boarding-school miss. But I had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bronze head whose royalty of hair I had shorn as the traitors shore King Childeric's Gothic locks.
I drove home with a sense of blankness upon me. Suppose she never came again? Suppose the episode was ended? Not even freedom from the Thing could compensate for the baffled adventure.
Think of the lame feller with an Adventure!
"Plato expresses four kinds of Mania—Firstly, the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to Love."—Preface to Zanoni.
"Plato expresses four kinds of Mania—Firstly, the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to Love."—Preface to Zanoni.
For myself, I have always found that excitement stimulates imagination. There are others, I know, who can do no creative work except when all within and without is lulled and calm. Perhaps I have too much calm as an ordinary thing! That evening, when I went to my room, lighted my lamps and closed my door, I stood alone for awhile breathing the mingled sweetness of the country air and the pomander ball. In that interval, there came to me, complete and whole as a gift thrust into my hand, the melody which an enthusiastic publisher since assured me has reached every ear in America.
As to that extravagant statement, I can only measure by the preposterous amount of money the melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic about it. For myself, I cannot hear it—ground on a street-organ, given on the stage, played on a phonograph record or delicately rendered by an orchestra—without feeling again the exaltation and enchantment of that night.
I flung myself down at my writing-table, tossing my former work right and left to make room for this. If it should escape before I could set it down! If the least of those airy cadences should be lost!
At three o'clock in the morning I came back to realization of time and place. The composition was finished; it stood up before me like a flower raised over-night. Eight hours had passed since I sat down to the work, after dinner. I was tired. As I began to draw into a pile the sheets of paper I had covered with notes, weariness gripped me like a hand.
Eight hours? If I had shoveled in a ditch twice that long I could have felt no more exhausted. Yielding to drained fatigue of mind and body, I dropped my head upon the arms I folded upon the table. My hot, strained eyes closed with relief, my stiff fingers relaxed. Rest and content flowed over me; my work was done, and good.
Rest passed into sleep, no doubt.
The sleep could not have been long, for not many hours remained before dawn. When I started awake and lifted my head, I found the room in darkness.A perfume was in the air, and the sense of a presence scarcely more tangible than the perfume. Even in the first dazed moment, I knew my lady had come again.
"Do not rise!" her murmuring voice cautioned me. "Unless you wish me to go?"
"No!"
"I am here because I promised to come. It was not wise of you to ask that of me."
"Then I prefer folly to wisdom," I answered, steadying myself to full wakefulness. "Or, rather, I am not sure that you can decide for me which is which!"
"Why? After all, why? Just—curiosity?"
"You, who speak so learnedly of magic and sorcery," I retorted, smiling under cover of the darkness, "have you never heard of the white magic conjured by a tress of hair, a perfume ball, and a voice sweeter than the perfume? An image of wax does not melt before a witch's fire so easily as a man before these things."
"My hair pleased you?" she questioned naïvely.
"Or so easily as a woman melts before admiration!" I supplemented. "I am delighted to proveyou human, mystic lady. Please me? Could anyone fail to be pleased with that most magnificent braid? But how can either you or I forgive the cruelty that took it from its owner? Why did you cut it off?"
"So little of it! And I did not know you, then."
"Little? That braid?"
"It reached below my knee, now it is but little less," she answered with indifference. "We all have such hair."
I gasped. My imagination painted the picture of all that shining richness enwrapping a slim young body. It was fantastic beyond belief to sit there at my desk, beneath my fingers the tools of sober, workaday life, and stare into the dark room that held the reality of my vision. She was there, but I could not rise and find her. She was opposite my eyes, but my promise forbade me to touch the lamp and see her.
"Who are 'we'?" I slowly followed her last sentence.
A sigh answered me. On the silence, a memory floated to me of the story she had told while I held her prisoner that first night:
"The woman sits in her low chair.The fire-shine is bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either side, her hair flows down to the floor."
Yes, by legend young witches had such hair; sylphs, undines and all of the airy race of Lilith. I thrust absurdities away from me and offered a quotation to fill the pause:
"'I met a lady in the meads''Full beautiful; a faery's child.''Her hair was long, her foot was light,''And her eyes were wild.'"
"'I met a lady in the meads''Full beautiful; a faery's child.''Her hair was long, her foot was light,''And her eyes were wild.'"
"'I met a lady in the meads''Full beautiful; a faery's child.''Her hair was long, her foot was light,''And her eyes were wild.'"
She did not laugh, or put away the suggestion. When I had decided that she did not mean to reply, and was seeking my mind for new speech to detain her with me, she finally spoke what seemed another quotation:
"'A spirit—one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom Josephus and Michael Psellus of Constantinople may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more.' Have you read the writings of the learned Jew or of the Platonist, you who are so very bold?"
"Neither," I meekly admitted. "But neither ancient gentleman could convince me that you are unhuman."
Her answer was just audible:
"Not I—but, It!"
Now I was silenced, for dreadful and uncanny was that whisper in the dark to a man who had met here in this room What I had met.
"Tell me more of this Thing without a name," I urged, mastering my reluctance to evoke even the idea of what the blood curdled to recall. "Why does It hate me?"
"What can I tell you? Even in your world, does not evil hate good as naturally as good recoils from evil? But this One has another cause also!" She hesitated. "And you yourself? How have you challenged and mocked It this very night? Here, where It glooms, you have dared bring the high joy of the artist who creates? Oh, brave, brave!—he who could await alone the visit of the Unspeakable, in the chamber into which the Loathsome Eyes have looked, and write the music of hope and beauty!"
I started, with a hot rush of surprise and pleasure. She had heard my work. She approved it. Morethan that, not to her was I the lame fellow who ought to get a better man to drive his car!
"Nor should you, who have two worlds of your own," she added in a lower tone, "doubt the existence of many both dark and bright. Go, then, out of this haunted place where a human madness broke through the Barrier. Be satisfied with the victories you have had. Let the visits of the Dark One fade into mere nightmare; and know I am no more a living woman than Franchina Descartes."
"Who was she?"
"Have you not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared in Paris the philosopher Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a beautiful woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself; but Descartes declared she was an automaton, a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had made. Yet many refused to believe his story, declaring he had by sorcery compelled a spirit to serve him in this form. He called her Franchina, his daughter."
"And the truth?"
"I have told you all the record tells. She was soon lost. Descartes took her with him upon a journey by sea; when, a storm arising, the superstitiouscaptain of the vessel threw the magic beauty into the Mediterranean."
"Thank you. But, are you fairy or automaton?"
"Do not laugh," she exclaimed with sudden passion. "You know I would say that I have no part in the world of men and women. Not through me shall the ancient dread seize a new life. A little time, now, then the doors will close upon me as the sea closed over Franchina. I will not take with me the memory of a wrong done to you. I shall never come to this house after tonight. If you would give me a happiness, promise me you will leave, too."
I had known we should come to this point. After a moment, I spoke as quietly as I could:
"Tell me your name."
She had not expected that question. I think she might have withheld the answer, given time to reflect. But as it was, she replied docilely as a bidden child:
"Desire Michell."
The name fell quaintly on both hearing and fancy, with a rustle of early New England tradition. Desire! I repeated it inwardly with satisfaction before I answered her.
"Thank you. Now, I, Roger Locke, do promise you, Desire Michell, that I will not leave this house until these matters are plainer to my understanding, whether you go or stay. But if you go and come no more, then I surely shall stay until I find a way to trace you or until the Thing kills me."
"No!"
"Yes."
There was a pause. Then, to my utter dismay, I heard her sobbing through the dark.
"Why do you tempt me?" she reproached. "Is it not hard enough, my duty? For me it is such pleasure to be here—to leave for a while the loneliness and chill of my narrow place! But you, so rich in all things, free and happy—how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark speaks or is silent? Let me go."
Wonder and exulting sense of power filled me.
"I can keep you, then?" I asked.
"I am—so weak."
"Desire Michell, I am as alone as you can be, in my real life. I have gone apart from much that occupies men and women; gaining and losing in different ways. One of the gains is freedom to disposeof myself without grief or loss to anyone, except the perfunctory regret of friends. Will you believe there is no risk that I would not take for a few hours with you? Even with your voice in the dark? Come to me as you can, let us take what time we may, and the chances be mine."
"But that is folly! You do not know. To protect you I must go."
"I refuse the protection. Stay! If there is sorrow in knowing you, I accept it. I understand nothing. I only beg you not to turn me back to the commonplace emptiness of life before I found you. Indeed, I will not be sent away."
"If I yield, you will reproach me some day."
"Never."
"It could only be like this—that we should speak a few times before the gates close upon me."
"What gates?"
"I cannot tell you."
"Very well," I took what the moment would grant me. "That is a bargain. Yet, what safety lies in secrecy between us? If we are to help each other, as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You will tell me no more about yourself? Very well. Tellme something more about the enemy in the dark whom I am to meet. You have hinted that It has a special motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere malignance toward mankind. What is that motive?"
"Ask me not," she faintly refused me.
"I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned is a heavy drawback in this combat. Arm me with a little understanding. What moves It against me?"
The pause following was filled with a sense of difficulty and recoil, her struggle against some terrible reluctance. So painful was that effort, somehow clearly communicated to me, that I was about to devour my curiosity and withdraw the question when her whisper just reached my hearing:
"Jealousy!"
"Jealousy? Of what? For whom?"
"For—me."
The monstrous implication sank slowly into my understanding; then brought me erect, gripping the edge of the table lest I forget restraint and move toward her.
"By what right?" I cried. "By what claim?Desire Michell, what has the Horror to do with you?"
The vehemence and heat of my cry struck a shock through the hushed room distinct as the shattering of crystal. There was no answer, no movement; no rebuke of my movement. I was alone. With that confession she had fled.
My cry had been louder than I knew. Presently I heard a door open. Steps sounded along the hall from the rooms on the opposite side of the house. Someone knocked hesitatingly.
"Are you all right, Mr. Locke?" Vere's voice came through the panels.
I crossed to the door and opened it. He stood at the threshold, an electric torch in his hand.
"We thought you called," he apologized. "I thought maybe you were sick, or wanted something; and no light showed around your door."
I found the wall switch and turned on the lamps. As on the last occasion, she had switched the lights off there, beyond my reach unless I broke my promise not to move about the room while she remained my guest.
"Come in," I invited him. "Much obliged to youand Phillida for looking me up! I had been working late and dropped asleep in my chair, with a nightmare as the result."
It was pleasant to have his normal presence, prosaic in bathrobe and pajamas, in my cheerfully lighted room. His dark eyes glanced toward the music-scrawled papers scattered about, then returned to meet my eyes smilingly.
"We heard some of that work," he admitted. "Phil and I—well, I guess we were guilty of sitting on the stairs to hear you play it over. I never listened to a tune that took hold of me, kind of, like that one. We'd certainly prize hearing all of it together, sometime, if you didn't mind."
The warmth of achievement flowed again in me. I crossed to the piano to assemble the finished sheets, answering him with one of those expressions of thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward vanity. I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me back to the reality of my own world.
Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in small, square script quaint as the pomander, was written a quotation strange to me:
"We walk upon the shadows of hills across a level thrown, and pant like climbers."
I did not know that I had read the words aloud until Vere answered them.
"So we do! I guess there is more panting over shadows and less real mountain-climbing done by us humans than most folks would believe. Most roads turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills we make such a fuss about. Who wrote that, Mr. Locke?"
"I don't know," I replied vaguely, intent upon Desire Michell's meaning in leaving this to me.
He nodded, and turned leisurely to go.
"Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote that piece tonight," he observed diffidently. "As if trouble did not amount to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil, now. She might be anxious."
Could that be what Desire had meant me to understand? Was there indeed some quality of courage——?
That is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money and popularity went to the publisher under the title, "Shadows of Hills."Of course no one connected the allusion. The general interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first printing: a sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe containing two young persons. I was well pleased to have it so.
But—in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose shadow I panted and strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain itself?
I did not know. I do not know, now.