"If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be understood of the Other World."—Oneirocritica Achmetis.
"If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be understood of the Other World."—Oneirocritica Achmetis.
In the morning I drove down to New York. There were affairs demanding attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night work into the hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the manuscript out of reach of the Thing at the house. Without reason, I had awakened with that instinct strong within me.
The atmosphere of the city was tonic. Merely driving through the friendly, crowded streets was an exhilaration. The practical employment of the day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In the evening I turned toward Connecticut with a feeling of leaving home behind me. But I would not stay away from the house for a night, risking that Desire Michell might come and find me missing. She might believe I had been seized by cowardice and deserted. She might never return.
I will not deny that I had lied to her. There was no intention in me of accepting her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give. I meant to snatch her out of darkness and mystery, to set her in the wholesome sunlight where Phillida flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates of which she vaguely spoke never should close between us. But it was plain that I must tread warily. Once frightened away, how could she be found? Her home, her history, even her face, were unknown to me. Tracing her by a perfume and a tress of hair had been tried, and failed. Of her connection with the Dark Thing I refused to think too deeply. Her connection with me must come first.
It was not until I passed the cottage of Mrs. Hill, glimmering whitely in the starlight, where the road made an angle toward the farm, that I recalled our talk in her "best room."
"The Michell family always owned it. The Reverend Cotton Mather Michell went to foreign parts for missionary work twenty years ago and died there——"
My lady of the night was Desire Michell. A clue?
"He never married, so the family's run out."
It was damp here in the hollow where the road dipped down. A chill ran coldly over me.
Arrived at the garage which had taken the place of our tumble-down barn, I put the car away as quietly as possible. Ten o'clock had struck as I passed through the last village, and our household was asleep. Moving without unnecessary noise, I crossed to the house. Bagheera, the cat, padded across the porch to meet me and rubbed himself around my legs while I stooped to put the latch-key in the lock.
As the key slid in place, I heard the waterfall over the dam abruptly change the sound of its flow, swelling and accelerating as when a gust of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the brink. But there was no wind. Immediately followed that sound from the lake which I can liken to nothing better than the smack of huge lips unclosing, or the suck of a thick body drawing itself from a bed of mud. The cat thrust himself violently between my feet and pressed against the house-door uttering a whimpering mew of urgency. Startled, I looked in the direction of the lake.
At this distance it showed as a mere expanse ofdarkness, only the reflection of a star here and there revealing the surface as water. What else could be shown, I rebuked my nerves by querying of them; and turned the key. Bagheera rushed into the hall when the door opened wide enough to admit his body. I followed more sedately and closed the door behind us both.
Now I was not acquainted with Bagheera's night privileges. Did Phillida allow him in the house, or not? After an instant's consideration, I bent and picked him up from his repose on the hall rug. He should spend the night shut in with me, out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the curve of my arm, he was carried upstairs without objection on his part. Until we reached my room! On its threshold I felt his body stiffen; his yellow eyes snapped open alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place, I reflected, amused, as I switched on the lights.
"All right, Bagheera," I spoke soothingly, and put him upon the rug.
He bounded erect, fur bristling, tail lashing from side to side after the fashion of a miniature panther. When I stooped to stroke him, he eluded my hand. In a gliding run, body crouched, ears flattened, hesped toward the doorway, was through it and gone.
Well, I decided, he could not be pursued all through the house. It would be easier to explain him to Phillida next morning. I was tired; pleasantly tired. The day had been filled with the enthusiasm and congratulations of my associates, with conferences and plans for launching the new music via theatres and advertising. It ought to "go big," they assured me. In my optimism of mood, I wondered if I had not already driven off the Dark Thing, since the girl had come to me the night past without It appearing before or afterward. Perhaps, woman-timid, she exaggerated the danger and It had retreated after the second failure to overpower me.
I fell asleep with a tranquil conviction that nothing would disturb my rest this night.
Stillness enveloped me, absolute, desolate. Silence contained me. Yet the thought of another scorched against my understanding in a burning communication of intelligence.
"Man," It commanded, "I am here. Fear!"
And I knew that which was my body did fear tothe point of death, but that which was myself stood up in revolt.
"Crouch," It bade. "Crouch, pygmy, and beg. Fear! The blood crawls in the veins, the heart checks, the nerves shrink and wither—man, your life wanes thin and faint. Down—shall your race affront mine?"
My heart did stagger and beat slow. Life crept a sluggish current. But there was another force that stiffened to resistance, and gathered itself to compact strength within me.
"No," my thought refused the dark intelligence. "I am not yours. Command your own, not me."
"Weakling, you have touched that which is mine. Into my path you have dared step. Back—for in my breath you die!"
The air my lungs drew in was foul and poisonous. With more and more difficulty my heart labored. Confused memories came to me of men found dead in their beds in haunted rooms. Would morning find me so? Better that way than to yield to the Thing! Better——
I struggled erect; or fancied so.
Now I saw myself as one who stood with foldedarms fronting a breach in a colossal wall. Huge, immeasurably huge that cliff reared itself beyond the sight and ranged away on either side into unknown distances, dully glistening like gray ice, unbroken save in this place. The gray strand on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall. Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked over with an all-concealing mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my danger was not of the common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when he draws near the supernatural; the ancient fear.
I stood there, while sweat poured painfully from me, and fronted my enemy who pressed me hard.
The Thing was at the breach, couched in the great cleft that split the Barrier, darkness within darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of Its hate beat upon me. From It emanated deathly cold, like the nearness of an iceberg in the night, with an odor of damp and mold.
"Puny earth-dweller, lost here," Its menace breathed, "what keeps you from destruction? For you the circle has not been traced nor the pentagramfixed, for you no law has been thrust down. Trespass is death. Die, then."
Only my will held It from me, and I felt that will reel in sickened bewilderment. I had no strength to answer, only the steadfast instinct to oppose.
The Thing did not pass. There in the breach It ravened for me, thrust Itself toward me, pressed against the thin veil of separation between us. I saw nothing, yet knew where It raised Itself, gigantic in formlessness more dreadful than any shape. Its whispered threats broke against me like an evil surf.
"Man, the prey is mine. Would you challenge me? The woman is mine by the pact of centuries. Save yourself. Escape."
The woman? Startled wonder filled me. Was I then fighting for Desire Michell?
Out of the air I was answered as if her voice had spoken; certainty came to grip me as if with her small hands. She had no help but in me. If I fell, she fell. If I stood firm——? Exultant resolve flared strong and high within me. My will to protect leaped forward.
The Thing shrank. It dwindled back throughthe gap in the Barrier. But as It fled, a last venomous message drifted to me:
"Again! And again! Tire but once, pygmy——!"
I was sitting up in bed in my lighted room, my fingers clutching the chain of the lamp beside me. Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond my window? Or was I still dreaming?
I was trembling with cold, drenched as with water so that my relaxing hand made a wet mark on the table beneath the lamp. This much might have been caused by nightmare. But what sane man had nightmares like these?
When I was able, I rose, changed to dry garments and wrapped myself in a heavy bathrobe. There was an electric coffee service in my room kept for occasions when I worked late into the night. I made strong black coffee now and drank it as near boiling as practicable. Presently the blood again moved warmly in my veins.
Then I knew that the chill in the room was not a delusion of my chilled body. I was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike asummer night. It seemed air strangely thickened and soiled, as pure water may be muddied by the passage of some unclean body. In this atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mold and decay, warring with the homely scent of coffee and the fragrance of the pomander beneath my pillow.
I was more shaken, more exhausted by this encounter with the unknown than by either of my former experiences. A fact which drove home the grim farewell of my enemy!Tire but once, pygmy——!Desire herself had foretold that the dark Thing would wear me down.
Well, perhaps! But not without fighting for Its victory. At least I would be no supine victim. Already I had forced my way—where? Where was that Barrier before which I had stood? Awe sank coldly through me at memory of that colossal land where I was pygmy indeed, an insolent human intruder upon the unhuman. What other shapes of dread stalked and watched beyond that titanic wall? By what swollen conceit could I hope to win against Them?
I would not consider escape by flight, even if the end had been certain destruction. But my head sankto my hands beneath the weight of a profound depression and discouragement.
It was the hour before dawn, traditionally the worst for man. The hour superstition sets apart for its own, when the life flame burns lowest. At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature, and bayed monotonously.
There was a weakness at the core of my strength. I waged this combat for the sake of Desire Michell.But what was she to whom the Thing laid claim by the pact of centuries?
Darkness began to tinge with light. Pale gray filtered into the dusk with grudging slowness. As day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the house in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls like thin smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim. I forced away my languor, rose and walked to the nearest window.
Something was moving up the slope from the lake; a dim shape about which the fog clung in steamy billows. My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly. What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom so tall?
A moment later the figure was near enough tobe distinguished as Ethan Vere, bearing several long fishing-rods over his shoulder.
"Vere!" I hailed him, with mingled relief and utter disgust with myself. "Anything going on so early?"
He looked up at me—I never saw Vere startled—and came on to stop beneath the window. Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his black curls, pushing their wetness from his forehead. I noticed how the mists painted him with a spectral pallor.
"Good morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted me. "Just as I've been thinking, there are some big snapping-turtles about the lake and creek. I guessed there'd be some war between them and me before that water was safe for use! One of the fellows dragged a duck under, drowned it and started feeding right before my eyes, just now."
"We will have to get a canoe."
He nodded placid assent.
"That'll look pretty on the lake. Phillida will like it. But I guess I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out of sight around some corner for work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs like mine, and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetchmy rifle, now. I'd admire to blow that duck-eater's ugly head off."
"I will get into some clothes and be right with you," I invited myself to the hunt.
"I'd like to have you," he replied with his quaint politeness. There were times when I could visualize Vere's New England mother as if I had known her.
The human interlude had been enough to dispel the black humors of the night. When I was ready to go out, I opened the drawer that held the copper-bronze braid and took it into my hand. How vital with youth its crisp resilience felt in my clasp, I thought; young, too, were its luxuriance and shining color. Nonsense, indeed, to fancy ghostliness here or the passing of musty centuries over the head that had worn this tress! A flood of reassurance rose high in me. Whatever the Thing might be, I would trust the girl Desire Michell. Yes, and for her I would stand fast at that Barrier until victory declared for the enemy or for me. Until It passed me, It should not reach her.
I went downstairs to join Vere. The brightening mist was cool and fresh. There was neither horror nor defeat in the promise of the morning.
"In vain I called on Rest to come and stay.We were but seated at the festivalOf many covers, when One cried: 'Away!'"—Rose Garden of Sa'adi.
"In vain I called on Rest to come and stay.We were but seated at the festivalOf many covers, when One cried: 'Away!'"—Rose Garden of Sa'adi.
Now I entered a time of experiences differing at every point, yet interwoven closely, so that my days might compare to a rope whose strands are of violently contrasted colors. The rope would be inharmonious, startling to the eye, but strong to bind and hold. As I was bound and held!
All day I lived in the wholesome household atmosphere evoked by Vere and Phillida. It is impossible to describe the sunny charm they created about the commonplace. Our gay, simple breakfasts where Phillida presided in crisp middy blouse or flowered smock; where the gray cat sat on the arm of Vere's chair, speculative yellow eye observant of his master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina served us her good food with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood events—how perfect a beginning for the day! How stalebeside our breeze-swept table was any board at which I had ever sat! I do declare that I have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my little cousin whom her world had pronounced "plain." Vere and I basked in her sunbeams gratefully.
Afterward, we each had our work. Of the three, Vere was the most industrious; slow, steady and unsparing of himself to a degree that accomplished surprising results. Phillida flitted over the place indoors and out, managing the house, following Vere about, driving to village or town with me on purchasing trips for our supplies. I did rather more of my own work than usual, that summer, and consequently had more of the commercial side to employ me.
A healthy, normal life? Yes—until the hours between midnight and dawn.
I never knew when I laid down at night whether I should sleep until sun and morning overlay the countryside; whether the whispering call of Desire Michell would summon me to an hour more exquisite than reality, less satisfying than a dream, or whether I should leap into consciousness of the Loathsome Eyes fixed coldly malignant upon me while myenemy's inhuman hate groped toward me across the darkness Its presence fouled.
For my two guests kept their promises.
If I speak briefly of the coming of the Thing during this time, I do so because the mind shrinks from past pain. It came again, and again. It craftily used the torture of irregularity in Its coming. For days there might be a respite, then It would haunt me nights in succession until my physical endurance was almost spent.
I have stood before the breach in that Barrier, fighting that nightmare duel, until the place of colossal desolation, last frontier the human race might hope to keep, became as well known to me as a landscape on earth. Yet the effect of the Thing's assaults upon me never lessened. On the contrary, the horror gained in strength. A dreadful familiarity grew between It and me. Communication flowed more readily between us with use. I will not set down, perhaps I dare not set down the intolerable wickedness of Its alternate menaces and offered bribes. Contact with Its intelligence poisoned.
There were nights when It was dumb, when all Its monstrous power concentrated and bore upon me,Its will to destroy locked with my will. My victory was that I lived.
In the shadow, Desire Michell and I drew closer to one another.
How can I tell of a love that grew without sight? So much of the love of romance and history is a matter of flower-petal complexions, heart-consuming eyes, satin lips, and all the form and color that make beauty. How can I make clear a love that grew strong and passionately demanding, knew delicate coquetries of advance and evasion, intimacy of minds like the meeting of eyes in understanding—all in the dark? The blind might comprehend. But the blind have a physical communication we had not; touch has enchantments of its own.
Every night, near midnight, I switched off the lights and waited in the chair at my writing-table, where I was accustomed to work. If she had not come by two o'clock, I learned to know she would not visit me that night. I might sleep in that certainty. A strange tryst I kept there in the dark; listening to the flow of the waterfall from the lake, loud in that dead hour's stillness, or hearing the soft,incessant sounds of insect life awake in trees and fields. If she came—a drift of perfume, a movement slight as a curtain stirred by the wind, then an hour with such a companion as the ancient magician might have drawn out of the air to his nine mystic lamps.
Strange, fantastic tales she told me, spun of fancies luminous and frail as threads of glass. She could not speak without betraying her deep learning in sciences rejected and forgotten by the modern world. Alchemy, astrology, geomancy furnished her speech with allusions blank to my ignorance; which she most gently and politely enlightened when I confessed. I learned that the Green Lion of Paracelsus was not a beast, but a recipe for making gold; that Salamandar's Feather was better known today as asbestos; and that the Emerald Table was by no means an article of furniture. I give these examples merely by way of illustration.
On the other side of the shield held between us, I soon discovered that she knew no more of modern city life than a well-taught child who has never left home. She listened eagerly to accounts of theatres and restaurants. The history of Phillida and EthanVere seemed to her more moving and wonderful than any story she could tell me. I was amazed and humbled to find that she rated my ability to make music as a lofty art among the occult sciences.
Of the evil Thing that haunted me, we came to say little. To press her with questions meant to end her visit, I found by experience. When I spoke of that strand between the Barrier and the gray mist-hidden sea, her passion of distress closed all intercourse with the plea that I go away at once, while escape was possible, while life remained mine. So for the most part I curbed my tongue and my consuming curiosity; not from consideration, but of necessity.
One night I asked her how the dark Thing spoke to me, by what medium of communication.
"Spirits of all orders can speak to man in every language, so long as they are face to face," she answered, with a faint surprise at my lack of knowledge. "'When they turn to man, they come into use of his language and no longer remember their own, but as soon as they turn from man they resume their own language, and forget his.'
"But they themselves are unaware of this fact,for they utter thought to thought by direct intelligence. So if angel or demon turns his back to you, Roger, you may not make him hear you though you call with great force."
"How do you know that, Desire?"
"But by simple reading! Do not Ennemoser and many writers record it?"
"Have you spoken to such beings, Desire?"
The question was rash, but it escaped me before I could check the impulse. To my relief, she answered without resentment:
"No."
"No? The Thing—the enemy that comes to me has never spoken to you?"
"No."
I was silent in amazement and incredulity. The dark creature claimed her, she declared herself helpless to escape from that dominion into normal life, and yet It never had spoken to her? It spoke to me, a stranger most ignorant, and not to the seeress who was familiar with Its existence and the lore which linked humanity to Its fearful kind?
"You do not believe me," her voice came quietly across my thoughts.
"I believe you, of course," I stammered. "I was only—astonished. You have described It, and the Barrier, so often; from the first night——! I supposed you had seen all I have, and more."
"All you have seen? Now tell me with what eyes you have seen the Barrier and the Far Frontier? The eyes of the body, or that vision by which man sees in a dream and which is to the sight as the speech of spirits is to the hearing?"
"I suppose—with the inner sight."
"Then understand me when I say that I have seen with the eyes of another, by a sight not mine and yet my own."
"You mean," I floundered in vague doubts and jealousy of her human associations of which I knew nothing. "You mean—hypnotism?"
She laughed with half-sad raillery.
"How shall I answer you, Roger? Once upon a time, the jewel called beryl was thought unrivaled as a mirror into which a magician might look to see reflected events taking place at a distance, or reflections of the future. But by and by magicians grew wiser. They found any crystal would serve as well as a beryl. Later still, they found a little waterpoured in a basin or held in the hollow of the hand showed as true a fantasm. So one wrote: 'There is neither crystallomancy nor hydromancy, but the magick is in the Seer himself.'"
"Well, Desire?"
"Well, Roger—if to see with the sight of another is hypnotism, then every man who writes a book or tells a good tale is a hypnotist; every historian who makes us see the past is a necromancer."
"You read of the Thing——?"
"No," she replied, after a long pause. "I knew It through sympathy with one who died as I would not have you to die, my friend Roger, of whom I shall think long in that place to which I go presently. Question me no more. When the time comes for you to throw a certain braid of hair and a pomander into the fire——"
"I will never do that!"
"No? Well, you might keep the pomander, which is pure gold engraved with ancient signs and the name of the Shining Dawn, Dahana, in Sanskrit characters. Also the perfume it contains is precious, being blent with the herb vervain which is powerful against evil spirits."
"It is not the pomander that I should keep, nor the pomander that holds the powerful spell."
"You—value the braid so much?"
"I value only one other beauty as highly."
"Yes, Roger?"
"Yes, Desire. And that beauty is she who wore the braid."
Now the darkness in the room was dense. Yet I thought I sensed a movement toward me as airy as the flutter of a bird's wing. The fragrance in the atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her passing. But when I spoke to her again, after a moment's waiting, she had gone.
I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in her ideas of neatness than my little Cousin Phillida, and no maid more exact in carrying out orders than Cristina. Nevertheless, automobiles pass on the quietest roads, and my windows are always wide open. There is the fireplace, too, with possibilities of soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust overlaying the writing-table on the following morning. And in the dust was a print as if a small hand had rested there, a yard from my chair.
A slim hand it must have been. I judged thepalm had been daintily cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd size of the whole affair. My hand covered it without brushing an outline.
I could not put this souvenir away with the braid and the pomander. But I could put its evidence with their witness of Desire Michell's reality.
"For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses being dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?" whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?" —King James' "Demonology."
"For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses being dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?" whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?" —King James' "Demonology."
Now I have to record how I walked into the oldest snare in the world.
Perhaps it was the sense of her near presence brought home to me by her hand-print on the table so close to where my hand rested; perhaps it was her speech of presently leaving me to return no more. Or perhaps both these joined in urging on my determination to learn more of Desire Michell before some unknown bar fell between us. I only know that I passed into a mood of trapped exasperation at my helplessness and lack of knowledge. It seemed imperative that I should act to save us both, act soon and surely; yet inaction was bound upon me by my ignorance. Who was she? Where did she live? What bond held her subject to the Thing from the Barrier? What gates were to close between us? Why could she not put her hand in mine, anynight, and let me take her away from this haunted place? Why, at least, not come to me in the light, and let me see her face to face? I was a man groping in a labyrinth while outside something precious to him is being stolen.
For the first time I found myself unable to work, unable to share our household life with Phillida and Vere, or to find relaxation in driving about the countryside. Anger against Desire herself stirred at the bottom of my mind; Desire, who hampered me by the word of honor in which she had netted me so securely.
It was then that my enemy from the unknown places began to whisper of the book.
I encountered that enemy in a new mood. We did not meet at the breach in the mighty wall, confronted in death conflict between Its will and mine. Instead, night after night It crept to my window as at our first meeting. I started awake to find Its awful presence blackening the starlight where It crouched opposite me, Its intelligence breathing against mine. As always, my human organism shrank from Its unhuman neighborhood. Chill and repugnance shook my body, while that part of mewhich was not body battled against nightmare paralysis of horror. But now It did not menace or strive against me. It displayed a dreadful suavity I might liken to the coiling and uncoiling of those great snakes who are reported to mesmerize their prey by looping movements and figures melting from change to change in the Hunger Dance of Kaa.
There was a book that held all I longed to know, It whispered to me. A book telling of the woman! She did not wish me to read, for fear I should grow overwise and make her mine. The book was here, in my house. I might arise and find—if I would be guided by It——!
I thrust the whispers away. How could I trust my enemy? If such a book existed, which seemed improbable, there was a taint of disloyalty to Desire in the thought of reading without her knowledge.
The Thing was not turned away. How could I do harm by learning what she was, unless she had evil to conceal? Did I fear to know the truth? As for the book's existence, I had only to accept guidance from It——?
I persisted in refusal. But the idea of the book followed me through my days like a wizard's familiardogging me. Where could such a volume be hidden, in what secret nook in wall or floor? How came a book to be written about the girl I supposed young, unknown and set apart from the world? Was I letting slip an opportunity by my fastidious notions of delicacy?
Indecision and curiosity tormented me beyond rest. Phillida and Vere began to consider me with puzzled eyes. Cristina developed a habit of cooking individual dishes of especial succulence and triumphantly setting them before me as a "surprise"; a kindness which of course obliged me to eat whether I was hungry or not. I suspect my little cousin abetted her in this transparent ruse. I pleaded the heat as an excuse for all. We were in late August now. Cicadas sang their dry chant in the fields, where the sun glared down upon Vere's crops and painted him the fine bronze of an Indian. Our lake scarcely stirred under the hot, still air.
It was after a day of such heat, succeeded by a night hardly more cool, that the lights in my room quietly went out. I was sitting at my table, some letters which required answers spread before me while I brooded, pen between my fingers, upon themystery which had become my life. For the moment I attributed the sudden failure of light to some accident at the powerhouse.
Not for long! The hateful cold that crept like freezing vapor into the room, the foul air of damp and corruption pouring into the scented country atmosphere, the frantic revolt of body and nerves—before I turned my eyes to the window I knew the monster from the Frontier crouched there.
"Weakling!" It taunted me. "Puny from of old, how should you prevail? By your fear, the woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in whose hand the weapon was laid and who shrinking let it fall unused, the end comes."
"The book?" I gasped, against my better judgment.
"The book was the weapon."
"No, or you would not have offered it to me."
"Coward, believe so. Hug the belief while you may. The offer is past."
Past? A madness of bafflement and frustrated curiosity gripped and shook me.
"I take the offer," I cried in passion and defiance. "If there is such a book, show it to me!"
The Thing was gone. Light quietly filled the lamps—or was it that I had opened my eyes? I gripped the arms of my chair, waiting. For what? I did not know. Only, all the horror I ever had felt in the presence of the Thing was slight compared to the fear that presently began to flow upon me as an icy current. There in the pleasantly lighted room, alone, I sank through depths of dread, down into an abyss of despair, down——
A long sigh of rising wind passed through the house like a sucked breath of triumph. Windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural abruptness. Absolute stillness succeeded. I felt a very slight shock, as if the ground at my feet was struck.
I fled from the terror for the first time. Yes, coward at last, deserter from that unseen Frontier's defense, I found myself in the hall outside my room, leaning sick and faint against the wall. Behind me the door shut violently, yet I felt no current of air to move it.
From the other side of the house there sounded the click of latch, then a patter of soft-shod feet.Phillida came hurrying down the hall toward me. She was wrapped in some silky pink-flowered garment. Her short hair stood out around her head like a little girl's well-brushed crop. She presented as endearingly natural a figure, I thought, as any man could seek or imagine. The wisdom of Ethan Vere who had garnered his love here!
"Cousin?" she exclaimed. "The hall light is so dim! You almost frightened me when I glimpsed you standing there. Did the wind wake you, too? I think we are going to have a thunder storm, it is so hot and gusty. I heard poor Bagheera mewing and scratching at the door, so I was just going down to let him in before the rain comes."
"Yes," I achieved. Then, finding my voice secure: "I will let in the cat. Where is Vere?"
"He did not wake up, so I tiptoed out. Why?"
"I do not like to have you going about the house alone at this hour."
Her eyes widened and she laughed outright.
"Why, Cousin Roger! What a funny idea to have about our very own house! I have one of the electric flashlights you bought for us all; see?"
What could I tell her of my vision of her womanlysoftness and timidity brought to bay by the Thing of horror, down in those empty lower rooms? How did I know It stalked no prey but me? Its clutch was upon Desire Michell. These were Its hours, between midnight and dawn.
"Tramps," I explained evasively. "Give me the light."
But she pattered down the stairs beside me, kimono lifted well above her pink-flowered slippers, one hand on the balustrade. The light glinted in the white topaz that guarded her wedding ring, a richer jewel than any diamond in the sight of one who knew the tender thought with which she had set it there. No! The horror was not for her, clothed in her wholesome goodness as in armor of proof. Surely for such as she the Barrier stood unbreached and strong.
When I opened the front door, Bagheera darted in like a hunted cat. A drift of mist entered with him. Looking out, I saw the night was heavy with a low-hanging fog that scarcely rose to the tree tops; a ground-mist that eddied in smoke-like waves of gray where our light fell upon it. Such mists were common here, yet I shivered and shut it out with relief.While I refastened the lock, Bagheera purred around my ankles, pressing caressingly against me as if thanking me after the manner of cats. I remembered this was not the first time he had shown this anxiety and gratitude for shelter.
"Bagheera does love you," Phillida commented, stooping to pat him. "Isn't it funny, though, that he never will go into your room? He is always petting around you downstairs. When Cristina or I are doing up your quarters, he will follow us right up to the door-sill, but we can't coax him inside. Perhaps he doesn't like that perfume you always have about."
A qualm ran through me, recalling the night I had taken the cat there by force and its frantic escape. But I snapped the key fast and straightened myself with sharp self-contempt. Had I fallen so low as to heed the caprices of a pet cat? Was it not enough that I had fled from my enemy after accepting the knowledge It had striven so long to force upon me?
For I had that knowledge. When I had halted in the passage outside my room, in the moment beforePhillida had joined me, there had been squarely set before my mental sight the place to seek the book.
"Phillida, there was a bookcase in this house when it was bought," I said. "I believe it stood in my room before the place was altered. A small stand; I remember putting my candle on its top the first night I slept here. Have you seen it?"
Some tone in my question seemed to touch her expression with surprise as she lifted her eyes to mine; or perhaps it was the hour I chose for the inquiry.
"Oh, yes," she answered readily. "I supposed you had noticed it long ago; I mean, where it stands. The quaintest bit, a genuine antique! And holding the stuffiest collection of old books, too! I believe they may be valuable, out-of-print, early editions. If," her voice faltered wistfully, "if Father ever forgives me for being happy with Ethan, and comes to visit us, he would love every musty old volume. Do you think Mother and he ever will, Cousin Roger?"
"I am sure they will, Phil. Feuds and tragic parents are out of date. They must adjust themselves gradually when they realize Vere is—himself.Before you go upstairs to him, will you tell me where to find that bookcase?"
"Now? Why, of course!"
She led me across the hall to her sewing room. I cannot say that she sewed there very much, but she had chosen that title in preference to boudoir or study as more becoming a housewife. She had assembled here a spinning-wheel from the attic, some samplers, a Hepplewhite sewing-table and chairs discovered about the house. Her canaries' cage hung above a great punch-bowl of flowered ware in which she kept gold-fish. A pipe of Vere's balanced beside the bowl showed that his masculine presence was not excluded.
In a corner stood the bookcase. Phillida pulled the chain of a lamp bright under a shade of peacock chintz, and watched me stoop to look at the faded bindings.
"Thank you, Phil," I said. "It may take some time to find the book I want. You had better hurry back to bed before Vere comes hunting for a missing wife."
"Are you going to stay and hunt for the book tonight, then?"
"Unless you are afraid I shall disturb your canaries?"
She did not laugh. Drawing nearer, she stroked my sleeve with a caressing doubt and remonstrance.
"But you have not been to bed at all, and soon it will be morning! Do you have to write your lovely music at night, Cousin Roger? You have been growing thin and tired, this summer. Are you quite well? You are so good that you should be happy, but—are you?"
"Good, Phil?" I wondered, touched. "Why, how did your lazy, tune-spinning, frivolous cousin get that reputation in this branch of the family?"
"You are so kind," she said simply. "Ethan says so. You know, Cousin Roger, that I was over-educated in my childhood; my brain choked with little, little stupid knowledge that hardly matters at all. We went to church Sundays because that was the correct thing to do. But I was almost a heathen when Ethan married me. He doesn't trouble about church. He doesn't trouble about the past, or life after death, or punishment for sin. He believes if one tries to be kind and straight, the big Kindness and Straightness takes care of everything. So I havelearned to feel that way, too. It is a—a calm sort of feeling all the time, if you know what I mean. And that is the way you are good, although perhaps you never thought of it."
"Thank you, Phillida," I acknowledged; and walked with her to the foot of the stairs.
When her pink-clad figure had vanished behind her bedroom door, I went back to the sewing room and drew up a chair before the case of books.
Phillida had not unreasonably stigmatized them as stuffy. They were a sober collection. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," an ancient copy of the Apocrypha, and a three-volume Life of Martin Luther loaded the first shelf. I looked at the second shelf and found it filled with the bound sermons of a divine of whom I had never heard.
The lowest shelf held strange companions for the sedate volumes above. Erudite works on theosophy, magic, the interpretation of dreams and demonology huddled together here. Not all of them were readable by my humble store of learning. There was a Latin copy of Artemidorus, Mesmer's "Shepherd," Mathew Paris, some volumes in Greek, and some I judged to be Arabian and Hebrew. At the end ofthe row stood a thin, dingy book whose title had passed out of legibility. I took it out and opened the covers.
Fronting the first page was a faded woodcut, the portrait of a woman. Beneath in old long-s type, dim on the yellowed paper, was printed the legend:
"Desire Michell, ye foulewitch."
Closing the book, I forced reason to come forward. I was resolved that panic should not drive me again nor my defense fall from within its walls. Master of my enemy I might never be; master of my own inner kingdom I must and should be. But I was glad to be here instead of upstairs while I read; glad of the interlude in Phillida's company, and of the presence of the three sleepy canaries who blinked down at the disturbing lamp.
The date stamped into the back of the book in Roman numerals was of a year in the seventeen hundreds. What connection could its Desire Michell have with the girl I knew? Perhaps she had adopted the name to mystify me. Or at most, she might be of the family of that unfortunate woman branded witch by a bigoted generation.
Reopening the book, I studied the dim, stiff portrait. The face was young, delicate of line, with long eyes set wide apart; eyes that even in this wretched picture kept a curious drowsy watchfulness. The inevitable white Puritan cap was worn, but curls clustered about the brow and two massive braids descended over either shoulder. The perfumed bronze-colored braid up in my drawer——?
The volume was entitled "Some Manifestations of Satan in Witchcraft in Ye Colonies," by Abimelech Fetherstone. Disregarding the satanic manifestations set forth in the other four chronicles, I turned to "Ye FouleWitch, Desire Michell."
As I began to read, another breath of wind sighed through the house, sucking windows and doors in and out with the shock of sound, instantly ended, that is produced by a distant explosion. I thought a flash of lightning whipped across my eyes. But when I glanced toward the windows I saw only the smoke-like fog banked in drifts against the panes.