"There are things against which ordinary protection would not suffice."
"There are things against which ordinary protection would not suffice."
"There are things against which ordinary protection would not suffice."
They had come to the head of the front stairs, leading down to the lobby of the theater. The others at table were chattering over a second cup of coffee, but I was straining my ears to hear what the judge and Varduk were saying.
"Arms? Yes, I've borne them," Pursuivant admitted. "Oddly enough, I'm armed now. Should you care to see?"
He lifted his malacca walking-stick in both hands, grasping its shank and the handle. A twist and a jerk, and it came apart, revealing a few inches of metal. Pursuivant drew forth, as from a sheath, a thin, gleaming blade.
"Sword-cane!" exclaimed Varduk admiringly. He bent for a closer look.
"And a singularly interesting one," elaborated Pursuivant. "Quite old, as you can see for yourself."
"Ah, so it is," agreed Varduk. "I fancy you had it put into the cane?"
"I did. Look at the inscription."
Varduk peered. "Yes, I can make it out, though it seems worn." He pursed his lips, then read aloud, very slowly: "Sic pereant omnes inimici tui, Domine.It sounds like Scripture."
"That's what it is, Mr. Varduk," Pursuivant was saying blandly. "The King James Version has it: 'So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord.' It's from Deborah's song—fifth chapter ofJudges."
Varduk was plainly intrigued. "A war-like text, I must say. What knight of the church chose it for his battle cry?"
"Many have chosen it," responded the judge. "Shall we go on?"
They walked down the stairs side by side, and so out of my sight and hearing.
When Varduk returned he called us at once to rehearsal. He was as alert as he had been the night before, but much harder to please. Indeed, he criticized speeches and bits of stage business that had won his high praise at the earlier rehearsal, and several times he called for repetitions and new interpretations. He also announced that at the third rehearsal, due the next day, he would take away our scripts.
"You are all accomplished actors," he amplified. "You need nothing to refresh good memories."
"I'd like to keep my book," begged Martha Vining, but Varduk smiled and shook his head.
"You'll be better without," he said definitely.
When we approached the climactic scene, with Swithin's attempt to kill Ruthven and Mary's attempted sacrifice, Varduk did not insist on stage business; in fact, he asked us flatly to speak our lines without so much as moving from our places. If this was to calm us after the frightening events of the night before, it did not succeed. Everyone there remembered the accidental sword-thrust, and Varduk's seeming invulnerability; it was as though their thoughts were doleful spoken words.
Rehearsal over—again without the final line by Ruthven—Varduk bade us a courteous good-night and, as before, walked out first with Sigrid and Martha Vining. I followed with Jake, but at the threshold I touched his arm.
"Come with me," I muttered, and turned toward the front of the lodge.
Varduk and the two women had gone out of sight around the rear of the building. Nobody challenged us as we walked silently in the direction of the road, but I had a sensation as of horrors all around me, inadequately bound back with strands that might snap at any moment.
"What's it about, Gib?" asked Jake once, but at that moment I saw what I had somehow expected and feared to see.
A silent figure lay at the foot of the upward-sloping driveway to the road. We both ran forward, coming up on either side of that figure.
The moon showed through broken clouds. By its light we recognized Judge Pursuivant, limp and apparently lifeless. Beside him lay the empty shank of his walking-stick. His right fist still clenched around the handle, and the slender blade set therein was driven deeply into the loam.
I did not know what to do, but Jake did. He knelt, scooped the judge's head up and set it against his knee, then slapped the flaccid cheeks with his open palm. Pursuivant's eyelids and mustache fluttered.
Jake snorted approvingly and lifted his own crossed eyes to mine. "I guess he's all right, Gib. Just passed out is all. Maybe better you go to Varduk and ask for some brand——"
He broke off suddenly. He was staring at something behind me.
I turned, my heart quivering inside my chest.
Shapes—monstrous, pallid, unclean shapes—were closing in upon us.
11. Battle and Retreat
I doubt if any writer, however accomplished, has ever done full justice to the emotion of terror.
To mention the icy chill at the back-bone, the sudden sinewless trembling of the knees, the withering dryness of throat and tongue, is to be commonplace; and terror is not commonplace. Perhaps to remember terror is to know again the helplessness and faintness it brings.
Therefore it must suffice to say that, as I turned and saw the closing in of those pale-glowing blots of menace, I wanted to scream, and could not; to run, and could not; to take my gaze away, and could not.
If I do not describe the oncoming creatures—if creatures indeed they were—it is because they defied clear vision then and defy clear recollection now. Something quasi-human must have hung about them, something suggestive of man's outline and manner, as in a rough image molded by children of snow; but they were not solid like snow. They shifted and swirled, like wreaths of thick mist, without dispersing in air. They gave a dim, rotten light of their own, and they moved absolutely without sound.
"It's them," gulped Jake Switz beside me. He, too, was frightened, but not as frightened as I. He could speak, and move, too—he had dropped Pursuivant's head and was rising to his feet. I could hear him suck in a lungful of air, as though to brace himself for action.
His remembered presence, perhaps the mere fact of his companionship before the unreasoned awfulness of the glow-shadowy pack that advanced to hem us in, gave me back my own power of thought and motion. It gave me, too, the impulse to arm myself. I stooped to earth, groped swiftly, found and drew forth from its bed the sword-cane of Judge Pursuivant.
The non-shapes—that paradoxical idea is the best I can give of them—drifted around me, free and weightless in the night air like luminous sea-things in still, dark water. I made a thrust at the biggest and nearest of them.
I missed. Or did I? The target was, on a sudden, there no longer. Perhaps I had pierced it, and it had burst like a flimsy bladder. Thus I argued within my desperate inner mind, even as I faced about and made a stab at another. In the same instant it had gone, too—but the throng did not seem diminished. I made a sweeping slash with my point from side to side, and the things shrank back before it, as though they dared not pass the line I drew.
"Give 'em the works, Gib!" Jake was gritting out. "They can be hurt, all right!"
I laughed, like an impudent child. I felt inadequate and disappointed, as when in dreams a terrible adversary wilts before a blow I am ashamed of.
"Come on," I challenged the undefinable enemy, in a feeble attempt at swagger. "Let me have a real poke at——"
"Hold hard," said a new voice. Judge Pursuivant, apparently wakened by this commotion all around him, was struggling erect. "Here, Connatt, give me my sword." He fairly wrung it from my hand, and drove back the misty horde with great fanwise sweeps. "Drop back, now. Not toward the lodge—up the driveway to the road."
We made the retreat somehow, and were not followed. My clothing was drenched with sweat, as though I had swum in some filthy pool. Jake, whom I remember as helping me up the slope when I might have fallen, talked incessantly without finishing a single sentence. The nearest he came to rationality was, "What did ... what if ... can they——"
Pursuivant, however, seemed well recovered. He kicked together some bits of kindling at the roadside. Then he asked me for a match—perhaps to make me rally my sagging senses as I explored my pockets—and a moment later he had kindled a comforting fire.
"Now," he said, "we're probably safe from any more attention of that bunch. And our fire can't be seen from the lodge. Sit down and talk it over."
Jake was mopping a face as white as tallow. His spectacles mirrored the firelight in nervous shimmers.
"I guess I didn't dream the other night, after all," he jabbered. "Wait till I tell Mister Varduk about this."
"Please tell him nothing," counseled Judge Pursuivant at once.
"Eh?" I mumbled, astonished. "When the non-shapes——"
"Varduk probably knows all about these things—more than we shall ever know," replied the judge. "I rather think he cut short his walk across the front yards so that they would attack me. At any rate, they seemed to ooze out of the timber the moment he and I separated."
He told us, briefly, of how the non-shapes (he liked and adopted my paradox) were upon him before he knew. Like Jake two nights before, he felt an overwhelming disgust and faintness when they touched him, began to faint. His last voluntary act was to draw the blade in his cane and drive it into the ground, as an anchor against being dragged away.
"They would never touch that point," he said confidently. "You found that out, Connatt."
"And I'm still amazed, more about that fact than anything else. How would such things fear, even the finest steel?"
"It isn't steel." Squatting close to the fire, Pursuivant again cleared the bright, sharp bodkin. "Look at it, gentlemen—silver."
It was two feet long, or more, round instead of flat, rather like a large needle. Though the metal was bright and worn with much polishing, the inscription over which Pursuivant and Varduk had pored was plainly decipherable by the firelight.Sic pereant omnes inimici tui, Domine.... I murmured it aloud, as though it were a protective charm.
"As you may know," elaborated Judge Pursuivant, "silver is a specific against all evil creatures."
"That's so," interjected Jake. "I heard my grandfather tell a yarn about the old country, how somebody killed a witch with a silver bullet."
"And this is an extraordinary object, even among silver swords," Pursuivant went on. "A priest gave it to me, with his blessing, when I did a certain thing to help him and his parish against an enemy not recognized by the common law of today. He assured me that the blade was fashioned by Saint Dunstan himself."
"A saint make a silver weapon!" I ejaculated incredulously.
Pursuivant smiled, exactly as though we had not lately feared and fought for our lives and souls. His manner was that of a kindly teacher with a dull but willing pupil.
"Saint Dunstan is not as legendary or as feeble as his name sounds. As a matter of fact, he flourished heartily in the Tenth Century—not long before the very real Norman Conquest. He was the stout son of a Saxon noble, studied magic and metal-working, and was a political power in England as well as a spiritual one."
"Didn't he tweak Satan's nose?" I inquired.
"So the old poem tells, and so the famous painting illustrates," agreed Pursuivant, his smile growing broader. "Dunstan was, in short, exactly the kind of holy man who would make a sword to serve against demons. Do you blame me for being confident in his work?"
"Look here, Judge," said Jake, "what were those things that jumped us up?"
"That takes answering." Pursuivant had fished a handkerchief from a side pocket and was carefully wiping the silver skewer. "In the first place, they are extra-terrestrial—supernatural—and in the second, they are noisomely evil. We need no more evidence on those points. As for the rest, I have a theory of a sort, based on wide studies."
"What is it, sir?" I seconded Jake. Once again the solid assurance of the judge was comforting me tremendously.
He pursed his lips. "I've given the subject plenty of thought ever since you, Connatt, told me the experience of your friend here. There are several accounts and considerations of similar phenomena. Among ancient occultists was talk of elementary spirits—things super-normal and sometimes invisible, of sub-human intelligence and personality and not to be confused with spirits of the dead. A more modern word is 'elemental', used by several cults. The things are supposed to exert influences of various kinds, upon various localities and people.
"Again, we have the poltergeist, a phenomenon that is coming in for lively investigation by various psychical scholars of today. I can refer you to the definitions of Carrington, Podmore and Lewis Spence—their books are in nearly every large library—but you'll find that the definitions and possible explanations vary. The most familiar manifestation of this strange but undeniable power is in the seeming mischief that it performs in various houses—the knocking over of furniture, the smashing of mirrors, the setting of mysterious fires——"
"I know about that thing," said Jake excitedly. "There was a house over in Brooklyn that had mysterious fires and stuff."
"And I've read Charles Fort's books—Wild Talentsand the rest," I supplemented. "He tells about such happenings. But see here, isn't the thing generally traced to some child who was playing tricks?"
Pursuivant, still furbishing his silver blade, shook his head. "Mr. Hereward Carrington, the head of the American Psychical Institute, has made a list of more than three hundred notable cases. Only twenty or so were proven fraudulent, and another twenty doubtful. That leaves approximately seven-eighths unexplained—unless you consider super-normal agency an explanation. It is true that children are often in the vicinity of the phenomena, and some investigators explain this by saying that the poltergeist is attracted or set in motion by some spiritual current from the growing personality of the child."
"Where's the child around here?" demanded Jake. "He must be a mighty bad boy. Better someone should take a stick to him."
"There is no child," answered the judge. "The summoning power is neither immature nor unconscious, but old, wicked and deliberate. Have you ever heard of witches' familiars?"
"I have," I said. "Black cats and toads, with demon spirits."
"Yes. Also grotesque or amorphous shapes—similar, perhaps, to what we encountered tonight—or disembodied voices and hands. Now we are getting down to our own case. The non-shapes—thanks again, Connatt, for the expression—are here as part of a great evil. Perhaps they came of themselves, spiritual vultures or jackals, waiting to share in the prey. Or they may be recognized servants of a vast and dreadful activity for wrong. In any case they are here, definite and dangerous."
Again I felt my nerve deserting me. "Judge Pursuivant," I pleaded, "we must get Miss Holgar out of here."
"No. You and I talked that out this afternoon. The problem cannot be solved except at its climax."
He rose to his feet. The fire was dying.
"I suggest that you go to your quarters. Apparently you're safe indoors, and just now the moon's out from behind the clouds. Keep your eyes open, and stay in the clear. The things won't venture into the moonlight unless they feel sure of you. Anyway, I think they're waiting for something else."
"How about you?" I asked.
"Oh, I'll do splendidly." He held up the sword of Saint Dunstan. "I'll carry this naked in my hand as I go."
We said good-night all around, rather casually, like late sitters leaving their club. Pursuivant turned and walked along the road. Jake and I descended gingerly to the yard of the lodge, hurried across it, and gained our boathouse safely.
12. Return Engagement
One of the most extraordinary features of the entire happening was that it had so little immediate consequence.
Judge Pursuivant reached his cabin safely, and came to visit us again and again, but never remained after dark. If Varduk knew of the attack by the non-shapes, and if he felt surprize or chagrin that Pursuivant had escaped, he did not betray it. By silent and common consent, Jake and I forbore to discuss the matter between ourselves, even when we knew that we were alone.
Meanwhile, the moon waned and waxed again while we rehearsed our play and between rehearsals swam, tramped and bathed in the sun. Not one of us but seemed to profit by the exercise and fresh air. Sigrid's step grew freer, her face browner and her green-gold hair paler by contrast. I acquired some weight, but in the proper places, and felt as strong and healthy as I had been when first I went from the Broadway stage to Hollywood, eight years before. Even Jake Switz, whose natural habitat lay among theatrical offices and stage doors, became something of a hill-climber, canoeist and fisherman. Only Varduk did not tan, though he spent much time out of doors, strolling with Davidson or by himself. Despite his apparent fragility and his stiffness of gait, he was a tireless walker.
One thing Jake and I did for our protection; that was to buy, on one of our infrequent trips to the junction, an electric flashlight apiece as well as one for Sigrid. These we carried, lighted, when walking about at night, and not once in the month that followed our first encounter with the non-shapes did we have any misadventure.
The middle of July brought the full moon again, and with it the approach of our opening night.
The theatrical sections of the papers—Varduk had them delivered daily—gave us whole square yards of publicity. Jake had fabricated most of this, on his typewriter in our boathouse loft, though his most glamorous inventions included nothing of the grisly wonders we had actually experienced. Several publishers added to the general interest in the matter by sending to Varduk attractive offers for the manuscript ofRuthven, and receiving blunt refusals. One feature writer, something of a scholar of early Nineteenth Century English literature, cast a doubt upon the authenticity of the piece. In reply to this, Judge Pursuivant sent an elaboration of his earlier statement thatRuthvenwas undoubtedly genuine. The newspaper kindly gave this rejoinder considerable notice, illustrating it with photographs of the judge, Varduk and Sigrid.
On July 20, two days before opening, Jake went out to nail signs along the main road to guide motor parties to our theater. He was cheerfully busy most of the morning, and Sigrid deigned to let me walk with her. We did not seek the road, but turned our steps along the brink of the water. An ancient but discernible trail, made perhaps by deer, ran there.
"Happy, Sigrid?" I asked her.
"I couldn't be otherwise," she cried at once. "Our play is to startle the world—first here, then on Broadway——"
"Sigrid," I said, "what is there about this play that has such a charm for you? I know that it's a notable literary discovery, and that it's pretty powerful stuff in spots, but in the final analysis it's only melodrama with a clever supernatural twist. You're not the melodramatic type."
"Indeed?" she flung back. "Am I a type, then?"
I saw that I had been impolitic and made haste to offer apology, but she waved it aside.
"What you said might well be asked by many people. The pictures have put me into a certain narrow field, with poor Jake Switz wearing out the thesaurus to find synonyms for 'glamorous'. Yet, as a beginner in Sweden, I didHedda GablerandThe Wild Duck—yes, and Bernard Shaw, too; I was the slum girl inPygmalion. After that, a German picture,Cyrano de Bergerac, with me as Roxane. It was luck, perhaps, and a momentary wish by producers for a new young foreign face, that got me into American movies. But, have I done so poorly?"
"Sigrid, nobody ever did so nobly."
"And at the first, did I do always the same thing? What was my first chance? The French war bride in that farce comedy. Then what? Something by Somerset Maugham, where I wore a black wig and played a savage girl of the tropics. Then what? A starring rôle, or rather a co-starring rôle—opposite you." She gave me a smile, as though the memory were pleasant.
"Opposite me," I repeated, and a thrill crept through me. "Lavengro, the costume piece. Our costumes, incidentally, were rather like what we will wear in the first part ofRuthven."
"I was thinking the same thing. And speaking of melodrama, what aboutLavengro? You, with romantic curly side-burns, stripped to the waist and fighting like mad with Noah Beery. Firelight gleaming on your wet skin, and me mopping your face with a sponge and telling you to use your right hand instead of your left——"
"By heaven, there have been lots of worse shows!" I cried, and we both laughed. My spirits had risen as we had strolled away from the lodge grounds, and I had quite forgotten my half-formed resolve to speak a warning.
We came to a stretch of sand, with a great half-rotted pink trunk lying across it. Here we sat, side by side, smoking and scrawling in the fine sand with twigs.
"There's another reason why I have been happy during this month of rehearsal," said Sigrid shyly.
"Yes?" I prompted her, and my heart began suddenly to beat swiftly.
"It's been so nice to be near you and with you."
I felt at once strong and shivery, rather like the adolescent hero of an old-fashioned novel. What I said, somewhat ruefully, was, "If you think so, why have you been so hard to see? This is the first time we have walked or been alone together."
She smiled, and in her own individual way that made her cheeks crease and her eyes turn aslant. "We saw a lot of each other once, Gib. I finished up by being sorry. I don't want to be sorry again. That's why I've gone slowly."
"See here, Sigrid," I blurted suddenly. "I'm not going to beat around the bush, or try to lead up diplomatically or dramatically, but—oh, hang it!" Savagely I broke a twig in my hands. "I loved you once, and in spite of the fact that we quarreled and separated, I've never stopped. I love you right this instant——"
She caught me in strong, fierce arms, and kissed me so soundly that our teeth rang together between lips crushed open. Thus for a second of white-hot surprize; then she let go with equal suddenness. Her face had gone pale under its tan—no acting there—and her eyes were full of panicky wonder.
"I didn't do that," she protested slowly. She, too, was plainly stunned. "I didn't. But—well, I did, didn't I?"
"You certainly did. I don't know why, and if you say so I won't ask; but you did, and it'll be hard to retire from the position again."
After that, we had a lot more to say to each other. I admitted, very humbly, that I had been responsible for our estrangement five years before, and that the reason was the very unmanly one that I, losing popularity, was jealous of her rise. For her part, she confessed that not once had she forgotten me, nor given up the hope of reconciliation.
"I'm not worth it," I assured her. "I'm a sorry failure, and we both know it."
"Whenever I see you," she replied irrelevantly, "bells begin to ring in my ears—loud alarm bells, as if fires had broken out all around me."
"We're triple idiots to think of love," I went on. "You're the top, and I'm the muck under the bottom."
"You'll be the sensation of your life whenRuthvencomes to Broadway," rejoined Sigrid confidently. "And the movie magnets will fight duels over the chance to ask for your name on a contract."
"To hell with the show business! Let's run away tonight and live on a farm," I suggested.
In her genuine delight at the thought she clutched my shoulders, digging in her long, muscular fingers. "Let's!" she almost whooped, like a little girl promised a treat. "We'll have a garden and keep pigs—no, there's a show."
"And the show," I summed up, "must go on."
On that doleful commonplace we rose from the tree-trunk and walked back. Climbing to the road, we sought out Jake, who with a hammer and a mouthful of nails was fastening his last sign to a tree. We swore him to secrecy with terrible oaths, then told him that we intended to marry as soon as we returned to New York. He half swallowed a nail, choked dangerously, and had to be thumped on the back by both of us.
"I should live so—I knew this would happen," he managed to gurgle at last. "Among all the men you know, Sigrid Holgar, you got to pick thisschlemiel!"
We both threatened to pummel him, and he apologized profusely, mourning the while that his vow kept him from announcing our decision in all the New York papers.
"With that romance breaking now, we would have every able-bodied man, woman and child east of the Mississippi trying to get into our show," he said earnestly. "With a club we'd have to beat them away from the ticket window. Standing-room would sell for a dollar an inch."
"It's a success as it is," I comforted him. "Ruthven, I mean. The house is a sell-out, Davidson says."
That night at dinner, Sigrid sat, not at the head of the table, but on one side next to me. Once or twice we squeezed hands and Jake, noticing this, was shocked and burned his mouth with hot coffee. Varduk, too, gazed at us as though he knew our secret, and finally was impelled to quote something from Byron—a satiric couplet on love and its shortness of life. But we were too happy to take offense or even to recognize that the quotation was leveled at us.
13. The Black Book
Our final rehearsal, on the night of the twenty-first of July, was fairly accurate as regards the speeches and attention to cues, but it lacked fire and assurance. Varduk, however, was not disappointed.
"It has often been said, and often proven as well, that a bad last rehearsal means a splendid first performance," he reminded us. "To bed all of you, and try to get at least nine hours of sleep." Then he seemed to remember something. "Miss Holgar."
"Yes?" said Sigrid.
"Come here, with me." He led her to the exact center of the stage. "At this spot, you know, you are to stand when the final incident of the play, and our dialog together, unfolds."
"I know," she agreed.
"Yet—are you sure? Had we not better be sure?" Varduk turned toward the auditorium, as though to gage their position from the point of view of the audience. "Perhaps I am being too exact, yet——"
He snapped his fingers in the direction of Davidson, who seemed to have expected some sort of request signal. The big assistant reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a piece of white chalk.
"Thank you, Davidson." Varduk accepted the proffered fragment. "Stand a little closer center, Miss Holgar. Yes, like that." Kneeling, he drew with a quick sweep of his arm a small white circle around her feet.
"That," he informed her, standing up again, "is the spot where I want you to stand, at the moment when you and I have our final conflict of words, the swearing on the Bible, and my involuntary blessing upon your head."
Sigrid took a step backward, out of the circle. I, standing behind her, could see that she had drawn herself up in outraged protest. Varduk saw, too, and half smiled as if to disarm her. "Forgive me if I seem foolish," he pleaded gently.
"I must say," she pronounced in a slow, measured manner, as though she had difficulty in controlling her voice, "that I do not feel that this little diagram will help me in the least."
Varduk let his smile grow warmer, softer. "Oh, probably it will not, Miss Holgar; but I am sure it will help me. Won't you do as I ask?"
She could not refuse, and by the time she had returned across the stage to me she had relaxed into cheerfulness again. I escorted her to the door of her cabin, and her good-night smile warmed me all the way to my own quarters.
Judge Pursuivant appeared at noon the next day, and Varduk, hailing him cordially, invited him to lunch.
"I wonder," ventured Varduk as we all sat down together, "if you, Judge Pursuivant, would not speak a few words in our favor before the curtain tonight."
"I?" The judge stared, then laughed. "But I'm not part of the management."
"The management—which means myself—will be busy getting into costume for the first act. You are a scholar, a man whose recent book on Byron has attracted notice. It is fitting that you do what you can to help our opening."
"Oh," said Pursuivant, "if you put it like that—but what shall I tell the audience?"
"Make it as short as you like, but impressive. You might announce that all present are subpenaed as witnesses to a classic moment."
Pursuivant smiled. "That's rather good, Mr. Varduk, and quite true as well. Very good, count on me."
But after lunch he drew me almost forcibly away from the others, talking affably about the merits of various wines until we were well out of earshot. Then his tone changed abruptly.
"I think we know now that the thing—whatever it is—will happen at the play, and we also know why."
"Why, then?" I asked at once.
"I am to tell the audience that they are 'subpenaed as witnesses.' In other words, their attention is directed, they must be part of a certain ceremony. I, too, am needed. Varduk is making me the clerk, so to speak, of his court—or his cult. That shows that he will preside."
"It begins to mean something," I admitted. "Yet I am still at a loss."
Pursuivant's own pale lips were full of perplexity. "I wish that we could know more before the actual beginning. Yet I, who once prepared and judged legal cases, may be able to sum up in part:
"Something is to happen to Miss Holgar. The entire fabric of theatrical activity—this play, the successful effort to interest her in it, the remote theater, her particular rôle, everything—is to perform upon her a certain effect. That effect, we may be sure, is devastating. We may believe that a part, at least, of the success depends on the last line of the play, a mystery as yet to all of us."
"Except to Varduk," I reminded.
"Except to Varduk."
But a new thought struck me, and for a moment I found it comforting.
"Wait. The ceremony, as you call it, can't be all evil," I said. "After all, he asks her to swear on a Bible."
"So he does," Pursuivant nodded. "What kind of a Bible?"
I tried to remember. "To tell the truth, I don't know. We haven't used props of any kind in rehearsals—not even the sword, after that first time."
"No? Look here, that's apt to be significant. We'll have to look at the properties."
We explored the auditorium and the stage with a fine show of casual interest. Davidson and Switz were putting final touches on the scenery—a dark blue backdrop for evening sky, a wall painted to resemble vine-hung granite, benches and an arbor—but no properties lay on the table backstage.
"You know this is a Friday, Gib?" demanded Jake, looking up from where he was mending the cable of a floodlight. "Bad luck, opening our play on a Friday."
"Not a bit," laughed Pursuivant. "What's begun on a Friday never comes to an end. Therefore——"
"Oi!" crowed Jake. "That means we'll have a record-breaking run, huh?" He jumped up and shook my hand violently. "You'll be working in this show till you step on your beard."
We wandered out again, and Sigrid joined us. She was in high spirits.
"I feel," she said excitedly, "just as I felt on the eve of my first professional appearance. As though the world would end tonight!"
"God forbid," I said at once, and "God forbid," echoed Judge Pursuivant. Sigrid laughed merrily at our sudden expressions of concern.
"Oh, it won't end that way," she made haste to add, in the tone one reserves for children who need comfort. "I mean, the world will begin tonight, with success and happiness."
She put out a hand, and I squeezed it tenderly. After a moment she departed to inspect her costume.
"I haven't a maid or a dresser," she called over her shoulder. "Everything has to be in perfect order, and I myself must see to it."
We watched her as she hurried away, both of us sober.
"I think I know why you fret so about her safety," Pursuivant said to me. "You felt, too, that the thing she said might be a bad omen."
"Then may her second word be a good omen," I returned.
"Amen to that," he said heartily.
Dinnertime came, and Pursuivant and I made a quick meal of it. We excused ourselves before the others—Sigrid looked up in mild astonishment that I should want to leave her side—and went quickly downstairs to the stage.
On the property table lay the cudgel I was to use in the first act, the sword I was to strike with in the second, the feather duster to be wielded by Martha Vining as Bridget, a tray with a wine service to be borne by Davidson as Oscar. There was also a great book, bound in red cloth, with red edging.
"That is the Bible," said Pursuivant at once. "I must have a look at it."
"I still can't see," I muttered, half to myself, "how this sword—a good piece of steel and as sharp as a razor—failed to kill Varduk when I——"
"Never mind that sword," interrupted Judge Pursuivant. "Look at this book, this 'Bible' which they've refused to produce up to now. I'm not surprized to find out that—well, have a look for yourself."
On the ancient black cloth I saw rather spidery capitals, filled with red coloring matter:Grand Albert.
"I wouldn't look inside if I were you," warned the judge. "This is in all probability the book that Varduk owned when Davidson met him at Revere College. Remember what happened to one normal young man, ungrounded in occultism, who peeped into it."
"What can it be?" I asked.
"A notorious gospel for witches," Pursuivant informed me. "I've heard of it—Descrepe, the French occultist, edited it in 1885. Most editions are modified and harmless, but this, at first glance, appears to be the complete and infamous Eighteenth Century version." He opened it.
The first phase of his description had stuck in my mind. "A gospel for witches; and that is the book on which Sigrid must swear an oath of renunciation at the end of the play!"
Pursuivant was scowling at the flyleaf. He groped for his pince-nez, put them on. "Look here, Connatt," he said.
I crowded close to his elbow, and together we read what had been written long ago, in ink now faded to a dirty brown:
Geo Gordon (Biron) his bookAt 1 hr. befor midnt, on 22 July, 1788 givn him. He was brot to coeven by Todlin he the saide Geo. G. to be bond to us for 150 yers. and serve for our glory he to gain his title & hav all he desirs. at end of 150 yrs. to give acctg. & not be releasd save by delivring anothr as worthie our coeven.(Signed)For coeven For Geo. Gordon (Biron)Terragon Todlin
Geo Gordon (Biron) his book
At 1 hr. befor midnt, on 22 July, 1788 givn him. He was brot to coeven by Todlin he the saide Geo. G. to be bond to us for 150 yers. and serve for our glory he to gain his title & hav all he desirs. at end of 150 yrs. to give acctg. & not be releasd save by delivring anothr as worthie our coeven.
(Signed)For coeven For Geo. Gordon (Biron)Terragon Todlin
"And look at this, too," commanded Judge Pursuivant. He laid his great forefinger at the bottom of the page. There, written in fresh blue ink, and in a hand somehow familiar:
This 22nd of July, 1938, I tender this book and quit this service unto Sigrid Holgar.
This 22nd of July, 1938, I tender this book and quit this service unto Sigrid Holgar.
George Gordon, Lord Byron.
14. Zero Hour
Pursuivant closed the book with a loud snap, laid it down on the table, and caught me by the arm.
"Come away from here," he said in a tense voice. "Outside, where nobody will hear." He almost dragged me out through the stage door. "Come along—down by the water—it's fairly open, we'll be alone."
When we reached the edge of the lake we faced each other. The sun was almost set. Back of us, in front of the lodge, we could hear the noise of early arrivals for the theater—perhaps the men who would have charge of automobile parking, the ushers, the cashier.
"How much of what you read was intelligible to you?" asked Pursuivant.
"I had a sense that it was rotten," I said. "Beyond that, I'm completely at sea."
"I'm not." His teeth came strongly together behind the words. "There, on the flyleaf of a book sacred to witches and utterly abhorrent to honest folk, was written an instrument pledging the body and soul of a baby to a 'coeven'—that is, a congregation of evil sorcerers—for one hundred and fifty years. George Gordon, the Lord Byron that was to be, had just completed his sixth month of life."
"How could a baby be pledged like that?" I asked.
"By some sponsor—the one signing the name 'Todlin.' That was undoubtedly a coven name, such as we know all witches took. Terragon was another such cognomen. All we can say of 'Todlin' is that the signature is apparently a woman's. Perhaps that of the child's eccentric nurse, Mistress Gray——"
"This is beastly," I interposed, my voice beginning to tremble. "Can't we do something besides talk?"
Pursuivant clapped me strongly on the back. "Steady," he said. "Let's talk it out while that writing is fresh in our minds. We know, then, that the infant was pledged to an unnaturally long life of evil. Promises made were kept—he became the heir to the estates and title of his grand-uncle, 'Wicked Byron,' after his cousins died strangely. And surely he had devil-given talents and attractions."
"Wait," I cut in suddenly. "I've been thinking about that final line or so of writing, signed with Byron's name. Surely I've seen the hand before."
"You have. The same hand wroteRuthven, and you've seen the manuscript." Pursuivant drew a long breath. "Now we know howRuthvencould be written on paper only ten years old. Byron lives and signs his name today."
I felt almost sick, and heartily helpless inside. "But Byron died in Greece," I said, as though reciting a lesson. "His body was brought to England and buried at Hucknall Torkard, close to his ancestral home."
"Exactly. It all fits in." Pursuivant's manifest apprehension was becoming modified by something of grim triumph. "Must he not have repented, tried to expiate his curse and his sins by an unselfish sacrifice for Grecian liberty? You and I have been over this ground before; we know how he suffered and labored, almost like a saint. Death would seem welcome—his bondage would end in thirty-six years instead of a hundred and fifty. What about his wish to be burned?"
"Burning would destroy his body," I said. "No chance for it to come alive again."
"But the body was not burned, and it has come alive again. Connatt, do you know who the living-dead Byron is?"
"Of course I do. And I also know that he intends to pass something into the hands of Sigrid."
"He does. She is the new prospect for bondage, the 'other as worthie.' She is not a free agent in the matter, but neither was Byron at the age of six months."
The sun's lower rim had touched the lake. Pursuivant's pink face was growing dusky, and he leaned on the walking-stick that housed a silver blade.
"Byron's hundred and fifty years will end at eleven o'clock tonight," he said, gazing shrewdly around for possible eavesdroppers. "Now, let me draw some parallels."
"Varduk—we know who Varduk truly is—will, in the character of Ruthven, ask Miss Holgar, who plays Mary, a number of questions. Those questions, and her answers as set down for her to repeat, make up a pattern. Think of them, not as lines in a play, but an actual interchange between an adept of evil and a neophyte."
"It's true," I agreed. "He asks her if she will 'give herself up,' 'renounce former manners,' and to swear so upon—the book we saw. She does so."
"Then the prayer, which perplexes you by its form. The 'wert in heaven' bit becomes obvious now, eh? How about the angel that fell from grace and attempted to build up his own power to oppose?"
"Satan!" I almost shouted. "A prayer to the force of evil!"
"Not so loud, Connatt. And then, while Miss Holgar stands inside a circle—that, also, is part of the witch ceremony—he touches her head, and speaks words we do not know. But we can guess."
He struck his stick hard against the sandy earth.
"What then?" I urged him on.
"It's in an old Scottish trial of witches," said Pursuivant. "Modern works—J. W. Wickwar's book, and I think Margaret Alice Murray's—quote it. The master of the coven touched the head of the neophyte and said that all beneath his hand now belonged to the powers of darkness."
"No! No!" I cried, in a voice that wanted to break.
"No hysterics, please!" snapped Pursuivant. "Connatt, let me give you one stark thought—it will cool you, strengthen you for what you must help me achieve. Think what will follow if we let Miss Holgar take this oath, accept this initiation, however unwittingly. At once she will assume the curse that Varduk—Byron—lays down. Life after death, perhaps; the faculty of wreaking devastation at a word or touch; gifts beyond human will or comprehension, all of them a burden to her; and who can know the end?"
"There shall not be a beginning," I vowed huskily. "I will kill Varduk——"
"Softly, softly. You know that weapons—ordinary weapons—do not even scratch him."
The twilight was deepening into dusk, Pursuivant turned back toward the lodge, where windows had begun to glow warmly, and muffled motor-noises bespoke the parking of automobiles. There were other flecks of light, too. For myself, I felt beaten and weary, as though I had fought to the verge of losing against a stronger, wiser enemy.
"Look around you, Connatt. At the clumps of bush, the thickets. What do they hide?"
I knew what he meant. I felt, though I saw only dimly, the presence of an evil host in ambuscade all around us.
"They're waiting to claim her, Connatt. There's only one thing to do."
"Then let's do it, at once."
"Not yet. The moment must behismoment, one hour before midnight. Escape, as I once said, will not be enough. We must conquer."
I waited for him to instruct me.
"As you know, Connatt, I will make a speech before the curtain. After that, I'll come backstage and stay in your dressing-room. What you must do is get the sword that you use in the second act. Bring it there and keep it there."
"I've told you and told you that the sword meant nothing against him."
"Bring it anyway," he insisted.
I heard Sigrid's clear voice, calling me to the stage door. Pursuivant and I shook hands quickly and warmly, like team-mates just before a hard game, and we went together to the lodge.
Entering, I made my way at once to the property table. The sword still lay there, and I put out my hand for it.
"What do you want?" asked Elmo Davidson behind me.
"I thought I'd take the sword into my dressing-room."
"It's a prop, Connatt. Leave it right where it is."
I turned and looked at him. "I'd rather have it with me," I said doggedly.
"You're being foolish," he told me sharply, and there is hardly any doubt but that I sounded so to him. "What if I told Varduk about this?"
"Go and tell him, if you like. Tell him also that I won't go on tonight if you're going to order me around." I said this as if I meant it, and he relaxed his commanding pose.
"Oh, go ahead. And for heaven's sake calm your nerves."
I took the weapon and bore it away. In my room I found my costume for the first act already laid out on two chairs—either Davidson or Jake had done that for me. Quickly I rubbed color into my cheeks, lined my brows and eyelids, affixed fluffy side-whiskers to my jaws. The mirror showed me a set, pale face, and I put on rather more make-up than I generally use. My hands trembled as I donned gleaming slippers of patent leather, fawn-colored trousers that strapped under the insteps, a frilled shirt and flowing necktie, a flowered waistcoat and a bottle-green frock coat with velvet facings and silver buttons. My hair was long enough to be combed into a wavy sweep back from my brow.
"Places, everybody," the voice of Davidson was calling outside.
I emerged. Jake Switz was at my door, and he grinned his good wishes. I went quickly on-stage, where Sigrid already waited. She looked ravishing in her simple yet striking gown of soft, light blue, with billows of skirt, little puffs of sleeves, a tight, low bodice. Her gleaming hair was caught back into a Grecian-looking coiffure, with a ribbon and a white flower at the side. The normal tan of her skin lay hidden beneath the pallor of her make-up.
At sight of me she smiled and put out a hand. I kissed it lightly, taking care that the red paint on my lips did not smear. She took her seat on the bench against the artificial bushes, and I, as gracefully as possible, dropped at her feet.
Applause sounded beyond the curtain, then died away. The voice of Judge Pursuivant became audible:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been asked by the management to speak briefly. You are seeing, for the first time before any audience, the lost play of Lord Byron,Ruthven. My presence here is not as a figure of the theater, but as a modest scholar of some persistence, whose privilege it has been to examine the manuscript and perceive its genuineness.
"Consider yourselves all subpenaed as witnesses to a classic moment." His voice rang as he pronounced the phrase required by Varduk. "I wonder if this night will not make spectacular history for the genius who did not die in Greece a century and more ago. I say, he did not die—for when does genius die? We are here to assist at, and to share in, a performance that will bring him his proper desserts.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I feel, and perhaps you feel as well, the presence of the great poet with us in this remote hall. I wish you joy of what you shall observe. And now, have I your leave to withdraw and let the play begin?"
Another burst of applause, in the midst of which sounded three raps. Then up went the curtain, and all fell silent. I, as Aubrey, spoke the first line of the play:
"I'm no Othello, darling...."
15. "Whither? I Dread to Think—"
Sigrid and I struck on the instant the proper note of affectionate gayety, and I could feel in the air that peculiar audience-rhythm by which an actor knows that his effort to capture a mood is successful. For the moment it was the best of all possible worlds, to be exchanging thus the happy and brilliant lines with the woman I adored, while an intelligent and sympathetic houseful of spectators shared our happy mood.
But, if I had forgotten Varduk, he was the more imposing when he entered. His luminous pallor needed no heightening to seize the attention; his face was set off, like some gleaming white gem, by the dark coat, stock, cape, books, pantaloons. He spoke his entrance line as a king might speak in accepting the crown and homage of a nation. On the other side of the footlights the audience grew tense with heightened interest.
He overpowered us both, as I might have known he would, with his personality and his address. We might have been awkward amateurs, wilting into nothingness when a master took the stage. I was eclipsed completely, exactly as Aubrey should be at the entrance of Ruthven, and I greatly doubt if a single pair of eyes followed me at my first exit; for at the center of the stage, Varduk had begun to make love to Sigrid.
I returned to my dressing-room. Pursuivant sat astride a chair, his sturdy forearms crossed upon its back.
"How does it go?" he asked.
"Like a producer's dream," I replied, seizing a powder puff with which to freshen my make-up. "Except for the things we know about, I would pray for no better show."
"I gave you a message in my speech before the curtain. Did you hear what I said? I meant, honestly, to praise Byron and at the same time to defy him. You and I, with God's help, will giveRuthvenan ending he does not expect."
It was nearly time for me to make a new entrance, and I left the dressing-room, mystified but comforted by Pursuivant's manner. The play went on, gathering speed and impressiveness. We were all acting inspiredly, maugre the bizarre nature of the rehearsals and other preparations, the dark atmosphere that had surrounded the piece from its first introduction to us.
The end of the act approached, and with it my exit. Sigrid and I dragged the limp Varduk to the center of the stage and retired, leaving him alone to perform the sinister resurrection scene with which the first act closes. I loitered in the wings to watch, but Jake Switz tugged at my sleeve.
"Come," he whispered. "I want to show you something."
We went to the stage door. Jake opened it an inch.
The space behind the lodge was full of uncertain, half-formed lights that moved and lived. For a moment we peered. Then the soft, larval radiances flowed toward us. Jake slammed the door.
"They're waiting," he said.
From the direction of the stage came Varduk's final line:
"Grave, I reject thy shelter! Death, stand back!"
Then Davidson dragged down the curtain, while the house shook with applause. I turned again. Varduk, backstage, was speaking softly but clearly, urging us to hurry with our costume changes. Into my dressing-room I hastened, my feet numb and my eyes blurred.
"I'll help you dress," came Pursuivant's calm voice. "Did Jake show you what waits outside?"
I nodded and licked my parched, painted lips.
"Don't fear. Their eagerness is premature."
He pulled off my coat and shirt. Grown calm again before his assurance, I got into my clothes for Act Two—a modern dinner suit. With alcohol I removed the clinging side-whiskers, repaired my make-up and brushed my hair into modern fashion once more. Within seconds, it seemed, Davidson was calling us to our places.
The curtain rose on Sigrid and me, as Mary and Swithin, hearing the ancestral tale of horror from Old Bridget. As before, the audience listened raptly, and as before it rose to the dramatic entrance of Varduk. He wore his first-act costume, and his manner was even more compelling. Again I felt myself thrust into the background of the drama; as for Sigrid, great actress though she is, she prospered only at his sufferance.
Off stage, on again, off once more—the play was Varduk's, and Sigrid's personality was being eclipsed. Yet she betrayed no anger or dislike of the situation. It was as though Varduk mastered her, even while his character of Ruthven overpowered her character of Mary. I felt utterly helpless.
In the wings I saw the climax approach. Varduk, flanked by Davidson as the obedient Oscar, was declaring Ruthven's intention to gain revenge and love.
"Get your sword," muttered Jake, who had taken Davidson's place at the curtain ropes. "You're on again in a moment."
I ran to my dressing-room. Pursuivant opened the door, thrust something into my hand.
"It's the silver sword," he told me quickly. "The one from my cane. Trust in it, Connatt. Almost eleven o'clock—go, and God stiffen your arm."
It seemed a mile from the door to the wings. I reached it just in time for my entrance cue—Sigrid's cry of "Swithin will not allow this."
"Let him try to prevent it," grumbled Davidson, fierce and grizzled as the devil-converted Oscar.
"I'm here for that purpose," I said clearly, and strode into view. The sword from Pursuivant's cane I carried low, hoping that Varduk would not notice at once. He stood with folded arms, a mocking smile just touching his white face.
"So brave?" he chuckled. "So foolish?"
"My ancestor killed you once, Ruthven," I said, with more meaning than I had ever employed before. "I can do so again."
I leaped forward, past Sigrid and at him.
The smile vanished. His mouth fell open.
"Wait! That sword——"
He hurled himself, as though to snatch it from my hand. But I lifted the point and lunged, extending myself almost to the boards of the stage. As once before, I felt the flesh tear before my blade. The slender spike of metal went in, in, until the hilt thudded against his breast-bone.
No sound from audience or actors, no motion. We made a tableau, myself stretched out at lunge, Varduk transfixed, the other two gazing in sudden aghast wonder.
For one long breath's space my victim stood like a figure of black stone, with only his white face betraying anything of life and feeling. His deep eyes, gone dark as a winter night, dug themselves into mine. I felt once again the intolerable weight of his stare—yet it was not threatening, not angry even. The surprize ebbed from it, and the eyes and the sad mouth softened into a smile. Was he forgiving me? Thanking me?...
Sigrid found her voice again, and screamed tremulously. I released the cane-hilt and stepped backward, automatically. Varduk fell limply upon his face. The silver blade, standing out between his shoulders, gleamed red with blood. Next moment the red had turned dull black, as though the gore was a millennium old. Varduk's body sagged. It shrank within its rich, gloomy garments. It crumbled.
The curtain had fallen. I had not heard its rumble of descent, nor had Sigrid, nor the stupefied Davidson. From beyond the folds came only choking silence. Then Pursuivant's ready voice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, a sad accident has ended the play unexpectedly—tragically. Through the fault of nobody, one of the players has been fatally——"
I heard no more. Holding Sigrid in my arms I told her, briefly and brokenly, the true story ofRuthvenand its author. She, weeping, gazed fearfully at the motionless black heap.
"The poor soul!" she sobbed. "The poor, poor soul!"
Jake, leaving his post by the curtain-ropes, had walked on and was leading away the stunned, stumbling Davidson.
I still held Sigrid close. To my lips, as if at the bidding of another mind and memory, came the final lines ofManfred:
"He's gone—his soul hath ta'en its earthless flight—Whither? I dread to think—but he is gone."
THE END