"How can there be wrong in facing a situation that I did not cause?"

"There is no wrong. There is danger."

"What danger?" I persisted.

"Can you ask me?" she retorted with a hint of impatience. "You who have felt Its grope toward your inner spirit?"

I shuddered, remembering the brush of those antennae, exploring, examining! But I persisted, beyond my every-day nature. Her speech was for me like that liquor distilled from honey that inflamed the Norsemen to war fury.

"You say I came off victor," I reminded her.

"Yes. But can you conquer again, and again, and again? Will you not feel strength fail, health break, madness creep close? Will you not be worn down by the Thing that knows no weariness and fall its prey at last?"

"It will come—often?"

"Until one conquers, It will come."

I forced away a qualm of panic.

"How can you know?" I demanded.

"Ask me not. I do know."

"But, look here!" I argued. "If as you say, this creature was not meant to meet mankind, how can It come after me this way?"

She seemed to pause, finally answering with reluctance:

"Because, two centuries ago one of the race of man here broke through the awful Barrier that rears a wall between human kind and those dark forms of life to which It belongs. For know that a human will to evil can force a breach in that Barrier, which those on the other side never could pass without such aid."

I neither understood nor believed. At least, I told myself that I did not believe her wild, legendary explanation of the nightmare Thing that visited me. I did not want to believe. Neither did I wish to offend her by saying so!

"You will go," she presently mistook my silence for surrender. "You are wise as well as brave. Good go with you! Good walk beside you in that happy world where you live!"

"Wait!" I cried sharply. Her voice had seemed to recede from me, a retreating whisper at the last word. "No! I will not go. I must—I will know more of you. You are no phantom. Who are you? Where—when can I see you in daylight?"

"Never."

"Why not?"

"I came to hold a light before the dreadful path. The warning is given."

"But you will come again?"

"Never."

"What? The Thing will come, and not you?"

"What have I to do with It, who am more helpless before It than you? Go; and give thanks that you may."

"Listen," I commanded, as firmly as I could. "I am not going away from this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me half-convinced of what I should do."

"I can stay no longer."

"Why can you not come again?"

"You plan to trap me," she reproached.

"No. Word of honor! You shall come and go as you please; I will not make a movement toward you."

"Not try—to see me, even?" she hesitated.

"Not even that, if you forbid."

There was a long pause.

"Perhaps——" drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through my room.

She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise. Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my lights at her entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp, and this time light flashed over the room.

I had known no one would be there, and no one was. Yet I was disappointed.

As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four. Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking foulness of mould and decay.

I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp for the coming of sunrise.



CHAPTER VII

"For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings live upon sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate perfumes."—ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY.

The breakfast bell, or rather Phillida's Chinese chimes, merrily summoned me to the dining-room; a homely spell to exercise the phantoms of the night.

My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white middy blouse and blue skirt, was already in her place behind the coffeepot. Vere sat opposite her at the round table. They were holding hands across the rolls and bacon and eggs, their glances interlocked in a shining content that made my solitariness rather drab and dull to my own contemplation. At my clumsy step the picture dissolved, of course. Vere rose while Phillida welcomed me to my chair and went into a young housewife's pretty solicitude about my fruit and hot eggs.

The sun glinted across the table. The very servant had a smiling air of enjoying the occasion. I never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big brindle cat purred on the window-sill beside Phillida; no dainty Persian or Angora, but a battered veteran whose nicked ears and scarred tail proved him a battling cat of ring experience.

"I planned to have a wee white kitten," Phil explained, while putting a saucer of milk before the feline tough. "One that would wear a ribbon, you know. You remember, Cousin Roger, how Mother always forbade pets because she believed animals carry germs? I meant to have a puss, if ever I had a home of my own. This one just walked into the kitchen on the first day we came here. Ethan said it was a lucky sign when a cat came to a new home. He gave it the meat out of his sandwiches that we had brought for lunch, and it stayed. So I decided to keep it instead of a kitten. It really is more cat!"

What footing was here for dreary terrors? In a mirror across the room I glimpsed my own countenance looking quite as usual. No over-night white hairs appeared; no upstanding look such as the legend gave to Sir Sintram after he met the Little Master.

After the meal, Vere asked me to walk over to the lake with him.

We strolled through the old orchard toward the dam. This was my side of the house. In passing, I looked up at the window against which the Thing had seemed to press Itself with sickening lust for me. Phillida was framed in the open square, and shook a dustcloth at us by way of greeting and evidence of her busyness.

The wide, shallow lake lay almost without movement, except at the head of the dam. There the water poured over with foam and tumult, an amber-brown cataract some twenty-odd feet across, to rush on below in a winding stream that grew calmer as it flowed.

"We must put our lake in order, Vere," I observed, as we stood on a knoll at the head of the dam. "All this growth of rank vegetation ought to be pulled up, the banks graded and turfed perhaps, the bottom cleaned up. Water-lilies would look better than cat-tails."

To my surprise, he did not assent. Instead, he set his foot on a boulder and rested his arm upon his knee; looking into the clear water.

"Mr. Locke, I just about hate saying what I have to," he told me in his sober, leisurely fashion. "I expect you won't like it; not at all. Well—best said before you get deeper in. I can't see my way to make farming this place pay."

I was bitterly disappointed. Even at the worst estimate of Vere, I had imagined he would stick the thing out a little longer than this. Poor Phillida's time of happiness should have lasted more than these few weeks. But the call of New York, of the "lounge lizard's" ease and unhealthy excitement had won already, it seemed. I said nothing at all. The blow was too sore.

"There are too few acres of arable land, and they're used up," Vere was continuing. "I've seen plenty of impoverished, run-out farms in New England. You could pour money into the soil out of a gold pitcher these five years to come, before it began to pay you back. And then your money might better have been put anywhere in bank, for profit! I saw that, the first week here. Since then I've been looking around for something better to do."

"And have found it, of course," I said bitingly. "Or else you would be drawing your salary as manager and saying nothing to me of all this! Well, where does poor Phil go, and when?"

He turned his dark-curled head and regarded me with calm surprise.

"I didn't exactly know that my wife was going anywhere, Mr. Locke."

"What? You do not mean to leave the farm?"

"Not unless you're tired of our bargain. I've been calculating how to make it pay. That won't be by planting corn and potatoes and taking a wagon-load into town! If you think I'm wrong, call in any practical man who knows this sort of business. We've got to think closer to win here. That's why I'd like to set the lake to work instead of just prettying it up."

"The lake, Vere? There isn't enough water-power over the dam to do any more than run a toy, is there?"

He motioned me nearer to where he stood gazing down.

"Notice what kind of water this is, Mr. Locke? Brown like forest water, sort of green-lighted because the bottom is like turf; neither mud nor sand, but a kind of under-water moss? You see? It's pure and clean, with a little fishy smell about it. Matter of fact, it is forest water! Comes from way off yonder, the stream does, before it spreads out into our lake, here. I borrowed a boat and followed back two miles before it got too shallow for me. Boys have caught trout here three times since I've been watching."

"Well?"

"My father was fish-warden in our district. I learned the business. If you're willing, I can start some trout-raising that ought to pay well. You know, the State is glad to help game preserving, free."

He proceeded to give me a brief lecture on the subject, in his quiet, unpretentious manner; producing notes and diagrams from his pockets. He had written to various authorities and exhibited their replies. He knew exactly what the State would do, what he himself must do, and what investment of money would be required. I listened to him in admiration and astonishment.

From fish raising, he went on to discuss each acre of the farm; its best use in view of its situation, condition, and our needs. We could afford so much labor, it appeared, and no more. We must have certain apparatus; methodically listed with prices. If we used a certain sheltered south field for a peach orchard, the trees planted should be such an age and have giant-powder blast deep beds for them in order that they might soon bear fruit.

When at last he ended his deceptive speech that sounded so lazy while implying so much energy, and turned his black eyes from the papers on his knee to my face, I had been routed long since.

"Vere," I said abruptly, "did you know that I thought you were going to desert the farm, when you began to speak?"

He nodded.

"Yes, I guess so. You don't exactly like me; haven't had any occasion to! You don't judge me a fit match for your cousin. Well, neither would anyone else, yet!"

He began to gather his papers together, his attention divided with them while he finished his answer:

"There will be plenty of time before that 'yet' runs out. Mighty pleasant time, thanks to you, Mr. Locke! Phillida and I expect to enjoy building things up as much as we'll enjoy it after they're all built. Meantime, I prize what you're doing all the more because I know how you feel. Now, if you'd be interested to look over these plans or submit them to someone you've confidence in, for inspection, I'll just turn them over to you."

He had so accurately measured me that I was disconcerted. It was quite true that he was compelling my respect, while my first dislike of him still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind. I felt ungenerous, but I would not lie to him.

"I am a queer fellow, Vere," I said. "Leave that to time, as you say! As for the plans, they are far beyond my scope. A city man, it has been my way to 'phone for an expert when anything was to be done, or to buy what I fancied and pay the bills. In this case, you are the expert. The plans seem brilliant to me. Certainly they are moderate in cost. Keep them, and carry them out as soon as that may be done. You are master here, not I."

We walked back together through the sun and freshness of the early spring morning. As we neared the house Phillida's voice hailed us. She was at my window again, leaning out with her hair wind-ruffled about her face.

"Cousin Roger," she summoned me, "I have found out what makes your room as sweet as a garden of spices. See what it is to be a composer completely surrounded by royalties, able to buy the most gorgeous scents to lay on one's pillow! And all enclosed in antique gold!"

She held up some small object that shone in the sunlight. "Throw it down," I begged, startled into excitement.

She complied, laughing. Vere sprang forward, but I made a quicker step and caught the thing.

It was one of those filigree balls of gold wrought into openwork, about the size of a walnut, that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain or ribbon and call a pomander. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence supposed to be reviving in case miladi felt a swoon or megrim about to overwhelm her; as ladies did in past centuries and do no longer.

Whose gentle pity had brought this pomander to my pillow, to help me from that faintness which had followed my struggle with the Thing? Whose was the exquisite, individual fragrance contained in the ball I held? I had a vision of a figure, surely light and soft of movement, haloed with such matchless hair as the braid I had captured, stealing step by timid step across my room; within my reach while I lay inert. Perhaps her face had bent near mine in her doubt of my life or death; hidden eyes had studied me in the scanty starlight.

Oh, for Ethan Vere's good looks and athlete's grace, to lure my lady from her masquerade!

"Where did you buy it, Cousin Roger? 'Fess up!" Phillida's merry voice coaxed me.

"It was given to me," I slowly answered. "I cannot offer it to you, Phil. But I will buy any other pretty thing you fancy, instead, next time I go to town."

She made a gesture of disclaim.

"I did not mean that! Only, do tell me what the perfume is?"

"I was going to ask if you knew."

"No. Something very expensive and imported, I suppose. Perhaps whoever gave it to you had it made for herself alone, as some wealthy women do. It is the most clinging, yet delicately refreshing scent I ever met."

"Tuberose," suggested Vere.

"Drawls, no. How can you? Like an old-fashioned funeral!" she cried.

"Tuberose didn't always go to funerals," he corrected her teasingly, as she made a face at him. "I remember them growing in my Aunt Bathsheba's garden. Creamy looking posies, kind of kin to a gardenia, seems to me! Thick-petalled, like white plush, and holding their sweet smell everlastingly. But Mr. Locke's perfumery isn't just that, either. There was something else grew in that garden—I can't call to mind what I mean. Basil, maybe?"

"The basil plant, that feeds on dead men's brains," quoted Phil with a mock shiver. "You are happy in your ideals, Drawls!"

He laughed.

"Well, that garden smelled pretty fine when the dew was just warming up in the sun, mornings—and so does this little gilt ball! I'll guess Mr. Locke's lady never got it from France. Smells like old New England."

There was no reason why a vague chill should creep over me, or the sunshine seem to darken as if a thin veil drifted between me and the surrounding brightness. Let me say again that no place could have been more unlike the traditional haunted house. There hung about it no sense of morbidity or depression. Yet, what was I to think? I was not sick or mad; and the Thing had come to me twice. I turned from the married lovers and made my way to the veranda, where I might be alone to consider the pomander whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence walking beside me.

Seated there, in one of the deep willow-chairs Phillida had cushioned in peacock chintz and marked especially mine by laying my favorite magazines on its arm, I studied my new trophy of the night. There was a satisfaction in its material solidity. It was real enough, resting in my palm.

Yes; but it was not ordinary among its quaint kind! As I picked out the design of the gold-work, that fact was borne in upon my mind. Here was no pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts. The small sphere was belted with the signs of the Zodiac, beautiful in minute perfection. All the rest of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating one group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange, outcast academies of astrology, alchemy—magic, in short. It contained what appeared to be a pinkish ball; originally a scented paste rolled round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices of the gold.

Had the old-world trinket been left to bewilder me? Why, and by whom? What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from even the college-bred Phillida's?

She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone associated with her wanted the place left vacant for some reason, why did not the Thing and the warning come to others of our household group? Vere, Phillida, the Swedish woman, Cristina—all had lived here for weeks without any experiences like mine. I had not been told to leave my room, but the house. The danger, then, was only for me?

Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at the first alarm?

The gray cat came purring about me and presently leaped upon my knee. On impulse, I offered the pomander to its nostrils. The unwinking yellow eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and unclosed with convulsive pleasure, it breathed with that thirsty eagerness for the scent so familiar to my own senses.

"Better than catnip, Bagheera?" I questioned. "You wouldn't bolt from it, either, would you?"

Phillida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed toward the hand I withdrew, and composed itself to sleep. I put the pomander in my waistcoat pocket.

I could not deny as mere nightmare the Thing which had visited me. Better confront that fact! It was real. Only, real in what sense? What human agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion so hideous that I could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight, without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain?

Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation? A truth hinted at by alchemists, Pythagoreans, Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and magnificent charlatans, these many centuries? Were there other races between earth and heaven; strange tribes of the middle spaces whose destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these beings, inimical to man as a cobra, intelligent as man, hunting Its victim by methods unknown to us?

Was I a cheated fool, or a pioneer on the borders of a new country?

Could I meet that Thing tonight, and tomorrow night? Could I bear the agony of Its presence, the stench of death and corruption that was Its atmosphere? At the mere memory my forehead grew wet.

The postman's buggy had stopped at our mailbox. Phillida ran down to meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me while she waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the old man to sort our letters from his bags. It did not appear so hard to make a woman happy, I mused. A man might attempt it with hope, if he could but persuade her to try him.

My lady had promised to come again. Perhaps, with patience——?

Phillida came across the lawn with an armful of gaudy-covered catalogues and a handful of letters.

"Catalogues for Ethan; letters for you," she called in advance of her arrival. "What an important person you are, Cousin Roger! It always gives me a quivery thrill to realize who you are as well as how nice you are. Now, isn't that a jumbled speech to tumble out of me?"

I took her tanned little hand along with the letters; letters that were so many voices summoning me back to pleasant, busy Manhattan.

"It is a fine speech for a humble person to answer, Phil! But does that sort of thing matter to you women? What do you love Vere for, at bottom? Because he is strong and supple and has curly hair? No?" as she shook her head. "Because he has worn the uniform, then; proved his courage in war at sea? Because he had the glamour about him of real adventure and cabaret glitter? Or because he took you away from a life you hated? Or, perhaps, because he is kind and loves you? No! For none of these reasons? Why, then, love Ethan Vere?"

She stopped vigorously shaking her head in repeated denial, and smiled at me triumphantly.

"Because he is Ethan Vere," she promptly responded. "Oh, Cousin Roger, you clever people are so stupid! It would not make any difference at all if Drawls were ugly, or never had been a sailor, or could not skate or do things, or had not been able to make me happy. It is something very much bigger than all that!"

"And all the divorce courts, Phil? The breach of promise suits, and the couples who make each other miserable?"

"But they never had anything," she said. "Perhaps they will have it, some day. Don't you know, Cousin Roger, that the most important things in the world are those most people never know about?"

I was not sure whether I knew that, or not. After last night, I was not sure of many things. Still, if such gifts were given as she believed, if it was merely a question of being Ethan Vere—or Roger Locke——?

But I had never seriously considered leaving the adventure.



CHAPTER VIII

"The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it."—HUGO DE ANIMA.

That evening Vere and I settled the business details of the developments he had planned. Also while we three were quietly together, I launched a discussion that had been gathering in my mind all day while I watched Phillida.

"You are doing as efficient work as Vere," I told her. "In fact, you are a most moderate pair! I gave you an open bank account, Phil; and you have furnished the house for so little that I am amazed. And it is all so gay, so freshly pretty! Being an ignorant man, the details are beyond me. But—one servant? Aren't you working yourself too hard? I had expected you to need several. Of course, we are not counting Vere's outdoor force."

She turned in her low chair beside the lamp and glanced toward the window behind her, before replying. I noticed the action, because a moment before Vere had turned precisely the same way.

"It is good of you to think of those things, Cousin Roger," she declared. "But, I want to be a real wife to Drawls. I do, indeed! And I have it all to learn because I was not brought up for that. Look at this dish-towel I am hemming. Cristina would laugh at the stitches if she dared, yet they are better than when I began. Some day I shall sew fine things. So it is with all my housekeeping. I think we should begin as we mean to go on, so I have furnished the house for—us. Perhaps if it had been for you alone, I should have chosen satin-wood and tapestry instead of willow and cretonne. The same way about Cristina. If Ethan and I are to save and earn this lovely place, as you offered, we cannot afford more than one maid. You understand what I am trying to explain, don't you?"

"Yes," I assented. "Surely! What were you looking for, just now, behind you?"

"I? Oh, nothing! I just fancied someone had passed by the window and stared in. I can't imagine what made me fancy that. Unless the cat——" She hesitated.

"Bagheera is asleep under Mr. Locke's chair," Vere observed casually.

"Truly, Cousin Roger, I love the way we are living," she resumed. "It is very miserable of me, I daresay, not to be more intellectual after all Father and Mother labored with me. But it is so! I want to live this way all my life; to be busy, and plan things with Ethan, and make them come true together."

Under cover of the table she put her hand into Vere's, and silence held us a little while. I watched Bagheera the cat, who sat beside my chair staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window across the room. Did I imagine a slight uneasiness in those eyes, a wary readiness in gathered limbs and muscles bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now the tail twitched with a lashing movement.

Presently Bagheera looked away and relaxed. A moment more, and he curled down, composing himself to sleep.

"You like the place, Phil?" I questioned. "You do not find it lonely here, or in any way depressing?"

The candor of her surprise told me that no dweller between the worlds had visited her.

"Cousin Roger? This darling house? Why?"

I passed that question safely, and after a few minutes bade them good-night. They had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it a matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone together.

As I made my solitary way upstairs, I will not deny a growing excitement, or that dread fought with my resolution. Who would keep tryst with me tonight? The Horror or the lady? Both; as each time before? If so, which one would come first, and what might be my measure of success or failure? If some trick were being played upon me, I meant to pluck it out of the mystery.

The quietly pleasant room received me without a hint of the unusual. I lighted the lamps and sat down to my work.

The house was still by ten o'clock, all lights out except mine. At midnight I lay down in the dark, the pomander under my pillow. Whether I put the gold ball there from sentiment, or from some absurd fancy about its perfume and mystic carving being somehow a talisman against evil, or because I feared the trinket might be taken from me during the night, I should be troubled to answer. I did place it there, and lay lapped in its sweet odor while the moments dragged past; heavy, slow-footed moments of strain and dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope uneasy as fear.

The cock crowed for the first hour; and for the second. I slept, at last. When I awoke, level sun-rays were striking across the world.

Nothing had happened.



CHAPTER IX

"These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade."—PLUTARCH.

Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance where such a woman as my lady could be lodged. However, I made my cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless, resolved to leave no chance untried. No better plan occurred to me than exhibition of the pomander with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young lady with red-gold hair. But nowhere did a native show recognition of the top or the description.

On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained buggy that inspired me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities. Why had I not put my question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning? Surely here was a man who knew everyone and went everywhere!

The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it, then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside. The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded to me.

"Morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted. "Now let me get the right stuff into this here box, an' I'll sort your family's right out for you. There's a sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill 'em, for Cliff Brown here, that's gone to the bottom of the bag. I don't know but Cliff's poultry'd thank me to leave it be! Up it's got to come, though!"

"Will it make them lay?" I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering into the sack.

"I guess it might, if Cliff told 'em they'd have to lay or eat it, judgin' from the smell that sample's put in my bag."

"Not as sweet as this?" I suggested, and leaned across to lay the pomander in his gnarled hand.

The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed an elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed in sensation.

"Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?" I asked. "A lady with bright fair hair, colored like copper-bronze?"

"Not I!" he denied briefly.

"No one at all like that—with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold color, and a lot of it?"

"No. Not around here, nor anywhere I've been! What do you call this perfumery, Mr. Locke?"

"I have no idea," I answered, sharply disappointed. "No one knows except the young lady I am trying to find. Are you sure you cannot help me at all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house who might be the one I am looking for?"

He shook his head, giving back the pomander with marked reluctance.

"No one who might be able to tell more than yourself?" I persisted.

A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr. Clifford Brown's mailbox and began to sort out my letters.

"Far as that goes, I guess Mis' Hill don't miss much of what goes on around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband hitch up, and she goes drivin' all day. Ain't a house she knows that don't get to hear the whole yarn! You know Mis' Royal Hill? Mis' Vere gets butter and cheese from her. Might ask her!"

I thanked him and drove on.

Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who owned the place next to ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called that morning; inviting me into her parlor to "set," when she had identified me. But she knew nothing of the object of my quest.

"I guessed you must be the new owner up to the Michell place," she observed, her beady, faded brown eyes busy with my appearance, picking up details in avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking crumbs. "Cliff Brown said a lame feller had bought it. I don't see as that little limp cripples you much, the way you can rampus 'round in that fast automobile of yours! Now, I'm perfectly sound, and I wouldn't be paid to drive the thing. You'd ought to get the other fellow to run it for you; the handsome one. I guess you like to do it, though? Writer, ain't you? Books or newspapers?"

I rallied my scattered faculties to answer the machine-gun attack.

"Music?" she echoed, her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness. "They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never heard of havin' a piano upstairs. Most folks like to show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of funny, takin' your company upstairs to play for 'em. But then it's kind of a funny thing for a man to take to, anyhow! I got a niece ten years old next August who can play piano so good there don't seem anythin' left to learn her, so——! But there ain't no use of you drivin' 'round here lookin' for a fair-headed girl, Mr. Locke. The Slav folk down in the shanties by the post road are about the only light-complected ones in this neighborhood. Somehow, we run mostly to plain brown. Senator Allen has two girls, but they're only home from a boardin' school for vacation. How do you like your place?"

"Very much," I assured her. "Only, I do not know a great deal about it, yet. Its history, I mean. Are there any interesting stories about the house? You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghost story to tell our friends when they come to visit us."

She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered rocking-chair, arms folded on her meagre breast.

"Guess you'll have to make one up! I never heard of none. The Michell family always owned it—and they were so stiff respectable an' upright everyone was scared of 'em! Most of the men were clergymen in their time. The last, Reverend Cotton Mather Michell, went abroad to foreign parts for missionary work with the heathen, twenty-odd years ago; an' died there. He never married, so the family's run out. The Michells were awful hard on women; called 'em vessels of wrath an' beguilers of Adam. Preached it right out of the pulpit—so I guess no girl in these parts could have been hired to wed with him, if he'd wanted. His mother died when he was born, so he'd had no softenin' influence. After news came of his death, the house was shut up 'till you bought it. My, how you've changed it, already! I'd admire to go through it."

When I had invited her to call on Phillida and inspect our domicile, and paid due thanks for information received, she followed me out to the car.

"All this land 'round here is old and full of Indian relics," she remarked. "Over to the Sound where the swamps used to be, there was lots of fightin' with savages. An' they say a witch was stoned to death where the Catholic convent stands now, on the road up above your place. So I guess you can figure out a story to tell your company, if you like."

"A convent?" I repeated, my attention caught by a new possibility. "Do they, perhaps, have visitors there, ladies in retreat for a time, as convents often do abroad?"

Mrs. Hill laughed, shaking her tightly-combed head.

"No hope of your girl there," she chuckled. "They're the strictest sisterhood in America, folks say. Poor Clares, I think they're called. No one, not even their relations, ever see their faces after they join. They're not allowed to talk to each other, even. Just stay in their cells, an' pray, even in the middle of the night, an' shave their heads an' live on a few vegetables an' dry bread."

I laughed with her. Certainly no convent would harbor my lady of marvelous tresses and magical perfume, of wild fancies and heretical theories. That thought of mine was indeed far afield. But where, then, was I next to seek?

I made a detour and used some strategy to gain a view of the Senator's daughters. They proved to be brunettes who wore their locks cropped after the fashion of certain Greenwich villagers. My disappointment was not great; my lady was not suggestive of a boarding-school miss. But I had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bronze head whose royalty of hair I had shorn as the traitors shore King Childeric's Gothic locks.

I drove home with a sense of blankness upon me. Suppose she never came again? Suppose the episode was ended? Not even freedom from the Thing could compensate for the baffled adventure.

Think of the lame feller with an Adventure!



CHAPTER X

"Plato expresses four kinds of Mania—Firstly, the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to Love."—PREFACE TO ZANONI.

For myself, I have always found that excitement stimulates imagination. There are others, I know, who can do no creative work except when all within and without is lulled and calm. Perhaps I have too much calm as an ordinary thing! That evening, when I went to my room, lighted my lamps and closed my door, I stood alone for awhile breathing the mingled sweetness of the country air and the pomander ball. In that interval, there came to me, complete and whole as a gift thrust into my hand, the melody which an enthusiastic publisher since assured me has reached every ear in America.

As to that extravagant statement, I can only measure by the preposterous amount of money the melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic about it. For myself, I cannot hear it—ground on a street-organ, given on the stage, played on a phonograph record or delicately rendered by an orchestra—without feeling again the exaltation and enchantment of that night.

I flung myself down at my writing-table, tossing my former work right and left to make room for this. If it should escape before I could set it down! If the least of those airy cadences should be lost!

At three o'clock in the morning I came back to realization of time and place. The composition was finished; it stood up before me like a flower raised over-night. Eight hours had passed since I sat down to the work, after dinner. I was tired. As I began to draw into a pile the sheets of paper I had covered with notes, weariness gripped me like a hand.

Eight hours? If I had shoveled in a ditch twice that long I could have felt no more exhausted. Yielding to drained fatigue of mind and body, I dropped my head upon the arms I folded upon the table. My hot, strained eyes closed with relief, my stiff fingers relaxed. Rest and content flowed over me; my work was done, and good.

Rest passed into sleep, no doubt.

The sleep could not have been long, for not many hours remained before dawn. When I started awake and lifted my head, I found the room in darkness. A perfume was in the air, and the sense of a presence scarcely more tangible than the perfume. Even in the first dazed moment, I knew my lady had come again.

"Do not rise!" her murmuring voice cautioned me. "Unless you wish me to go?"

"No!"

"I am here because I promised to come. It was not wise of you to ask that of me."

"Then I prefer folly to wisdom," I answered, steadying myself to full wakefulness. "Or, rather, I am not sure that you can decide for me which is which!"

"Why? After all, why? Just—curiosity?"

"You, who speak so learnedly of magic and sorcery," I retorted, smiling under cover of the darkness, "have you never heard of the white magic conjured by a tress of hair, a perfume ball, and a voice sweeter than the perfume? An image of wax does not melt before a witch's fire so easily as a man before these things."

"My hair pleased you?" she questioned naively.

"Or so easily as a woman melts before admiration!" I supplemented. "I am delighted to prove you human, mystic lady. Please me? Could anyone fail to be pleased with that most magnificent braid? But how can either you or I forgive the cruelty that took it from its owner? Why did you cut it off?"

"So little of it! And I did not know you, then."

"Little? That braid?"

"It reached below my knee, now it is but little less," she answered with indifference. "We all have such hair."

I gasped. My imagination painted the picture of all that shining richness enwrapping a slim young body. It was fantastic beyond belief to sit there at my desk, beneath my fingers the tools of sober, workaday life, and stare into the dark room that held the reality of my vision. She was there, but I could not rise and find her. She was opposite my eyes, but my promise forbade me to touch the lamp and see her.

"Who are 'we'?" I slowly followed her last sentence.

A sigh answered me. On the silence, a memory floated to me of the story she had told while I held her prisoner that first night:

"The woman sits in her low chair. The fire-shine is bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either side, her hair flows down to the floor."

Yes, by legend young witches had such hair; sylphs, undines and all of the airy race of Lilith. I thrust absurdities away from me and offered a quotation to fill the pause:

"'I met a lady in the meads' 'Full beautiful; a faery's child.' 'Her hair was long, her foot was light,' 'And her eyes were wild.'"

She did not laugh, or put away the suggestion. When I had decided that she did not mean to reply, and was seeking my mind for new speech to detain her with me, she finally spoke what seemed another quotation:

"'A spirit—one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom Josephus and Michael Psellus of Constantinople may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more.' Have you read the writings of the learned Jew or of the Platonist, you who are so very bold?"

"Neither," I meekly admitted. "But neither ancient gentleman could convince me that you are unhuman."

Her answer was just audible:

"Not I—but, It!"

Now I was silenced, for dreadful and uncanny was that whisper in the dark to a man who had met here in this room What I had met.

"Tell me more of this Thing without a name," I urged, mastering my reluctance to evoke even the idea of what the blood curdled to recall. "Why does It hate me?"

"What can I tell you? Even in your world, does not evil hate good as naturally as good recoils from evil? But this One has another cause also!" She hesitated. "And you yourself? How have you challenged and mocked It this very night? Here, where It glooms, you have dared bring the high joy of the artist who creates? Oh, brave, brave!—he who could await alone the visit of the Unspeakable, in the chamber into which the Loathsome Eyes have looked, and write the music of hope and beauty!"

I started, with a hot rush of surprise and pleasure. She had heard my work. She approved it. More than that, not to her was I the lame fellow who ought to get a better man to drive his car!

"Nor should you, who have two worlds of your own," she added in a lower tone, "doubt the existence of many both dark and bright. Go, then, out of this haunted place where a human madness broke through the Barrier. Be satisfied with the victories you have had. Let the visits of the Dark One fade into mere nightmare; and know I am no more a living woman than Franchina Descartes."

"Who was she?"

"Have you not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared in Paris the philosopher Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a beautiful woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself; but Descartes declared she was an automaton, a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had made. Yet many refused to believe his story, declaring he had by sorcery compelled a spirit to serve him in this form. He called her Franchina, his daughter."

"And the truth?"

"I have told you all the record tells. She was soon lost. Descartes took her with him upon a journey by sea; when, a storm arising, the superstitious captain of the vessel threw the magic beauty into the Mediterranean."

"Thank you. But, are you fairy or automaton?"

"Do not laugh," she exclaimed with sudden passion. "You know I would say that I have no part in the world of men and women. Not through me shall the ancient dread seize a new life. A little time, now, then the doors will close upon me as the sea closed over Franchina. I will not take with me the memory of a wrong done to you. I shall never come to this house after tonight. If you would give me a happiness, promise me you will leave, too."

I had known we should come to this point. After a moment, I spoke as quietly as I could:

"Tell me your name."

She had not expected that question. I think she might have withheld the answer, given time to reflect. But as it was, she replied docilely as a bidden child:

"Desire Michell."

The name fell quaintly on both hearing and fancy, with a rustle of early New England tradition. Desire! I repeated it inwardly with satisfaction before I answered her.

"Thank you. Now, I, Roger Locke, do promise you, Desire Michell, that I will not leave this house until these matters are plainer to my understanding, whether you go or stay. But if you go and come no more, then I surely shall stay until I find a way to trace you or until the Thing kills me."

"No!"

"Yes."

There was a pause. Then, to my utter dismay, I heard her sobbing through the dark.

"Why do you tempt me?" she reproached. "Is it not hard enough, my duty? For me it is such pleasure to be here—to leave for a while the loneliness and chill of my narrow place! But you, so rich in all things, free and happy—how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark speaks or is silent? Let me go."

Wonder and exulting sense of power filled me.

"I can keep you, then?" I asked.

"I am—so weak."

"Desire Michell, I am as alone as you can be, in my real life. I have gone apart from much that occupies men and women; gaining and losing in different ways. One of the gains is freedom to dispose of myself without grief or loss to anyone, except the perfunctory regret of friends. Will you believe there is no risk that I would not take for a few hours with you? Even with your voice in the dark? Come to me as you can, let us take what time we may, and the chances be mine."

"But that is folly! You do not know. To protect you I must go."

"I refuse the protection. Stay! If there is sorrow in knowing you, I accept it. I understand nothing. I only beg you not to turn me back to the commonplace emptiness of life before I found you. Indeed, I will not be sent away."

"If I yield, you will reproach me some day."

"Never."

"It could only be like this—that we should speak a few times before the gates close upon me."

"What gates?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Very well," I took what the moment would grant me. "That is a bargain. Yet, what safety lies in secrecy between us? If we are to help each other, as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You will tell me no more about yourself? Very well. Tell me something more about the enemy in the dark whom I am to meet. You have hinted that It has a special motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere malignance toward mankind. What is that motive?"

"Ask me not," she faintly refused me.

"I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned is a heavy drawback in this combat. Arm me with a little understanding. What moves It against me?"

The pause following was filled with a sense of difficulty and recoil, her struggle against some terrible reluctance. So painful was that effort, somehow clearly communicated to me, that I was about to devour my curiosity and withdraw the question when her whisper just reached my hearing:

"Jealousy!"

"Jealousy? Of what? For whom?"

"For—me."

The monstrous implication sank slowly into my understanding; then brought me erect, gripping the edge of the table lest I forget restraint and move toward her.

"By what right?" I cried. "By what claim? Desire Michell, what has the Horror to do with you?"

The vehemence and heat of my cry struck a shock through the hushed room distinct as the shattering of crystal. There was no answer, no movement; no rebuke of my movement. I was alone. With that confession she had fled.

My cry had been louder than I knew. Presently I heard a door open. Steps sounded along the hall from the rooms on the opposite side of the house. Someone knocked hesitatingly.

"Are you all right, Mr. Locke?" Vere's voice came through the panels.

I crossed to the door and opened it. He stood at the threshold, an electric torch in his hand.

"We thought you called," he apologized. "I thought maybe you were sick, or wanted something; and no light showed around your door."

I found the wall switch and turned on the lamps. As on the last occasion, she had switched the lights off there, beyond my reach unless I broke my promise not to move about the room while she remained my guest.

"Come in," I invited him. "Much obliged to you and Phillida for looking me up! I had been working late and dropped asleep in my chair, with a nightmare as the result."

It was pleasant to have his normal presence, prosaic in bathrobe and pajamas, in my cheerfully lighted room. His dark eyes glanced toward the music-scrawled papers scattered about, then returned to meet my eyes smilingly.

"We heard some of that work," he admitted. "Phil and I—well, I guess we were guilty of sitting on the stairs to hear you play it over. I never listened to a tune that took hold of me, kind of, like that one. We'd certainly prize hearing all of it together, sometime, if you didn't mind."

The warmth of achievement flowed again in me. I crossed to the piano to assemble the finished sheets, answering him with one of those expressions of thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward vanity. I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me back to the reality of my own world.

Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in small, square script quaint as the pomander, was written a quotation strange to me:

"We walk upon the shadows of hills across a level thrown, and pant like climbers."

I did not know that I had read the words aloud until Vere answered them.

"So we do! I guess there is more panting over shadows and less real mountain-climbing done by us humans than most folks would believe. Most roads turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills we make such a fuss about. Who wrote that, Mr. Locke?"

"I don't know," I replied vaguely, intent upon Desire Michell's meaning in leaving this to me.

He nodded, and turned leisurely to go.

"Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote that piece tonight," he observed diffidently. "As if trouble did not amount to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil, now. She might be anxious."

Could that be what Desire had meant me to understand? Was there indeed some quality of courage——?

That is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money and popularity went to the publisher under the title, "Shadows of Hills." Of course no one connected the allusion. The general interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first printing: a sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe containing two young persons. I was well pleased to have it so.

But—in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose shadow I panted and strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain itself?

I did not know. I do not know, now.



CHAPTER XI

"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 of darkness, 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, he sped 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 to the 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 folded arms 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 pentagram fixed, 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 through the 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 a summer 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 sank to 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 to be 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 fetch my 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.



CHAPTER XII

"In vain I called on Rest to come and stay. We were but seated at the festival Of 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 stale beside 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 my enemy'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 Ethan Vere 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 water poured 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 the palm 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.



CHAPTER XIII

"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?"—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, any night, 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 me which 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 familiar dogging 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 the mystery 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 womanly softness 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 before Phillida 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?"