Pat awoke in rather better spirits. Somehow, the actual entrance of Dr.
Horker into the case gave her a feeling of security, and her natural
optimistic nature rode the pendulum back from despair to hope. Even the
painful black-and-blue mark on her arm, as she examined it ruefully,
failed to shake her buoyant mood.
Her mood held most of the day; it was only at evening that a recurrence
of doubt assailed her. She sat in the dim living room waiting the
arrival of her mother's guests, and wondered whether, after all, the
predicament was as easily solvable as she had assumed. She watched
the play of lights and shadows across the ceiling, patterns cast
through the windows by moving headlights in the street, and wondered
anew whether her faith in Dr. Carl's abilities was justified. Science!
She had the faith of her generation in its omnipotence, but here in
the dusk, the outworn superstitions of childhood became appalling
realities, and some of Magda's stories, forgotten now for years, rose
out of their graves and went squeaking and maundering like sheeted
ghosts in a ghastly parade across the universe of her mind. The
meaningless taunts she habitually flung at Dr. Carl's science became
suddenly pregnant with truth; his patient, hard-learned science seemed
in fact no more than the frenzies of a witch-doctor dancing in the
heart of a Rhodesian swamp.
What was it worth--this array of medical facts--if it failed to
cure? Was medicine falling into the state of Chinese science--a vast
collection of good rules for which the reasons were either unknown or
long forgotten? She sighed; it was with a feeling of profound relief
that she heard the voices of the Brocks outside; she played miserable
bridge the whole evening, but it was less of an affliction than the
solitude of her own thoughts.
Saturday morning, cloudy and threatening though it was, found the
pendulum once more at the other end of the arc. She found herself, if
not buoyantly cheerful, at least no longer prey to the inchoate doubts
and fears of the preceding evening. She couldn't even recall their
nature; they had been apart from the cool, day-time logic that preached
a common-sense reliance on accepted practices. They had been, she
concluded, no more than childish nightmares induced by darkness and the
play of shadows.
She dressed and ate a late breakfast; her mother was already en route
to the Club for her bridge-luncheon. Thereafter, she wandered into the
kitchen for the company of Magda, whom she found with massive arms
immersed in dish water. Pat perched on her particular stool beside the
kitchen table and watched her at her work.
"Magda," she said finally.
"I'm listening, Miss Pat."
"Do you remember a story you told me a long time ago? Oh, years
and years ago, about a man in your town who could change into
something--some fierce animal. A wolf, or something like that."
"Oh, him!" said Magda, knitting her heavy brows. "You mean the
werewolf."
"That's it! The werewolf. I remember it now--how frightened I was after
I went to bed. I wasn't more than eight years old, was I?"
"I couldn't remember. It was years ago, though, for sure."
"What was the story?" queried Pat. "Do you remember that?"
"Why, it was the time the sheep were being missed," said the woman,
punctuating her words with the clatter of dishes on the drainboard.
"Then there was a child gone, and another, and then tales of this great
wolf about the country. I didn't see him; us little ones stayed under
roof by darkness after that."
"That wasn't all of it," said Pat. "You told me more than that."
"Well," continued Magda, "there was my uncle, who was best hand with
a rifle in the village. He and others went after the creature, and my
uncle, he came back telling how he'd seen it plain against the sky, and
how he'd fired at it. He couldn't miss, he was that close, but the wolf
gave him a look and ran away."
"And then what?"
"Then the Priest came, and he said it wasn't a natural wolf. He melted
up a silver coin and cast a bullet, and he gave it to my uncle, he
being the best shot in the village. And the next night he went out once
more."
"Did he get it?" asked Pat. "I don't remember."
"He did. He came upon it by the pasture, and he aimed his gun. The
creature looked straight at him with its evil red eyes, and he shot it.
When he came to it, there wasn't a wolf at all, but this man--his name
I forget--with a hole in his head. And then the Priest, he said he was
a werewolf, and only a silver bullet could kill him. But my uncle, _he_
said those evil red eyes kept staring at him for many nights."
"Evil red eyes!" said Pat suddenly. "Magda," she asked in a faint
voice, "could he change any time he wanted to?"
"Only by night, the Priest said. By sunrise he had to be back."
"Only by night!" mused the girl. Another idea was forming in her active
little mind, another conception, disturbing, impossible to phrase. "Is
that worse than being possessed by a devil, Magda?"
"Sure it's worse! The Priest, he could cast out the devil, but I never
heard no cure for being a werewolf."
Pat said nothing further, but slid from her high perch to the floor and
went soberly out of the kitchen. The fears of last night had come to
life again, and now the over-cast skies outside seemed a fitting symbol
to her mood. She stared thoughtfully out of the living room windows,
and the sudden splash of raindrops against the pane lent a final touch
to the whole desolate ensemble.
"I'm just a superstitious little idiot!" she told herself. "I laugh
at Mother because she always likes to play North and South, and here
I'm letting myself worry over superstitions that were discarded before
there was any such thing as a game called contract bridge."
But her arguments failed to carry conviction. The memory of the
terrible eyes of that _other_ had clicked too aptly to Magda's phrase.
She couldn't subdue the picture that haunted her, and she couldn't cast
off the apprehensiveness of her mood. She recalled gloomily that Dr.
Horker was at the Club--wouldn't be home before evening, else she'd
have gladly availed herself of his solid, matter-of-fact company.
She thought of Nick's appointment with the Doctor for that evening.
Suppose his psychoanalysis brought to light some such horror as these
fears of hers--that would forever destroy any possibility of happiness
for her and Nick. Even though the Doctor refused to recognize it,
called it by some polysyllabic scientific name, the thing would be
there to sever them.
She wandered restlessly into the hall. The morning mail, unexamined,
lay in its brazen receptacle, she moved over, fingering it idly.
Abruptly she paused in astonishment--a letter in familiar script
had flashed at her. She pulled it out; it was! It was a letter from
Nicholas Devine!
She tore it open nervously, wondering whether he had reverted to his
original refusal of Dr. Horker's aid, whether he was unable to come,
whether _that_ had happened. But only a single unfolded sheet slipped
from the envelope, inscribed with a few brief lines of poetry.
"The grief that is too faint for tears,
And scarcely breathes of pain,
May linger on a hundred years
Ere it creep forth again.
But I, who love you now too well
To suffer your disdain,
Must try tonight that love to quell--
And try in vain!"
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