"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.