"Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft sweet woman."
--LILITH.
The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of
a solid mass enclosing the house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam
of sun pierced it. Through it sounds reached the ear distorted and
magnified. All day I sat in my room reading.
There are books which should not be preserved. I, who am a lover of
books, who detest any form of censorship, I do seriously set down my
belief that there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed. With
this few people will agree. My answer to them is simple: they have not
read the books I mean.
Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were of that character, of
course. Nearly all of them were well known to classical students, at
least by name. Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were,
but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there were two that clung to
the mind like pitch. I have no intention of giving their titles.
Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I was in a mood akin to it.
Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out
of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of
guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously
blended with contempt for my companions' childish light-heartedness. As
soon as possible, I left them.
Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table again, I pushed
aside the pile of books and sank into sombre thought. What should I say
to Desire Michell if she came tonight?
Who was she, who was claimed by the Unspeakable and who did not deny Its
claim? Was I confronted with two beings from places unknown to normal
humanity? If she was the woman that she had seemed to be throughout our
intercourse, how could the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common man
with full measure of mankind's common faults and weaknesses, could hold
Its clutch from me by right of the law that protects each in his place.
Was she one of those who have stepped from the permitted places?
"_Sara the daughter of Ruel--who was beloved by an evil spirit who
suffered none to come to her_."
"_There was a young gentlewoman of excellent beauty, daughter of a
nobleman of Mar, who loved a foule monstrous thing verie horrible to
behold, and for it refused rich marriages.... Until the Gospel of St.
John being said suddenlie the wicked spirit flue his waies with sore
noise_."
I put out my hand and thrust the pile of books aside from my direct
sight. But I could not so easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these
books had implanted. I could not forget that Desire Michell herself had
alleged jealousy as the Thing's reason for attacking me.
What if we came to an explanation tonight and ended this long delirium?
Was it not time? Had not my weeks of endurance earned me this right?
Resolution mounted in me, defiant and strong.
The evening had passed to an hour when I might look for the girl to
come. I switched off the lights, and sat down to keep our nightly tryst.
In the darkness of the haunted room, the thoughts I would have held at
bay rushed upon me as clamorous besiegers.
Desire! Desire of the world! Desire of mine and of the unhuman Thing,
did we grasp at Eve or Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold
phosphorescence of swamp and marsh?
A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A delicate stir of movement
passed by me. I raised my head from my hands, expectant.
"I am here," her familiar voice told me.
"Desire, you had to come, tonight."
Some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words. But
she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might.
She was mute, as one who stands still to find the path before taking a
step.
"You are angry," she said at last. "Something here has gone badly for
you; I knew that before I entered this room."
"How can you say that?" I challenged. "If you are like other men and
women, how can you know what happens when you are absent? How do you
know what passes between the Thing from the Frontier and me?"
"I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I feel from afar when you
are in sorrow, why, so do many people feel with another in sympathy."
"You feel more than ordinary sympathy can," I retorted.
"Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy I have for you, Roger."
Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood. Was she trying to
turn me from my purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted me
anything so near an admission of love until now.
"It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne for these meagre meetings
where I do not see your face or touch your hand," I answered. "But that
must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come with me. Let us go out
of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with
my cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to New York or Boston.
I am asking you to be my wife. Let us have done with phantoms and
spectres. I love you."
"No," she whispered. "You do not love me tonight. Tonight you distrust
me. Why?"
"Is it distrusting you to ask you to marry me?"
"Not this way would you have asked that of me when I last came! But I
will answer you more honestly than you do me. To go with you would be
the greatest happiness the world could give. To think of it dazzles the
heart. But it is not for me. Have you forgotten, Roger, that my life is
not mine? That I am a prisoner who has crept out for a little while? The
gates soon close, now, upon me."
"What gates?" I demanded.
"Sacrifice and expiation."
"Expiation of what?" I exclaimed, exasperated. "Desire, I have read the
book of Desire Michell, downstairs."
I heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness. Silence bound us both. In
the hush, it seemed to me that the house suddenly trembled as it had
done the night before, a slight shock as from some distant explosion. In
my intentness upon the woman opposite me the tremor passed unheeded. She
must answer me now, surely! Now----
She spoke with a breathless difficulty, spacing her words apart:
"How did you--find--the book?"
"It told me--the Thing from out there," I admitted, sullenly defiant of
her opinion.
She cried out sharply.
"You? You took Its gift? You did that fatal madness--and you are here?
Oh, you are lost, and the guilt mine! Yet I warned you that danger
flowed from knowing me. You accepted the risk and the sorrow--yet you
have thrown down all for a bribe of knowledge. Do you not know what it
means to take a gift from the Dark Ones of the Borderland? To brave the
Loathesome Eyes so long--and fall this way at last! Yet--there may be a
hope--since you still live. But go. Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but go
now. By all that man can dread for soul or body, go now."
"Not without you."
"Me? Oh, how can I make you understand! I shall never come here again.
Take with you my gratitude for our hours together, my prayers for all
the years to come. There is no blame to you because you could not trust
a woman on whom falls the shadow of the awful Watcher that stalks behind
me. I make no reproach--if only you will go. Do not linger. I do most
solemnly warn you not to stay alone in this room one moment after I have
gone."
"Desire!" I exclaimed. "Wait. Forgive me. I trust you. I did not mean
what you believe. Do not leave me this way. Desire----"
I can say honestly that my next action was without intention. On my
table lay, as usual, a small electric torch. Every member of our
household was provided with one for use in emergencies likely to occur
in a country house, the time of candles being past. Now, rising in
agitation and repentance, my hand pressed by chance upon the
flashlight's button. A beam of light poured across the darkness.
What did I see, starting out of the black gloom? A spirit or a woman?
Were those a woman's draperies or part of the night fog that showed mere
swirl upon swirl of pale gray twisting in the path of light? I glimpsed
a face colorless as pearl, the shine of eyes dark and almond shaped,
then a drifting mass of gray smoke, all intermingled with glittering
gold flashes, seemed to close between us. The whole apparition sank down
out of vision, as aghast, I lifted my hand and the torch went out.
Shaken out of all ability to speak, I stood in my place. Did I hear a
movement, or only a stirring of the orchard trees beyond the windows?
"Desire?" I ventured, my voice hoarse to my ears.
No answer. I felt myself alone.
I would not at once turn on the lamps. My haste might seem an attempt to
break faith with her a second time. I sat down again, folding my arms
upon the table and resting my forehead upon them.
Well, I had seen her at last--but how? A wan loveliness seemingly
painted upon the canvas of the dark by a brush dipped in moonlight. A
white moth caught fluttering in the ray of the torch. Seen at the
instant of her leaving me forever; insulted by my suspicions, my love
hurled coarsely at her like a command, my promise of security for her
visits apparently broken. How dared I even hope for her return?
Now I knew why my enemy had guided me to those books, that I might read,
fill my mind with the poison of vile thoughts, and destroy the
comradeship that bound me to Desire Michell. How should I find her? How
free us both?
The clock in the hall downstairs struck a single bell. With dull
surprise I realized that considerable time had passed while I sat there.
Still I did not move, weighed down by a profound discouragement.
Suddenly, as a wave will run up a beach in advance of the incoming tide,
impelled by some deep stir in the ocean's secret places, an icy surge
rushed about my feet. Deathly cold from that current struck through my
whole body. My heart shuddered and staggered in its beating from pure
shock.
"_Go! Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but now!_"
The wave seeped back, receded away from me down its invisible beach.
Desire's warning hammered at my mind, striving to burst some barred door
to reach the consciousness within that had loitered too long. This was
the new peril. This was what I had fled from, unknowing the source of my
panic, the night before.
This was death.
A second surge struck me with the heavy shock of a veritable wave from
some bitter ocean. This time the tide rose to my knees; boiling and
hissing in its rush. Blood and nerves seemed to freeze. I felt my heart
stop, then reel on like a broken thing. Flecks of crimson spattered like
foam against my eyelids.
The wave broke. The mass poured down the beach, tugging at me in its
retreat. With the last strength ebbing away from me with that receding
current, I dragged the chain of the lamp beside me.
The comfort of light springing up in the room! The relief of seeing
normal, pleasant surroundings! Truly light is an elixir of courage to
man.
That cold had paralyzed me. I had no force to rise. Nor did I altogether
wish to rise and go. I had lost Desire tonight. Was I to lose my
self-respect also? Was I to run a beaten man from this peril, after
standing against my enemy so long?
Should I not rather stand on this my ground where I was not the "lame
feller"?
Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night
stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds
indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of
goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam.
The series of progressive crashes passed back of the house and continued
on, dying away down the creek.
As I braced my startled nerves after this outbreak of noise, the light
was withdrawn from every lamp in the room. At the same moment, the
electric torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor. I heard its
progress across the muffling softness of the rug, across the polished
wood beyond, and final stoppage at some point out of my reach.
As vapor rises from some unseen source and forms in vague growing mass
within the curdled air, so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared
Itself in the night and stared in upon me. As so many times, I felt the
Eyes I could not see; the pressure of a colossal hate loomed over me,
poised to crush, yet withheld by a force greater than either of us. The
venom of Its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere about me, fouling
the breath I drew. My lungs labored.
"Pygmy," Its intelligence thrust against mine. "Frail and presumptuous
Will that has dared oppose mine, you are conquered. This is the hour
foretold to you, the hour of your weakness and my strength. Weakling,
feel the death surf break upon you. Fall down before me. Cower--plead!"
Now indeed I felt a sickness of self-doubt, for the wash of the
invisible sea never had come to me until tonight. And there was Desire's
saying that I had destroyed myself by accepting the Thing's gift of
knowledge of the book. But I summoned my forces.
"Never," my thought refused It. "Have we not met front to front these
many nights? And who has drawn back, Breaker of the Law? You return, but
I live. The duel is not lost."
"It is lost, Man, and to me. Have you not taken my gift that you might
spy meanly on the secret of your beloved? Have you not opened your mind
to the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of strength within and
tear down its power? Of your own deed, you are mine. My breath drinks
your breath. Your life falls down as a lamp that is thrown from its
pedestal. Your spirit rises from its seat and looks toward those spaces
where it shall take flight tonight. Man, you die."
Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the
swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away
down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining
low. My enemy spoke the truth. One more such wave----
My imagination sprang ahead of the event. In fancy, I saw bright dawn
filling this room of mine, shining on the figure of a man who had been
myself. His head rested on his folded arms so that his face was hidden.
On the table beside him a vase was overturned; a spray of heliotrope lay
near and water had trickled over scattered sheets of music, staining the
paper. By and by Vere would come to summon that unanswering figure to
the gay little breakfast-table. Phillida would leave her place behind
the burnished copper percolator she prized so highly and come running up
the stairs. In her gentleness she would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry
for that. But it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall that I
had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never
lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange, how she had
been rated below more beautiful or more clever women until the waif
Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for us to wonder at!
"Pygmy, will you think of another pygmy now?" raged the Thing.
"Yourself! Think of yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the
vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the grave. Think how you are
alone with me. Think how you are abandoned to me."
But with that tenderness for Phillida a warmth had flowed through me
like strength.
"Not so," my defiance answered It. "For where I am, I stand by my own
will. With where I shall stand, you have nothing to do. Back, then, for
with the death of my body your power ends. Back--or else face me, Thing
of Darkness, while we stand in one place."
At this mad challenge of mine silence closed down like a shutting trap.
Consciousness sank away from me with a sense of swooning quietness.
* * * * *
I stood before the Barrier on the ghostly frontier; erect, arms folded,
fronting the Breach in that inconceivably mighty wall. Above, away out
of vision on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs.
This I had seen before. But behind me lay that which I had not seen. The
mists I believed to be eternal had lifted. Naked, a vast gray sea
stretched parallel with the Barrier; like it, without end or even a
horizon to bound its enormous desolation. Between these two immensities
on the narrow strand at the foot of the wall, I stood, pygmy indeed. In
the Breach, as of old, the Thing whose home was there reared Itself
against me.
"Man," It spat, "would you see me? Would you see the Eyes once seen by
the witch-woman, who fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay,
crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you brave my immemorial age?"
It reared up, up, a towering formlessness. It stooped, a lowering
menace.
"Man, whenever man has summoned Evil since the youngest days of the
world have I not answered? Have I not brought my presence to the
magician's lamp? Have I not shadowed the alchemist at his crucible? When
the woman called upon me with ancient knowledge, did I not come. I am
the guardian of the Barrier. Whoever would pass this way must pass me.
Have you the power? Die, then, and begone."
With a long heaving sound of waters in movement, the gray sea stirred
from its stillness. As if drawn to some center out of sight, the tide
began to recede down that strange beach. Then realization came to me
that here was the ocean which, invisible, had surged icy death upon me a
while past. The ocean now gathered for the final wave that should
overwhelm the defeated.
"Braggart!" my thought answered the taunt. "If the witch-woman was
yours, the girl Desire is mine. This I know: as little as man has to do
with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living
or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare look
upon you, if you have visible form."
Now in the hush a sound that I had faintly heard as a continuing thing
seemed to draw nearer. A sound of light, swift footsteps hurrying,
hurrying; the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But I heeded
this slightly. My gaze was upon that which took place within the cleft
in the great wall. For there the cold darkness was writhing and turning,
visible, yet obscure; as the rapids of a glassy, twisting river might
look by night. And as one might glimpse beneath the smooth boil and
heave of such a river the dim shape of crocodile or water-monster, so in
that moving dark there seemed to lie Something from which the mind
shrank, appalled. Now gigantic tentacles rolled about a central mass,
groping out in unsatisfied greed. Now an ape-like shape seemed to stalk
there, rearing up its monstrous stature until all that Breach was choked
with it. It fell down into vagueness, where huge coils upraised and sank
their loops. But through all change steadily fixed upon me I felt the
eyes of the Unseen.
I stood my ground. With what pain and draining cost to my poor endurance
there is no need to say. Each instant I anticipated the surge of that
returning sea whose flood should smother out the human spark upon its
shore. This I had brought upon myself. Yes, and would again to help
Desire Michell! If I had sheltered her for one hour----!
The Thing halted, stooped.
"Man, cast off the woman," It snarled at me. "Fool, evil goes with her.
For her you suffer. Thrust her from your breast."
I looked down. Wavering against my breast, just above my heart glimmered
a spot of light. The little hurrying steps had ceased. I thought, if the
bright head of Desire Michell were rested there against me, how I would
strive to shield her from sight of the Thing yonder. In the sweep of
that will to protect, I drew my coat about the spot of hovering
brightness.
I felt her press warm against me. I heard the roar of the death-wave far
out in that sea. Before me----
Oh Horror of the Frontier, what broke through the dread Breach. What
formed there, more inhuman from Its likeness to humanity? What Hand
reached for me--for--us----