"An excellent way to get a fayrie--and when you have her, bind
her!"--ANCIENT ALCHEMIST'S RECIPE.
In the darkness Time crept along like a crippled thing, slow-moving,
hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes,
likened by Phillida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding-board for
furtive noises that grew up like fungi in the moist atmosphere. The
thought of Phillida and Vere down in the pleasant living room tempted me
almost beyond resistance. I wanted to spring up, to rush out of the
room; to fling myself into my car and drive full speed until strength
failed and gasoline gave out.
Was that the lake which stirred in the windless night? The lake, under
which lay the fire-blackened ruins of the house where the first Desire
Michell flung open an awful door that her vengeance might stride
through!
Was it too late for my Desire to come, and time for the coming of that
Other?
The step of Vere sounded on the gravel path where he walked beneath the
window. He was making a trip of inspection, and would find no light
shining from the room. I was about to rise and call down a word of
reassurance to him, when a current of spiced air passed by me. I sat
arrested in hope and expectancy.
"Here, after my warning, after last night?" her soft voice panted across
the dark. "Will you die, then? Cruel to me, and wicked to come here
again! Oh, must I wish you were a coward!"
Every vestige of her calmness gone, she was sobbing as she spoke. I
could imagine she was wringing the little hands that once had left a
betraying print upon my table's surface.
"I was cruel to you last night, Desire; yet afterward you saved my life
by sending Ethan Vere to wake me. Would you have had me leave without
meeting you again, neither thanking you nor asking your forgiveness?"
I thought she came nearer.
"For so little, you would brave the Dread One in Its time of triumph? O
steadfast soldier, who faces the Breach even in the hour of death, in
all that you have done you have remembered me. Why speak of anger or
forgiveness? Have I not injured you?"
"Never. I love you."
"Is not that an injury? Even though I hid my ill-omened face from you,
reared as I was to sad knowledge of the wrath upon me, the wrong has
been done. Weak as water in the test, I kept the letter of my promise
and broke the intent. Yet go; keep life at least."
"Desire, I do not understand you," I answered. "No matter for that, now!
I am content to share whatever you bring. Not roughly or in challenge as
I asked you last night, but earnestly and with humility I ask you to
come away with me now. If trouble comes to my wife and me, I do not
doubt we can bear it. Let us not be frightened from the attempt. Come."
"I, to take happiness like that?" she marveled in desolate amazement.
"No. At least I will go to my own place, if tardily. Roger, be kind to
me. Give me a last gift. Let me know that somewhere you are living. Out
of my sight, out of my knowledge, but living in the same world with me.
Each moment you stay here is a risk."
In that warning she had reason. I rose. It was time to act, but action
must be certain. If my groping movements missed her in the dark there
might be no second chance.
"Desire, if all is as you say and we are not to meet again as we have
done, you shall let me touch you before I go," I said firmly.
"No!"
"Yes. Why, would you have me live all the years to come in doubt whether
you were a woman or a dream? Perhaps you might seem at last a phantom of
my own sick brain to which faithfulness would be folly? Here across the
table I stretch my arm. Lay your palm in my palm. I may die tonight."
Whether she wished it also, or whether my resolve drew obedience, I do
not know. But a vague figure moved through the dark toward me. A hand
settled in mine with the brushing touch of an alighting bird. I closed
my hand hotly upon that one. I sprang a step aside from the table
between us, found her, and drew her to me.
What did I hold in my arms? Softness, fragrance, draperies beneath which
beat life and warmth. As I stooped to reassure her, her breath curled
against my cheek. So with that guide I turned my head, and set my lips
on the lips I had never seen.
Did Something uprear Itself out there in the black fog? A cold air
rushed across the summer heat of the fog; air foul as if issued from the
opened door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered through the
house. The hanging chains of the lamps swung with a faint tinkling
sound.
I snatched Desire Michell off her feet and sprang for the door. Somehow
I found and opened it at the first essay. We were out into the hall.
With one hand I dragged the door shut behind us, then carried her on to
the head of the stairs. There I set her down, but stood before her as a
bar against any attempt at escape.
A lamp shed a subdued light above us. I looked at my captive. Never
again after that kiss could she deny her womanhood or pose as a phantom.
So far my victory was complete. The lady might be angry, but it must be
woman's anger. I knew she had not suspected my intention until I lifted
her in my arms. She had struggled then, after her defenses had fallen.
She was quiet now, as though the light had quelled her resistance. She
stood drooped and trembling; not the old-time witch, not the dazzling
adventuress, only a small fragile girl wound and wrapped in some gray
stuff that even covered the brightness of her hair. Her face was held
down and showed no more color than a water-lily.
"I thought," she whispered, just audibly. "I thought you--would say,
good-bye!"
"I know," I stammered. "But I could not. That way was impossible for
us."
She did not contradict me. She was so very small, I saw, that her head
would reach no higher than where the bright spot had rested above my
heart when I had last stood at the Barrier. One hand gripped the veils
beneath her chin, and seemed the clenched fist of a child.
The crash of my door had startled the household. I had heard Phillida
cry out, and Vere's running steps upon the gravel path. Now he came
springing up the stairs. At the head of the flight he stopped, staring
at us.
"Desire," I spoke as naturally as I could manage, "this is Mr. Vere.
Vere, my fiancee, Miss Michell. Shall we go down to Phillida?"
And Desire Michell did not deny my claim.
I am not very sure of how we found ourselves downstairs. Nor do I
remember in what words we made the two girls known to one another.
Presently we were all in the living room, and Phillida had possession of
Desire Michell while Vere and I looked on stupidly at the proceedings.
Phil had placed her in a chair beside a tall floor-lamp and gently drew
off the draperies that hooded her. With little murmurs of compassion,
she unbound and shook free her guest's hair.
"My dear, you are all damp! This awful fog! You must have been out a
long time? You shall drink some tea before we start. Drawls, will you
light the alcohol lamp on the tea-table? The kettle is filled."
Now I could understand how Desire had appeared amid a drift of fireshot
smoke in the beam of my electric torch, the night before. Her hair was a
garment of flame-bright silk flowing around her, curling and eddying in
rich abundance. Over this she had worn the gray veils to smother all
that color and sheen into neutral sameness with night and shadows. No
wonder her face had seemed wraith-like when her startled shrinking away
from the light had set all that drapery billowing about her.
She was the voice that had been my intimate comrade through weeks of
strange adventure. She was the woman of the faded, yellow book, and the
painted beauty at the Metropolitan. She was all the Desires of whom I
had ever dreamed; and she was none of them, for she was herself. Her
long dark eyes, suddenly lifted to me, were individual by that ancestral
blending of drowsiness with watchfulness; yet were akin to the eyes of
youth in all times by their innocence. Her mouth, too, was the soft
mouth of a young girl kept apart from sordid life. But her forehead, the
noble breadth between the black tracery of her eyebrows, expressed the
student whose weird, lofty knowledge had so often abashed my ignorance.
Only my ignorance? Now as she looked at me across the room, all
self-confidence trickled away from me. What distinguished me from a
thousand men she might meet on any city street? What had I ever said
worth note in the hours we had spent together? Now she saw me in the
light, plainly commonplace; and remembering myself lame, I stood amazed
at the audacity with which I had laid claim to her.
She was rising from the chair, gently putting aside Phillida's detaining
hands. She had not spoken one word since her faltered speech to me,
upstairs. Neither Vere nor Phillida had heard her voice. She had given
her hand to each of them and submitted to Phil's care with a docility I
failed to recognize in my companion of the dark. Her decisive movement
now was more like the Desire Michell I knew. Only, what was she about to
do? Repudiate my violence and me--perhaps go back to her hiding-place?
She came straight to where I stood, not daring even to advance toward
her. We might have been alone in the room. I rather think we were, to
her preoccupation.
"You must go away," she said. "If there is any hope, it is in that.
Nothing else matters, now; nothing! If you wish, take me with you. It
would be wiser to leave me. But nothing really matters except that you
should not stay here. I will obey you in everything if you will only go.
Take your car and drive--drive fast--anywhere!"
It is impossible to convey the desperate urgency and fervor of her low
voice. Phillida uttered an exclamation of fear. Vere wheeled about and
left the room. The front door closed behind him. The gravel crunched
under his tread on the path to the garage, and the rate at which the
light he carried moved through the fog showed that he was running. He
obviously accepted the warning exactly as it was given. After the
briefest indecision, Phillida hurried out into the hall.
For my part, I did nothing worth recording. I had made discovery of two
places where I was not the "lame feller." And if the first place was the
dreary Frontier, the second country was that rich Land of Promise in
Desire Michell's eyes.
What we said in our brief moment of solitude is not part of this
account.
Phillida was back promptly, her arms full of garments. With little
murmurs of explanation by way of accompaniment, she proceeded to invest
Desire in a motor coat and a dark-blue velvet hat rather like an
artist's tam-o'shanter. I noticed then that the girl wore a plain frock
of gray stuff, long of sleeve and skirt, fastened at the base of her
throat with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness of tint and
contour. Nothing farther from the fashion of the day or the figure of my
cousin could be imagined.
"You must wear the coat because it is always cool motoring at night,"
Phillida was murmuring. "And of course you will want it at a hotel;
until you can do some shopping. I will just tie back your gorgeous,
scrumptious hair with this ribbon, now. I know I haven't enough hairpins
to put it up without wasting an awful lot of time, but we will buy them
in the morning. We are going to take the very best care of you every
minute, so you must not worry."
"You are so kind to me," Desire began tremulously. "No one was ever so
kind! It does not matter about me, or what people think of me, if he
will only go from here quickly."
"Right away," Phillida soothed. "My husband has gone for the car. I hear
him coming now!"
In fact, Vere was coming up the veranda steps. His hand was on the knob
of the outer door, fumbling with it in a manner not usual to him, then
the knob yielded and he was inside.
"But how slow you are, Drawls," his wife called, with an accent of
wonder.
Vere crossed the threshold of the room, his gaze seeking mine. He was
pale, and drops of fog moisture pearled his dark face like sweat.
"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he addressed me, ignoring the others. "Perhaps
you felt that shake-up, a quarter-hour ago? Like a kind of earthquake,
or the kick from a big explosion a long ways off? It didn't seem very
strong to me. It was too strong for that old tree by the garage, though!
Must have been decayed clear through inside. Willows are like that,
tricky when they get old."
"Ethan, what _are_ you talking about?" cried Phillida, aghast.
He continued to look at me.
"I guess it must have fallen just about when you slammed your door
upstairs. Seems I do remember a sort of second crash following the noise
you made. I was too keen on finding out what was happening up there to
pay much heed."
"Well, Vere?"
"Tree smashed down through the roof of the garage," he reluctantly gave
his report. "Everything under the hood of the automobile is wrecked.
There is no motor left, and no radiator. Just junk, mixed up with broken
wood and leaves and pieces of the stucco and tiles of the garage."
So there was to be no going tonight from the house beside the lake. A
frustrated group, we stood amid our preparations; the two girls wearing
cloaks and hats for the drive that would never be taken. Had we ever
really expected to go? Already the project was fading into the realm of
fantastic ideas, futile as the pretended journeys of children who are
kept in their nursery. Desire lifted her hands and took off the blue
velvet cap with a resignation more expressive than words. Only my
practical little cousin charged valiantly at all obstacles.
"We aren't ever going to give up?" she cried protest. "Cousin Roger?
Ethan? _You_ cannot mean to give up. Why--'phone to the nearest garage
to send us another car. If we pay them enough they will drive anywhere.
Or if they cannot take us to New York, they will take us to the railroad
station where we can get a train for some place. Can't we, Drawls?"
"We could," Vere admitted. "I'd admire to try it, anyhow. But the
telephone wire came across the place right past the garage, you
know----"
"The tree tore the wire down, too?"
"I'm afraid it snapped right in two, Phil."
"We--we might walk," she essayed.
But even her brave voice trailed into silence as she glanced toward the
black, dripping night beyond the windows.
"Or if we found a horse and wagon," she murmured a final suggestion.
Vere shook his head.
"Come!" I assumed charge with a cheerfulness not quite sincere. "None of
us are ready for such desperate efforts to leave our cozy quarters here.
Especially as I fancy Vere's 'earthquake' was the tremor of an
approaching thunderstorm. I felt it, myself. Let us light all the lamps
and draw the curtains to shut out the fog which has got on everyone's
nerves by its long continuance. We are overwrought beyond reason.
Suppose we sit here together, strong in numbers, for the few hours until
daylight? I think that should be safeguard enough. Tomorrow we will do
all we had planned for tonight. Come in, Vere, and close the door."
He obeyed me at once. Desire Michell passively suffered me to unfasten
and take off the coat she wore, too heavy for such a night. She had
uttered no word since Vere announced the destruction of the car. She did
not speak now, when I put her in the low chair beneath the lamp. I had a
greed of light for her, as a protection and because darkness had held
her so long.
"It seems as if we should do something!" Phillida yielded unwillingly.
Vere's eyes met mine as he turned from drawing the last curtain. We were
both thinking of the force that had driven the frail old willow tree
through tile and cement of the new building to flatten the metal of
motor and car into uselessness. The mere weight of the tree would not
have carried it through the roof. To "do something" by way of physical
escape from that----
The ribbon had glided from Desire's hair, almost as if the vital,
resilient mass resentfully freed itself from restraint by the bit of
satin. Now she put up her hands with a slow movement and drew two broad
strands of the glittering tresses across her shoulders, veiling her
face.
"Wait," she answered Phillida, most unexpectedly. "I must be sure--quite
sure! I must think. If you will--wait."