"Fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home."
--COWPER.
The uproar of rushing waters was still in my ears. But I was in my chair
before the hearth in the living room of the farmhouse, and the noise was
the din of a tempest outside.
Opposite me, Phillida and Desire were clinging together, watching me
with such looks of gladness and anxiety that I felt myself abashed
before them. Bagheera, the cat, sat on the table beside the lamp, yellow
eyes blinking at each flash and rattle of lightning and thunder, while
he sleeked his recently wetted fur. Wondering where that wet had come
from, I discovered presently that the fire was out, and the hearth
drenched with soot-stained water. I looked toward the windows, from
which the curtains had been drawn aside. Rain poured glistening down the
panes, but the clean storm was empty of horror.
"Drink some of this, Mr. Locke," urged Vere, whose arm was about me.
"Sit quiet, and I guess you'll be all right in a few moments."
I took the advice. Strength was flowing into me, as inexplicably as it
had flowed away from me a while past. How can I describe the certainty
of life that possessed me? The assurance was established, singularly
enough, for all of us. None of my companions asked, and I myself never
doubted whether the danger might return. The experience was complete,
and closed. Moreover, already the Thing that had been our enemy, the
horror that had been Its atmosphere, the mystery that haunted
Desire--all were fading into the past. The phantoms were exorcised, and
the house purified of fear.
But there was something different from ordinary storm in this tempest.
The tumult of rain and wind linked another, deeper roar with theirs. The
house quivered with a steady trembling like a bridge over which a train
is passing. Pulling myself together I turned to Vere.
"What is happening outdoors?" I asked.
"The cloudburst was too much for the dam," he answered regretfully. "It
went off with a noise like a big gun, a while back. I expect the lake is
flooding the whole place and messing up everything from our cellar to
the chickenhouse. Daylight is due pretty soon, now, and the storm is
dying down. We'll be able to add up the damage, after a bit."
"The water came down the chimney and drowned Bagheera," Phillida bravely
tried to summon nonchalance. "Isn't it lucky you and Desire could not
get started in the car, after all? Fancy being out in that!"
Desire Michell steadied her soft lips and gave her quota to the shelter
of commonplace speech we raised between ourselves and emotions too
recently felt.
"It was like the tropical storms in Papua, where I lived until this
year," she said. "Once, one blew down the mission house."
Vere's weather prediction proved quite right. In an hour the storm had
exhausted itself, or passed away to other places. Sunrise came with a
veritable glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air washed limpidly
pure by the rain. The east held a troop of small clouds red as
flamingoes flying against a shining sky; last traces of our tempest.
We stood on the porch together to survey an unfamiliar scene in the rosy
light. Water overlay lawns and paths, so the house stood in a wide,
shallow lake whose ripples lapped around the white cement steps and the
pillars of the porte-cochere. Phillida's Pekin ducks floated and fed on
this new waterway as contentedly as upon their accustomed pastures.
Small objects sailed on the flood here and there; Bagheera's milk-pan
from the rear veranda bobbed amidst a fleet of apples shaken down in the
orchard, while some wooden garden tools nudged a silk canoe-cushion.
In contrast to all this aquatic prospect, where the real lake had been
there now lay some acres of ugly, oozing marsh; its expanse dotted with
the bodies of dead water-creatures and such of Vere's young trout as had
not been swept away by the outpouring flood. The dam was a mere pile of
debris through which trickled a stream bearing no resemblance to the
sparkling waterfall of yesterday. Already the sun's rays were drawing a
rank, unwholesome vapor from the long-submerged surface.
We contemplated the ruin for a while, without words.
"Poor Drawls!" Phillida sighed at length. "All your work just rubbed
out!"
"Never mind, Vere," I exclaimed impulsively. "We will put it all back in
the same shape as it was."
But even as I spoke, I felt an odd shock of uneasiness and recoil from
my own proposition. I did not want the lake to be there again; or to
hear the unaccountable sounds to which it gave birth and the varying
fall of the cataract over the dam. Did the others share my repugnance? I
seemed to divine that they did. Even the impetuous Phil did not break
out in welcome of my offer. Desire, who had smoothed her sober gray
dress in some feminine fashion and stood like Marguerite or Melisande
with a great braid over either shoulder, moved as if to speak, then
changed her intention. A faint distress troubled her expression.
As usual, Vere himself quietly lifted us out of unrest.
"I'm not sure that couldn't be bettered, Mr. Locke," he demurred. "That
is if you liked, of course! That marsh could be cleaned up and drained
into pretty rich land, I guess. And down there beyond the barn, on the
other side where the creek naturally widens out into a kind of basin, I
should think might be the spot for a smaller, cleaner lake."
"Doesn't it seem to you, Ethan," I said, "that we have progressed rather
past the _Mr. Locke_ stage?"
A little later, when Desire and I were alone on the porch, we walked to
the end nearest the vanished lake. Or rather, I led her to a swinging
couch there, and sat down beside her.
"Point out the path down the hill by which you used to come," I asked of
her.
She shook her head. There are no words to paint how she looked in the
clear morning, except that she seemed its sister.
"It is only the end of a path that matters," she said. "Look instead at
the marsh. Do you see nothing there stranger than a path through the
woods even when trodden by a wilful woman?"
Following her lifted finger, I saw a series of long mounds out there in
the muddy floor not far from the dam. Not high, two or three feet at
most, the mounds formed an irregular square of considerable area.
"The old house!" I exclaimed.
"It was set on fire by the second Desire Michell one night deep in
winter. Her father built this house of yours and put in the dam that
covered the ruins with water. I think he hoped to wash away the horror
upon the place."
"I know so little of your history."
"You can imagine it." She turned her head from me. "The first child came
back from England when it was a man grown, and claimed the house and
name of the first Desire. He settled and married here. For two
generations only sons were born to the Michells. I do not know if the
Dark One came to them. I believe it did, but they were hard, austere men
who beat off evil. Then, a daughter was born. She looked like the first
Desire and she was--not good. She was a scandal to the family. She
listened to It----! The tradition is that she set fire to the house
after a terrible quarrel with her people, but herself perished by some
miscalculation. There were no more girls born for another while after
that. Not until my father's time. He had a sister who resembled the two
Desires of the past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and
austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was
born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew,
and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness.
Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is why I--covered myself
from--you."
I took her hand, so small a thing to hold and feel flutter in mine.
"But what of me, Desire? The darkness covered no beauty in me, but a
defect. You never saw me until last night and now in the morning. Now
that you know, can you bear with a man who--limps? You, so perfect?"
She turned toward me. Her kohl-dark eyes, vivid as a summer noon, opened
to my anxious scrutiny.
"But I have seen you often," she said, the heat of confession bright on
cheek and lip. "I never meant you to know, but now----! After the first
time you spoke to me so kindly and gayly--I was so very sorrowfully
alone--and the convent was so dull! My father's field-glasses were in my
trunk."
"Desire?"
"I fear I have no vocation for a nun. I--there is a huge rock half-way
down the hill with a clear view of this place. I have spent hours there,
watching these lawns and verandas, and the things you all did. It all
seemed so amusing and, and happy. You see, where I lived there were
almost no white people except my father and a priest at the Catholic
mission. So I learned to know Phillida and Mr. Vere and----"
"Then, all this time, Desire----"
"The glasses brought you very close," she whispered. "I knew you by
night and by day."