SA-N’SA
June sunshine poured through the window of his bedroom in the Ritz; and
Cleves had just finished dressing when he heard his wife’s voice in the
adjoining sitting-room.
He had not supposed that Tressa was awake. He hastened to tie his tie
and pull on a smoking jacket, listening all the while to his wife’s
modulated but gay young voice.
Then he opened the sitting-room door and went in. And found his wife
entirely alone.
She looked up at him, her lips still parted as though checked in what
she had been saying, the smile still visible in her blue eyes.
“Who on earth are you talking to?” he asked, his bewildered glance
sweeping the sunny room again.
She did not reply; her smile faded as a spot of sunlight wanes, veiled
by a cloud—yet a glimmer of it remained in her gaze as he came over to
her.
“I thought they’d brought our breakfast,” he said, “—hearing your
voice.... Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Victor.”
He seated himself, and his perplexed scrutiny included her frail
morning robe of China silk, her lovely bare arms, and her splendid hair
twisted up and pegged down with a jade dagger. Around her bare throat
and shoulders, too, was a magnificent necklace of imperial jade which
he had never before seen; and on one slim, white finger a superb jade
ring.
“By Jove!” he said, “you’re very exotic this morning, Tressa. I never
before saw that negligee effect.”
The girl laughed, glanced at her ring, lifted a frail silken fold and
examined the amazing embroidery.
“I wore it at the Lake of the Ghosts,” she said.
The name of that place always chilled him. He had begun to hate it,
perhaps because of all that he did not know about it—about his wife’s
strange girlhood—about Yian and the devil’s Temple there—and about
Sanang.
He said coldly but politely that the robe was unusual and the jade very
wonderful.
The alteration in his voice and expression did not escape her. It meant
merely masculine jealousy, but Tressa never dreamed he cared in that
way.
Breakfast was brought, served; and presently these two young people
were busy with their melons, coffee, and toast in the sunny room high
above the softened racket of traffic echoing through avenue and street
below.
“Recklow telephoned me this morning,” he remarked.
She looked up, her face serious.
“Recklow says that Yezidee mischief is taking visible shape. The
Socialist Party is going to be split into bits and a new party,
impudently and publicly announcing itself as the Communist Party of
America, is being organised. Did you ever hear of anything as
shameless—as outrageous—in this Republic?”
She said very quietly: “Sanang has taken prisoner the minds of these
wretched people. He and his remaining Yezidees are giving battle to the
unarmed minds of our American people.”
“Gutchlug is dead,” said Cleves, “—and Yarghouz and Djamouk, and
Yaddin.”
“But Tiyang Khan is alive, and Togrul, and that cunning demon Arrak
Sou-Sou, called The Squirrel,” she said. She bent her head, considering
the jade ring on her finger. “—And Prince Sanang,” she added in a low
voice.
“Why didn’t you let me shoot him when I had the chance?” said Cleves
harshly.
So abrupt was his question, so rough his sudden manner, that the girl
looked up in dismayed surprise. Then a deep colour stained her face.
“Once,” she said, “Prince Sanang held my heart prisoner—as Erlik held
my soul.... I told you that.”
“Is that the reason you gave the fellow a chance?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.... And possibly you gave Sanang a chance because he still holds
your—affections!”
She said, crimson with the pain of the accusation: “I tore my heart out
of his keeping.... I told you that.... And, believing—trying to believe
what you say to me, I have tried to tear my soul out of the claws of
Erlik.... Why are you angry?”
“I don’t know.... I’m not angry.... The whole horrible situation is
breaking my nerve, I guess.... With whom were you talking before I came
in?”
After a silence the girl’s smile glimmered.
“I’m afraid you won’t like it if I tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You—such things perplex and worry you.... I am afraid you won’t like
me any the better if I tell you who it was I had been talking with.”
His intent gaze never left her. “I want you to tell me,” he repeated.
“I—I was talking with Sa-n’sa,” she faltered.
“With whom?”
“With Sa-n’sa.... We called her Sansa.”
“Who the dickens is Sansa?”
“We were three comrades at the Temple,” she said timidly, “—Yulun,
Sansa, and myself. We loved each other. We always went to the Lake of
the Ghosts together—for protection——”
“Go on!”
“Sansa was a girl of the Aroulads, born at Buldak—as was Temujin. The
night she was born three moon-rainbows made circles around her Yaïlak.
The Baroulass horsemen saw this and prayed loudly in their saddles.
Then they galloped to Yian and came crawling on their bellies to Sanang
Noïane with the news of the miracle. And Sanang came with a thousand
riders in leather armour. And, ‘What is this child’s name?’ he shouted,
riding into the Yaïlak with his black banners flapping around him like
devil’s wings.
“A poor Manggoud came out of the tent of skins, carrying the new born
infant, and touched his head to Sanang’s stirrup. ‘This babe is called
Tchagane,’ he said, trembling all over. ‘No!’ cries Sanang, ‘she is
called Sansa. Give her to me and may Erlik seize you!’
“And he took the baby on his saddle in front of him and struck his
spurs deep; and so came Sansa to Yian under a roaring rustle of black
silk banners.... It is so written in the Book of Iron.... Allahou
Ekber.”
Cleves had leaned his elbow on the table, his forehead rested in his
palm.
Perhaps he was striving in a bewildered way to reconcile such occult
and amazing things with the year 1920—with the commonplace and noisy
city of New York—with this pretty, modern, sunlit sitting-room in the
Ritz-Carlton on Madison Avenue—with this girl in her morning negligee
opposite, her coffee and melon fragrant at her elbow, her wonderful
blue eyes resting on him.
“Sansa,” he repeated slowly, as though striving to grasp even a single
word from the confusion of names and phrases that were sounding still
in his ears like the vibration of distant and unfamiliar seas.
“Is this the girl you were talking with just now? In—in _this_ room?”
he added, striving to understand.
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t here, of course.”
“Her body was not.”
“Oh!”
Tressa said in her sweet, humorous way: “You must try to accustom
yourself to such things, Victor. You know that Yulun talks to me.... I
wanted to talk to Sansa. The longing awakened me. So—_I made the
effort_.”
“And she came—I mean the part of her which is not her body.”
“Yes, she came. We talked very happily while I was bathing and
dressing. Then we came in here. She is such a darling!”
“Where is she?”
“In Yian, feeding her silk-worms and making a garden. You see, Sansa is
quite wealthy now, because when the Japanese came she filled a bullock
cart with great lumps of spongy gold from the Temple and filled another
cart with Yu-stone, and took the Hezar of Baroulass horsemen on guard
at the Lake of the Ghosts. And with this Keutch, riding a Soubz horse,
and dressed like an Urieng lancer, my pretty little comrade Tchagane,
who is called Sansa, marched north preceded by two kettle-drums and a
toug with two tails——”
Tressa’s clear laughter checked her; she clapped her hands, breathless
with mirth at the picture she evoked.
“Kai!” she laughed; “what adorable impudence has Sansa! Neither
Tchortcha nor Khiounnou dared ask her who were her seven ancestors! No!
And when her caravan came to the lovely Yliang river, my darling Sansa
rode out and grasped the lance from her Tougtchi and drove the point
deep into the fertile soil, crying in a clear voice: ‘A place for
Tchagane and her people! Make room for the toug!’
“Then her Manggoud, who carried the spare steel tip for her lance, got
out of his saddle and, gathering a handful of mulberry leaves, rubbed
the shaft of the lance till it was all pale green.
“‘Toug iaglachakho!’ cries my adorable Sansa! ‘Build me here my
Urdu![2]—my Mocalla![3] And upon it pitch my tent of skins!”
Again Tressa’s laughter checked her, and she strove to control it with
the jade ring pressed to her lips.
“Oh, Victor,” she added in a stifled voice, looking at him out of eyes
full of mischief, “you don’t realise how funny it was—Sansa and her
toug and her Urdu—Oh, Allah!—the bones of Tchinguiz must have rattled
in his tomb!”
Her infectious laughter evoked a responsive but perplexed smile from
Cleves; but it was the smile of a bewildered man who has comprehended
very little of an involved jest; and he looked around at the modern
room as though to find his bearings.
Suddenly Tressa leaned forward swiftly and laid one hand on his.
“You don’t think all this is very funny. You don’t like it,” she said
in soft concern.
“It isn’t that, Tressa. But this is New York City in the year 1920. And
I can’t—I absolutely can not get into touch—hook up, mentally, with
such things—with the unreal Oriental life that is so familiar to you.”
She nodded sympathetically: “I know. You feel like a Mergued Pagan from
Lake Baïkal when all the lamps are lighted in the Mosque;—like a camel
driver with his jade and gold when he enters Yarkand at sunrise.”
“Probably I feel like that,” said Cleves, laughing outright. “I take
your word, dear, anyway.”
But he took more; he picked up her soft hand where it still rested on
his, pressed it, and instantly reddened because he had done it. And
Tressa’s bright flush responded so quickly that neither of them
understood, and both misunderstood.
The girl rose with heightened colour, not knowing why she stood up or
what she meant to do. And Cleves, misinterpreting her emotion as a
silent rebuke to the invasion of that convention tacitly accepted
between them, stood up, too, and began to speak carelessly of
commonplace things.
She made the effort to reply, scarcely knowing what she was saying, so
violently had his caress disturbed her heart,—and she was still
speaking when their telephone rang.
Cleves went; listened, then, still listening, summoned Tressa to his
side with a gesture.
“It’s Selden,” he said in a low voice. “He says he has the Yezidee
Arrak Sou-Sou under observation, and that he needs you desperately.
Will you help us?”
“I’ll go, of course,” she replied, turning quite pale.
Cleves nodded, still listening. After a while: “All right. We’ll be
there. Good-bye,” he said sharply; and hung up.
Then he turned and looked at his wife.
“I wish to God,” he muttered, “that this business were ended. I—I can’t
bear to have you go.”
“I am not afraid.... Where is it?”
“I never heard of the place before. We’re to meet Selden at ‘Fool’s
Acre.’”
“Where is it, Victor?”
“I don’t know. Selden says there are no roads,—not even a spotted
trail. It’s a wilderness left practically blank by the Geological
Survey. Only the contours are marked, and Selden tells me that the
altitudes are erroneous and the unnamed lakes and water courses are all
wrong. He says it is his absolute conviction that the Geological Survey
never penetrated this wilderness at all, but merely skirted it and
guessed at what lay inside, because the map he has from Washington is
utterly misleading, and the entire region is left blank except for a
few vague blue lines and spots indicating water, and a few heights
marked ‘1800.’”
He turned and began to pace the sitting-room, frowning, perplexed,
undecided.
“Selden tells me,” he said, “that the Yezidee, Arrak Sou-Sou, is in
there and very busy doing something or other. He says that he can do
nothing without you, and will explain why when we meet him.”
“Yes, Victor.”
Cleves turned on his heel and came over to where his wife stood beside
the sunny window.
“I hate to ask you to go. I know that was the understanding. But this
incessant danger—your constant peril——”
“That does not count when I think of my country’s peril,” she said in a
quiet voice. “When are we to start? And what shall I pack in my trunk?”
“Dear child,” he said with a brusque laugh, “it’s a wilderness and we
carry what we need on our backs. Selden meets us at a place called
Glenwild, on the edge of this wilderness, and we follow him in on our
two legs.”
He glanced across at the mantel clock.
“If you’ll dress,” he said nervously, “we’ll go to some shop that
outfits sportsmen for the North. Because, if we can, we ought to leave
on the one o’clock train.”
She smiled; came up to him. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Because
I also am nervous and tired; and I mean to make an end of every Yezidee
remaining in America.”
“Sanang, too?”
They both flushed deeply.
She said in a steady voice: “Between God and Erlik there is a black
gulf where a million million stars hang, lighting a million million
other worlds.
“Prince Sanang’s star glimmers there. It is a sun, called Yramid. And
it lights the planet, Yu-tsung. Let him reign there between God and
Erlik.”
“You will slay this man?”
“God forbid!” she said, shuddering. “But I shall send him to his own
star. Let my soul be ransom for his! And may Allah judge between
us—between this man and me.”
Then, in the still, sunny room, the girl turned to face the East. And
her husband saw her lips move as though speaking, but heard no sound.
“What on earth are you saying there, all to yourself?” he demanded at
last.
She turned her head and looked at him across her left shoulder.
“I asked Sansa to help me.... And she says she will.”
Cleves nodded in a dazed way. Then he opened a window and leaned there
in the sunshine, looking down into Madison Avenue. And the roar of
traffic seemed to soothe his nerves.
But “Good heavens!” he thought; “do such things really go on in New
York in 1920! Is the entire world becoming a little crazy? Am I really
in my right mind when I believe that the girl I married is talking,
without wireless, to another girl in China!”
He leaned there heavily, gazing down into the street with sombre eyes.
“What a ghastly thing these Yezidees are trying to do to the
world—these Assassins of men’s minds’!” he thought, turning away toward
the door of his bedroom.
As he crossed the threshold he stumbled, and looking down saw that he
had tripped over a white sheet lying there. For a moment he thought it
was a sheet from his own bed, and he started to pick it up. Then he saw
the naked blade of a knife at his feet.
With an uncontrollable shudder he stepped out of the shroud and stood
staring at the knife as though it were a snake. It had a curved blade
and a bone hilt coarsely inlaid with Arabic characters in brass.
The shroud was a threadbare affair—perhaps a bed-sheet from some cheap
lodging house. But its significance was so repulsive that he hesitated
to touch it.
However, he was ashamed to have it discovered in his room. He picked up
the brutal-looking knife and kicked the shroud out into the corridor,
where they could guess if they liked how such a rag got into the
Ritz-Carlton.
Then he searched his bedroom, and, of course, discovered nobody hiding.
But chills crawled on his spine while he was about it, and he shivered
still as he stood in the centre of the room examining the knife and
testing edge and point.
Then, close to his ear, a low voice whispered: “Be careful, my lord;
the Yezidee knife is poisoned. But it is written that a poisoned heart
is more dangerous still.”
He had turned like a flash; and he saw, between him and the
sitting-room door, a very young girl with slightly slanting eyes, and
rose and ivory features as perfect as though moulded out of tinted
bisque.
She wore a loose blue linen robe, belted in, short at the elbows and
skirt, showing two creamy-skinned arms and two bare feet in straw
sandals. In one hand she had a spray of purple mulberries, and she
looked coolly at Cleves and ate a berry or two.
“Give me the knife,” she said calmly.
He handed it to her; she wiped it with a mulberry leaf and slipped it
through her girdle.
“I am Sansa,” she said with a friendly glance at him, busy with her
fruit.
Cleves strove to speak naturally, but his voice trembled.
“Is it you—I mean your real self—your own body?”
“It’s my real self. Yes. But my body is asleep in my mulberry grove.”
“In—in China?”
“Yes,” she said calmly, detaching another mulberry and eating it. A few
fresh leaves fell on the centre table.
Sansa chose another berry. “You know,” she said, “that I came to Tressa
this morning,—to my little Heart of Fire I came when she called me. And
I was quite sleepy, too. But I heard her, though there was a night wind
in the mulberry trees, and the river made a silvery roaring noise in
the dark.... And now I must go. But I shall come again very soon.”
She smiled shyly and held out her lovely little hand, “—As Tressa tells
me is your custom in America,” she said, “I offer you a good-bye.”
He took her hand and found it a warm, smooth thing of life and pulse.
“Why,” he stammered in his astonishment, “you _are_ real! You are not a
ghost!”
“Yes, I am real,” she answered, surprised, “but I’m not in my body,—if
you mean that.” Then she laughed and withdrew her hand, and, going,
made him a friendly gesture.
“Cherish, my lord, my darling Heart of Fire. Serpents twist and twine.
So do rose vines. May their petals make your path of velvet and sweet
scented. May everything that is round be a pomegranate for you two to
share; may everything that sways be lilies bordering a path wide enough
for two. In the name of the Most Merciful God, may the only cry you
hear be the first sweet wail of your first-born. And when the tenth
shall be born, may you and Heart of Fire bewail your fate because both
of you desire more children!”
She was laughing when she disappeared. Cleves thought she was still
there, so radiant the sunshine, so sweet the scent in the room.
But the golden shadow by the door was empty of her. If she had slipped
through the doorway he had not noticed her departure. Yet she was no
longer there. And, when he understood, he turned back into the empty
room, quivering all over. Suddenly a terrible need of Tressa assailed
him—an imperative necessity to speak to her—hear her voice.
“Tressa!” he called, and rested his hand on the centre table, feeling
weak and shaken to the knees. Then he looked down and saw the mulberry
leaves lying scattered there, tender and green and still dewy with the
dew of China.
“Oh, my God!” he whispered, “such things _are_! It isn’t my mind that
has gone wrong. There _are_ such things!”
The conviction swept him like a tide till his senses swam. As though
peering through a mist of gold he saw his wife enter and come to
him;—felt her arm about him, sustaining him where he swayed slightly
with one hand on the table among the mulberry leaves.
“Ah,” murmured Tressa, noticing the green leaves, “she oughtn’t to have
done that. That was thoughtless of her, to show herself to you.”
Cleves looked at her in a dazed way. “The body is nothing,” he
muttered. “The rest only is real. That is the truth, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I seem to be beginning to believe it.... Sansa said things—I shall try
to tell you—some day—dear.... I’m so glad to hear your voice.”
“Are you?” she murmured.
“And so glad to feel your touch.... I found a shroud on my threshold.
And a knife.”
“The Yezidees are becoming mountebanks.... Where is the knife?” she
asked scornfully.
“Sansa said it was poisoned. She took it. She—she said that a poisoned
heart is more dangerous still.”
Then Tressa threw up her head and called softly into space: “Sansa!
Little Silk-Moth! What are these mischievous things you have told to my
lord?”
She stood silent, listening. And, in the answer which he could not
hear, there seemed to be something that set his young wife’s cheeks
aflame.
“Sansa! Little devil!” she cried, exasperated. “May Erlik send his imps
to pinch you if you have said to my lord these shameful things. It was
impudent! It was mischievous! You cover me with shame and confusion,
and I am humbled in the dust of my lord’s feet!”
Cleves looked at her, but she could not sustain his gaze.
“Did Sansa say to you what she said to me?” he demanded unsteadily.
“Yes.... I ask your pardon.... And I had already _told_ her you did
not—did not—were not—in—love—with me.... I ask your pardon.”
“Ask more.... Ask your heart whether it would care to hear that I am in
love. And with whom. Ask your heart if it could ever care to listen to
what my heart could say to it.”
“Y-yes—I’ll ask—my heart,” she faltered.... “I think I had better
finish dressing——” She lifted her eyes, gave him a breathless smile as
he caught her hand and kissed it.
“It—it would be very wonderful,” she stammered, “—if our necessity
should be-become our choice.”
But that speech seemed to scare her and she fled, leaving her husband
standing tense and upright in the middle of the room.
Their train on the New York Central Railroad left the Grand Central
Terminal at one in the afternoon.
Cleves had made his arrangements by wire. They travelled lightly,
carrying, except for the clothing they wore, only camping equipment for
two.
It was raining in the Hudson valley; they rushed through the outlying
towns and Po’keepsie in a summer downpour.
At Hudson the rain slackened. A golden mist enveloped Albany, through
which the beautiful tower and façades along the river loomed, masking
the huge and clumsy Capitol and the spires beyond.
At Schenectady, rifts overhead revealed glimpses of blue. At Amsterdam,
where they descended from the train, the flag on the arsenal across the
Mohawk flickered brilliantly in the sunny wind.
By telegraphic arrangement, behind the station waited a touring car
driven by a trooper of State Constabulary, who, with his comrade,
saluted smartly as Cleves and Tressa came up.
There was a brief, low-voiced conversation. Their camping outfit was
stowed aboard, Tressa sprang into the tonneau followed by Cleves, and
the car started swiftly up the inclined roadway, turned to the right
across the railroad bridge, across the trolley tracks, and straight on
up the steep hill paved with blocks of granite.
On the level road which traversed the ridge at last they speeded up,
whizzed past the great hedged farm where racing horses are bred,
rushing through the afternoon sunshine through the old-time Scotch
settlements which once were outposts of the old New York frontier.
Nine miles out the macadam road ended. They veered to the left over a
dirt road, through two hamlets; then turned to the right.
The landscape became rougher. To their left lay the long, low Maxon
hills; behind them the Mayfield range stretched northward into the open
jaws of the Adirondacks.
All around them were woods, now. Once a Gate House appeared ahead; and
beyond it they crossed four bridges over a foaming, tumbling creek
where Cleves caught glimpses of shadowy forms in amber-tinted pools—big
yellow trout that sank unhurriedly out of sight among huge submerged
boulders wet with spray.
The State trooper beside the chauffeur turned to Cleves, his purple tie
whipping in the wind.
“Yonder is Glenwild, sir,” he said.
It was a single house on the flank of a heavily forested hill. Deep
below to the left the creek leaped two cataracts and went flashing out
through a belt of cleared territory ablaze with late sunshine.
The car swung into the farm-yard, past the barn on the right, and
continued on up a very rough trail.
“This is the road to the Ireland Vlaie,” said the trooper. “It is
possible for cars for another mile only.”
Splendid spruce, pine, oak, maple, and hemlock fringed the swampy,
uneven trail which was no more than a wide, rough vista cut through the
forest.
And, as the trooper had said, a little more than a mile farther the
trail became a tangle of bushes and swale; the car slowed down and
stopped; and a man rose from where he was seated on a mossy log and
came forward, his rifle balanced across the hollow of his left arm.
The man was Alek Selden.
It was long after dark and they were still travelling through pathless
woods by the aid of their electric torches.
There was little underbrush; the forest of spruce and hemlock was first
growth.
Cleves shined the trees but could discover no blazing, no trodden path.
In explanation, Selden said briefly that he had hunted the territory
for years.
“But I don’t begin to know it,” he added. “There are vast and ugly
regions of bog and swale where a sea of alders stretches to the
horizon. There are desolate wastes of cat-briers and witch-hopple under
leprous tangles of grey birches, where stealthy little brooks darkle
deep under matted débris. Only wild things can travel such country.
“Then there are strange, slow-flowing creeks in the perpetual shadows
of tamarack woods, where many a man has gone in never to come out.”
“Why?” asked Tressa.
“Under the tender carpet of green cresses are shining black bogs set
with tussock; and under the bog stretches quicksand,—and death.”
“Do you know these places?” asked Cleves.
“No.”
Cleves stepped forward to Tressa’s side.
“Keep flashing the ground,” he said harshly. “I don’t want you to step
into some hell-hole. I’m sorry I brought you, anyway.”
“But I had to come,” she said in a low voice.
Like the two men, she wore a grey flannel shirt, knickers, and spiral
puttees.
They, however, carried rifles as well as packs; and the girl’s pack was
lighter.
They had halted by a swift, icy rivulet to eat, without building a
fire. After that they crossed the Ireland Vlaie and the main creek,
where remains of a shanty stood on the bluff above the right bank—the
last sign of man.
Beyond lay the uncharted land, skimped and shirked entirely in certain
regions by map-makers;—an unknown wilderness on the edges of which
Selden had often camped when deer shooting.
It was along this edge he was leading them, now, to a lean-to which he
had erected, and from which he had travelled in to Glenwild to use the
superintendent’s telephone to New York.
There seemed to be no animal life stirring in this forest; their
torches illuminated no fiery orbs of dazed wild things surprised at
gaze in the wilderness; no leaping furry form crossed their
flashlights’ fan-shaped radiance.
There were no nocturnal birds to be seen or heard, either: no bittern
squawked from hidden sloughs; no herons howled; not an owl-note, not a
whispering cry of a whippoorwill, not the sudden uncanny twitter of
those little birds that become abruptly vocal after dark, interrupted
the dense stillness of the forest.
And it was not until his electric torch glimmered repeatedly upon
reaches of dusk-hidden bog that Cleves understood how Selden took his
bearings—for the night was thick and there were no stars.
“Yes,” said Selden tersely, “I’m trying to skirt the bog until I shine
a peeled stick.”
An hour later the peeled alder-stem glittered in the beam of the
torches. In ten minutes something white caught the electric rays.
It was Selden’s spare undershirt drying on a bush behind the lean-to.
“Can we have a fire?” asked Cleves, relieving his wife of her pack and
striding into the open-faced camp.
“Yes, I’ll fix it,” replied Selden. “Are you all right, Mrs. Cleves?”
Tressa said: “Delightfully tired, thank you.” And smiled faintly at her
husband as he let go his own pack, knelt, and spread a blanket for his
wife.
He remained there, kneeling, as she seated herself.
“Are you quite fit?” he asked bluntly. Yet, through his brusqueness her
ear caught a vague undertone of something else—anxiety perhaps—perhaps
tenderness. And her heart stirred deliciously in her breast.
He inflated a pillow for her; the firelight glimmered, brightened,
spread glowing across her feet. She lay back with a slight sigh,
relaxed.
Then, suddenly, the thrill of her husband’s touch flooded her face with
colour; but she lay motionless, one arm flung across her eyes, while he
unrolled her puttees and unlaced her muddy shoes.
A heavenly warmth from the fire dried her stockinged feet. Later, on
the edge of sleep, she opened her eyes and found herself propped
upright on her husband’s shoulder.
Drowsily, obediently she swallowed spoonfuls of the hot broth which he
administered.
“Are you really quite comfortable, dear?” he whispered.
“Wonderfully.... And so very happy.... Thank you—dear.”
She lay back, suffering him to bathe her face and hands with warm
water.
When the fire was only a heap of dying coals, she turned over on her
right side and extended her hand a little way into the darkness.
Searching, half asleep, she touched her husband, and her hand relaxed
in his nervous clasp. And she fell into the most perfect sleep which
she had known in years.
She dreamed that somebody whispered to her, “Darling, darling, wake up.
It is morning, beloved.”
Suddenly she opened her eyes; and saw her husband set a tray, freshly
plaited out of Indian willow, beside her blanket.
“Here’s your breakfast, pretty lady,” he said, smilingly. “And over
there is an exceedingly frigid pool of water. You’re to have the camp
to yourself for the next hour or two.”
“You dear fellow,” she murmured, still confused by sleep, and reached
out to touch his hand. He caught hers and kissed it, back and palm, and
got up hastily as though scared.
“Selden and I will stand sentry,” he muttered. “There is no hurry, you
know.”
She heard him and his comrade walking away over dried leaves; their
steps receded; a dry stick cracked distantly; then silence stealthily
invaded the place like a cautious living thing, creeping unseen through
the golden twilight of the woods.
Seated in her blanket, she drank the coffee; ate a little; then lay
down again in the early sun, feeling the warmth of the heap of
whitening coals at her feet, also.
For an hour she dozed awake, drowsily opening her eyes now and then to
look across the glade at the pool over which a single dragon-fly
glittered on guard.
Finally she rose resolutely, grasped a bit of soap, and went down to
the edge of the pool.
Tressa was in flannel shirt and knickers when her husband and Selden
hailed the camp and presently appeared walking slowly toward the dead
fire.
Their grave faces checked her smile of greeting; her husband came up
and laid one hand on her arm, looking at her out of thoughtful,
preoccupied eyes.
“What is the Tchordagh?” he said in a low voice.
The girl’s quiet face went white.
“The—the Tchordagh!” she stammered.
“Yes, dear. What is it?”
“I don’t—don’t know where you heard that term,” she whispered. “The
Tchordagh is the—the power of Erlik. It is a term.... In it is
comprehended all the evil, all the cunning, all the perverted spiritual
intelligence of Evil,—its sinister might,—its menace. It is an
Alouäd-Yezidee term, and it is written in brass in Eighur characters on
the Eight Towers, and on the Rampart of Gog and Magog;—nowhere else in
the world!”
“It is written on a pine tree a few paces from this camp,” said Cleves
absently.
Selden said: “It has not been there more than an hour or two, Mrs.
Cleves. A square of bark was cut out and on the white surface of the
wood this word is written in English.”
“Can you tell us what it signifies?” asked Cleves, quietly.
Tressa’s studied effort at self-control was apparent to both men.
She said: “When that word is written, then it is a death struggle
between all the powers of Darkness and those who have read the written
letters of that word.... For it is written in The Iron Book that no one
but the Assassin of Khorassan—excepting the Eight Sheiks—shall read
that written word and live to boast of having read it.”
“Let us sit here and talk it over,” said Selden soberly.
And when Tressa was seated on a fallen log, and Cleves settled down
cross-legged at her feet, Selden spoke again, very soberly:
“On the edges of these woods, to the northwest, lies a sea of briers,
close growing, interwoven and matted, strong and murderous as barbed
wire.
“Miles out in this almost impenetrable region lies a patch of trees
called Fool’s Acre.
“At Wells I heard that the only man who had ever managed to reach
Fool’s Acre was a trapper, and that he was still living.
“I found him at Rainbow Lake—a very old man, who had a fairly clear
recollection of Fool’s Acre and his exhausting journey there.
“And he told me that man had been there before he had. For there was a
roofless stone house there, and the remains of a walled garden. And a
skull deep in the wild grasses.”
Selden paused and looked down at the recently healed scars on his
wrists and hands.
“It was a rotten trip,” he said bluntly. “It took me three days to cut
a tunnel through that accursed tangle of matted brier and grey
birch.... Fool’s Acre is a grove of giant trees—first growth pine, oak,
and maple. Great outcrops of limestone ledges bound it on the east. A
brook runs through the woods.
“There is a house there, _no longer roofless_, and built of slabs of
fossil-pitted limestone. The glass in the windows is so old that it is
iridescent.
“A seven-foot wall encloses the house, built also of slabs blasted out
of the rock outcrop, and all pitted with fossil shells.
“Inside is a garden—not the _remains_ of one—a beautiful garden full of
unfamiliar flowers. And in this garden I saw the Yezidee on his knees
_making living things out of lumps of dead earth_!”
“The Tchordagh!” whispered the girl.
“What was the Yezidee doing?” demanded Cleves nervously.
Involuntarily all three drew nearer each other there in the sunshine.
“It was difficult for me to see,” said Selden in his quiet, serious
voice. “It was nearly twilight: I lay flat on top of the wall under the
curving branches of a huge syringa bush in full bloom. The Yezidees——”
“Were there two!” exclaimed Cleves.
“Two. They were squatting on the old stone path bordering one of the
flower-beds.” He turned to Tressa: “They both wore white cloths twisted
around their heads, and long soft garments of white. Under these their
bare, brown legs showed, but they wore things on their naked feet which
were shaped like what we call Turkish slippers—only different.”
“Black and green,” nodded Tressa with the vague horror growing in her
face.
“Yes. The soles of their shoes were bright green.”
“Green is the colour sacred to Islam,” said Tressa. “The priests of
Satan defile it by staining with green the soles of their footwear.”
After an interval: “Go on,” said Cleves nervously.
Selden drew closer, and they bent their heads to listen:
“I don’t, even now, know what the Yezidees were actually doing. In the
twilight it was hard to see clearly. But I’ll tell you what it looked
like to me. One of these squatting creatures would scoop out a handful
of soil from the flower-bed, and mould it for a few moments between his
lean, sinewy fingers, and then he’d open his hands and—and something
_alive_—something small like a rat or a toad, or God knows what, would
escape from between his palms and run out into the grass——”
Selden’s voice failed and he looked at Cleves with sickened eyes.
“I can’t—can’t make you understand how repulsive to me it was to see a
wriggling live thing creep out between their fingers and—and go running
or scrambling away—little loathsome things with humpy backs that hopped
or scurried through the grass——”
“What on earth _were_ these Yezidees doing, Tressa?” asked Cleves
almost roughly.
The girl’s white face was marred by the imprints of deepening horror.
“It is the Tchor-Dagh,” she said mechanically. “They are using every
resource of hell to destroy me—testing the gigantic power of Evil—as
though it were some vast engine charged with thunderous
destruction!—and they were testing it to discover its terrific capacity
to annihilate——”
Her voice died in her dry throat; she dropped her bloodless visage into
both hands and remained seated so.
Both men looked at her in silence, not daring to interfere. Finally the
girl lifted her pallid face from her hands.
“That is what they were doing,” she said in a dull voice. “Out of
inanimate earth they were making things animate—living creatures—to—to
test the hellish power which they are storing—concentrating—for my
destruction.”
“What is their purpose?” asked Cleves harshly. “What do these Mongol
Sorcerers expect to gain by making little live things out of lumps of
garden dirt?”
“They are testing their power,” whispered the girl.
“Like tuning up a huge machine?” muttered Selden.
“Yes.”
“For what purpose?”
“To make larger living creatures out of—of clay.”
“They can’t—they can’t _create_!” exclaimed Cleves. “I don’t know
how—by what filthy tricks—they make rats out of dirt. But they can’t
make a—anything—like a—like a man!”
Tressa’s body trembled slightly.
“Once,” she said, “in the temple, Prince Sanang took dust which was
brought in sacks of goat-skin, and fashioned the heap of dirt with his
hands, so that it resembled the body of a man lying there on the marble
floor under the shrine of Erlik.... And—and then, there in the shadows
where only the Dark Star burned—that black lamp which is called the
Dark Star—the long heap of dust lying there on the marble pavement
began to—to _breathe_!—”
She pressed both hands over her breast as though to control her
trembling body: “I saw it; I saw the long shape of dust begin to
breathe, to stir, move, and slowly lift itself——”
“A Yezidee trick!” gasped Cleves; but he also was trembling now.
“God!” whispered the girl. “Allah alone knows—the Merciful, the Long
Suffering—He knows what it was that we temple girls saw there—that
Yulun saw—that Sa-n’sa and I beheld there rising up like a man from the
marble floor—and standing erect in the shadowy twilight of the Dark
Star....”
Her hands gripped at her breast; her face was deathly.
“Then,” she said, “I saw Prince Sanang draw his sabre of Indian steel,
and he struck ... once only.... And a dead man fell down where the
_thing_ had stood. And all the marble was flooded with scarlet blood.”
“A trick,” repeated Cleves, in the ghost of his own voice. But his gaze
grew vacant.
Presently Selden spoke in tones that sounded weakly querulous from
emotional reaction:
“There is a path—a tunnel under the matted briers. It took me more than
a week to cut it out. It is possible to reach Fool’s Acre. We can
try—with our rifles—if you say so, Mrs. Cleves.”
The girl looked up. A little colour came into her cheeks. She shook her
head.
“Their bodies may not be there in the garden,” she said absently. “What
you saw may not have been that part of them—the material which dies by
knife or bullet.... And it is necessary that these Yezidees should
die.”
“Can you do anything?” asked Cleves, hoarsely.
She looked at her husband; tried to smile:
“I must try.... I think we had better not lose any time—if Mr. Selden
will lead us.”
“Now?”
“Yes, we had better go, I think,” said the girl. Her smile still
remained stamped on her lips, but her eyes seemed preoccupied as though
following the movements of something remote that was passing across the
far horizon.