He picked it up, smelled it, and burst into a peal of laughter.
"Father, it"s too bad of you!" he said. "There have I been keeping our bargain, while you--"
He broke off, laughing again.
"No, I"ll confess," he said, "because I"m so pleased at having found you out. I"ve been having some quiet drinks up in my bedroom while you"ve been doing the same down here. What did you do with your bottles? I put mine in the lake. I say, that is funny, isn"t it? But it"s rather unsociable. Let"s follow Germany"s example, and call our treaty waste paper."
And Archie had laughed over that miserable sordid exposure, just as light-heartedly as he had laughed over the jolly innocent humours at Silorno, and, sick at heart, Jessie had left the two together with the bottle which there was no need to conceal any more.
She sat long at her window in a miserable state of horror and fear and agitation, now trying to persuade herself that she was taking these things too heavily--Helena had always told her she took things heavily--now letting her fears issue in terrible cohort and looking them in the face. It was her powerlessness to help that most tortured her, her fate of having to stand and watch while Archie pushed out ever farther, with delight and joy, on to the perilous seas. But now there was to her a reality about it all which she had never wholly felt before. Often she had told herself that she was imagining perils, but to-night, in the darkness and the quiet, she felt herself face to face with the grim, deadly facts. Spiritual and ghostly enemies were about, and next moment she had slid on to her knees. No words came: she tried just to open her heart to that light that surely shone through the evil that swarmed about her. Something, ever so faint, glimmered there, and presently she rose again with her soul fixed on that little spark shining within her. In any case, she must make every effort to help, instead of succ.u.mbing to her sense of powerlessness.
At that moment she heard light, swift footsteps on the stairs, and instantly her mind was made up, and she came out into the broad pa.s.sage just as Archie was opposite her door. His face was eager and alert; there was no trace of intoxication there.
"Hullo, Jessie," he said, smiling. "Not gone to bed yet?"
She had to be wise: mere helpless prayer would avail nothing if she did not exert herself and make use of her wits and her love.
"No: I didn"t feel sleepy," she said. "You don"t look sleepy either. Are you going to bed?"
"No, not yet," said Archie.
Jessie came a step closer to him.
"Oh, Archie, are you going to talk to Martin?" she asked. "Mayn"t I come? I should so love to, for I know all that Martin means to you. You know I did hear him talking to you before. It would be lovely if I could hear you talking together, so that I knew what he said."
Archie looked at her.
"Well, I don"t know why not," he said. "But you must promise not to interrupt. Perhaps you"ll neither hear nor see anything. But I don"t see why you shouldn"t try. It"s just a seance. Come along, Jessie."
He led the way into his bedroom, and shut the door.
"I shall really rather like you to be here," he said. "I"m glad you suggested it. For now and then I go into very deep trance, and then I can"t remember what exactly has happened. I only know that there has been round me an atmosphere--to call it that--in which I glow and expand. Sometimes I rather think I struggle and groan: you mustn"t mind that. It"s only the protest of my material earthly self. Come on: let"s begin. I long for Martin to come."
Jessie felt her dread and horror of the occult surge up in her, and it required all her resolution to remain here. But the call of her love was imperative: if she was to be permitted to help Archie at all, she must learn what it was that possessed him, and find means to combat it. She had to know first what it was, penetrate, so far as her love had power, into the source of it, diagnose it, if she was to help in curing.
"What are you going to do?" she said.
"It"s very simple; you"ll soon see. Sit down, Jessie."
He went to the window and drew aside the curtains. He put on the table in front of where he was to sit the silver top of some toilet-bottle, and then went to the door and turned out all the electric lights at the switch-board. The moonlight outside, without shining directly into the room, made the objects in it clearly though duskily visible, and Jessie, where she sat with her back to the light, could see Archie"s face and outline, when her eyes got accustomed to the dimness, quite distinctly.
He sat close to her at the end of the writing-table, and just in front of him glimmered the stopper from the toilet-bottle.
"Now I"m going to look at that till I go off into trance," he said.
"Watch what happens very closely, for I may go into deep trance, and promise me not to move till I come round again. I daresay you will neither hear nor see anything, but I don"t know."
For some few minutes, as far as the girl could judge, they sat in silence. Once or twice Archie shifted his position slightly, and she heard his shirt-front creak a little as he breathed quietly and normally. Outside a little wind stirred, and the ta.s.sel of the blind tapped against the sill.
Then there came a change: his breathing grew louder, as if he panted for air, and now and again he moaned, and she saw his head drop forward.
This moaning sound was horrible to hear, and, but for her promise, and the insistent urging of her love, she must have got up and roused him.
His breath whistled between his lips as he took it in, and his face seemed to be shining with some dew of anguish, and his arms twisted and writhed as if struggling against some overmastering force. Then suddenly all sign of struggle ceased, he sat bent forward, but perfectly still, and from the table in front of him came three loud, peremptory raps, as of splitting wood. From the dusk of the room came others which she could not localize.
Archie raised his head, and, instead of leaning over the table, sank back in his chair, his arms hanging limp by his side. He began to whisper to himself, and soon Jessie caught the words.
"Martin, are you here?" he kept repeating. "Martin, are you here?
Martin, Martin?"
There was more light in the room now. It came from a pale greyish efflorescence of illumination, globular in shape, that lay apparently over his left breast. It made its immediate neighbourhood quite bright: she could see the stud in his shirt with absolute distinctness. Out of it there came a little wisp of mist that floated up like a stream of smoke above his shoulders. In the air there, independently of this, there was forming another mist-like substance, and the stream that came away from Archie seemed to join this. It began to take shape: it spread upwards and downwards into the semblance of a column, its edges losing themselves in the dark. Lines began to be interwoven within it: it was as if something was forming inside it, like a chicken in an egg. It lost its vagueness of outline, plaiting and weaving itself together: there appeared an arm bare to the shoulder; above that she could see a neck, and slowly above the neck there grew a smiling, splendid face. There seemed to be a grey robe cast about the body, from which the bare arm protruded, but much of this was vague.
Jessie felt as if some awful paralysis of terror lay over her spirit.
The whole room, cool and fresh with the night-air pa.s.sing through the open window, reeked, to her spiritual sense, with evil and unnameable corruption. Over her conscious superficial self, the mechanism that directed her limbs and worked in her brain, she had complete control: for Archie"s sake she was learning about this h.e.l.lish visitor who came to him. But within, her soul cried out in a horror of uttermost darkness. Then her will took hold of that too: whatever G.o.d permitted must be faced for the sake of love.
Just then Archie spoke in an odd m.u.f.fled voice.
"I"m going very deep," he said. "But, Martin, you"ve made me so happy all day. You"ve hardly left me at all. You"re getting to be part of me, aren"t you? Let"s talk about Helena. I say, she is a devil, isn"t she?"
Jessie had not known that anything could be so horrible as the smiling face that the apparition bent on him.
"But you"ve ceased hating her," it said. "You love her, don"t you?
Always cling to love!"
"I know, I adore her. I believe she loves me too." He laughed and licked his lips and his voice sank, so that Jessie could catch no word of what he said. But he spoke for a long time, laughing occasionally, and making horrible little movements with his arms as if he clasped something. Now and then he would perhaps ask a question, for in the same inaudible manner the apparition answered him, laughing sometimes in response. Once or twice in that devilish colloquy she caught a word or two of hideous and carnal import, and her sickened love nearly withered within her. But because love is immortal, and cannot perish though all the blasts of h.e.l.l rage against it, it still stood firm, though scorched and beaten upon. If she let it die, she felt that she would be no better than that visible incarnation of evil that smiled and bent over Archie.
Presently that devilish whispering ceased, and she saw that the apparition was beginning to lose its clearness of outline. Slowly it began to disintegrate into the weavings of mist out of which it came, and Archie said, "Good-bye, Martin, but not for long." Some of these streamers seemed to disperse in the air, others, like an eddying water-spout, seemed to draw back into that focus of light which lay over Archie"s breast. Then that too began to fade, and in the stillness and quiet she again heard the creaking of his shirt as he lay back in his chair with closed eyes. Then the struggles and moanings, the writhings of his arms began again, and again subsided, and he lay quite still.
Outside the night-wind stirred and dropped.
Then Archie spoke in a tired, husky voice.
"Hullo, Jessie," he said, "it"s all over. By Jove, it was ripping. But I went awfully deep. I can remember nothing after Martin came. What did he say?"
Jessie got up.
"I heard hardly anything," she said. "He spoke in whispers, and so did you."
"Did you see him?" asked Archie.
"Yes, quite clearly. But I think I"ll go to bed now. You look very tired."
He had got up and turned on the electric light, and stood by the door rubbing his eyes.
"Yes, I am tired," he said, "but I"m divinely happy. Tell me to-morrow whatever you can remember. Good-night, Jess. You are a good sort."
He detained her hand for a moment.
"We"re cousins, Jess," he said, "and you"re an awfully good friend.
Won"t you give me a kiss?"
For one second she shrank from him in nameless horror. The next she put it all from her, for her shrinking, no angel of the Lord, but a weak, cowardly impulse, stood full in the path of love, and while it was there she could not reach Archie.