The question was rash, but it escaped me before I could check the impulse. To my relief, she answered without resentment:
"No."
"No? The Thing--the enemy that comes to me has never spoken to you?"
"No."
I was silent in amazement and incredulity. The dark creature claimed her, she declared herself helpless to escape from that dominion into normal life, and yet It never had spoken to her? It spoke to me, a stranger most ignorant, and not to the seeress who was familiar with Its existence and the lore which linked humanity to Its fearful kind?
"You do not believe me," her voice came quietly across my thoughts.
"I believe you, of course," I stammered. "I was only--astonished. You have described It, and the Barrier, so often; from the first night----!
I supposed you had seen all I have, and more."
"All you have seen? Now tell me with what eyes you have seen the Barrier and the Far Frontier? The eyes of the body, or that vision by which man sees in a dream and which is to the sight as the speech of spirits is to the hearing?"
"I suppose--with the inner sight."
"Then understand me when I say that I have seen with the eyes of another, by a sight not mine and yet my own."
"You mean," I floundered in vague doubts and jealousy of her human a.s.sociations of which I knew nothing. "You mean--hypnotism?"
She laughed with half-sad raillery.
"How shall I answer you, Roger? Once upon a time, the jewel called beryl was thought unrivaled as a mirror into which a magician might look to see reflected events taking place at a distance, or reflections of the future. But by and by magicians grew wiser. They found any crystal would serve as well as a beryl. Later still, they found a little water poured in a basin or held in the hollow of the hand showed as true a fantasm.
So one wrote: "_There is neither crystallomancy nor hydromancy, but the magick is in the Seer himself._""
"Well, Desire?"
"Well, Roger--if to see with the sight of another is hypnotism, then every man who writes a book or tells a good tale is a hypnotist; every historian who makes us see the past is a necromancer."
"You read of the Thing----?"
"No," she replied, after a long pause. "I knew It through sympathy with one who died as I would not have you to die, my friend Roger, of whom I shall think long in that place to which I go presently. Question me no more. When the time comes for you to throw a certain braid of hair and a pomander into the fire----"
"I will never do that!"
"No? Well, you might keep the pomander, which is pure gold engraved with ancient signs and the name of the Shining Dawn, Dahana, in Sanskrit characters. Also the perfume it contains is precious, being blent with the herb vervain which is powerful against evil spirits."
"It is not the pomander that I should keep, nor the pomander that holds the powerful spell."
"You--value the braid so much?"
"I value only one other beauty as highly."
"Yes, Roger?"
"Yes, Desire. And that beauty is she who wore the braid."
Now the darkness in the room was dense. Yet I thought I sensed a movement toward me as airy as the flutter of a bird"s wing. The fragrance in the atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her pa.s.sing. But when I spoke to her again, after a moment"s waiting, she had gone.
I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in her ideas of neatness than my little Cousin Phillida, and no maid more exact in carrying out orders than Cristina. Nevertheless, automobiles pa.s.s on the quietest roads, and my windows are always wide open. There is the fireplace, too, with possibilities of soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust overlaying the writing-table on the following morning. And in the dust was a print as if a small hand had rested there, a yard from my chair.
A slim hand it must have been. I judged the palm had been daintily cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd size of the whole affair. My hand covered it without brushing an outline.
I could not put this souvenir away with the braid and the pomander. But I could put its evidence with their witness of Desire Mich.e.l.l"s reality.
CHAPTER XIII
"For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses being dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?"--KING JAMES" "DEMONOLOGY."
Now I have to record how I walked into the oldest snare in the world.
Perhaps it was the sense of her near presence brought home to me by her hand-print on the table so close to where my hand rested; perhaps it was her speech of presently leaving me to return no more. Or perhaps both these joined in urging on my determination to learn more of Desire Mich.e.l.l before some unknown bar fell between us. I only know that I pa.s.sed into a mood of trapped exasperation at my helplessness and lack of knowledge. It seemed imperative that I should act to save us both, act soon and surely; yet inaction was bound upon me by my ignorance. Who was she? Where did she live? What bond held her subject to the Thing from the Barrier? What gates were to close between us? Why could she not put her hand in mine, any night, and let me take her away from this haunted place? Why, at least, not come to me in the light, and let me see her face to face? I was a man groping in a labyrinth while outside something precious to him is being stolen.
For the first time I found myself unable to work, unable to share our household life with Phillida and Vere, or to find relaxation in driving about the countryside. Anger against Desire herself stirred at the bottom of my mind; Desire, who hampered me by the word of honor in which she had netted me so securely.
It was then that my enemy from the unknown places began to whisper of the book.
I encountered that enemy in a new mood. We did not meet at the breach in the mighty wall, confronted in death conflict between Its will and mine.
Instead, night after night It crept to my window as at our first meeting. I started awake to find Its awful presence blackening the starlight where It crouched opposite me, Its intelligence breathing against mine. As always, my human organism shrank from Its unhuman neighborhood. Chill and repugnance shook my body, while that part of me which was not body battled against nightmare paralysis of horror. But now It did not menace or strive against me. It displayed a dreadful suavity I might liken to the coiling and uncoiling of those great snakes who are reported to mesmerize their prey by looping movements and figures melting from change to change in the Hunger Dance of Kaa.
There was a book that held all I longed to know, It whispered to me. A book telling of the woman! She did not wish me to read, for fear I should grow overwise and make her mine. The book was here, in my house.
I might arise and find--if I would be guided by It----!
I thrust the whispers away. How could I trust my enemy? If such a book existed, which seemed improbable, there was a taint of disloyalty to Desire in the thought of reading without her knowledge.
The Thing was not turned away. How could I do harm by learning what she was, unless she had evil to conceal? Did I fear to know the truth? As for the book"s existence, I had only to accept guidance from It----?
I persisted in refusal. But the idea of the book followed me through my days like a wizard"s familiar d.o.g.g.i.ng me. Where could such a volume be hidden, in what secret nook in wall or floor? How came a book to be written about the girl I supposed young, unknown and set apart from the world? Was I letting slip an opportunity by my fastidious notions of delicacy?
Indecision and curiosity tormented me beyond rest. Phillida and Vere began to consider me with puzzled eyes. Cristina developed a habit of cooking individual dishes of especial succulence and triumphantly setting them before me as a "surprise"; a kindness which of course obliged me to eat whether I was hungry or not. I suspect my little cousin abetted her in this transparent ruse. I pleaded the heat as an excuse for all. We were in late August now. Cicadas sang their dry chant in the fields, where the sun glared down upon Vere"s crops and painted him the fine bronze of an Indian. Our lake scarcely stirred under the hot, still air.
It was after a day of such heat, succeeded by a night hardly more cool, that the lights in my room quietly went out. I was sitting at my table, some letters which required answers spread before me while I brooded, pen between my fingers, upon the mystery which had become my life. For the moment I attributed the sudden failure of light to some accident at the powerhouse.
Not for long! The hateful cold that crept like freezing vapor into the room, the foul air of damp and corruption pouring into the scented country atmosphere, the frantic revolt of body and nerves--before I turned my eyes to the window I knew the monster from the Frontier crouched there.
"Weakling!" It taunted me. "Puny from of old, how should you prevail? By your fear, the woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in whose hand the weapon was laid and who shrinking let it fall unused, the end comes."
"The book?" I gasped, against my better judgment.
"The book was the weapon."
"No, or you would not have offered it to me."