At that I rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast pipe against an apple-tree. I was not so sure that he was right, self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden-bronze spot of light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the Barrier; the light so like the bright imagined head of Desire. To fly from my place now, herded like a cowardly sheep by the Thing of the Frontier, would that not be to thrust her away to save myself?
No! Not myself, my life!
I had the answer now. I walked back to Vere and took my seat again.
"Both of us, or neither," I told him. "If you can help me make it both by any ingenuity, I shall be mighty glad. It"s a pleasant world! But we will not talk any more of my running for New York like a kicked pup. The question is, will you and Phillida take care of the lady who calls herself Desire Mich.e.l.l, if tomorrow morning finds her free, but alone and friendless?"
"As long as we live, Mr. Locke," he answered. "But I guess there isn"t any disgrace in your going to New York, running or not, if you take her with you. And that is what ought to have been done long ago."
"Vere?"
He nodded.
"You"ve got me! Just pick the lady up, carry her out of that room, and have a show-down. Put her in your car and take her to town."
"I gave her my word not----"
"People can"t stand bowing to each other when the ship"s afire. If she is worth dying for, she doesn"t want you to die for her."
The simplicity of it! And, leaping the breach of faith, the temptation!
What harm could I do Desire by this plan of Vere"s? What good might I not do her? Was it mere slavishness of mind on my part not to overrule her timid will? She must pardon me when she realized my desperate case.
A dying man might be excused for some roughness of haste, surely.
Whether flight could save us I did not know. I did know absolutely that my enemy had crossed the Barrier last night, and I was prey merely withheld from It by the chance respite of a few daylight hours.
Suppose our escape succeeded? A whole troup of pictures flitted across the screen of my fancy. Desire beside me in the city, my wife. Desire in those delightful shops that make Fifth Avenue gay as a garden of tulips, where I might buy for her frocks and hats, shoes of conspicuous frivolity and those long white gloves that seem to caress a woman"s arm--everything fair and fine. Restaurants I had described for her, where she might dine in silken ease and perhaps hear played the music she had named----
I aroused myself and looked at Vere.
"You"ll do it?" he translated my expression.
"I will, if she gives me the opportunity."
"Do you judge she will?"
"I hope so. Since she went so far as to show herself to you in order to send help to me when I was in danger, I believe she will come to my room tonight if I wait there----"
He looked at me silently. The consternation and protest in his face were speech enough.
"If I wait there alone," I finished somewhat hurriedly. "If she comes in time, we will try the plan. Have the car ready. You and Phillida will be prepared, of course. We will waste no time in getting away as far as possible."
"And if that Thing comes before she does, Mr. Locke?"
"Is there any other way?"
"I guess you haven"t considered that you"re inviting me to stand by while you get yourself killed," he said stiffly. "I"m not an educated man. I never heard the names you mentioned this morning of people who used to study out things like this. I never heard of any worlds except earth and heaven and h.e.l.l. But then I couldn"t explain how an electric car runs. I know the car does run; and I know you nearly died last night. If you go back and stay alone in that room, we both know what you are going to meet."
I turned away from him because I sickened at the prospect he evoked. The memory of that death-tide was too near and rolled too coldly across the future. If the trial had been hard when mercifully unantic.i.p.ated, what would it be to meet my enemy now that I knew myself conquered? Would It not deliberately forestall Desire"s coming, tonight?
"Mightn"t you help the lady more if you went away now, and came back?"
he urged.
The deserter"s argument, time without end! Was I to fall as low as that?
Phillida"s voice called to Vere from the veranda, summoning him to some need of farm or household.
"In a moment, Pretty," he called a.s.sent.
But he did not move. I guessed that he hoped much from my silence and would not disturb me lest my decision be hindered or changed.
By and by I stood up.
"Vere, in your varied experiences in peace and war, did you ever chance to meet a coward?"
"Once," he answered briefly.
"And, did you like the sight?"
"No."
"Then," I said, "let us not invite one another to that display. Shall we go in to Phillida?"
CHAPTER XVII
"They say-- What say they?
Let thame say!"
--OLD SCOTTISH INSCRIPTION.
After luncheon, I drove over to the village with Phillida, who had some housewifely orders to give at the shops. On second thoughts, Vere and I had agreed to tell her nothing about the venture we planned for tonight.
We had satisfied her by the a.s.surance that I meant to start for New York before the dangerous hours after midnight. Rea.s.sured, she regained her usual spirits with the buoyancy of her few years and healthy nerves. I gathered her secret belief was that no "ghost" would dare face Ethan.
Which may have been quite true!
On our way home, we stopped at the shop of Mrs. Hill to add to our supply of eggs, Phillida"s hens having unaccountably failed to supply their quota. I went in, leaving my companion in the car.
No one else was in the shop. An impulse prompted me to put a question to the little woman whose life had been spent in this neighborhood.
"Mrs. Hill, did you ever hear of anyone named Desire Mich.e.l.l?" I asked.
She stopped counting eggs and blinked up at me. Her sallow, wrinkled face lightened with curiosity and an absurd primness.
"Now, Mr. Locke! I"d like to know where a young city feller like you got that old story from?"
"I have not got it. I want you to tell it to me. She was a witch?"