When I was able, I rose, changed to dry garments and wrapped myself in a heavy bathrobe. There was an electric coffee service in my room kept for occasions when I worked late into the night. I made strong black coffee now and drank it as near boiling as practicable. Presently the blood again moved warmly in my veins.

Then I knew that the chill in the room was not a delusion of my chilled body. I was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike a summer night. It seemed air strangely thickened and soiled, as pure water may be muddied by the pa.s.sage of some unclean body. In this atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mold and decay, warring with the homely scent of coffee and the fragrance of the pomander beneath my pillow.

I was more shaken, more exhausted by this encounter with the unknown than by either of my former experiences. A fact which drove home the grim farewell of my enemy! _Tire but once, pygmy----!_ Desire herself had foretold that the dark Thing would wear me down.

Well, perhaps! But not without fighting for Its victory. At least I would be no supine victim. Already I had forced my way--where? Where was that Barrier before which I had stood? Awe sank coldly through me at memory of that colossal land where I was pygmy indeed, an insolent human intruder upon the unhuman. What other shapes of dread stalked and watched beyond that t.i.tanic wall? By what swollen conceit could I hope to win against Them?

I would not consider escape by flight, even if the end had been certain destruction. But my head sank to my hands beneath the weight of a profound depression and discouragement.

It was the hour before dawn, traditionally the worst for man. The hour superst.i.tion sets apart for its own, when the life flame burns lowest.

At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature, and bayed monotonously.

There was a weakness at the core of my strength. I waged this combat for the sake of Desire Mich.e.l.l. _But what was she to whom the Thing laid claim by the pact of centuries?_

Darkness began to tinge with light. Pale gray filtered into the dusk with grudging slowness. As day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the house in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls like thin smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim. I forced away my languor, rose and walked to the nearest window.

Something was moving up the slope from the lake; a dim shape about which the fog clung in steamy billows. My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly.

What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom so tall?

A moment later the figure was near enough to be distinguished as Ethan Vere, bearing several long fishing-rods over his shoulder.

"Vere!" I hailed him, with mingled relief and utter disgust with myself.

"Anything going on so early?"

He looked up at me--I never saw Vere startled--and came on to stop beneath the window. Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his black curls, pushing their wetness from his forehead. I noticed how the mists painted him with a spectral pallor.

"Good morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted me. "Just as I've been thinking, there are some big snapping-turtles about the lake and creek. I guessed there'd be some war between them and me before that water was safe for use! One of the fellows dragged a duck under, drowned it and started feeding right before my eyes, just now."

"We will have to get a canoe."

He nodded placid a.s.sent.

"That'll look pretty on the lake. Phillida will like it. But I guess I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out of sight around some corner for work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs like mine, and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetch my rifle, now. I'd admire to blow that duck-eater's ugly head off."

"I will get into some clothes and be right with you," I invited myself to the hunt.

"I'd like to have you," he replied with his quaint politeness. There were times when I could visualize Vere's New England mother as if I had known her.

The human interlude had been enough to dispel the black humors of the night. When I was ready to go out, I opened the drawer that held the copper-bronze braid and took it into my hand. How vital with youth its crisp resilience felt in my clasp, I thought; young, too, were its luxuriance and shining color. Nonsense, indeed, to fancy ghostliness here or the pa.s.sing of musty centuries over the head that had worn this tress! A flood of rea.s.surance rose high in me. Whatever the Thing might be, I would trust the girl Desire Mich.e.l.l. Yes, and for her I would stand fast at that Barrier until victory declared for the enemy or for me. Until It pa.s.sed me, It should not reach her.

I went downstairs to join Vere. The brightening mist was cool and fresh.

There was neither horror nor defeat in the promise of the morning.

CHAPTER XII

"In vain I called on Rest to come and stay.

We were but seated at the festival Of many covers, when One cried: 'Away!'"

--ROSE GARDEN OF SA'ADI.

Now I entered a time of experiences differing at every point, yet interwoven closely, so that my days might compare to a rope whose strands are of violently contrasted colors. The rope would be inharmonious, startling to the eye, but strong to bind and hold. As I was bound and held!

All day I lived in the wholesome household atmosphere evoked by Vere and Phillida. It is impossible to describe the sunny charm they created about the commonplace. Our gay, simple breakfasts where Phillida presided in crisp middy blouse or flowered smock; where the gray cat sat on the arm of Vere's chair, speculative yellow eye observant of his master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina served us her good food with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood events--how perfect a beginning for the day! How stale beside our breeze-swept table was any board at which I had ever sat! I do declare that I have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my little cousin whom her world had p.r.o.nounced "plain." Vere and I basked in her sunbeams gratefully.

Afterward, we each had our work. Of the three, Vere was the most industrious; slow, steady and unsparing of himself to a degree that accomplished surprising results. Phillida flitted over the place indoors and out, managing the house, following Vere about, driving to village or town with me on purchasing trips for our supplies. I did rather more of my own work than usual, that summer, and consequently had more of the commercial side to employ me.

A healthy, normal life? Yes--until the hours between midnight and dawn.

I never knew when I laid down at night whether I should sleep until sun and morning overlay the countryside; whether the whispering call of Desire Mich.e.l.l would summon me to an hour more exquisite than reality, less satisfying than a dream, or whether I should leap into consciousness of the Loathsome Eyes fixed coldly malignant upon me while my enemy's inhuman hate groped toward me across the darkness Its presence fouled.

For my two guests kept their promises.

If I speak briefly of the coming of the Thing during this time, I do so because the mind shrinks from past pain. It came again, and again. It craftily used the torture of irregularity in Its coming. For days there might be a respite, then It would haunt me nights in succession until my physical endurance was almost spent.

I have stood before the breach in that Barrier, fighting that nightmare duel, until the place of colossal desolation, last frontier the human race might hope to keep, became as well known to me as a landscape on earth. Yet the effect of the Thing's a.s.saults upon me never lessened. On the contrary, the horror gained in strength. A dreadful familiarity grew between It and me. Communication flowed more readily between us with use. I will not set down, perhaps I dare not set down the intolerable wickedness of Its alternate menaces and offered bribes. Contact with Its intelligence poisoned.

There were nights when It was dumb, when all Its monstrous power concentrated and bore upon me, Its will to destroy locked with my will.

My victory was that I lived.

In the shadow, Desire Mich.e.l.l and I drew closer to one another.

How can I tell of a love that grew without sight? So much of the love of romance and history is a matter of flower-petal complexions, heart-consuming eyes, satin lips, and all the form and color that make beauty. How can I make clear a love that grew strong and pa.s.sionately demanding, knew delicate coquetries of advance and evasion, intimacy of minds like the meeting of eyes in understanding--all in the dark? The blind might comprehend. But the blind have a physical communication we had not; touch has enchantments of its own.

Every night, near midnight, I switched off the lights and waited in the chair at my writing-table, where I was accustomed to work. If she had not come by two o'clock, I learned to know she would not visit me that night. I might sleep in that certainty. A strange tryst I kept there in the dark; listening to the flow of the waterfall from the lake, loud in that dead hour's stillness, or hearing the soft, incessant sounds of insect life awake in trees and fields. If she came--a drift of perfume, a movement slight as a curtain stirred by the wind, then an hour with such a companion as the ancient magician might have drawn out of the air to his nine mystic lamps.

Strange, fantastic tales she told me, spun of fancies luminous and frail as threads of gla.s.s. She could not speak without betraying her deep learning in sciences rejected and forgotten by the modern world.

Alchemy, astrology, geomancy furnished her speech with allusions blank to my ignorance; which she most gently and politely enlightened when I confessed. I learned that the Green Lion of Paracelsus was not a beast, but a recipe for making gold; that Salamandar's Feather was better known today as asbestos; and that the Emerald Table was by no means an article of furniture. I give these examples merely by way of ill.u.s.tration.

On the other side of the shield held between us, I soon discovered that she knew no more of modern city life than a well-taught child who has never left home. She listened eagerly to accounts of theatres and restaurants. The history of Phillida and Ethan Vere seemed to her more moving and wonderful than any story she could tell me. I was amazed and humbled to find that she rated my ability to make music as a lofty art among the occult sciences.

Of the evil Thing that haunted me, we came to say little. To press her with questions meant to end her visit, I found by experience. When I spoke of that strand between the Barrier and the gray mist-hidden sea, her pa.s.sion of distress closed all intercourse with the plea that I go away at once, while escape was possible, while life remained mine. So for the most part I curbed my tongue and my consuming curiosity; not from consideration, but of necessity.

One night I asked her how the dark Thing spoke to me, by what medium of communication.

"Spirits of all orders can speak to man in every language, so long as they are face to face," she answered, with a faint surprise at my lack of knowledge. "'_When they turn to man, they come into use of his language and no longer remember their own, but as soon as they turn from man they resume their own language, and forget his._'

"But they themselves are unaware of this fact, for they utter thought to thought by direct intelligence. So if angel or demon turns his back to you, Roger, you may not make him hear you though you call with great force."

"How do you know that, Desire?"

"But by simple reading! Do not Ennemoser and many writers record it?"

"Have you spoken to such beings, Desire?"