CHAPTER XIV

"Beauty is a witch--"

--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

I will tear the core out of many yellow pages of diffuse writing spiced with smug moral reflections.

Desire Mich.e.l.l had been no traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent; no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors' cattle or crops. Her father was a clergyman who brought his goods and his motherless daughter from England to the Colonies, and settled in "ye Pequot Marsh country."

There he found a congregation, and they lived much respected. Their culture appeared to be far beyond that of their few, hard-working neighbors. Young Mistress Mich.e.l.l was reputed learned in the use of simples, among other arts, and to have been "of a beauty exceeding the custom among G.o.dly women, to so great degree that sorcery should have been suspected of her."

However, sorcery was not suspected; not even when her fame spread among near-dwelling Indian tribes who gave her a name signifying _Water on which the Sun is Shining_. Admiration was her portion, then, with all the suitors the vicinity held. But from fastidiousness or ambition she refused every proposal made to her father for her. She walked aloof and alone, until another sort of wooer came to the gate of the minister's house.

This man's full name was not given, apparently through the writer's cautious respect for place and influence. He was vaguely described as goodly in appearance, of high family, but not abundantly supplied with riches. However he chanced to come to the obscure settlement was not stated. He did come, saw Desire Mich.e.l.l, and fell as abjectly prostrate before her as any youth who never had left the village.

He pressed his courtship hard and eagerly. At first he was welcome at the minister's house. But a day came when Master Mich.e.l.l forbade him to cross that door and rumor whispered, scandalized, that Sir Austin's suit had not been honorable to the maid.

Sir Austin sulked a week at the village inn. Then he broke under the torment of not seeing Desire Mich.e.l.l. Their betrothal was made public, and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage in the spring.

Travel was slow in the winter, news trickled slowly across s...o...b..und distances. With spring came no bridegroom; instead word arrived of his affair with an heiress recently come to New York from England. She was rich in gold and grants of land from the Crown. Her husband would be a man of weight and influence, it seemed.

Sir Austin had married her.

Desire Mich.e.l.l shut herself in her father's house. The clergyman did not live many months after the humiliation. Alone, the girl lived.

"Student," wrote Abimelech Fetherstone, "of black and bitter arts. Or as some say, having, like Bombastus de Hohenheim, a devil's bird enchained to do her will."

In his distant home, Sir Austin sickened. He burned with fever, anguish consumed him. Physicians were called to the bedside of the rich man.

They could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He screamed for water.

When it was brought, his throat locked and he could not swallow. He raved of Desire Mich.e.l.l, beseeching her mercy. In his times of sanity, he begged and commanded his wife and servants to send for the girl. In her pardon he saw his sole hope of life.

Finally, he was obeyed. Messengers were sent to the village. They were not even admitted to the house they sought, or to sight of Mistress Mich.e.l.l.

"Your master came himself to woo; let him come himself to plead."

That was the answer they received to carry back to the sick man.

Sir Austin heard, and submitted with trembling hope. Writhing in the anguish wasting him by day and night, he made the journey by coach and litter to Desire Mich.e.l.l's house. At her door-sill he implored entrance and pity. The door did not open.

It never opened for him. For three days in succession he was borne to her threshold, calling on her in his pain and fear. His servants and physician cl.u.s.tered about staring at the house which stood locked and blank of response. At night fire-shine was seen from an upper room; some declared they heard wild, melodious laughter.

On the third day Sir Austin died. A stern-faced deputation of men went to the house of the late clergymen. They found the door unlatched and open to their entrance. In the upper room they found Mistress Mich.e.l.l seated before her hearth where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair "flowing down in grate bewty."

"What have I to do with Sir Austin, or he with me?" she calmly asked the men who gaped upon her. "How should I have harmed him, who came not near him, as ye know? Bury him, and leave me in peace."

If she had been aged and ugly, she might have been hung. Gossip ran rife through the countryside. But indignation was strong against the man who had jilted the local beauty, there existed no proof of harm done, and the matter slept for a time.

New matters came. A horror grew up around the house. The girl was seen flitting across the fields at dawn, a monstrous shadow following. Her voice was heard from the room where she locked herself alone, raised in unknown speech. Strange lights moved in her windows in the deep night.

The old woman who had served in the house for years was stricken with a palsy and was taken away mumbling unintelligible things that iced the blood of superst.i.tious hearers.

There was a young man of the neighborhood whose love for Mistress Mich.e.l.l had been long and constant. One morning he was found dead on her doorstep, his face fixed in drawn terror. Under his hand four words were scrawled in the snow: "_Sara daughter of Ruel----_"

There were those who could finish that quotation. Next Sabbath the new minister took as his text: "Ye shall not suffer a witch to live." And he spoke of Sara the daughter of Ruel, who was wed to ten bridegrooms, each of whom was dead on the wedding eve; for she was beloved by an evil spirit that suffered none to come to her. Authority moved at last against Desire Mich.e.l.l. But when the officers came to arrest her, she was found dead in her favorite seat before the hearth.

"Fair and upright in her place, scented with a perfume she herself distilled of her learning in such matters; which was said to contain a rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard, with vervain and cedar and secret simples; in which she steeped her hair so that wherever she abode were sweet odours. So did she escape Justice, but shall not escape h.e.l.l's d.a.m.nation and Heaven's casting out."

I closed the book and laid it down.

Reading those dim, closely printed pages had taken time. I was astonished to find the window s.p.a.ces gray with dawn, when I glanced that way. The night was past. Neither from Desire nor from the Thing without a name which had sent me to this book could I find out what I was expected to glean from the narration.

My enemy had made no conditions on directing me to the book. It had asked no price, uttered no menace. Why, then, had I so solemn a certainty that a crisis in our affair had been reached. I had come to an end; a corner had been turned. I had opened a door that could not be closed. How did I know this? Why?

Why was the fog against the windows this morning so like the fog that shrouded the unearthly sea opposite the Barrier?

By and by Cristina came downstairs and busied herself in the kitchen.

Bagheera, who had slept beside my chair all night, rose and padded out to the region of breakfast and saucers of milk. Next, the voices of Phillida and Vere drifted from above.

To have Phillida find me there in her sewing-room, finishing an all-night vigil, involved too many explanations. I did an unwise thing.

From the lowest shelf of the bookcase I gathered such books as were readable by my knowledge, and carried the armful up to my room. After a hot bath and breakfast I would look over these companions of the New England witch book.

CHAPTER XV

"Not a drop of her blood was human, But she was made like a soft sweet woman."

--LILITH.

The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of a solid ma.s.s enclosing the house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam of sun pierced it. Through it sounds reached the ear distorted and magnified. All day I sat in my room reading.

There are books which should not be preserved. I, who am a lover of books, who detest any form of censorship, I do seriously set down my belief that there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed. With this few people will agree. My answer to them is simple: they have not read the books I mean.

Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were of that character, of course. Nearly all of them were well known to cla.s.sical students, at least by name. Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were, but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there were two that clung to the mind like pitch. I have no intention of giving their t.i.tles.

Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I was in a mood akin to it.

Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously blended with contempt for my companions' childish light-heartedness. As soon as possible, I left them.

Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table again, I pushed aside the pile of books and sank into sombre thought. What should I say to Desire Mich.e.l.l if she came tonight?

Who was she, who was claimed by the Unspeakable and who did not deny Its claim? Was I confronted with two beings from places unknown to normal humanity? If she was the woman that she had seemed to be throughout our intercourse, how could the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common man with full measure of mankind's common faults and weaknesses, could hold Its clutch from me by right of the law that protects each in his place.

Was she one of those who have stepped from the permitted places?

"_Sara the daughter of Ruel--who was beloved by an evil spirit who suffered none to come to her_."

"_There was a young gentlewoman of excellent beauty, daughter of a n.o.bleman of Mar, who loved a foule monstrous thing verie horrible to behold, and for it refused rich marriages.... Until the Gospel of St.

John being said suddenlie the wicked spirit flue his waies with sore noise_."

I put out my hand and thrust the pile of books aside from my direct sight. But I could not so easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these books had implanted. I could not forget that Desire Mich.e.l.l herself had alleged jealousy as the Thing's reason for attacking me.