Take your car and drive--drive fast--anywhere!"

It is impossible to convey the desperate urgency and fervor of her low voice. Phillida uttered an exclamation of fear. Vere wheeled about and left the room. The front door closed behind him. The gravel crunched under his tread on the path to the garage, and the rate at which the light he carried moved through the fog showed that he was running. He obviously accepted the warning exactly as it was given. After the briefest indecision, Phillida hurried out into the hall.

For my part, I did nothing worth recording. I had made discovery of two places where I was not the "lame feller." And if the first place was the dreary Frontier, the second country was that rich Land of Promise in Desire Mich.e.l.l's eyes.

What we said in our brief moment of solitude is not part of this account.

Phillida was back promptly, her arms full of garments. With little murmurs of explanation by way of accompaniment, she proceeded to invest Desire in a motor coat and a dark-blue velvet hat rather like an artist's tam-o'shanter. I noticed then that the girl wore a plain frock of gray stuff, long of sleeve and skirt, fastened at the base of her throat with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness of tint and contour. Nothing farther from the fashion of the day or the figure of my cousin could be imagined.

"You must wear the coat because it is always cool motoring at night,"

Phillida was murmuring. "And of course you will want it at a hotel; until you can do some shopping. I will just tie back your gorgeous, scrumptious hair with this ribbon, now. I know I haven't enough hairpins to put it up without wasting an awful lot of time, but we will buy them in the morning. We are going to take the very best care of you every minute, so you must not worry."

"You are so kind to me," Desire began tremulously. "No one was ever so kind! It does not matter about me, or what people think of me, if he will only go from here quickly."

"Right away," Phillida soothed. "My husband has gone for the car. I hear him coming now!"

In fact, Vere was coming up the veranda steps. His hand was on the k.n.o.b of the outer door, fumbling with it in a manner not usual to him, then the k.n.o.b yielded and he was inside.

"But how slow you are, Drawls," his wife called, with an accent of wonder.

Vere crossed the threshold of the room, his gaze seeking mine. He was pale, and drops of fog moisture pearled his dark face like sweat.

"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he addressed me, ignoring the others. "Perhaps you felt that shake-up, a quarter-hour ago? Like a kind of earthquake, or the kick from a big explosion a long ways off? It didn't seem very strong to me. It was too strong for that old tree by the garage, though!

Must have been decayed clear through inside. Willows are like that, tricky when they get old."

"Ethan, what _are_ you talking about?" cried Phillida, aghast.

He continued to look at me.

"I guess it must have fallen just about when you slammed your door upstairs. Seems I do remember a sort of second crash following the noise you made. I was too keen on finding out what was happening up there to pay much heed."

"Well, Vere?"

"Tree smashed down through the roof of the garage," he reluctantly gave his report. "Everything under the hood of the automobile is wrecked.

There is no motor left, and no radiator. Just junk, mixed up with broken wood and leaves and pieces of the stucco and tiles of the garage."

So there was to be no going tonight from the house beside the lake. A frustrated group, we stood amid our preparations; the two girls wearing cloaks and hats for the drive that would never be taken. Had we ever really expected to go? Already the project was fading into the realm of fantastic ideas, futile as the pretended journeys of children who are kept in their nursery. Desire lifted her hands and took off the blue velvet cap with a resignation more expressive than words. Only my practical little cousin charged valiantly at all obstacles.

"We aren't ever going to give up?" she cried protest. "Cousin Roger?

Ethan? _You_ cannot mean to give up. Why--'phone to the nearest garage to send us another car. If we pay them enough they will drive anywhere.

Or if they cannot take us to New York, they will take us to the railroad station where we can get a train for some place. Can't we, Drawls?"

"We could," Vere admitted. "I'd admire to try it, anyhow. But the telephone wire came across the place right past the garage, you know----"

"The tree tore the wire down, too?"

"I'm afraid it snapped right in two, Phil."

"We--we might walk," she essayed.

But even her brave voice trailed into silence as she glanced toward the black, dripping night beyond the windows.

"Or if we found a horse and wagon," she murmured a final suggestion.

Vere shook his head.

"Come!" I a.s.sumed charge with a cheerfulness not quite sincere. "None of us are ready for such desperate efforts to leave our cozy quarters here.

Especially as I fancy Vere's 'earthquake' was the tremor of an approaching thunderstorm. I felt it, myself. Let us light all the lamps and draw the curtains to shut out the fog which has got on everyone's nerves by its long continuance. We are overwrought beyond reason.

Suppose we sit here together, strong in numbers, for the few hours until daylight? I think that should be safeguard enough. Tomorrow we will do all we had planned for tonight. Come in, Vere, and close the door."

He obeyed me at once. Desire Mich.e.l.l pa.s.sively suffered me to unfasten and take off the coat she wore, too heavy for such a night. She had uttered no word since Vere announced the destruction of the car. She did not speak now, when I put her in the low chair beneath the lamp. I had a greed of light for her, as a protection and because darkness had held her so long.

"It seems as if we should do something!" Phillida yielded unwillingly.

Vere's eyes met mine as he turned from drawing the last curtain. We were both thinking of the force that had driven the frail old willow tree through tile and cement of the new building to flatten the metal of motor and car into uselessness. The mere weight of the tree would not have carried it through the roof. To "do something" by way of physical escape from that----

The ribbon had glided from Desire's hair, almost as if the vital, resilient ma.s.s resentfully freed itself from restraint by the bit of satin. Now she put up her hands with a slow movement and drew two broad strands of the glittering tresses across her shoulders, veiling her face.

"Wait," she answered Phillida, most unexpectedly. "I must be sure--quite sure! I must think. If you will--wait."

CHAPTER XIX

"Oh, little booke--how darst thou put thyself in press for drede?"--CHAUCER.

We sat quietly waiting. I had drawn a chair near Desire. Phillida and Vere were together, chairs touching, her right hand curled into his left. Bagheera the cat had slipped into the room before the door was closed, and lay pressed against his mistress's stout little boot. Our small garrison was a.s.sembled, surely for as strange a defense as ever sober moderns undertook. For my part, it was wonder enough to study that captive who was at once so strange yet so intimately well known to me.

The Tiffany clock on the mantel shelf chimed midnight. Soon after, we began to experience the first break in the heavy monotony of heat and fog that had overlaid the place for three days. The temperature began to fall. The fog did not lift. The flowered cretonne curtains hung straight from their rods unstirred by any movement of air. But the atmosphere in the room steadily grew colder. I saw Phillida shiver in the chill dampness and pull closer the collar of her thin blouse. When Desire finally spoke, we three started as if her low tones had been the clang of a hammer.

"I have tried to judge what is best," she said, not raising her face from its shadowing veil of hair. "I am not very wise. But it seems better that there should be no ignorance between us. If I had been either wise or good, I should never have come down from the convent to draw another into danger and horror without purpose or hope of any good ending."

"The convent?" I echoed, memory turning to the bleak building far up the hillside. "You came from there?"

"There is a path through the woods. I am very strong and vigorous. But I had to wait until all there were asleep before I could come. Sometimes I could not come at all. For this house, I had my father's old key. It was only for this little time while I am being taught. Soon I will put on a nun's dress and cut my hair, and--and never--never leave there any more."

Stupefied, I thought of the black loneliness of the wooded hillside behind us. No wonder the fog was wet upon her hair! Her slight feet had traversed that path night after night, had brought her to the door her key fitted, had come through the dark house to the door of the room upstairs. When she left me, she had toiled that desolate way back. For what? Humility bent me, and bewilderment.

"But why?" Phillida gasped. "Why? Cousin Roger hunted everywhere to find you. He would have gone anywhere you told him to see you. Didn't you know that?"

"I never meant him to see me."

"Why not?"

"I am Desire Mich.e.l.l, fourth of that name; all women who brought misfortune upon those who cared for them," she answered, her voice lower still. "How shall I make you understand? I was brought up to know the wrath and doom upon me, yet I myself can scarcely understand. My father knew all, yet he fell in weakness."

"Your father?" I questioned, recalling Mrs. Hill's positive genealogy of the Mich.e.l.ls in which there was no place for this daughter of the line.