The Thing from the Lake Part 18

"Coward, believe so. Hug the belief while you may. The offer is past."

Past? A madness of bafflement and frustrated curiosity gripped and shook me.

"I take the offer," I cried in pa.s.sion and defiance. "If there is such a book, show it to me!"

The Thing was gone. Light quietly filled the lamps--or was it that I had opened my eyes? I gripped the arms of my chair, waiting. For what? I did not know. Only, all the horror I ever had felt in the presence of the Thing was slight compared to the fear that presently began to flow upon me as an icy current. There in the pleasantly lighted room, alone, I sank through depths of dread, down into an abyss of despair, down----

A long sigh of rising wind pa.s.sed through the house like a sucked breath of triumph. Windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural abruptness. Absolute stillness succeeded. I felt a very slight shock, as if the ground at my feet was struck.

I fled from the terror for the first time. Yes, coward at last, deserter from that unseen Frontier's defense, I found myself in the hall outside my room, leaning sick and faint against the wall. Behind me the door shut violently, yet I felt no current of air to move it.

From the other side of the house there sounded the click of latch, then a patter of soft-shod feet. Phillida came hurrying down the hall toward me. She was wrapped in some silky pink-flowered garment. Her short hair stood out around her head like a little girl's well-brushed crop. She presented as endearingly natural a figure, I thought, as any man could seek or imagine. The wisdom of Ethan Vere who had garnered his love here!

"Cousin?" she exclaimed. "The hall light is so dim! You almost frightened me when I glimpsed you standing there. Did the wind wake you, too? I think we are going to have a thunder storm, it is so hot and gusty. I heard poor Bagheera mewing and scratching at the door, so I was just going down to let him in before the rain comes."

"Yes," I achieved. Then, finding my voice secure: "I will let in the cat. Where is Vere?"

"He did not wake up, so I tiptoed out. Why?"

"I do not like to have you going about the house alone at this hour."

Her eyes widened and she laughed outright.

"Why, Cousin Roger! What a funny idea to have about our very own house!

I have one of the electric flashlights you bought for us all; see?"

What could I tell her of my vision of her womanly softness and timidity brought to bay by the Thing of horror, down in those empty lower rooms?

How did I know It stalked no prey but me? Its clutch was upon Desire Mich.e.l.l. These were Its hours, between midnight and dawn.

"Tramps," I explained evasively. "Give me the light."

But she pattered down the stairs beside me, kimono lifted well above her pink-flowered slippers, one hand on the bal.u.s.trade. The light glinted in the white topaz that guarded her wedding ring, a richer jewel than any diamond in the sight of one who knew the tender thought with which she had set it there. No! The horror was not for her, clothed in her wholesome goodness as in armor of proof. Surely for such as she the Barrier stood unbreached and strong.

When I opened the front door, Bagheera darted in like a hunted cat. A drift of mist entered with him. Looking out, I saw the night was heavy with a low-hanging fog that scarcely rose to the tree tops; a ground-mist that eddied in smoke-like waves of gray where our light fell upon it. Such mists were common here, yet I s.h.i.+vered and shut it out with relief. While I refastened the lock, Bagheera purred around my ankles, pressing caressingly against me as if thanking me after the manner of cats. I remembered this was not the first time he had shown this anxiety and grat.i.tude for shelter.

"Bagheera does love you," Phillida commented, stooping to pat him.

"Isn't it funny, though, that he never will go into your room? He is always petting around you downstairs. When Cristina or I are doing up your quarters, he will follow us right up to the door-sill, but we can't coax him inside. Perhaps he doesn't like that perfume you always have about."

A qualm ran through me, recalling the night I had taken the cat there by force and its frantic escape. But I snapped the key fast and straightened myself with sharp self-contempt. Had I fallen so low as to heed the caprices of a pet cat? Was it not enough that I had fled from my enemy after accepting the knowledge It had striven so long to force upon me?

For I had that knowledge. When I had halted in the pa.s.sage outside my room, in the moment before Phillida had joined me, there had been squarely set before my mental sight the place to seek the book.

"Phillida, there was a bookcase in this house when it was bought," I said. "I believe it stood in my room before the place was altered. A small stand; I remember putting my candle on its top the first night I slept here. Have you seen it?"

Some tone in my question seemed to touch her expression with surprise as she lifted her eyes to mine; or perhaps it was the hour I chose for the inquiry.

"Oh, yes," she answered readily. "I supposed you had noticed it long ago; I mean, where it stands. The quaintest bit, a genuine antique! And holding the stuffiest collection of old books, too! I believe they may be valuable, out-of-print, early editions. If," her voice faltered wistfully, "if Father ever forgives me for being happy with Ethan, and comes to visit us, he would love every musty old volume. Do you think Mother and he ever will, Cousin Roger?"

"I am sure they will, Phil. Feuds and tragic parents are out of date.

They must adjust themselves gradually when they realize Vere is--himself. Before you go upstairs to him, will you tell me where to find that bookcase?"

"Now? Why, of course!"

She led me across the hall to her sewing room. I cannot say that she sewed there very much, but she had chosen that t.i.tle in preference to boudoir or study as more becoming a housewife. She had a.s.sembled here a spinning-wheel from the attic, some samplers, a Hepplewhite sewing-table and chairs discovered about the house. Her canaries' cage hung above a great punch-bowl of flowered ware in which she kept gold-fish. A pipe of Vere's balanced beside the bowl showed that his masculine presence was not excluded.

In a corner stood the bookcase. Phillida pulled the chain of a lamp bright under a shade of peac.o.c.k chintz, and watched me stoop to look at the faded bindings.

"Thank you, Phil," I said. "It may take some time to find the book I want. You had better hurry back to bed before Vere comes hunting for a missing wife."

"Are you going to stay and hunt for the book tonight, then?"

"Unless you are afraid I shall disturb your canaries?"

She did not laugh. Drawing nearer, she stroked my sleeve with a caressing doubt and remonstrance.

"But you have not been to bed at all, and soon it will be morning! Do you have to write your lovely music at night, Cousin Roger? You have been growing thin and tired, this summer. Are you quite well? You are so good that you should be happy, but--are you?"

"Good, Phil?" I wondered, touched. "Why, how did your lazy, tune-spinning, frivolous cousin get that reputation in this branch of the family?"

"You are so kind," she said simply. "Ethan says so. You know, Cousin Roger, that I was over-educated in my childhood; my brain choked with little, little stupid knowledge that hardly matters at all. We went to church Sundays because that was the correct thing to do. But I was almost a heathen when Ethan married me. He doesn't trouble about church.

He doesn't trouble about the past, or life after death, or punishment for sin. He believes if one tries to be kind and straight, the big Kindness and Straightness takes care of everything. So I have learned to feel that way, too. It is a--a calm sort of feeling all the time, if you know what I mean. And that is the way you are good, although perhaps you never thought of it."

"Thank you, Phillida," I acknowledged; and walked with her to the foot of the stairs.

When her pink-clad figure had vanished behind her bedroom door, I went back to the sewing room and drew up a chair before the case of books.

Phillida had not unreasonably stigmatized them as stuffy. They were a sober collection. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," an ancient copy of the Apocrypha, and a three-volume Life of Martin Luther loaded the first shelf. I looked at the second shelf and found it filled with the bound sermons of a divine of whom I had never heard.

The lowest shelf held strange companions for the sedate volumes above.

Erudite works on theosophy, magic, the interpretation of dreams and demonology huddled together here. Not all of them were readable by my humble store of learning. There was a Latin copy of Artemidorus, Mesmer's "Shepherd," Mathew Paris, some volumes in Greek, and some I judged to be Arabian and Hebrew. At the end of the row stood a thin, dingy book whose t.i.tle had pa.s.sed out of legibility. I took it out and opened the covers.

Fronting the first page was a faded woodcut, the portrait of a woman.

Beneath in old long-s type, dim on the yellowed paper, was printed the legend:

"_Desire Mich.e.l.l, ye foule witch._"

Closing the book, I forced reason to come forward. I was resolved that panic should not drive me again nor my defense fall from within its walls. Master of my enemy I might never be; master of my own inner kingdom I must and should be. But I was glad to be here instead of upstairs while I read; glad of the interlude in Phillida's company, and of the presence of the three sleepy canaries who blinked down at the disturbing lamp.

The date stamped into the back of the book in Roman numerals was of a year in the seventeen hundreds. What connection could its Desire Mich.e.l.l have with the girl I knew? Perhaps she had adopted the name to mystify me. Or at most, she might be of the family of that unfortunate woman branded witch by a bigoted generation.

Reopening the book, I studied the dim, stiff portrait. The face was young, delicate of line, with long eyes set wide apart; eyes that even in this wretched picture kept a curious drowsy watchfulness. The inevitable white Puritan cap was worn, but curls cl.u.s.tered about the brow and two ma.s.sive braids descended over either shoulder. The perfumed bronze-colored braid up in my drawer----?

The volume was ent.i.tled "Some Manifestations of Satan in Witchcraft in Ye Colonies," by Abimelech Fetherstone. Disregarding the satanic manifestations set forth in the other four chronicles, I turned to "Ye Foule Witch, Desire Mich.e.l.l."

As I began to read, another breath of wind sighed through the house, sucking windows and doors in and out with the shock of sound, instantly ended, that is produced by a distant explosion. I thought a flash of lightning whipped across my eyes. But when I glanced toward the windows I saw only the smoke-like fog banked in drifts against the panes.