 CHAPTER XVII After luncheon I drove over to the village with Philida, who had some house-wively orders to give at the shops. On second thought, Vera and I had agreed to tell her nothing about the venture we planned for tonight. We had satisfied her by the assurance that I meant to start for New York before the dangerous hours after midnight. Reassured, she regained her usual spirits with the buoyancy of her few years and healthy nerves. I gathered her secret belief 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, Philida'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 any one named Desire Mitchell? 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? She was a hussy, said Mrs. Hill severely. I was a little girl when she ran away from her father's respectable house, fifty-odd years ago. The disgrace killed him being a clergyman. And the gossip that came back later, and pitches of her in such dresses. Dear, dear, the wicked certainly have opportunities. Fifty years ago, I echoed, dazed by this intrusion of a third Desire Mitchell. Ah! Nearly seventy she'd be if she was alive today, which she ain't. Why, she changed her name to one fancier that you might have heard talk of. She was— The name she gave me, I shall not set down. It is enough to say it was that of a superwoman whose beauty, genius, and absolute lack of conscience, set Europe ablaze for a while. A torch of womanhood quenched at the highest burning hour of her career by a sudden and violent death. There was an older house once on your place, she added pensively. Did you know that? It stood in the hollow where your lake is now. Two, three hundred years old folks say it was. One night it burned down in a big thunderstorm. The Mitchell's then living had your house built over by the orchard then, and had a dam built across so as to cover up the old site with water. All the Mitchell's lived there till the last one went missionary, abroad, and died in foreign parts. I mean the Hussey's brother. He took up his father's work feeling a strong call. He was only a young boy when his sister went off, but he felt it dreadful. He was a hard man on the sinner, preached hell and damn nation all his days, he did. Lean over the pulpit he would, his eyes flame and fire, and his tongue shriveling folks in their pews, I can tell you. He left children, I asked. No, sir. Reverend never married. He felt women a snare. Land, not much snaring with what farmwomen get to wear around here. I've kind of thought of one of those blue full-arred silks with white spots into it since before I married Hill, but never came any nearer than pricing it and bringing home a sample. He was death on sweet odors and soft raiment. Only sweet odors I ever get are ten-cent bottles Hill makes the peddler throw in when we trade. I do fancy jockey club for special times, and I've got a reasonable hope of salvation, too. I notice your cousin, Mrs. Vier, has sent on her handkerchief weekdays as well as when she's going somewhere, so I guess you don't hold with the Reverend Mitchell in New York. I laughed with her as I took up the bag of eggs. Did the Runaway sister leave any children? I queried. Not a Mitchell alive anywhere, she asserted positively. Dead, all dead. The Reverend was buried at his mission in some outlandish place. And if those heathen women dress like I've seen in the Movin' Pictures Palace in the village, I don't know how he makes out to rest with them flottin' past his grave. I went thoughtfully out to the car. Indeed I drove home in such abstraction that Filida reproved me. The cat is still in your tongue, she teased. Or did Mrs. Hill vamp you and make roast meat of your heart with her eyes? Phil, do you put scent on your handkerchief weekdays as well as Sundays? I shook off thought to inquire. No, I keep sachet in my handkerchief box. Why? Next time you're in town, will you buy a blue silk-foulard dress with white spots in it, and the largest bottle of jockey-club extract on sale, and give them to Mrs. Hill for a Christmas present? I'll give you a blank check. Cousin Roger, why? So I told her why. But I did not tell her the story of the second Desire Mitchell, nor of the original house that stood in the hollow now filled by our lake. Why had a peculiar horror crept through me when Mrs. Hill told me what ruins that water covered? Why had I remembered the inexplicable, repugnant sound that on several occasions had preceded the coming of the monster, a sound like the smack of huge lips, or somebody withdrawn from thick slime? Was entrance into human air open to the alien thing only through the ruins of the house where it had been first called by the sorceress of long ago? We were walking across from the garage, after putting away the car, when a recollection flashed upon me. The Metropolitan Museum, in New York, held a portrait by a famous French artist of that incendiary beauty whose name it now appeared cloaked the identity of Desire Mitchell, daughter and sister of New England clergyman. I had seen the portrait, and piled in an intricate magnificence of curls, puffs, and coils about the haughty little head of the lady, was her gold-browns hair, the color of the braid upstairs in my chiffonniere drawer. I went up to my room and opened the work of Master Abimelech Featherstone. Yes, there was likeness between the poor, coarse woodcut and the French portrait. The long, dark eyes with their expression of blended drowsiness and watchfulness were too individual to have escaped either record. Moreover, both pictures resembled that face of ivory and dusk I had glimpsed in the ray of the electric torch, all clouded and surrounded by swirls of gray vapor shot with gold. Who and what was the girl Desire Mitchell, whom I had come to love through a more profound darkness than that of the sight? It seemed wisest to keep busy for the rest of the afternoon. I sorted my music. There was the score of a musical comedy so nearly completed that it could be sent to those who waited for it. Veer would attend to that, if tonight made it necessary. I reflected with disappointment that the first rehearsals would begin in a couple of weeks, and I had looked forward to this production with special interest. There was the symphony, still unfinished, that I had hoped might be more enduring than popular music. If I was to be less enduring than either, we must go glimmering on our ways. If I snatched Desire out of her path into mine, she and I would see all those things together. I finished at last and set my room in order. There was a fire laid ready for lighting in my hearth, a mere artistic flourish in such weather. I kindled it and put in the flames three of the volumes from the ancient bookcase. The others were oddities in occult science. Those three were vile and poisonous. No doubt other copies exist, but at least I refused to be guilty of leaving these to wreak their mischief in Phyllida's household. They burned quietly enough and meekly fell to ashes under my poker. Our round dinner table was cheerful as usual, with yellow shaded candles flanking a bowl of yellow and scarlet nasturtiums. But I found its mistress suffering from a nervous headache. It is only the fog, she answered our sympathy. It came on with the evenings somehow. Never mind me. Christina has made a cream of lettuce bisque, and she will never forgive us if we do not eat every bit. Yes, Ethan, of course, I'll take mine. I only wish every bush and tree would not drip, drip like a horrid kind of clock ticking, and the foghorns over at the lighthouses move regularly every half minute. And I never heard the water fall over the dam so loud. We've had a wet summer, veer observed, soothingly tranquil as ever. The lake and creek are full. There is more water going over to make a noise. Please do not be so frightfully sensible, draws. You know I mean a different loudness. It sort of rises up and swims all over one, then dies away. Even a fountain will seem to do that if a wind shifts a spray, I suggested. Yes, cousin Roger, but there is no wind tonight. A discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder. I fancied veer was similarly affected. If something moved under the water, we changed the conversation to a pergola planned for building next spring that was to be overrun by grapevines and honeysuckle. The grape shall hang through like an Italian pitcher, Phyllidae anticipated, headache forgotten in her enthusiasm. She shook her hair about her pink cheeks, leaning over to outline a pergola with four spoons. Here in the middle we must have a birdbath, or no, the birds might peck the grapes. We could have one of those big silver-colored-looking balls on a pedestal to reflect wee views of the garden and lake and sky, with people moving no bigger than dolls. Imagine a reflection of Ethan, like a little pushy and so high! So I was able to leave her eagerly hunting catalogues of garden ornaments in her sewing-room, when the time came for me to keep my rendezvous with death, or the lady. In spite of my warning gesture, veer followed me into the hall. His dark face was distressed and anxious. Let me go with you, he urged. No, thanks. Stay with Phyll and keep her too busy to suspect where I am. If I'm doing wrong to let you go, he began, you cannot stop me. It is still too early for danger, I think. If you like, you can stroll out on the lawn from time to time and look up at my windows. As long as the lamps are lighted in the room, I am all right. Nothing is happening. Your lamps were all three lighted when I found you last night, he said. The darkness had been only for my eyes, then? Certainly I had seemed to see light withdrawn from the lamps. I mastered a tremor of the nerves, and covering it by stroking baghera, who sat in a hall chair making an after-dinner toilet with tong and paw. Well, take care of Phyll, I repeated, evading argument. He detained me. He detained me. The young lady might not come if there were two people, Mr. Locke. I can see that. But I'll go instead. I guess I'd be safer than you with the—the—you know what I mean. It would be the first time for me. And if I sat waiting in the dark, the lady couldn't tell you were not there. Of course, I'd bring her right to you. No one could appreciate the courage of that offer so well as we who had both felt the intolerable horror of the nearness of the thing whose nature was beyond our nature to endure. She would come to no one except me, I refused. But thank you. And, Veer, if what you have said about my feeling toward Phyllida's husband was true once, it is true no longer. His clasp was still warm in my hand when I went into my room and switched on the lights. Soft and colorful, the haunted room sprang into view. The writing table and piano gleamed Bear without their usual burdens of scattered papers and music removed that afternoon. For lack of familiar occupation when I sat down in my favorite place, I took up the gold pommander and fell to studying the intricate designs worked in the metal. Containing a rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling Spikenard, with vervein and cedar and secret symbols, vervein which is powerful against evil spirits, the strange fragrance had as the bouquet of rich wine, never cloying, exquisite, might well have seemed magical to the dry Puritans, I mused. It should stay with me to-night, like a promise of her coming. After I had sat there a while, I turned out the lights. CHAPTER XVII An excellent way to get a fairy, and when you have her, bind her. Ancient Alchemist's recipe. In the darkness, time crept along like a crippled thing, slow-moving, hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip drip from trees and bushes, likened by Philida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding board for a furtive noises that grew up like fungi in the moist atmosphere. The thought of Philida and Vir down in the pleasant living-room tempted me almost beyond resistance. I wanted to spring up, to rush out of the room, to fling myself into my car and drive full speed until strength failed and gasoline gave out. Was that the lake which stirred in the windless night? The lake under which lay the fire-blackened ruins of the house where the first desired Mitchell flung open an awful door that her vengeance might stride through? Was it too late for my desire to come, and time for the coming of that other? The step of Vir sounded on the gravel path where he walked beneath the window. He was making a trip of inspection and would find no light shining from the room. I was about to rise and call down a word of reassurance to him when a current of spiced air passed by me. I sat arrested in hope and expectancy. Here, after my warning, after last night, her soft voice panted across the dark, will you die then? Cruel to me and wicked to come here again. Oh, must I wish you were a coward! Every vestige of her calmness gone she was sobbing as she spoke. I could imagine she was wringing the little hands that once had left a betraying print upon my table surface. I was cruel to you last night, Desire, yet afterward you saved my life by sending Ethan Vir to wake me. Would you have had me leave without meeting you again, neither thanking you nor asking your forgiveness? I thought she came nearer. For so little you would brave the dread one in its time of triumph. Oh, steadfast soldier who faces the breach even in the hour of death and all that you have done you have remembered me. Why speak of anger or forgiveness? Have I not injured you? Never. I love you. Is not that an injury? Even though I hid my ill omen face from you reared as I was to sad knowledge of the wrath upon me, the wrong has been done. Weak as water in the test I kept the letter of my promise and broke the intent. Yet go! Keep life at least. Desire, I do not understand you, I answered. No matter for that now, I am content to share whatever you bring. Not roughly or in challenge as I asked you last night, but earnestly and with humility I ask you to come away with me now. If trouble comes to my wife and me I do not doubt we can bear it. Let us not be frightened from the attempt. Come! I, to take happiness like that, she marveled in desolate amazement. No, at least I will go to my own place, if tardily. Roger, be kind to me. Give me a last gift. Let me know that somewhere you are living. Out of my sight, out of my knowledge, out of my sight, out of my knowledge, but living in the same world with me, each moment you stay here is a risk. In that warning she had reason. I rose. It was time to act, but action must be certain. If my groping movements missed her in the dark there might be no second chance. Desire, if all is as you say and we are not to meet again as we have done, you shall let me touch you before I go, I said firmly. No. Yes. Why, would you have me live all the years to come in doubt whether you were a woman or a dream? Perhaps you might seem at last a phantom of my own sick brain to which faithfulness would be folly. Here, across the table, I stretch my arm. Lay your palm in my palm. I may die tonight. Whether she wished it also, or whether my resolve drew obedience, I do not know. But a vague figure moved through the dark toward me. A hand settled in mine with the brushing touch of an alighting bird. I closed my hand hudly upon that one. I sprang a step aside from the table between us, found her, and drew her to me. What did I hold in my arms? Softness, fragrance, draperies beneath which beat life and warmth. As I stooped to reassure her, her breath curled against my cheek. So with that guide I turned my head and set my lips on the lips I had never seen. Did something up rear itself out there in the black fog? A cold air rushed across the summer heat of the fog. Air foul as if issued from the open door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered through the house. The hanging chains of the lamps swung with the faint tinkling sound. I snatched desire Mitchell off her feet and sprang for the door. Somehow I found and opened it at the first essay. We were out into the hall. With one hand I dragged the door shut behind us, then carried her on to the head of the stairs. There I set her down, but stood before her as a bar against any attempt at escape. A lamp shed a subdued light above us. I looked at my captive. Never again after that kiss could she deny her womanhood or pose as a phantom. So far my victory was complete. The lady might be angry, but it must be woman's anger. I knew she had not suspected my intention until I lifted her in my arms. She had struggled then after her defences had fallen. She was quiet now as though the light had quelled her resistance. She stood drooped and trembling. Not the old-time witch, not the dazzling adventurous, only a small fragile girl, wound and wrapped in some gray stuff that even covered the brightness of her hair. Her face was held down and showed no more color than a water lily. I thought, she whispered just audibly, I thought you would say goodbye. I know, I stammered, but I could not. That way was impossible for us. She did not contradict me. She was so very small, I saw, that her head would reach no higher than where the bright spot had rested above my heart when I had last stood at the barrier. One hand gripped the veils beneath her chin and seemed the clenched fist of a child. The crash of my door had startled the household. I had heard Philoda cry out and Veer's running steps upon the gravel path. Now he came springing up the stairs. At the head of the flight he stopped, staring at us. Desire, I spoke as naturally as I could manage. This is Mr. Veer. Veer, my fiance, Miss Mitchell. Shall we go down to Philoda? And Desire Mitchell did not deny my claim. I am not very sure of how we found ourselves downstairs, nor do I remember in what words we made the two girls known to one another. Presently we were all in the living-room and Philoda had possession of Desire Mitchell while Veer and I looked on stupidly at the proceedings. Phil had placed her in a chair beside a tall floor lamp and gently drew off the draperies that hooded her. With little murmurs of compassion she unbound and shook free her guest's hair. My dear, you are all damp. This awful fog. You must have been out a long time. You shall drink some tea before we start. Dralls, will you light the alcohol lamp on the tea table? The kettle is filled. Now I could understand how Desire had appeared amid a drift of fire-shot smoke in the beam of my electric torch the night before. Her hair was a garment of flame-brite silk flowing around her, curling and eddying in rich abundance. Over this she had worn the gray veils to smother all that color and sheen into neutral sameness with night and shadows. No wonder her face had seemed wraith-like when her startled shrinking away from the light had said all that drapery billowing about her. She was the voice that had been my intimate comrade through weeks of strange adventure. She was the woman of the faded yellow book and the painted beauty at the Metropolitan. She was all the desires of whom I had ever dreamed and she was none of them. For she was herself. Her long, dark eyes, suddenly lifted to me, were individual by that ancestral blending of drowsiness and watchfulness, yet were akin to the eyes of youth in all times by their innocence. Her mouth, too, was the soft mouth of a young girl kept apart from sordid life. But her forehead, the noble breath between her and her eyes, the noble breath between the black tracery of her eyebrows, expressed the student whose weird, lofty knowledge had so often abashed my ignorance. Only my ignorance? Now as she looked at me across the room all self-confidence trickled away from me. What distinguished me from a thousand men she might meet on any city street? What had I ever said worth note in the hours we had spent together? Now she saw me in the light, plainly commonplace, and remembering myself lame I stood amazed at the audacity with which I had laid claim to her. She was rising from the chair, gently putting aside Filida's detaining hands. She had not spoken one word since her faltered speech to me upstairs. Neither Vir nor Filida had heard her voice. She had given her hand to each of them and submitted to Fil's care with the docility I failed to recognize in my companion of the dark. Her decisive movement now was more like the desire Mitchell I knew. Only what was she about to do? Repudiate my violence and me? Perhaps go back to her hiding-place? She came straight to where I stood, not daring even to advance toward her. We might have been alone in the room. I rather think we were to her preoccupation. You must go away, she said. If there is any hope it is in that. Nothing else matters now, nothing. If you wish take me with you. It would be wiser to leave me, but nothing really matters except that you should not stay here. I will obey you in everything if you will only go. Take your car and drive, drive fast, anywhere. It is impossible to convey the desperate urgency and fervor of her low voice. Filida uttered an exclamation of fear. Vir 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, Filida 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 lamefeller, and if the first place was the dreary frontier, the second country was that rich land of promise in Desire Mitchell's eyes. What we said in our brief moment of solitude is not part of this account. Filida was back promptly, her arms full of garments. With little murmurs of explanation by way of accompaniment, she proceeded to invest Desire in a motorcoat and a dark blue velvet hat, rather like an artist's tamish-hander. 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, Filida was murmuring, and of course you will want it at a hotel, unless 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 away from here quickly. Right away, Filida soothed. My husband has gone for the car. I hear him coming now. In fact, Vir was coming up the veranda steps. His hand was on the knob of the outer door, fumbling with it in a manner not usual to him. Then the knob yielded, and he was inside. But how slow you are, draws, his wife called, with an accent of wonder. Vir crossed the threshold of the room, his gaze seeking mine. He was pale, and drops of fog-moisture purled 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 Filida, 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, Vir? 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, mixed up with broken wood and leaves and pieces of the stucco and tiles of the garage. So there was to be no going to-night 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 were kept in their nursery. Desire lifted her hands and took off the blue velvet cap with the 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 draw? We could, Veer 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 too, 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. Veer shook his head. Come, I assume, 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 Veer'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, Veer, and close the door. He obeyed me at once. Desire Mitchell passively suffered me to unfasten and take off the coat she wore, too heavy for such a night. She had uttered no words since Veer 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, Phyllida yielded unwillingly. Veer'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 mass 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 Phyllida most unexpectedly. I must be sure. Quite sure. I must think. If you will wait. End of Chapter 18. Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 19 of The Thing From the Lake This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline The Thing From the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram Chapter 19 O little book! How dars thou put thyself in press for dread? Chaucer. We sat quietly waiting. I had drawn a chair near Desire. Phyllida and Veer 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 assembled, surely for as strange a defence 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 Cretan curtains hung straight from their rods, unstirred by any movement of air. But the atmosphere in the room steadily grew colder. I saw Phyllida shiver in the chilled 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. Stupified 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, Phyllida 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 Mitchell, 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 Mitchells, in which there was no place for this daughter of the line. He was the last of his family. When he was very young the conviction came to him that his duty was never to marry, so our race might cease to exist. He lived here and preached against evil. He studied the ancient learning that he might be fitted to wrestle with sin. But in the end horror of what was here gained upon him, so that he closed the house and went abroad to work as a missionary. There was a girl, the daughter of the clergyman who was leaving the mission. My father fell in love. He forgot all his convictions and married her. He knew it was a sin, but it was stronger than he was. She only lived one year. When I was born, she died. He prayed that I would die too, but I— Her voice died into silence. I ventured to lean nearer and take her hand into mine. Desire, I said, Why should you be a sufferer for the actions of a woman who died over two centuries ago? What is the long dead desire Mitchell to you? A strange and solemn hush followed my question. The words seemed to take a significance and importance beyond their simple meaning. The hand I held trembled in my clasp. She answered at last, just audibly, You know, you said that you had read her book. But the book tells so little desire, just such a chronicle of superstition as may be found in a hundred old records. She shook her head slightly. Not that. Bring me the book. The book was upstairs in the room from which I was going to go. The book was upstairs in the room from which I had carried her half an hour before in something very like a panic flight. Before I could release her hand and rise, before I comprehended his intention, Vir was out of the living room and upon the stairs. It was too late to overtake him. The man who had been a professional skater covered the stairs in a few easy swinging strides. We heard his light tread on the floor overhead. Heard him stop beside the table where the book lay. Then he was returning. My door closed. His steps sounded on the stairs again. In a moment he was back among us and quietly offering the volume to our guest. His dark eyes met mine reassuringly, deprecating the thoughts I am sure my face expressed. Light's burning and all serene up there, he announced. Desire touched the book with a curious repugnant. I was looking for this the first night I came here, she murmured. That is why I came to America after my father died. I had promised him to destroy this record. When I heard that the house was sold to a gentleman from New York, I came down from the convent on the hill to find the bookcase holding the old history. I did not know anyone was here that night until you touched my hair. I remembered the bookcase near the bed where I stood my candle and matches. Unaware I had prevented her finding the things she sought, and so forced her to return. Afterward the house had been full of workmen making alterations and improvements, until later still Phyllida had transferred the bookcase and its contents to her sewing-room. If I had not taken the whim to sleep in the old house on the night of my purchase, or if I had chosen another room, the existence of Desire Mitchell might never have been known to me. Would the creature from the barrier have appeared to me, if I had not known her? She was drawing something from behind the portrait of the First Desire Mitchell, a thin, small book that had lain concealed between the cover of the larger volume and the page bearing the wood-cut, where a sort of pocket was formed that had escaped our notice. Layed upon the table, the little book rolled away from the girl's fingers and lay curled upon itself in the lamp-light. The limp Morocco cover was spotted with mildew and half-revealed pages of close, fine writing blotched in places with rusty stains. It gave out an order of mold and age in an atmosphere made sweet by Desire's presence. Phyllida, who had been silent even when Vir left her to go upstairs, shrank away from the book on the table. She darted a glance over her shoulder at the curtained windows behind her. Draws, I cannot help what everybody thinks of me, she said plainively. I am cold. The fire is ready, laid in the grate. Will you put a match to a please? No one smiled at the request. Her husband uttered some soothing phrase of compliance. We all looked on while the flame caught and began to creep up among the apple-logs. Bagheera rose and changed his position to one before the hearth. When Vir stood erect, Desire leaned toward him. With you read aloud, sir, she asked of him and made a gesture toward the Morocco book. She surprised us all by that choice. I was unreasoning enough to feel slighted, although the task was one for which I felt a strong dislike. I fancied Vir liked the idea no better from his expression. However, he offered no demure, but sat down at the table and began to flatten the warped pages that perversely sprang back and clung about his fingers. Desire slowly turned her lovely eyes to me, eyes that looked by gift of nature as if their long corners had been brushed with coal. She said nothing, yet some of the words she said to me, had been brushed with coal. She said nothing, yet somehow conveyed her meaning and intent. I understood that she did not wish to hear me read those pages, that it was painful to her that they should be read at all. Vir was ready. He glanced around our circle, then began with the simple directness that gave him a dignity peculiarly his own. Mistress Desire Mitchell, her book, beginning at the nineteenth year of her age, he read in his leisurely voice. The living Desire Mitchell and I were regarding one another. I smiled at the quaint wording, but she shuddered and put her hands across her eyes. Yet there was nothing in those first pages except a girl's chronicle of village life. This book evidently carried on a diary kept from early childhood, a diary written out of loneliness. Apparently the bare colonial life pressed heavily upon the writer, who, having no companions of the intellect, turned to this record of her own mind as a prisoner might talk to his reflection in a mirror rather than go mad from sheer silence. Discontent and restlessness beat through the lines like fluttering wings. She wrote of her own beauty with the cool appraisal oddly removed from vanity, almost with resentment of a possession she could not use. Like a man who finds treasure in a desert isle, I am rich in coin that I may not spend, she wrote. I stand before my mirror and take a tress of my hair in either hand. I spread wide my arms full reach, yet I cannot touch the end of those tresses. Nor can my two hands clasp the bulk of them. There have been other women who had such hair who were of body straight and white and had the eyes, but I cannot read that they stayed poor and obscure. There followed some quotations from the classics of which I was able to give but vague translations when Vier passed the book to me, both because my knowledge was scanty and because of their daring unconventionality. There were allusions too to ladies of later history who had found fairness abroad staircase for ambition to mount. Of the writer's learning there could be no question, a learning amazing in one so young and so situated. The source of this became apparent. Her father was consumed with the passion of scholarship and the girl's hungry mind fed in the pastures where he led the way. Here crept into view an anomaly of character. The austere Puritan divine, whose life was open and blank, bare and cold as a winter field, cherished a secret dissipation of the mind. He labored upon a book on the errors of magic. So laboring he became snared by the thing he denounced. He believed in the hidden lore while he condemned it. Deeper and deeper into forbidden knowledge his eagerness for research led him, unsanctioned by any church where the book's Dr. Mitchell starved his body to buy from Jews or other furtive dealers in unusual wares. The titles in his library comprehended the names of more charlatans than bishops. He could define the distinctions between necromancy, sorcery, and magic. The marvellous calculations of the Pythagoreans engaged him, and the lost mysteries of the cabiri. From such studies he would arise on the sabbath to preach sermons that held his dull flock agape. Bitter drafts of salvation he poured for their spiritual drinking. He scarcely saw how any man might escape hellfire, all being so vile. Against witchcraft and tampering with Satan's agents he was eloquent. He rode sixty miles in midwinter to see a Quaker whipped, and a woman hung who had been convicted as a witch. Of all this his daughter wrote with an elfin mockery. Her brilliant eye of youth saw through the inconsistency of the beliefs he strove to reconcile. She learned his lore, read his books, and discarded his doctrine. I study with him, but I think alone she set down her independence. Without his knowledge she proceeded to actual experiment with rude crucible and alembic in her own chamber. She essayed some age-old recipes of blended herbs and ingredients within her reach, handled at certain hours of the night and phases of the moon. All were innocent enough, it seemed. She cured a beloved old dog of rheumatism and partial blindness. She discovered an exquisite perfume which she named Rose of Jerusalem. But the experiments were not fortunate, she made obscure complaint. The dog, cured, lived only a few weeks. The perfume in which she reveled with a fierce, long-denied appetite, steeping her rich hair in it and her severely dull garments, awoke many whispers in a community where sweet odors were unknown, and disapproved. She eluded, with the mingling of freezing scorn and triumph, to the young men who followed after her, seeking a wife who would be at their hearth as fatal a guest as that fair woman sent by an enemy to Alexander the Great, whose honey-breath was deadly poisoned to who so kissed there. Into this situation rode the fine gentleman from the colonial world of fashion who was to fix the fate of Desire Mitchell and his own. From this point on the diary was a record of the same story as The History of Ye Fowl Witch, Desire Mitchell. The love affair that followed Sir Austin's visit to the clergyman's house leaped hot and instant as flame from oil and fire brought together. The girl was parched with thirst for life, yet despised all around her. The man was dazzled by a beauty and mentality foreign as a bird of paradise found nested in Connecticut snow. A mad, wild passion linked them that was more than half a duel, for Sir Austin was already betrothed. Honor might not have chained him for long, but his need of his betrothed fortune proved more enduring. He was a man bred to wealth who did not possess it. He offered Desire Mitchell his left hand. He was turned out of her father's house with a red wheel struck across his face like a brand. Of course he returned. The arrow was firmly fixed. He asked her to marry him and was refused with savage contempt. He would not take the refusal. Her heart and ambition were hidden traitors to his cause. In the end she surrendered and the marriage day was set. Sir Austin rode away to set his house in order while Desire turned from alchemy to make her wedding garments. The entries during this interval were sweetly gentle and feminine. Her rows of Jerusalem fragrance was all her own and was kept so, but she made lesser-air essences and sold them through a peddler in order to buy fine linen and brocade for a true sew not designed to be worn in a Puritan village. She was happy and at rest in expectation. On her wedding-day the destroying news fell. Sir Austin hid a weak spirit within a strong and handsome body. Away from Desire's glamour, back in New York, he had not broken his engagement to the heiress. Instead he had married her on the day arranged before he met the clergyman's daughter. There was never again a connected record in the diary. Pages were torn out in places, entries were broken off, half-made. But the story, Veer's slow, steady voice conveyed to us, was the one we knew, the one my Desire had told to me the first night I slept in this house. The half-mad girl turned to her father's deadly books. Sir Austin died as his waxen image dissolved before his death. He died before the fire where the girl sat watching with merciless hate. He died raving and frothing on her door-sill. She never saw him after the day he rode away to prepare for their marriage. She set open her window that she might hear his progress to that hard death but never deigned to turn her glance upon him. The clergyman was dead now, of shame, or perhaps of terror at the child he had reared. The girl was alone. The diary grew wilder, with gaps of weeks where there were no entries. More frequently pages were missing and paragraphs obliterated by the reddish blotches like rust or blood. There were accounts of weird, half-told experiments, ranging through the three degrees of magic set forth by Talmud and Kabbalah. She wrote of legions of kingdoms between earth and heaven, and the twelve unearthly worlds of Plato. She alluded to a barrier between men and other orders of beings, beyond which dwelt those whom the magicians of old glimpsed after long toil and incantation. Those of whom Vertabied, the Armenian, says, their orders differ from one another in situation and degree of glory, just as there are different ranks among men, though they are all of one nature. They cannot cross nor overthrow this wall, nor can man alone, but if they and man join together, one there beyond, whispers to me of power, splendor, victory. Days later there was entered a passage of mad triumph and terror. The barrier was broken through. Out of the breach issued the one whom she had invited to her silver lamps, colossal, formless, whose approach froze blood and spirit. Eyes of unspeakable meaning glared across the dark, whispers unbearable to humanity beat upon her intelligence and named her comrade. Now, as Veer read this, I felt again that quiver of the house or air he had likened to an earth-shock and held responsible for the fall of the willow tree that had destroyed our hope of escape by automobile. I looked at my companions and saw no evidence of anyone having noticed what I had seemed to feel. Veer indeed was pale, while Filida, who sat beside him, was highly flushed with excitement and wonder as she listened. Desire had not stirred in her chair, except to bend her head so her face was shaded by the loosened richness of her hair. Seeing them so undisturbed, I kept silence. A storm might be approaching, but I made no pretense to myself of believing that shock either thunder or earthquake. The tone of the diary altered rapidly. At first the unknown from beyond the wall appalled the woman only by its unhuman strangeness, the repugnance of flesh and blood for its lowly neighborhood. Fear emanated from its presence, seen yet unseen, a blackness moving in the black of night when it visited her. Yet she had courage to endure those awful colloquies. She listened. She strove by the spell and incantation to subdue this to her service, as the demon Orthone served the Lord of Kharas, as Paracelsus was served by his familiar, or Jig by the spirit of his ring. Alas for the sorceress misguided by legend and fantasy. She had evoked no phantom, but a fact actual as nature always as even if nature is not humanly understood. The thing was real. The awe of the magician became the stricken panic of the woman. She had unloosed what she could not bind. She had called a servant and gained a master. Gone forever were the dreams of power and splendor and triumph. Now she learned that only pure magic can discharge the spirits it has summoned, nor could a murderous attain that lofty art. We were given a glimpse of a frantic girl crouched in the useless pentagram traced on the floor for her protection, covering her beauty with the cloak of her hair against the eyes that burned upon her between the overturned silver lamps. A deepening horror gathered about the house of Mistress Desire Mitchell. The old dame who had been the girl's nurse and caretaker fled the place and fell into mumbling dotage in a night. No child would come near the garden, though fruit and nuts rotted away were they dropped from overrightness. No neighbor crossed the doorstep where Sir Austin had died. She lived in utter solitude by day. By night she waged hideous battle against her visitor, using woman's cunning, assaying every expedient and art her book suggested to her desperate need. With each conflict her strength and resource waned, while that which she held at bay knew no weariness. Time was not for it, nor change of purpose. I faint. I fail, she wrote. The sea of dread breaks about my feet. It is midnight. The pentagram fades from the floor. The nine lamps die. The breath of the one at the casement is upon me. Veer stopped. A handful of pages have been torn out here, he stated. The next entry that I can read is in the middle of a stained page, and must be considerably later on. Philoda made an odd little noise like a whimper clutching at his sleeve. The third shock for which I had been waiting shuttered through the house, this time distinctly enough for all to feel. A gust of wind went through the wet trees outside like a gasp. Ethan, what was that? She stammered. Oh, I'm afraid! Cousin Roger! I had no voice to answer her. In my ears was the rush and surge of that sea whose waters had gripped me in the past night. I felt the icy death tide hiss around me in its first returning wave, rise to my knees-height, then sink away down its unearthly beach. What I had dimly known all day, underlying veers sturdy cheerfulness and our plans and efforts, was the truth. Through those intervening hours of daylight I had remained my enemy's prisoner, bound on that shore we both knew well, until it pleased or had power to return and finish with me. No doubt it was governed by laws as we are. As before, the cold struck a paralysis across my senses. Veers reassurance sounded faint and distant. The thunder is getting closer, he said. That was a storm wind, all right. Would you rather go upstairs and lie down and not hear any more of this stuff tonight? No. Oh, no! I could not bear to be alone, she refused. Just go on, dear. Of course it is the coming storm that makes the room so cold. He put his left arm around her as she nestled against him. His right hand held the diary flattened on the table under the light. The next entry is just one line in the middle of a page where everything else is blotted out, Veer repeated. It reads, The child is a week old today. The wave crashed foaming and tumult up the strand, flowing higher, drenching me in cold, sharpest fire. The tide rose faster tonight. The silence that held the others dumb before the significance of that last sentence covered my silence from notice. Desire's face was quite hidden. Lamp light and fire light wavered and gleamed across her bent head. I wanted to arise and go to her, to take her hands and tell her to have patience and courage. But when this wave ebbed, my strength drained away with the receding water. Moreover, the darkness curdled and moved beyond the window opposite me. The curtains hung between were no bar to my vision, as the light and presence of my companions were no bar to the thing that kept rendezvous with me. Since last night we were nearer to one another, a breath of chill foulness crept across the pungent odor of the burning apple log in the fireplace. A whisper spoke to my intelligence. Man, conquered by me, fall down before me. Beg my forbearance. Beg life of me and take the gift. No, my thought answered its. You die, man. All men die. Not as they die who are mine. I am not yours. You kill me as a wild beast might, but I am not yours. Not dying nor dead am I yours. Would you not live, pig me? Not as your pensioner. The logs on the hearth crackled and sank down with a soft rustle burned through to a core of glowing red. Filida spoke with a hushed urgency, drawing still closer to her husband so that her forehead rested against his shoulder. Go on, Ethan, finish, and let us be done. Veer bent his head above the book on the table to obey her. Across the dark, I saw a man in the dark, across the dark I suddenly saw the eyes glare in upon him. On the next page the writing begins again, he said. It says, I am offered the kingdom of earth, but I crave that kingdom of myself which I cast away. The child is sent to England. The circle is drawn. The names are traced and the lamps filled. Tonight I make the last essay. There remains untried one mighty spell. This mystery, a clap of thunder right over the house, overwhelmed the reader's voice. Filida screamed as a violent wind volleied through the place with a crashing of doors and shutters, upstairs and down. The diary was ripped from beneath Veer's hand and hurled straight to the center of that nest of fire formed by the settling of the logs. A long tongue of flame leaped high in the chimney as the spread leaves of the book caught and flared, fanned by wind and draught. Veer sprang up, but Filida's clinging arms delayed him. When he reached the fire tongs there was nothing to rescue except a charring mass halfway toward ashes. He turned toward me, perhaps at last surprised by my immobility. I am sorry, Mr. Locke, he apologized. Desire had started up with the others when the sudden uproar of the storm burst upon them. Now she cried out, breaking Veer's excuse of the loss. Her small face blanched, she ran a few steps toward me. It has come. He will die. He is dying. Look. Look. End of chapter 19 Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 20 Of The Thing From The Lake This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline The Thing From The Lake By Eleanor M. Ingram Chapter 20 Behold! Where are their abodes? Their places are not, even as though they had not been. Tomb of King Enteth Desire Mitchell was beside me, and I could not rise or answer her. She bent over me, so that the rows of Jerusalem fragrance inundated me, and drove back the sickening air that was the breath of our enemy. Let me go! she sobbed, her head beside my head. If you can hear me, listen and leave me as it wills. You know now that I belong to it by heritage? You know why we can never be together as you planned? Try to feel horror of me. Put me away from you. No evil can come to me unless I seek evil. But it will not suffer you to take me. Live, dear Roger, and let me go! Yeel to me, man, what you may not keep! The whisper of the Thing followed after her voice. Would you take the witch-child to your hearth? Cast her off, and taste my pardon. Can you hear, Roger? Roger, let me go! With an effort terrible to make as death to meet, I broke from the paralysis that chained me. As from the drag of a whirlpool, I tore myself from the tide-clutch, from the will of the Thing, from the numb weakness upon me. For a moment I thrust back the hand at my throat. I stood up, and drew desire up with me in my arms, both of us reeling with my unsteadiness. I do not give you up, I said, my speech hoarse and difficult. I claim you, now and after, and my claim is good, because I pay. Desire exclaimed something, what I do not know. Her voice was lost in the triumphant conviction that I was right. She was free, and the freedom was my gift to her. I was not vanquished, but victor. The life I paid was not a penalty, but a price. Her face was uplifted to mine, as she clung to me. Then my weight glided through her arms, and I fell back in my chair. I was alone amid blackness and desolation that poured past me, like the wind above the world. For the last time I opened my eyes on the gray shore at the foot of the barrier. I, pygmy indeed, stood again before the colossal wall whose palisades reared up beyond vision, and stretched away beyond vision on either side. I was alone here, no whisper of taunt or menace, no presence of horror troubled me. Opposite me the breach that split the cliff showed as a shadowed canyon, empty except of dread. Far out behind me the sea that was like no sea of earth gathered itself beneath its eternal mists, as a tidal wave draws and gathers. With folded arms I stood there, waiting for the returning surge of mighty waters to overwhelm me in their flood. I waited in awe and solemn expectancy beyond fear or hope. But now I became aware of a new doubleness of experience. Here on the frontier I was between the worlds, yet I also saw the room in the house left behind. I saw myself as an unconscious body reclined in a chair beside the hearth. Desire Mitchell knelt on the floor beside me, her hands grasping my arms, her gaze fixed on my face, her hair spilling its shining lengths across my knees. Philoda was huddled in a chair, crying hysterically. Veer apparently had been trying to force some stimulant upon the man who was myself, yet was not myself, for while I watched he reluctantly rose from bending above the figure and set a glass upon the table. I echoed his sigh. Life was good. The sea behind me began to rush in from immeasurable distances. The roar of the water's thunderous approach blended with the heat and flash of storm all about the house into which I looked. He dies, Desire spoke, her voice level and calm. Has it not been so with all who loved the daughters of my race these two centuries passed? Yet never did one of those die as he dies. Not for passion, but for protection of the woman. Not as a madman or one ignorant, but facing that which was not meant for man to face, his eyes beating back the intolerable eyes. Oh, glory and grief of mine to have seen this! Philoda cowered lower in her chair, burying her face in the cushions. But Veer abruptly stood erect, his fine dark face lifted and set. Just so some ancestors of his might have risen in a bleak New England meeting-house when moved powerfully to wrestle with evil in prayer. But it is doubtful if any main deacon ever addressed his deity as Veer appealed to his. Almighty, where in place as we don't understand? He spoke simply as to a friend within the room, his earnest, drawing speech entirely natural. But you know them as you do us. If things have got to go this way, why, we'll make out the best we can. But if they don't, and we're just blundering into trouble, please save Roger Locke and this poor girl. Because we know you can. Amen. Now at this strange and beautiful prayer, or so it seemed to me, a ray of blinding light cleaved up from where Veer stood, like a shot arrow speeding straight through house and night into inconceivable space. Then the room vanished from my sight as the great wave burst out of the mist upon me. I went down in a smother of ghastly, snarling floods, cold as space is cold. Something fled past me up the strand, shrieking in human passion. The eyes of my enemy glared briefly across my vision. One last view I glimpsed of that dread barrier amid the tumultant welter of my passing. The breach was closed. Unbroken, majestic, the enormous wall stood up in violet. End of Chapter 20 Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 21 Of The Thing From The Lake This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline The Thing From The Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram Chapter 21 Fancy, like the finger of a clock, runs the great circuit and is still at home. COUPER The uproar of rushing waters was still in my ears. But I was in my chair before the hearth in the living-room of the farmhouse. And the noise was the din of a tempest outside. Opposite me, Philida and Desire were clinging together, watching me with such looks of gladness and anxiety that I felt myself abashed before them. Bagheera, the cat, sat on the table beside the lamp, yellow eyes blinking at each flash and rattle of lightning and thunder, while he sleeked his recently wetted fur. Wondering where that wet had come from, I discovered presently that the fire was out, and the hearth drenched with soot-stained water. I looked toward the windows from which the curtains had been drawn aside. Rain poured glistening down the panes, but the clean storm was empty of horror. Drink some of this, Mr. Locke, urged Vir, whose arm was about me. Sit quiet, and I guess you'll be all right in a few moments. I took the advice. Strength was flowing into me as inexplicably as it had flowed away from me a while past. How can I describe the certainty of life that possessed me? The assurance was established, singularly enough, for all of us. None of my companions asked, and I myself never doubted whether the danger might return. The experience was complete and closed. Moreover, already the thing that had been our enemy, the horror that had been its atmosphere, the mystery that haunted desire, all were fading into the past. The phantoms were exercised, and the house purified of fear. But there was something different from ordinary storm in this tempest. The tumult of rain and wind linked another deeper roar within theirs. The house quivered with a steady trembling, like a bridge over which a train is passing. Pulling myself together, I turned to Vir. What is happening outdoors? I asked. The cloud burst was too much for the dam, he answered regretfully. It went off with a noise like a big gun a while back. I expect the lake is flooding the whole place and messing up everything from our cellar to the chicken-house. Daylight is due pretty soon now, and the storm is dying down. We'll be able to add up the damage after a bit. The water came down the chimney and drowned Bagheera, Phyllida bravely tried to summon nonchalant. Isn't it lucky you and Desire could not get started in the car after all? Fancy being out in that. Desire Mitchell steadied her soft lips and gave her quarter to the shelter of common-place speech we raised between ourselves and emotions too recently felt. It was like the tropical storms in Papua, where I lived until this year, she said. Once one blew down the mission-house. Vir's weather prediction proved quite right. In an hour the storm had exhausted itself or passed away to other places. Sunrise came with a veritable glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air and water, and it was like a storm. Sunrise came with a veritable glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air washed limpidly pure by the rain. The east held a troop of small clouds, red as flamingos, flying against a shining sky. Last traces of our tempest. We stood on the porch together to survey an unfamiliar scene in the rosy light. Water overlayed lawns and paths, whose ripples lapped around the white cement steps and the pillars of the port-cauchère. Philidas peaking ducks floated and fed on this new waterway, as contentedly as upon their accustomed pastures. Small objects sailed on the flood here and there. Bag here is milk-pan from the rear veranda, bobbed amidst a fleet of apples shaken down in the orchard, while some wooden garden-tools nudged a silk canoe cushion. In contrast to all this aquatic prospect, where the real lake had been, there now lay some acres of ugly, oozing marsh. It's expanse dotted with the bodies of dead water-creatures, and such a veer's young trout as had not been swept away by the outpouring flood. The dam was a mere pile of debris through which trickled a stream bearing no resemblance to the sparkling waterfall of yesterday. Already the sun's rays were drawing a rank unwholesome vapor from the long submerged surface. We contemplated the ruin for a while, without words. Poor draws, Philidas sighed at length. All your work just rubbed out. Never mind, veer, I exclaimed impulsively. We will put it all back in the same shape as it was. But even as I spoke, I felt an odd shock of uneasiness and recoil from my own proposition. I did not want the lake to be there again, or to hear the unaccountable sounds to which it gave birth and the varying fall of the cataract over the dam. Did the others share my repugnance? I seemed to divine that they did. Even the impetuous Phil did not break out in welcome of my offer. Desire, who had smoothed her sober grey dress in some feminine fashion, and stood like Marguerite or Melisande with a great braid over either shoulder, moved as if to speak, then changed her intention. A faint distress troubled her expression. As usual, veer himself quietly lifted us out of unrest. I'm not sure that couldn't be bettered, Mr. Locke, he demirred. That is, if you liked, of course. That marsh could be cleaned up and drained into pretty rich land, I guess. And down there beyond the barn, on the other side where the creek naturally widens out into a kind of basin, I should think might be the spot for a smaller, cleaner lake. Does it seem to you, Ethan, I said, that we have progressed rather past the Mr. Locke stage? A little later, when Desire and I were alone in the porch, we walked to the end nearest the vanished lake. Or rather, I led her to a swinging couch there and sat down beside her. Point out the path down the hill by which you used to come, I asked of her. She shook her head. There are no words to paint how she looked in the clear morning, except that she seemed at sister. It is only the end of a path that matters, she said. Look instead at the marsh. Do you see nothing there stranger than a path through the woods, even when trodden by a willful woman? Following her lifted finger, I saw a series of long mounds out there in the muddy floor, not far from the dam. Not high, two or three feet at most. The mounds formed in a regular square of considerable area. The old house, I exclaimed. It was set on fire by the second Desire Mitchell one night deep in winter. Her father built this house of yours and put in the dam that covered the ruins with water. I think he hoped to wash away the horror upon the place. I know so little of your history. You can imagine it, she turned her head for me. The first child came back from England when it was a man grown and claimed the house and name of the first Desire. He settled and married here. For two generations only sons were born to the Mitchells. I do not know if the dark one came to them. I believe it did, but they were hard, austere men who beat off evil. Then a daughter was born. She looked like the first Desire, and she was not good. She was a scandal to the family. She listened to it. The tradition is that she set fire to the house after a terrible quarrel with her people. But herself perished by some miscalculation. There were no more girls born for another while after that, not until my father's time. He had a sister who resembled the two desires of the past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew, and died in Paris after a life of great splendour and heartlessness. Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is why I covered myself from you. I took her hand, so small a thing to hold and feel flutter in mine. But what of me, Desire? The darkness covered no beauty in me, but a defect. You never saw me until last night and now in the morning. Now that you know, you can bear with a man who limps? You so perfect? She turned toward me. Her cold, dark eyes vivid as a summer noon, open to my anxious scrutiny. But I have seen you often, she said, the heat of confession bright on cheek and lip. I never meant you to know, but now, after the first time you spoke to me so kindly and gaily, I was so very sorrowfully alone, and the convent was so dull. My father's field glasses were in my trunk. Desire! I fear I have no vocation for a nun. I—there is a huge rock halfway down the hill with a clear view of this place. I have spent hours there, watching these lawns and verandas, and the things you all did. It all seemed so amusing and—and happy. You see, where I lived there were almost no white people except my father and a priest at the Catholic Mission. So I learned to know Phyllida and Mr. Veer, and— Then all this time, Desire? The glasses brought you very close, she whispered. I knew you by night and by day. End of Chapter 21 Recording by Roger Moline Chapter 22 Of The Thing From The Lake This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Moline The Thing From The Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram Chapter 22 Life hath its term, the assembly is dispersed, and we have not described thee from the first. Gullistan I have come to the end of this narrative, and with the end I come to what people of practical mind may call its explanation. Of the four of us who were joined in living through the events of that summer, my wife and I and Ethan Veer agree in one belief, while Phyllida holds the opinion of her father, the Professor. I think, bagheera, the cat might be added to our side also, if his testimony was available. The press reports of the cloudburst and flood brought the Professor up to Connecticut to verify with his own eyes his daughter's safety. Aunt Carolyn did not come with him, but I may here set down that she did come later. They found their son-in-law by no means what their foreboding's menaced, so reconciled themselves at last to the marriage, to Phyllida's abiding joy. But first the little Professor arrived alone three days after the storm. Characteristically he had sent no warning of his coming, so no one met him at the railway station. He arrived in one of those curious products of a country livery stable known as a rig, driven by a local reprobate whom no prohibition could sober. I shall never forget the incredulous rapture with which Phyllida welcomed him, nor the pride with which she presented Veer. The damages to the place were already being repaired, although weeks of work would be needed to restore a condition of order and to make the changes we planned. The automobile had been disentangled from the wreckage of garage and willow tree, and towed away to receive expert attention. We were awaiting the arrival of the new car I had ordered for the honeymoon tour, desire and I were going to take. Phyllida had declared two weeks shopping unnecessary preliminary to the wedding of a bride who was to live in New York and meet everybody. Nor would I have shortened the pretty orgy into which the two girls entered, transforming my sorceress into a lady of the hour, happiness seeming to me rather to be savored than gulped. Needless to say, there was no more talk of the convent whose iron gates were to have closed between the last desire Mitchell and the world. She had been directed there by the priest whose island mission was near her fathers. In her solitude and ignorance of life, the sisterhood seemed to offer a refuge in which to keep her promise to her father. But she had to learn the principles of the church she was about to adopt, and during that period of delay I had come to the old house. On the second day of his visit we told all the story to the professor. We could not have told on Carolyn, but we told him. It is perfectly simple, he pronounced at the end. Interesting, even unique in point, but simple of explanation. And what may be the explanation, I inquired with skepticism. Marsh gas, he replied triumphantly. Have none of you young people ever considered the singular emanations from swamps and marshes where rotting vegetation underlies shallow water? Filida, I am astonished that you did not enlighten your companions on this point. You, at least, have been carefully educated, not in the light froth of modern music and art, but in the rudiments of science. I do not intend to wound your feelings, Roger. I am not wounded, sir, I retorted, just incredulous. Ah! said the professor, with the bland superiority of his tribe. Well, well, yet even you know something of the evils attending people who live in low, swampy areas? Malaria, Agu, Fevers. In the tropics these take the form of virulent maladies that sweep a man from earth in a few hours. Your lake was haunted, so was the house that once stood in its basin, as some vague instinct strove to warn the generations of Mitchells as well as you. Haunted by emanations of some powerful form of marsh gas, given forth more plentifully at night, which lowered the heart action and impeded the breathing of one drawing the poison into his lungs through hours of sleep, producing Nightmare. Science has by no means analyzed all the possibilities of such phenomena. Nightmare, I cried. Do you mean to account by Nightmare for the wide and repeated experiences that twice brought me to the verge of death? And Desire? What of her knowledge of that same Nightmare? What of the legend of her family so exactly coinciding with all I felt? And why did not Philoda and Ethan suffer the Nightmare with me? He held up a lean hand. Gently, gently, Roger, consider that of all the household you alone slept in the side of the house toward the lake. I know that you always have your windows open day and night, a habit that used to cause great annoyance to your Aunt Carolyn when you were a boy. Thus you were exposed to the full effect of the water gases. That you did not feel the effects every night, I attribute to differences in the wind, that from some directions would blow the fumes away from the house, thus relieving you. I gather from your account that the phenomena were most produced in close, foggy weather, when the poisonous air was atmospherically held down to the earth. You have spoken of miasmic mists that hung below the level of the treetops. When Mr. Veer experienced a similar unease and depression, he was on the shore of the lake at dawn after precisely such a close, foggy night as I have described as most dangerous. The symptoms confirm this theory. You say you awakened on each occasion with a sense of suffocation. Your heart labored, your limbs were cold, and mind unnaturally depressed, owing to slow circulation of the blood. You were a man asphyxiated. After each attack, you were more sensitive to the next, as a malaria patient grows worse if he remains in the swamp districts. It is remarkable that you did not guess the truth from the smell of decaying vegetation and stagnant damp which you admit accompanied the seizures. However, you did not. And in your condition the last three days of continuous fog brought on two attacks that nearly proved fatal. Now as to the character of your hallucinations and their agreement with the young lady's ideas. That is a trifle more involved discussion, yet simple, simple. He put the tips of his fingers together and surveyed us with the benign condescension of one instructing a class of small children. The first night that you passed in your newly purchased house, Roger, you accidentally encountered Miss Mitchell, or she did you. He smiled humorously. While your feelings were excited by the unusual episode, the strange surroundings and the dark she related to you a wild legend of witchcraft and monsters. Later, when you suffered your first attack of marsh gas poisoning, your consequent hallucination took form from the story you had just heard. Later conversations with your mysterious lady fixed the idea into an obsession. Recurrent dreams are a common phenomenon even in healthy persons. In this case, no doubt the exact repetition of the physical sensation of miasmic poisoning tended to reproduce in your mind the same sequence of ideas or semi-delirious imaginings. These were, of course, varied or distorted somewhat on each occasion, influenced by what you had been hearing or reading in advance of them. This mental condition became more and more confirmed as you steeped yourself more deeply in legendary lore, and also, pardon me, in the morbid fancies of the young lady, whose ghostly visits in the dark and whose increasing interest for you put a further bias upon your thoughts. What were the noises I heard from the lake and the shocks we all felt, I demanded? He nodded amiably toward Veer. Mr. Veer has mentioned the large bubbles which formed and burst in the surface of the lake. That is a common manifestation of ordinary marsh gas. Possibly the singular and unknown emanation that took place at night came to the surface in the form of a bubble, or bubbles, huge enough to produce, in bursting, the smacking sound of which you speak. But I am inclined to another theory, after a walk I took about your place this morning. When you put up your cement dam, instead of the old log affair that held back only a part of the stream, you made a greater depth and bulk of water in the swamp basin than it has contained these many years, if ever. As a result, I believe the sloping mud basin began to slip toward the dam. Oh, very gradually! Probably not stirring for weeks at a time. Just a yielding here, a parting there, until the cloud burst precipitated the disaster. You had, my dear Roger, a miniature landslide which would account for sounds of shifting mud and water in your lake, and for the shocks or trembling of your house when the earth movements occurred. The rest of us regarded one another. I think Vier might have spoken if he had not been unwilling to mar Philip's contentment by any appearance of dispute with her father. It has very cleverly worked out, sir, I conceded. But how do you explain that desire knew what I experienced with the thing from the barrier, if my experiences were merely delirious dreams? I have not yet understood that she did know, said the Professor dryly. She put the suggestions into your head, innocently, of course. When you afterward compared notes and found they agreed, you cried, miraculous. How is that, Miss Mitchell? Did you actually know what Roger experienced in these excursions before he told you of them? Desire gazed at him with her meditative eyes, so darkly lovely, yet never quite to lose their individual difference from any other lovely eyes I have ever seen. The eyes, I thought then and still think, of one who has seen more, or at least seen into, father's spaces than most of treadmill-trotting humanity. She wore one of the new frocks for which Phyllida and she had already made a flying trip to town, a most sophisticated frock from Fifth Avenue, with frivolous French shoes to correspond. Her hair of a laurel eye was demurely coiled and wound about her little head. Yet some indescribable atmosphere closed her delicately around, an impalpable wall between her and the common place. Even the desiccated material professor was aware of this influence and took off his spectacles uneasily, wiped them and put them on again to contemplate her. I am not sure, she answered him with careful candor. I believe that I could always tell when the dark one had been with him. I could feel that here, she touched her breast. I knew what its visits were like, because I was brought up to know by my father and was told the history of the three Desire Mitchells. My father had studied deeply and taught me. I shall not tell anyone all he taught me. I do not want to think of those things. Some of them I have told to Roger. Some of them are quite harmless and pleasant, like the secret formula for making the Rose of Jerusalem perfume, which has virtues not common, as Roger can say who has felt it revive him from faintness. But there are places into which we should not thrust ourselves. It is like, like suicide. One's mind must be perverted before certain things can be done. And that is the true sin, to debase one's soul. All men discover and learn of science and the universe by honest duty and effort is good, is lofty, and leads up. Nothing is forbidden to us. But if we turn aside to the low door which only opens to crime and evil purpose, we step outside. I am unskillful. I do not express myself well. Very well, young lady, the Professor condescended. Unfortunately, your theories are wild mysticism. The veritable fiend that has plagued the house of Mitchell is the mischievous habit of rearing each generation from childhood to a belief in doom and witchcraft. A child will believe anything it is told. Why not, when all things are still equally wonderful to it? Let me point out that your theory also contradicts itself, since Roger certainly did not enter upon any path of crime, yet he met your unearthly monster. Because he chose to link his fate with mine, who am linked by heredity with the dweller at the frontier, she said earnestly. He was in the position of one who enters the lair of a wild beast to bring out a victim who was trapped there. It may cost that rescuer his life. Roger nearly paid his life. But he mastered it, and took me away from it, because he was not afraid, and not seeking his own good. I never imagined anyone so brave and strong and unselfish as Roger. I suppose it is because he thinks of others instead of himself, which gives the strongest kind of strength. The thing nearly had me, though I hastily intervened to spare my own modesty, and it did have me worse than afraid. I seemed to be arguing against an impenetrable obstinacy, snapped the professor. Do you, Roger, who were educated under my own eye, in my house, have the effrontery to tell me that you believe Miss Mitchell is descended from the union of an evil spirit and a human being, as the Eastern legends claim for salad in the great? Your own theory, sir, being? I evaded. There is no theory about the matter, he declared. Excuse me, Miss Mitchell. The child was undoubtedly Sir Austin's son, which accounts for the madness of the first-desire Mitchell. We were all silent for a while. Whatever thoughts each held remained unvoiced. Come, Philoda, you take my sane point of view, I hope—the professor finally challenged his daughter with a glance of scorn and compassion at the rest of our group. You observe that I have explained every point raised, Miss Mitchell's testimony being of the vaguest? Yes, Papa—Philoda agreed hesitatingly. I do believe you have solved the whole problem. Only, if cousin Roger was suffering from marsh gas poisoning last night, when he seemed to be dying, I do not quite see why Ethan's prayer should have cured him. The professor was momentarily posed. He looked disconcerted, took off his glasses and put them on again, and at length muttered something about storm wind dissipating the miasma in the air and events being mere coincidence. The house was never again visited by the dark presence. Phantom or fancy, the horror was gone as if it never had brooded about the place. Desire Locke is a fatal companion only to my heart. But whether all this is so because the lake is drained and the Shetland pony of a young veer browses over the green pasture that was once a miasmic swamp, or whether it is so for more subtle, wilder reasons, no one can say. I, recalling that colossal barrier I visioned as closed and a certain cleaving arrow of light, must at least call the coincidence amazing. As I have said, my wife and I, Ethan veer, and bag here of the cat, have an understanding between us. End of Chapter 22 Recording by Roger Maline End of The Thing From the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram