 6 I have made a story that hath not been heard. A great feat of arms that hath not been seen. A menom haet. I woke slowly. It seemed that I struggled to wakefulness as a spent swimmer struggles towards shore. Up, up through deep poles of sleep, I dragged myself, driven by some dimly sensed necessity. Peril had stolen upon me in my unconsciousness a stalking beast. I knew that with nightmare certainty. It was as if my soul stood affrighted beside my brain, trailing upon its ally to arouse and stand with it against the menace. And my brain answered, but with infinite difficulty, like a drugged warrior who hears the clang of battle and forces numbed limbs to stir arise and grasp the sword. I was awake. Suddenly the swimmer reaching the surface. How shall I describe fear incarnate? The horror was at the open window opposite the foot of my bed, staring in upon me with slavering covetousness of the prey. It watched. I lay there, and felt it seek for me across the darkness with tentacles of evil that groped for some part of me upon which it might lay hold. The room was still. Between the draperies the windows showed nothing to the eye except a dark square faintly tinned with the night luminance of the sky. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. But gradually I became aware of a hideous odor of mould and mildew, of must and damp decay that loaded the air with disgust. I lay there, and opposed the approach of the thing with all the will of resistance in me. The sweat poured from my whole body so that I lay as in water and the drenched linen of my sleeping suit clung coldly to me. It could not pass the defence of my will. I felt the malevolent fury of its striving. Like the antenna of some monstrous insect brushing about my body, I felt its evil desires wavering about my mental self, examining, searching where it might seize. It had not yet found the weakness it sought. If it did, the sickening, vault-like air I must breathe fought for it. So did the darkness. All this time, or the time that seemed so long, I had no more command of my body than a cataleptic patient. Every ounce of force in me had rushed to support the two warriors of the battle, the brain and will that opposed the clutching menace. But now, as I grew more and more fully awake, out of very loathing and danger I drew determination. Slowly, painfully, I began to free my right arm and hand from this paralysis. As I advanced in resolution, the thing seemed to recoil. Inch by inch I moved my hand across the bed toward my reading lamp on the stand beside me. In proportion, as I moved, the dreadful tentacles drew back and away. A last effort and the chain was in my fingers. I jerked spasmodically. Every light from the lamp flashed over the room. All the quiet comfort of the place sprang into view as if to reassure me. The piano opened as I had left it, the table strewn with my evening's work, each bit of furniture, each drapery or trinket, undisturbed. The thing was gone. In the hush I heard my panting breath and the tick of my watch on the stand. It was two o'clock in the morning. As I mechanically read the hour, a cock somewhere shrilled at second call before dawn. The horror had been true to the legendary time of apparitions. Weak and chilled I presently made an attempt to rise. But at the movement a wave of sickness swept through me. The room seemed to rock and swing. I had just time to recognize the grip of faintness before I fell back on the pillow. Vivifying sweetness was in my nostrils, which expanded avidly for this new air. Perfume that was a tonic, a subtle elixir that sparkled upon the senses, sank suavely and healingly through me, so that I seemed to draw refreshment with each breath. Reluctantly I aroused more and more in response to this unusual stimulant, which somehow gave delicious rest yet drew me from it into life. I could have sworn someone had touched me. With some exclamation on my lips I started up to find myself in darkness. The lamps I had left lighted burned no longer. This time there was no terror in my awakening. No thing of nightmare pressed against my window-space. The fragrance persisted. The ghastly smell of mold and corruption was gone. But I wanted light for all that. Reaching for the lamp beside me, on its stand, I found the little chain. I felt the chain draw in my fingers and heard the click that should have meant light, but no answering brightness sprang up. Instead across the dark came a voice, a voice low-pitched, soft, without weakness, keen with exultation. Victory! Victory! You have no need of light, who conquered in darkness? The enemy has fled. It has covered the unspeakable eyes from the eyes of a man. By the will of a man its will has been forbidden. It has dragged itself back to the barrier and cowards there for this time. Oh, soldier on the dreadful frontier, be proud! Putting off your armor to-night, be proud and rest! Those practical people who are never unnerved by the intangible, may gauge if they can the weirdness of this address following my first experience, and then smile their contempt of me. For I confess to a moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that of the woman who had trailed her braid of hair into my grasp, the night I first slept here. But how did she know of the things visit to me? I had not spoken, nor uttered a cry throughout its visitation. How could she have knowledge of that silent struggle between it and me, or of my escape so narrowly won? How, unless she too? I groped for a glass of water left on my stand. I drank and felt my dry throat relax. Who are you? I asked. A sigh trembled toward me. I am one who stands on the threshold of your beautiful world, as a traveler stands outside a lighted palace, gazing where she may not enter, and feeling the winter about her. Do not suppose me quite a superstitious fool, I said brustly. You are a woman, the woman who left a very real braid of hair in my hands not long ago, to save herself from capture. Yes, yes, I am neither more nor less real than the one which came for you a while since. Then my nightmare was real? A thing of flesh and blood, or clever mechanism? You know it. Perhaps you produced it? The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless heat against her cool melancholy. Real? What is real? she challenged me. Into the sciences that you should understand better than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a million years men have vowed you to touch empty air. They saw and felt it empty, but now a child-nose air swarms with life. In that thin nothingness crowd and move the distributors of death, disease, health, vigor, existence itself. The water you have just tasted is pure and clear in the glass? Pure? Each drop is an ocean of inhabitants clean and unclean. I speak common places, but is there no knowledge not yet common place? Oh, man, with all the unfathomed universe about us, dare you pronounce what is real? What is natural, I began. She interrupted me. Doubtless what is not natural cannot and does not exist. Have you then measured nature? He was a great thinker, one of deep knowledge, who compared man to a child wandering on the shore of a vast ocean and picking up a pebble here and there. Of what would you convince me? And why? Of what? Danger! Why? Would you watch a man enter a jungle where some hideous beast crouched in ambush, while you neither warned nor armed him? I am here to turn you back. I am the native of that country who runs to cry warning to a stranger, and put into his hand the weapon of understanding. So solemn, so urgent a sincerity was in her voice, that again chill touched me. The clammy dampness of my garments hung on my limbs as a reminder of the thing, real or unreal, that twice had made its presence felt beyond denial. Wild as her words might be, their incredible suggestion was matched by my experience. I sought with my eyes for her before answering. The room was dark, yet the darker bulk of furniture loomed out enough to be distinguishable. No figure was visible, even traced by the direction of her voice. I was certain that any movement to seek her would mean her flight. Do you mean that you want me to go away from this place, I questioned? The sigh came again, just audibly. Yes! Why should you die? Was I wrong in fancying the sigh regretful? Did I not hear a wistful reluctance in her tone? Excitement ran along my veins like burning oil on flowing water. The woman hidden in the dark, the association of her voice with the strange, exquisite fragrance I breathed, the thought of beauty in her born of that lovely braid of hair I had seized, all blended in a spell of human magic. I have said I was a man much alone, and a lame man who craved adventure. Just now, I said, you spoke of some victory. You called me soldier. Is it not victory to have driven back the dark one? Is he not a soldier who, aroused in the night to meet dreadful assault, sets his face to the enemy and battles front to front? Before the eyes men and women have died or lost reason, or fled across half the world, broken by fear. What are the wars of man with man, compared with a man's battle against the unknown? I honor you. I salute you. But, soldier alone, on the forbidden frontier, go! Join your fellows in the world allotted to you. Live, nor seek to tread where mankind is not sent. How can there be wrong in facing a situation that I did not cause? There is no wrong. There is danger. What danger, I persisted. Can you ask me? she retorted with a hint of impatience. You who have felt its grope toward your inner spirit? I shuddered, remembering the brush of those antennae, exploring, examining. But I persisted beyond my everyday nature. Her speech was for me like that liquor distilled from honey that inflamed the Norsemen to war fury. You say I came off victor, I reminded her. Yes, but can you conquer again and again and again? Will you not feel strength fail, health break, madness creep close? Will you not be worn down by the thing that knows no weariness and fall its prey at last? It will come, often. Until one conquers, it will come. I forced away a qualm of panic. How can you know, I demanded. Ask me not. I do know. But look here, I argued. If, as you say, this creature was not meant to meet mankind, how can it come after me this way? She seemed to pause, finally answering with reluctance. Because two centuries ago one of the race of man here broke through the awful barrier that rears a wall between humankind and those dark forms of life to which it belongs. For know that a human will to evil can force a breach in that barrier, which those on the other side never could pass without such aid. I neither understood nor believed. At least I told myself that I did not believe her wild, legendary explanation of the nightmare thing that visited me. I did not want to believe. Neither did I wish to offend her by saying so. You will go, she presently mistook my silence for surrender. You are wise as well as brave. Good go with you. Good walk beside you in that happy world where you live. Wait! I cried sharply. Her voice had seemed to recede from me, a retreating whisper at the last word. No, I will not go. I must. I will know more of you. You are no phantom. Who are you? Where? When can I see you in daylight? Never. Why not? I came to hold a light before the dreadful path. The warning is given. But you will come again? Never. What? The thing will come and not you? What have I to do with it? Who are more helpless before it than you? Go and give thanks that you may. Listen, I commanded, as firmly as I could. I am not going away from this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me half convinced of what I should do. I can stay no longer. Why can you not come again? Why can you not come again? You plan to trap me, she reproached. No. Word of honor. You shall come and go as you please. I will not make a movement toward you. Not try to see me even, she hesitated. Not even that, if you forbid. There was a long pause. Perhaps, drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had begun to stir the tree branches and flutter through my room. She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise. Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric switch beside my door. No doubt, she had turned off my lights at her entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading lamp, and this time light flashed over the room. I had known no one would be there, and no one was, yet I was disappointed. As I drew on my dressing-gown, I heard a clock downstairs strike four, not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and bittersweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath the jubilant rain, I heard a bell ring, and the gentle strife of sweet odors my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking foulness of mould and decay. I sat down at my desk to wait beside the lamp for the coming of sunrise. End of Chapter 6 Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 7 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 7 For it is well known that Paris and such delicate beings live upon sweet odors as food. But all evil spirits abominate perfumes. Oriental mythology The breakfast bell, or rather fillet as Chinese chimes, merrily summoned me to the dining-room, a homely spell to exercise the phantoms of the night. My little cousin, Rosie beyond belief, trim in white middy-blouse and blue skirt, was already in her place behind the coffee-pot. Veer sat opposite her at the round table. They were holding hands across the rolls and bacon and eggs. Their glances interlocked in a shining content that made my solitariness rather drab and dull to my own contemplation. At my clumsy step the picture dissolved, of course. Veer rose while fillet a welcomed me to my chair and went into a young housewife's pretty solicitude about my fruit and hot eggs. The sun glinted across the table. The very servant had a smiling air of enjoying the occasion. I never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big, brindle cat purred on the windowsill beside Filida. No dainty Persian or Angora, but a battered veteran whose nicked ears and scarred tail proved him a battling cat of ring experience. I planned to have a wee white kitten, Phil explained, while putting a saucer of milk before the feline toff. One that would wear a ribbon, you know. You remember, cousin Roger, how mother always forbade pets because she believed animals carried germs? I meant to have a puss, if ever I had a home of my own. This one just walked into the kitchen on the first day we came here. Ethan said it was a lucky sign when a cat came to a new home. He gave it the meat out of his sandwiches that we had brought for lunch, and it stayed. So I decided to keep it instead of a kitten. It really is more cat. What footing was here for dreary terrors? In a mirror across the room I glimpsed my own countenance looking quite as usual. No overnight white hairs appeared, no upstanding look such as the legend gave to Sir Sintrum after he met the little master. After the meal, Veer asked me to walk over to the lake with him. We strolled through the old orchard toward the dam. This was my side of the house. In passing I looked up at the window against where I was I looked up at the window against which the thing had seemed to press itself with sickening lust for me. Filida was framed in the open square, and shook a dustcloth at us by way of greeting and evidence of her busyness. The wide shallow lake lay almost without movement, except at the head of the dam. There the water poured over with foam and tumult, an amber-brown cataract some twenty-odd feet across, to rush on below in a winding stream that grew calmer as it flowed. We must put our lake in order, Veer. I observed as we stood on a knoll at the head of the dam. All this growth of rank vegetation ought to be pulled up, the banks graded and turfed perhaps, the bottom cleaned up. Water lilies would look better than cat-tails. To my surprise he did not assent. Instead he set his foot on a boulder and rested his arm upon his knee, looking into the clear water. Mr. Lock, I just about hate saying what I have to, he told me in his sober, leisurely fashion. I expect you won't like it, not at all. Well, best said before you get deeper in. I can't see my way to make farming this place pay. I was bitterly disappointed. Even at the worst estimate of Veer, I had imagined he would stick the thing out a little longer than this. Poor Filida's time of happiness should have lasted more than these few weeks. But the call of New York, of the lounge lizard's case and unhealthy excitement, had won already, it seemed. I said nothing at all. The blow was too sore. There are too few acres of arable land, and they're used up, Veer was continuing. I've seen plenty of impoverished, run-out farms in New England. You could pour money into the soil out of a gold pitcher these five years to come, before it began to pay you back, and then your money might better have been put anywhere in bank, for profit. I saw that the first week here. Since then I've been looking around for something better to do. And have found it, of course, I said, bitingly, or else you would be drawing your salary as manager and saying nothing to me of all this. Well, where does poor Fil go, and when? He turned his dark-curled head and regarded me with calm surprise. I didn't exactly know that my wife was going anywhere, Mr. Locke. What? You do not mean to leave the farm? Not unless you're tired of our bargain. I've been calculating how to make it pay. That won't be by planting corn and potatoes and taking a wagon load into town. If you think I'm wrong, call in any practical man who knows this sort of business. We've got to think closer to win here. That's why I'd like to set the lake to work, instead of just prettying it up. The lake, Veer? There isn't enough water power over the dam to do any more than run a toy, is there? He motioned me nearer to where he stood gazing down. Notice what kind of water this is, Mr. Locke? Brown, like forest water, sort of green-lighted because the bottom is like turf. Neither mud nor sand, but a kind of underwater moss. You see? It's pure and clean, with a little fishy smell about it. Matter of fact, it is forest water. Comes from way off yonder, the stream does, before it spreads out into our lake here. I borrowed a boat and followed back two miles before it got too shallow for me. Boys have caught trout here three times since I've been watching. Well, my father was fish-warden in our district. I learned the business. If you're willing, I can start some trout-raising that ought to pay well. You know, the state is glad to help game-preserving, free. He proceeded to give me a brief lecture on the subject in his quiet, unpretentious manner, producing notes and diagrams from his pockets. He had written to various authorities and exhibited the replies. He knew exactly what the state would do, what he himself must do, and what investment of money would be required. I listened to him in admiration and astonishment. From fish-raising he went on to discuss each acre of the farm, its best use in view of its situation, condition, and our needs. We could afford so much labor it appeared, and no more. We must have certain apparatus, methodically listed with prices. If we used a certain sheltered south field for a peach orchard, the trees planted should be such an age and have giant powder-blast deep beds for them in order that they might soon bear fruit. When at last he ended his deceptive speech that sounded so lazy while implying so much energy, and turned his black eyes from the papers on his knee to my face, I had been routed long since. Veer, I said abruptly, did you know that I thought you were going to desert the farm when you began to speak? He nodded. Yes, I guess so. You don't exactly like me, haven't had any occasion to. You don't judge me a fit match for your cousin. Well, neither would anyone else, yet. He began to gather his papers together, his attention divided with them, while he finished his answer. There will be plenty of time before that yet runs out. Mighty pleasant time, thanks to you, Mr. Locke. Filada and I expect to enjoy building things up as much as will enjoy it after they're all built. Meantime, I prize what you're doing all the more, because I know how you feel. Now, if you'd be interested to look over these plans, or submit them to someone you've confidence in, for inspection, then I'll give you a chance to see what your inspection. I'll just turn them over to you. He had so accurately measured me that I was disconcerted. It was quite true that he was compelling my respect, while my first dislike of him still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind. I felt ungenerous, but I would not lie to him. I am a queer fellow, Veer, I said. Leave that to time, as you say. As for the plans, they are far beyond my scope. A city man, it has been my way to phone for an expert when anything was to be done, or to buy what I fancied and pay the bills. In this case, you are the expert. The plans seem brilliant to me. Certainly they are moderate and cost. Keep them, and carry them out as soon as that may be done. You are master here, not I. We walked back together through the sun and freshness of the early spring morning. As we neared the house, Philip's voice hailed us. She was at my window again, leaning out with her hair wind-ruffled about her face. "'Cousin Roger!' she summoned me. I have found out what makes your room as sweet as a garden of spices. See what it is to be a composer completely surrounded by royalties, able to buy the most gorgeous scents to lay on one's pillow, and all enclosed in antique gold!' She held up some small object that shone in the sunlight. "'Throw it down!' I begged, startled into excitement. She complied, laughing. Veer sprang forward, but I made a quicker step and caught the thing. It was one of those filigree balls of gold wrought into open work, about the size of a walnut that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain or ribbon and call a pommander. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence, supposed to be reviving in case my lady felt a swoon or me grim about to overwhelm her, as ladies did in past centuries, and do no longer. Whose gentle pity had brought this pommander to my pillow, to help me from that faintness which had followed my struggle with the thing? Whose was the exquisite individual fragrance contained in the ball I held? I had a vision of a figure, surely light and soft of movement, haloed with such matchless hair as the braid I had captured, stealing step by timid step across my room, within my reach while I lay inert. Perhaps her face had bent near mine in her doubt of my life or death? Hidden eyes had studied me in the scanty starlight. Oh, for Ethan Veer's good looks and athlete's grace to lure my lady from her masquerade. Where did you buy it, Cousin Roger? Fess up! fillet his merry voice coaxed me. It was given to me, I slowly answered. I cannot offer it to you, Phil, but I will buy any other pretty thing you fancy. Instead, next time I go to town, she made a gesture of disclaim. I did not mean that. Only, do tell me what the perfume is. I was going to ask if you knew. No. Something very expensive and imported, I suppose. Perhaps whoever gave it to you had it made for herself alone, as some wealthy women do. It is the most clinging yet delicately refreshing scent I ever met. Tuberose suggested Veer. Draws, no. How can you? Like an old-fashioned funeral, she cried. Tuberose didn't always go to funerals, he corrected her teasingly, as she made a face at him. I remember them growing in my Aunt Bathsheba's garden. Creamy-looking posies, kind of akin to a gardenia, seems to me. Thick-pedaled, like white plush, and holding their sweet smell everlastingly. But Mr. Locke's perfumery isn't just that, either. There was something else grew in that garden. I can't call to mind what I mean. Basil, maybe? The basil plant that feeds on dead men's brains, quoted Phil with a mock shiver. You are happy in your ideals, Draws. He laughed. Well, that garden smelled pretty fine when the dew was just warming up in the sun mornings. And so does this little guilt ball. I'll guess Mr. Locke's lady never got it from France. Smells like Old New England. There was no reason why a vague chill should creep over me, or the sunshine seemed to darken as if a thin veil drifted between me and the surrounding brightness. Let me say again that no place could have been more unlike the traditional haunted house. There hung about it no sense of morbidity or depression. Yet what was I to think? I was not sick or mad, and the thing had come to me twice. I turned from the married lovers and made my way to the veranda, where I might be alone to consider the pommander whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence walking beside me. Seated there, in one of the deep willow-chairs Phyllida had cushioned in peacock chints and marked especially mine by laying my favorite magazines on its arm, I studied my new trophy of the night. There was a satisfaction in its material solidity. It was real enough, resting in my palm. Yes, but it was not ordinary among its quaint kind. As I picked out the design of the goldwork, that fact was born in upon my mind. Here was no pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts. The small sphere was belted with the signs of the zodiac, beautiful in minute perfection. All the rest of the globe was covered with lace fine work repeating one group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange, outcast academies of astrology, alchemy, magic, in short. It contained what appeared to be a pinkish ball, originally a scented paste rolled round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices of the gold. Had the old world trinket been left to bewilder me? Why and by whom? What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from even the college-bred Philodas? She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone associated with her, wanted the place left vacant for some reason, why did not the thing and the warning come to others of our household group? Vir, Philoda, the Swedish woman, Christina, all had lived here for weeks without any experiences like mine. I had not been told to leave my room but the house. The danger, then, was only for me. Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at the first alarm? The grey cat came purring about me and presently leaped upon my knee. On impulse I offered the pommander to its nostrils. The unwanking yellow eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and unclosed with convulsive pleasure. It breathed with that thirsty eagerness for the scent so familiar to my own senses. Better than catnip-bag-hera, I questioned. You wouldn't bolt from it either, would you? Philoda's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed toward the hand I withdrew and composed itself to sleep. I put the pommander in my waistcoat pocket. I could not deny as mere nightmare the thing which had visited me. Better confront that fact. It was real. Only real in what sense? What human agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion so hideous, that I could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight, without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain? Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation, a truth hinted at by alchemists, Pythagoreans, Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and magnificent charlatans these many centuries? Were there other races between earth and heaven, strange tribes of the middle spaces whose destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these beings, inimical to man as a cobra, intelligent as man, hunting its victim by methods unknown to us? Was I a cheated fool or a prisoner on the borders of a new country? Could I meet that thing to-night and to-morrow night? Could I bear the agony of its presence, the stench of death and corruption that was its atmosphere? At the mere memory my forehead grew wet. The postman's buggy had stopped at our mailbox. Filida ran down to meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me while she waited, fists thrust in midi-pockets, for the man to sort our letters from his bags. It did not appear so hard to make a woman happy, I mused. A man might attempt it with hope if he could but persuade her to try him. My lady had promised to come again. Perhaps with patience. Filida came across the lawn with an armful of gaudy-covered catalogues and a handful of letters. Catalogues for Ethan, letters for you, she called in advance of her arrival. What an important person you are, cousin Roger. It always gives me a quivery thrill to realize who you are as well as how nice you are. Now, isn't that a jumbled speech to tumble out of me? I took her tanned little hand along with the letters, letters that were so many voices summoning me back to pleasant, busy Manhattan. It is a fine speech for a humble person to answer, Phil. But does that sort of thing matter to you, women? What do you love Vir for at bottom? Because he is strong and supple and has curly hair? No, as she shook her head. Because he has worn the uniform then? Proved his courage in war at sea? Because he had the glamour about him of real adventure and cabaret glitter? Or because he took you away from a life you hated? Or perhaps because he is kind and loves you? No. For none of these reasons? Why then love Ethan Vir? She stopped vigorously, shaking her head in repeated denial, and smiled at me triumphantly. Because he is Ethan Vir, she promptly responded. Oh, cousin Roger, you clever people are so stupid. It would not make any difference at all if draws were ugly, or never had been a sailor, or could not skate or do things, or had not been able to make me happy. It is something very much bigger than all that. And all the divorce courts fill, the breach of promise suits, and the couples who make each other miserable? But they never had anything, she said. Perhaps they will have it some day. Don't you know, cousin Roger, that the most important things in the world are those most people never know about? I was not sure whether I knew that or not. After last night, I was not sure of many things. Still, if such gifts were given, as she believed, if it was merely a question of being Ethan Vir, or Roger Locke, but I had never seriously considered leaving the adventure. End of Chapter 7 Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 8 of The Thing From the Lake Chapter 8 The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it. Hugo de Anima That evening, I would like to thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for so little that I am amazed. And it is all so gay, so freshly pretty. Being an ignorant man, the details are beyond me. But one servant? Aren't you working yourself too hard? I had expected you to need several. Of course we are not counting Veer's outdoor force." She turned in her low chair beside the lamp and glanced toward the window behind her, before replying. I noticed the action, because a moment before Veer had turned precisely the same way. "'It is good of you to think of those things, cousin Roger,' she declared. "'But I want to be a real wife to Drolls. I do, indeed. And I have it all to learn, because I was not brought up for that. Look at this dish-towel I am hemming. Christina would laugh at the stitches if she dared. Yet they are better than when I began. Someday I shall so find things. So it is with all my housekeeping. I think we should begin, as we mean to go on, so I have furnished the house for us. Perhaps if it had been for you alone I should have chosen satin wood and tapestry, instead of willow and croton. The same way about Christina. If Ethan and I are to save and earn this lovely place, as you offered, we cannot afford more than one maid. You understand what I am trying to explain, don't you?' "'Yes,' I assented. "'Surely. What were you looking for, just now, behind you?' "'I? Oh, nothing. I just fancied someone had passed by the window and stared in. I can't imagine what made me fancy that, unless the cat,' she hesitated. "'Bagheera is asleep under Mr. Locke's chair,' Veer observed casually. "'Truly, cousin Roger, I love the way we're living,' she resumed. "'It is very miserable of me, I daresay, not to be more intellectual after all father and mother labored with me. But it is so. I want to live this way all my life, to be busy and plan things with Ethan, and make them come true together. Under cover of the table she put her hand into Veer's, and silence held us a little while. I watched Bagheera, the cat, who sat beside my chair, staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window across the room. Did I imagine a slight uneasiness in those eyes? A wary readiness in gathered limbs and muscles, bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now the tail twitched with a lashing movement. Presently, Bagheera looked away and relaxed. A moment more, and he curled down, composing himself to sleep. "'You like the place, Phil?' I questioned. You did not find it lonely here, or in any way depressing?' The candor of her surprise told me that no dweller between the worlds had visited her. "'Cousin Roger, this darling house? Why?' I passed that question safely, and after a few minutes bade them good night. They had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it a matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone together. As I made my solitary way upstairs, I will not deny a growing excitement, or that dread fought with my resolution. Who would keep Trist with me to-night? The horror or the lady? Both as each time before? If so, which one would come first, and what might be my measure of success or failure? If some trick were being played upon me, I meant to pluck it out of the mystery. The quietly pleasant room received me without a hint of the unusual. I lighted the lamps and sat down to my work. The house was still, by ten o'clock, all lights out except mine. At midnight I lay down in the dark the pommander under my pillow. Whether I put the gold ball there from sentiment, or from some absurd fancy about its perfume and mystic carving being somehow a talisman against evil, or because I feared the trinket might be taken from me during the night, I should be troubled to answer. I did place it there, and lay lapped in its sweet odor while the moments dragged past, heavy, slow-footed movements of strain and dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope uneasy as fear. The cock crowed for the first hour and for the second. I slept at last. When I awoke, little sun rays were striking across the world. Nothing had happened. These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade. Plutarch. Next morning I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance where such a woman as my lady could be lodged. However, I made my cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless, resolved to leave no chance untried. No better plan occurred to me than an exhibition of the Pomonder with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young lady with red-gold hair. But nowhere did a native show recognition of the top, or the description. On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained buggy that inspired me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities. Why had I not put my question to our rural mail-deliverer in the beginning? Surely here was a man who knew everyone and went everywhere. The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it, then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside. The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him and nodded to me. "'Morning, Mr. Locke,' he greeted. Now let me get the right stuff into this here box, and I'll sort your family stuff right out for you. There's a sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill them, for Cliff Brown here that's gone to the bottom of the bag. I don't know, but Cliff's poultry had thanked me to leave it be. Up it's got to come, though. Will it make them lay?' I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering into the sack. "'I guess it might, if Cliff told him they'd have to lay or eat it, judging from the smell that sample's put in my bag. Not as sweet as this,' I suggested, and leaned across to lay the pommander in his gnarled hand. The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed an elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed in sensation. "'Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?' I asked. A lady with bright, fair hair, colored like copper bronze. "'Not I,' he denied briefly. "'No one at all like that, with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold color, and a lot of it. "'No, not around here, nor anywhere I've been. What do you call this perfumery, Mr. Locke?' "'I have no idea,' I answered, sharply disappointed. "'No one knows, except the young lady I'm trying to find. "'Are you sure you cannot help me at all? "'There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house "'who might be the one I am looking for?' He shook his head, giving back the pommander with marked reluctance. "'No one who might be able to tell more than yourself,' I persisted. A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr. Clifford Brown's mailbox and began to sort out my letters. "'Far as that goes, I guess Miss Hill don't miss much of what goes on around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband hitch up, and she goes driving all day. Ain't a house she knows that don't get to hear the whole yarn. You know Miss Royal Hill? Miss Veer gets butter and cheese from her, might ask her.' I thanked him and drove on. Mrs. Hill, Garryless wife of the farmer who owned the place next to ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called that morning, inviting me into her parlor to set when she had identified me. But she knew nothing of the object of my quest. "'I guessed you must be the new owner up the Mitchell Place,' she observed, her beady, faded brown eyes busy with my appearance, picking up details in avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking crumbs.' Cliff Brown said a lame feller had bought it. I don't see as that little limp cripples you much, the way you can rump us round in that fast automobile of yours. Now I'm perfectly sound, and I wouldn't be paid to drive the thing. You're not to get the other fella to run it for you, the handsome one. I guess you like to do it, don't you? Writer, ain't you? Books or newspapers?' I rallied my scattered faculties to answer the machine-gun attack. "'Music,' she echoed, her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness. They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I thought they were just fooling me. Seems I never heard of having a piano upstairs. Most folks like to show them off in the parlor. Must be kind of funny, taking your company upstairs to play for them. But then it's kind of a funny thing for a man to take to anyhow. I get a niece, ten years old, next August, who can play piano so good there don't seem anything left to learn her. So—' But there ain't no use of you driving round here looking for a fair-headed girl, Mr. Locke. The slav folk down in the shanties by the post-road are about the only light-complected ones in this neighborhood. Somehow we run mostly to Plain Brown. Senator Allen has two girls, but they're only home from a boarding school for vacation. How do you like your place? Very much, I assured her. Luckily I did not know a great deal about it yet. It's history, I mean. Are there any interesting stories about the house? You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghost story to tell our friends when they come to visit us. She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered rocking chair, arms folded on her meager breast. Guess you'll have to make one up. I never heard a nun. The Mitchell family always owned it, and they were so stiff, respectable, and upright, everyone was scared of them. Most of the men were clergymen in their time. The last, reverend cotton-mather Mitchell went abroad to foreign parts for missionary work with the heathen, twenty odd years ago, and died there. He never married, so the families run out. The Mitchells were awful hard on women, called them vessels of wrath and beguilers of Adam. Preached it right out of the pulpit. So I guess no girl in these parts could have been hired to wed with him, if he'd wanted. His mother died when he was born, so he'd had no softening influence. After news came of his death the house was shut up till you bought it. My, how you've changed it already! I'd admire to go through it. When I had invited her to call on Philoda and inspect our domicile, and paid due thanks for information received, she followed me out to the car. All this land round here is old and full of Indian relics, she remarked. Over to the sound where the swamps used to be, there was lots of fighting with savages. And they say a witch was stoned to death where the Catholic convent stands now, on the road, up above your place. So I guess you can figure out a story to tell your company, if you like. A convent, I repeated, my attention caught by a new possibility. Do they perhaps have visitors there? Ladies in retreat for a time as convents often do abroad? Mrs. Hill laughed, shaking her tightly combed head. No hope of your girl there, she chuckled. They're the strictest sisterhood in America, folks say. Poor clairs, I think they're called. No one, not even their relations, ever see their faces after they join. They're not allowed to talk to each other, even. Just stay in their cells and pray, even in the middle of the night, and shave their heads, and live on a few vegetables and dry bread. I laughed with her. Certainly no convent would harbor my lady of marvelous tresses and magical perfume, of wild fancies and heretical theories. That thought of mine was indeed far afield. But where, then, was I next to seek? I made a detour and used some strategy to gain a view of the senator's daughters. They proved to be brunettes who wore their locks cropped after the fashion of certain Greenwich villagers. My disappointment was not great. My lady was not suggestive of a boarding school miss. But I had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bron's head, whose royalty of hair I had shorn as the trader's sure King Childerick's gothic locks. I drove home with a sense of blankness upon me. Suppose she never came again. Suppose the episode was ended. Not even freedom from the thing could compensate for the baffled adventure. Think of the lamefeller with an adventure. End of chapter 9. Recording by Roger Moline Chapter 10 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 10 Plato expresses four kinds of mania. Firstly, the musical. Secondly, the telestic or mystic. Thirdly, the prophetic. And fourthly, that which belongs to love. Preface to Zanoni For myself I have always found that excitement stimulates imagination. There are others, I know, who can do no creative work except when all within and without is lulled and calm. Perhaps I have too much calm as an ordinary thing. That evening when I went to my room, lighted my lamps and closed my door, I stood alone for a while, breathing the mingled sweetness of the country air and the pommander ball. In that interval there came to me complete and whole as a gift thrust into my hand the melody which an enthusiastic publisher since assured me has reached every ear in America. As to that extravagant statement, I can only measure by the preposterous amount of money the melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic about it. For myself I cannot hear it, ground on a street organ, given on the stage, played on a phonograph record or delicately rendered by an orchestra, without feeling again the exaltation and enchantment of that night. I flung myself down at my writing-table, tossing my former work right and left to make room for this. If it should escape before I set it down. If the least of those airy cadences should be lost. At three o'clock in the morning I came back to realisation of time and place. The composition was finished. It stood up before me like a flower raised overnight. Eight hours had passed since I sat down to the work after dinner. I was tired. As I began to draw into a pile the sheets of paper I had covered with notes, weariness gripped me like a hand. Eight hours? If I had shoveled in a ditch twice that long I could have felt no more exhausted. Yielding to drained fatigue of mind and body I dropped my head upon the arms I folded upon the table. My hot strained eyes closed with relief. My stiff fingers relaxed. Rest and content flowed over me. My work was done and good. Rest passed into sleep, no doubt. The sleep could not have been long for not many hours remained before dawn. When I started awake and lifted my head I found the room in darkness. A perfume was in the air and the sense of a presence scarcely more tangible than the perfume. Even in the first dazed moment I knew my lady had come again. Do not rise, her murmuring voice cautioned me. Unless you wish me to go? No. I am here because I promised to come. It was not wise of you to ask that of me. Then I prefer folly to wisdom, I answered, steadying myself to full wakefulness. Or rather I am not sure that you can decide for me which is which. Why? After all, why? Just curiosity? You who speak so learnedly of magic and sorcery, I retorted, smiling under cover of the darkness, have you never heard of the white magic conjured by a tress of hair, a perfume ball, and a voice sweeter than the perfume? An image of wax does not melt before a witch's fire so easily as a man before these things. My hair pleased you, she questions naively. Or so easily as a woman melts before admiration, I supplemented. I am delighted to prove you human, mystic lady. Please me? Could anyone fail to be pleased with that most magnificent braid? But how can either you or I forgive the cruelty that took it from its owner? Why did you cut it off? So little of it, and I did not know you then. Little that braid? It reached below my knee. Now it is but little less, she answered with indifference. We all have such hair. I gasped. My imagination painted the picture of all that shining richness and wrapping a slim young body. It was fantastic beyond belief to sit there at my desk, beneath my fingers, the tools of sober, work-a-day life, and stare into the dark room that held the reality of my vision. She was there, but I could not rise and find her. She was opposite my eyes, but my promise forbade me to touch the lamp and see her. Who are we? I slowly followed her last sentence. Asai answered me. On the silence a memory floated to me of the story she had told while I held her prisoner that first night. The woman sits in her low chair. The fireshine is bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either side her hair flows down to the floor. Yes, by legend young witches had such hair. Selfs, undines, and all the airy race of Lilith. I thrust absurdities away from me and offered a quotation to fill the pause. I met a lady in the meads, full, beautiful, a fairy's child. Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild. She did not laugh or put away the suggestion. When I had decided that she did not mean to reply and was seeking my mind for new speech to detain her with me, she finally spoke what seemed another quotation. A spirit, one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels, concerning whom Josephus and Michael Celis of Constantinople may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more. Have you read the writings of the learned Jew or of the Platonist who you are so very bold? Neither, I meekly admitted, but neither ancient gentleman could convince me that you are unhuman. Her answer was just audible. Not I, but it. Now I was silent, for dreadful and uncanny was that whisper in the dark to a man who had met here in this room what I had met. Tell me more of this thing without a name, I urged, mastering my reluctance to evoke even the idea of what the blood curdled to recall. Why does it hate me? What can I tell you? Even in your world does not evil hate good as naturally as good recoils from evil? But this one has another cause also. She hesitated. And you, yourself? How have you challenged and mocked it this very night? Here, where it glooms, you have dared bring the high joy of the artist who creates? Oh, brave, brave, he who could await alone the visit of the unspeakable, in the chamber into which the loathsome eyes have looked and write the music of hope and beauty. I started with a hut rush of surprise and pleasure. She had heard my work. She approved it. More than that, not to her was I the lame fellow who ought to get a better man to drive his car. Nor should you who have two worlds of your own, she added in a lower tone, doubt the existence of many both dark and bright. Go then, out of this haunted place where a human madness broke through the barrier. Be satisfied with the victories you have had. Let the visits of the dark one fade into mere nightmare, and no, I am no more a living woman than Francine Descartes. Who was she? Have you not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared in Paris the philosopher Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a beautiful woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself. But Descartes declared she was an automaton, a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had made. Yet many refused to believe his story, declaring he had by sorcery compelled a spirit to serve him in this form. He called her Francine, his daughter. And the truth? I have told you all the record tells. She was soon lost. Descartes took her with him upon a journey by sea, when, a storm arising, the superstitious captain of the vessel threw the magic beauty into the Mediterranean. Thank you, but are you fairy or automaton? Do not laugh, she exclaimed with sudden passion. You know I would say that I have no part in the world of men and women. Not through me shall the ancient dread seize a new life. A little time now, then the doors will close upon me as the sea closed over Francine. I will not take with me the memory of a wrong done to you. I shall never come to this house after tonight. If you would give me a happiness, promise me you will leave too. I had known we should come to this point. After a moment I spoke as quietly as I could. Tell me your name. She had not expected that question. I think she might have withheld the answer, given time to reflect. But as it was she replied docilely as a bin child. Desire Mitchell. The name fell quaintly on both hearing and fancy, with a rustle of early New England tradition. Desire! I repeated it inwardly with satisfaction before I answered her. Thank you. Now I, Roger Locke, do promise you, Desire Mitchell, that I will not leave this house until these matters are planer to my understanding, whether you go or stay. But if you go and come no more, then I surely shall stay until I find a way to trace you or until the thing kills me. No! Yes. There was a pause. Then to my utter dismay I heard her sobbing through the dark. Why do you tempt me? she reproached. Is it not hard enough, my duty? For me it is such pleasure to be here, to leave for a while the loneliness and chill of my narrow place. But you, so rich in all things, free and happy, how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark speaks or is silent? Let me go! Wonder and exulting sense of power filled me. I can keep you then, I asked. I am so weak. Desire Mitchell, I am as alone as you can be in my real life. I have gone apart from much that occupies men and women, gaining and losing in different ways. One of the gains is freedom to dispose of myself without grief or loss to anyone except the perfunctory regret of friends. Will you believe there is no risk that I would not take for a few hours with you? Even with your voice in the dark? Come to me as you can. Let us take what time we may and the chances be mine. But that is folly. You do not know. To protect you I must go. I refuse the protection. Stay. If there is sorrow in knowing you, I accept it. I understand nothing. I only beg you not to turn me back to the commonplace emptiness of life before I found you. Indeed, I will not be sent away. If I yield, you will reproach me some day. However, it could only be like this that we should speak a few times before the gates close upon me. What gates? I cannot tell you. Very well, I took what the moment would grant me. That is a bargain. Yet what safety lies in secrecy between us? If we are to help each other, as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You will tell me no more about yourself? Very well. Tell me something more about the enemy in the dark whom I am to meet. You have hinted that it has a special motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere malignance toward mankind. What is that motive? Look me not, she faintly refused me. I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned is a heavy drawback in this combat. Arm me with a little understanding. What moves it against me? The pause following was filled with a sense of difficulty and recoil, her struggle against some terrible reluctance. No painful was that effort, somehow clearly communicated to me, that I was about to devour my curiosity and withdraw the question when her whisper just reached my hearing. Jealousy! Jealousy! Of what? For whom? For me! The monstrous implication sank slowly into my understanding, then brought me erect, gripping the edge of the table lest I forget restraint and move toward her. By what right, I cried? By what claim? Desire Mitchell, what has the horror to do with you? The vehemence and heat of my cry struck a shock through the hushed room distinct as the shattering of crystal. There was no answer, no movement, no rebuke of my movement. I was alone. With that confession she had fled. My cry had been louder than I knew. Presently I heard a door open. Steps sounded along the hall from the rooms on the opposite side of the house. Someone knocked hesitatingly. Are you all right, Mr. Locke? Veer's voice came through the panels. I crossed to the door and opened it. He stood at the threshold, an electric torch in his hand. We thought you called, he apologized. I thought maybe you were sick or wanted something and no light showed around your door. I found the wall switch and turned on the lamps. As on the last occasion she had switched the lights off there beyond my reach unless I broke my promise not to move about the room while she remained my guest. Come in, I invited him. Much obliged to you and Philadelphia looking me up. I had been working late and dropped asleep in my chair with the nightmare as the result. It was pleasant to have his normal presence, prosaic in bathrobe and pajamas in my cheerfully lighted room. His dark eyes glanced toward the music-scrawled papers scattered about, then returned to meet my eyes smilingly. We heard some of the work, he admitted. Phil and I, well, I guess we were guilty of sitting on the stairs to hear you play it over. I never listened to a tune that took hold of me, kind of, like that one. We'd certainly prized hearing all of it together some time, if you didn't mind. The warmth of achievement flowed again in me. I crossed to the piano to assemble the finished sheet, answering him with one of those expressions of thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward vanity. I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me back to the reality of my own world. Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in small square script quaint as the pommander, was written a quotation strange to me. We walk upon the shadows of hills across a level throne and pant like climbers. I did not know that I had read the words aloud until Vier answered them. So we do. I guess there is more panting over shadows and less real mountain climbing done by us humans than most folks would believe. Most roads turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills we make such a fuss about. Who wrote that, Mr. Locke? I don't know, I replied vaguely, intent upon Desire Mitchell's meaning in leaving this to me. He nodded and turned leisurely to go. Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote that piece to-night, he observed diffidently. As if trouble did not amount to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil now, she might be anxious. Could that be what Desire had meant me to understand? Was there indeed some quality of courage? That is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money and popularity went to the publisher under the title Shadows of Hills. Of course no one connected the illusion. The general interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first printing. A sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe containing two young persons. I was well pleased to have it so. But in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose shadow I panted and strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain itself? I did not know. I do not know now. CHAPTER XI. OF THE THING FROM THE LAKE. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE THING FROM THE LAKE, by Eleanor M. Ingram. CHAPTER XI. If the dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be understood of the other world. O Nirocritica, Achmedis. In the morning I drove down to New York. There were affairs demanding attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my overnight work into the hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the manuscript out of reach of the thing at the house. Without reason I had awakened with that instinct strong within me. The atmosphere of the city was tonic. Merely driving through the friendly, crowded streets was an exhilaration. The practical employment of the day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In the evening I turned toward Connecticut with a feeling of leaving home behind me. But I would not stay away from the house for a night, risking that Desire Mitchell might come and find me missing. She might believe I had been seized by cowardice and deserted. She might never return. I will not deny that I had lied to her. There was no intention in me of accepting her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give. I meant to snatch her out of darkness and mystery to set her in the wholesome sunlight where Filada flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates of which she vaguely spoke never should close between us. But it was plain that I must tread wearily. Once frightened away how could she be found? Her home, her history, even her face were unknown to me. Tracing her by a perfume and a tress of hair had been tried and failed. Of her connection with the dark thing I refused to think too deeply. Her connection with me must come first. It was not until I passed the cottage of Mrs. Hill, glimmering whitely in the starlight, where the road made an angle toward the farm that I recalled our talk in her best room. The Mitchell family always owned it. The Reverend Cotton Mather Mitchell went to foreign parts for missionary work twenty years ago and died there. My Lady of the Night was Desire Mitchell. A clue? He never married, so the families run out. It was damp here in the hollow where the road dipped down. A chill ran coldly over me. Arrived at the garage which had taken the place of our tumble down barn, I put the car away as quietly as possible. Ten o'clock had struck as I passed through the last village and our household was asleep. Moving without unnecessary noise I crossed to the house. Bagheera, the cat, padded across the porch to meet me and rubbed himself around my legs while I stooped to put the latch key in the lock. As the key slid in place I heard the water fall over the dam abruptly changed the sound of its flow, swelling and accelerating as when a gust of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the brink. But there was no wind. Immediately followed that sound from the lake which I can liken to nothing better than the smack of huge lips unclosing or the suck of a thick body drawing itself from a bed of mud. The cat thrust himself violently between my feet and pressed against the house-door uttering a whimpering mew of urgency. Startled I looked in the direction of the lake. At this distance it showed as a mere expanse of darkness, only the reflection of a star here and there revealing the surface as water. What else could be shown I rebuked my nerves by querying of them and turned the key. Bagheera rushed into the hall when the door opened wide enough to admit his body. I followed more sedately and closed the door behind us both. Now I was not acquainted with Bagheera's night privileges. Did Filida allow him the house or not? After an instant's consideration I bent and picked him up from his repose on the hall rug. He should spend the night shut in with me, out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the curve of my arm he was carried upstairs without objection on his part. Until we reached my room. On its threshold I felt his body stiffen. His yellow eyes snapped open alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place I reflected amused as I switched on the lights. All right, Bagheera, I spoke soothingly and put him upon the rug. He bounded erect, fur bristling, tail lashing from side to side after the fashion of a miniature panther. When I stooped to stroke him he eluded my hand. In a gliding run body crouched, ears flattened. He sped toward the doorway, was through it and gone. Well, I decided, he could not be pursued all through the house. It would be easier to explain him to Filida next morning. I was tired, pleasantly tired. The day had been filled with the enthusiasm and congratulations of my associates, with conferences and plans for launching the new music via theatres and advertising. It ought to go big, they assured me. In my optimism of mood I wondered if I had not already driven off the dark thing, since the girl had come to me the night past without it appearing before or afterward. Perhaps, woman timid, she exaggerated the danger and it had retreated after the second failure to overpower me. I fell asleep with a tranquil conviction that nothing would disturb my rest this night. Stillness enveloped me, absolute, desolate, silence contained me. Yet the thought of another scorched against my understanding in a burning communication of intelligence. Man, it commanded, I am here, fear. And I knew that which was my body did fear to the point of death, but that which was myself stood up in revolt. Crouch, it bade. Crouch, pygmy, and beg. Fear, the blood crawls in the veins. The heart checks. The nerves shrink and wither. Man, your life wanes thin and faint. Down! Shall your race affront mine? My heart did stagger and beat slow. Life crept a sluggish current. But there was another force that stiffened to resistance and gathered itself to compact strength within me. No! my thought refused the dark intelligence. I am not yours. Command your own, not me. Weakling, you have touched that which is mine. Into my path you have dared step. Back, for in my breath you die. The air my lungs drew in was foul and poisonous. With more and more difficulty my heart labored. Confused memories came to me of men found dead in their beds in haunted rooms. Would mourning find me so? Better that way than to yield to the thing. Better! I struggled erect, or fancied so. Now I saw myself as one who stood with folded arms, fronting a breach in a colossal wall. Huge, immeasurably huge, that cliff reared itself beyond the site and ranged away on either side into unknown distances. Dully glistening like gray ice. Unbroken save in this place. The gray strand on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall. Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean, banked over with an all-concealing mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my danger was not of the common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when he draws near the supernatural. The ancient fear. I stood there, while sweat poured painfully from me, and fronted my enemy who pressed me hard. The thing was at the breach, couched in the great cleft that split the barrier, darkness within darkness. Unseen I felt the glare of its hate beat upon me. From it emanated deathly cold, like the nearness of an iceberg in the night, with an odor of damp and mold. Puny earth-dweller, lost here, its menace breathed. What keeps you from destruction? For you the circle has not been traced nor the pentagram fixed. For you no law has been thrust down. Trespass is death. Die, then. Only my will held it for me, and I felt that will real in second bewilderment. I had no strength to answer, only the steadfast instinct to oppose. The thing did not pass. There in the breach it ravened for me, thrust itself toward me, pressed against the thin veil of separation between us. I saw nothing, yet knew where it raised itself, gigantic and formlessness more dreadful than any shape. Its whispered threats broke against me like an evil surf. Man, the prey is mine. Would you challenge me? The woman is mine by the pact of centuries. Save yourself. Escape. The woman startled wonder filled me. Was I then fighting for desire, Mitchell? Out of the air I was answered as if her voice had spoken. Certainty came to grip me as if with her small hands. She had no help but in me. If I fell, she fell. If I stood firm, exultant resolve flared strong and high within me. My will to protect leaped forward. The thing shrank. It dwindled back through the gap in the barrier. But as it fled, a last venomous message drifted to me. Again and again. Tire but once, pygmy. I was sitting up in bed in my lighted room, my fingers clutching the chain of the lamp beside me. Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond my window? Or was I still dreaming? I was trembling with cold, drenched as with water so that my relaxing hand made a wet mark on the table beneath the lamp. This much might have been caused by nightmare. But what sane man had nightmares like these? When I was able, I rose, changed to dry garments, and wrapped myself in a heavy bathrobe. There was an electric coffee service in my room, kept for occasions when I worked late into the night. I made strong black coffee now, and drank it as near boiling as practicable. Presently the blood again moved warmly in my veins. Then I knew that the chill in the room was not a delusion of my chilled body. I was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike a summer night. It seemed air strangely thickened and soiled, as pure water may be muddied by the passage of some unclean body. In this atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mold and decay, warring with the homely scent of coffee and the fragrance of the pommander beneath my pillow. I was more shaken, more exhausted by this encounter with the unknown than by either of my former experiences. A fact which drove home the grim farewell of my enemy. Tire but once pig me! Desire herself had foretold that the dark thing would wear me down. Well, perhaps, but not without fighting for its victory. At least I would be no supine victim. Already I had forced my way. Where? Where was that barrier before which I had stood? Ah, sank coldly through me at memory of that colossal land where I was pig me indeed. An insolent human intruder upon the unhuman. What other shapes of dread stocked and watched beyond that titanic wall? By what swollen conceit could I hope to win against them? I would not consider escape by flight, even if the end had been certain destruction. But my head sank to my hands beneath the weight of a profound depression and discouragement. It was the hour before dawn, traditionally the worst for man. The hour superstition sets apart for its own when the life flame burns lowest. At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature and bade monotonously. There was a weakness at the core of my strength. I waged this combat for the sake of Desire Mitchell. But what was she to whom the thing laid claim by the pact of centuries? Darkness began to tinge with light. Pale gray filtered into the dusk with grudging slowness. As day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the house in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls like thin smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim. I forced away my langer, rose and walked to the nearest window. Something was moving up the slope from the lake, a dim shape about which the fog clung in steamy billows. My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly. What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom so tall? A moment later the figure was near enough to be distinguished as Ethan Veer, bearing several long fishing rods over his shoulder. Veer, I hailed him with mingled relief and utter disgust with myself. Anything going on so early? He looked up at me, I never saw Veer startled, and came on to stop beneath the window. Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his black curls, pushing their wetness from his forehead. I noticed how the mists painted him with a spectral pallor. Good morning, Mr. Locke, he greeted me. Just as I've been thinking, there are some big snapping turtles about the lake and creek. I guess there'd be some war between them and me before that water was safe for use. One of the fellows dragged a duck under, drowned it, and started feeding right before my eyes just now. We'll have to get a canoe! He nodded, placid ascent. That'll look pretty on the lake. Filida will like it. But I guess I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out of sight round some corner for work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs like mine and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetch my rifle now. I'd admire to blow that duck-eater's ugly head off. I'll get into some clothes and be right with you, I invited myself to the hunt. I'd like to have you, he replied, with his quaint politeness. There were times when I could visualize Veer's New England mother as if I had known her. The human interlude had been enough to dispel the black humors of the night. When I was ready to go out, I opened the drawer that held the copper-bron's braid and took it into my hand. How vital with youth its crisp resilience felt in my clasp, I thought. Young, too, were its luxuriance and shining color. Nonsense, indeed, to fancy ghostliness here, or the passing of musty centuries over the head that had worn this dress. A flood of reassurance rose high in me. Whatever the thing might be, I would trust the girl, Desire Mitchell. Yes, and for her, I would stand fast at that barrier until victory declared for the enemy or for me. Until it passed me, it should not reach her. I went downstairs to join Veer. The brightening mist was cool and fresh. There was neither horror nor defeat in the promise of the morning. End of Chapter 11, Recording by Roger Moline