Flames Part 5

"O, I see! But, my dear fellow, what is there nervous about the tent?

Do you imagine ghosts lurking in the hangings, or phantoms of dead Arabs clinging, like bats, round that rosette in the roof? You got it up the Nile, didn't you?"

"Yes. Where have you been?"

"Dining out. And, oddly enough, I met Marr again, the man I told you about. It seems he is in universal request just now."

"On account of his mystery-mongering, I suppose."

"Probably."

"Did you tell him anything about our sitting?"

"Only that we had sat, and that nothing had happened."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Pooh, pooh! these processes are, and always must be, gradual.

Another time there may be some manifestation.'"

"Manifestation! Did you ask him of what nature the manifestation was likely to be? These people are so vague in the terms they employ."

"Yes, I asked him; but I couldn't get much out of him. I must tell you, Val, that he seemed curiously doubtful about my statement that nothing had happened. I can't think why. He said, 'Are you quite sure?'"

"Of course you answered Yes?"

"Of course."

Valentine looked at him for a moment and then said:

"You didn't mention the--the curtain by any chance?"

"No. You thought you had left it only partially drawn, didn't you?"

Valentine made no reply. His face was rather grave. Julian did not repeat the question. He felt instinctively that Valentine did not wish to be obliged to answer it. Oddly enough, during the short silence which followed, he was conscious of a slight constraint such as he had certainly never felt with Valentine before. His gaiety seemed dropping from him in this quiet room to which he was so often a visitor. The rowdy expression faded out of his face and he found himself glancing half furtively at his friend.

"Valentine," he presently said, "shall we really sit to-night?"

"Yes, surely. You meant to when you came here, didn't you?"

"I don't believe there is anything in it."

"We will find out. Remember that I want to get hold of your soul."

Julian laughed.

"If you ever do it will prove an old man of the sea to you," he said.

"I will risk that," Valentine answered.

And then he added:

"But, come, don't let us waste time. I will go and send away Wade.

Clear that little table by the piano."

Julian began removing the photographs and books which stood on it, while Valentine went out of the room and told his man to go.

As soon as they heard the front door close upon him they sat down opposite to each other as on the previous night.

They kept silence and sat for what seemed a very long time. At last Julian said:

"Val!"

"Well?"

"Let us go back into the tentroom."

"Why?"

"Nothing will ever happen here."

"Why should anything happen there?"

"I don't know. Let us go. The fire is burning too brightly here. We ought to have complete darkness."

"Very well, though I can't believe it will make the slightest difference."

They got up and went into the tentroom, which looked rather cheerless with its fireless grate.

"I know this will be better," Julian said. "We'll have the same table as last night."

Valentine carefully drew the green curtain quite over the door and called Julian's attention to the fact that he had done so. Then they sat down again. Rip lay on the divan in his basket with a rug over him, so that he might not disturb them by any movement in search of warmth and of companionship.

The arrangements seemed careful and complete. They were absolutely isolated from the rest of the world. They were in darkness and the silence might almost be felt. As Julian said, they were safe from trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm _voix d'or_, they were therefore probably also safe from what Marr had mysteriously called "manifestations."

Dead, dumb silence. Their four hands, not touching, lay loosely on the oval table. Rip slept unutterably, shrouded head and body in his cosy rug. So--till the last gleam of the fire faded. So--till another twenty minutes had pa.s.sed. The friends had not exchanged a word, had scarcely made the slightest movement. Could a stranger have been suddenly introduced into the black room, and have remained listening attentively, he might easily have been deceived into the belief that, but for himself, it was deserted. To both Valentine and Julian the silence seemed progressive. With each gliding moment they could have declared that it grew deeper, more dense, more prominent, even more grotesque and living. There seemed to be a sort of pressure in it which handled them more and more definitely. The sensation was interesting and acute. Each gave himself to it, and each had a, perhaps deceptive, consciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evanescent, fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring away from himself, by this act of sitting, a vital liquid, and he thought with a mental smile:

"Am I letting my soul out of its cage, here and now?"

"No doubt," his common sense replied; "no doubt this sensation is the merest fancy."

He played with it in the darkness, and had no feeling of weariness.

Nearly an hour had pa.s.sed in this morose way, when, with, it seemed, appalling abruptness, Rip barked.

Although the bark was half stifled in rug, both Valentine and Julian started perceptibly.

"'Sh!" Valentine hissed to the little dog. "'Sh! Rip! Quiet!"