The Thing from the Lake Part 11

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 Vere.

"Drawls, 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 kin to a gardenia, seems to me!

Thick-petalled, 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, Drawls!"

He laughed.

"Well, that garden smelled pretty fine when the dew was just warming up in the sun, mornings--and so does this little gilt 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 seem 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 pomander whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence walking beside me.

Seated there, in one of the deep willow-chairs Phillida had cushioned in peac.o.c.k chintz 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 gold-work, that fact was borne 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 m.u.f.fle her ident.i.ty in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from even the college-bred Phillida's?

She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone a.s.sociated 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? Vere, Phillida, the Swedish woman, Cristina--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 gray cat came purring about me and presently leaped upon my knee. On impulse, I offered the pomander to its nostrils. The unwinking 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, Bagheera?" I questioned. "You wouldn't bolt from it, either, would you?"

Phillida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed toward the hand I withdrew, and composed itself to sleep. I put the pomander 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 s.p.a.ces 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 pioneer on the borders of a new country?

Could I meet that Thing tonight, and tomorrow 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. Phillida ran down to meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me while she waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the old 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----?

Phillida 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 Vere 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 Vere?"

She stopped vigorously shaking her head in repeated denial, and smiled at me triumphantly.

"Because he _is_ Ethan Vere," she promptly responded. "Oh, Cousin Roger, you clever people are so stupid! It would not make any difference at all if Drawls 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, Phil? 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 Vere--or Roger Locke----?

But I had never seriously considered leaving the adventure.

CHAPTER VIII

"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 Vere and I settled the business details of the developments he had planned. Also while we three were quietly together, I launched a discussion that had been gathering in my mind all day while I watched Phillida.

"You are doing as efficient work as Vere," I told her. "In fact, you are a most moderate pair! I gave you an open bank account, Phil; and you have furnished the house 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 Vere'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 Vere 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 Drawls. 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. Cristina would laugh at the st.i.tches if she dared, yet they are better than when I began. Some day I shall sew fine 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 cretonne. The same way about Cristina. 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 a.s.sented. "Surely! What were you looking for, just now, behind you?"

"I? Oh, nothing! I just fancied someone had pa.s.sed 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," Vere observed casually.