The Thing from the Lake Part 25

"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. An' the gossip that came back, later, an' pictures 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 Mich.e.l.l.

"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 super-woman 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 Mich.e.l.ls then living had your house built over by the orchard, then, an' had a dam built across so as to cover up the old site with water. All the Mich.e.l.ls lived there till the last one went missionary abroad an' died in foreign parts. I mean the hussy's brother. He took up his father's work, feelin' 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 h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation all his days, he did. Lean over the pulpit, he would, his eyes flamin' fire an' his tongue shrivellin' folks in their pews, I can tell you!"

"He left children?" I asked.

"No, sir! Rev'rund never married. He felt women a snare. Land, not much snarin' with what farm women get to wear around here! I've kind of thought of one of those blue foulard silks with white spots into it since before I married Hill, but never came any nearer than pricin' it an' bringin' home a sample. He was death on sweet odors an' soft raiment. Only sweet odors I ever get are the ten-cent bottles Hill makes the pedlar throw in when we trade. I do fancy _Jockey Club_ for special times, an' I've got a reasonable hope of salvation, too. I notice your cousin, Mrs. Vere, has scent on her handkerchief week days as well as when she's goin' somewhere, so I guess you don't hold with the Rev'rund Mich.e.l.l 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 Mich.e.l.l alive anywhere," she a.s.serted positively. "Dead, all dead! The Rev'rund was buried at his mission in some outlandish place.

An' if those heathen women dress like I've seen in the movin' picture palace in the village, I don't know how he makes out to rest with them flauntin' past his grave!"

I went thoughtfully out to the car. Indeed, I drove home in such abstraction that Phillida reproved me.

"'The cat has stolen 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 week days as well as Sundays?" I shook off thought to inquire.

"No; I keep sachet in my handkerchief box. Why?"

"Next time you are 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 Mich.e.l.l; 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 some body withdrawn from thick slime? Was entrance into human air open to the alien Thing only through the ruins of the house where It had first been 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 ident.i.ty of Desire Mich.e.l.l, daughter and sister of New England clergymen. 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-bronze hair; the color of the braid upstairs in my chiffonier drawer.

I went up to my room and opened the work of Master Abimelech Fetherstone. Yes, there was likeness between the poor, coa.r.s.e 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 Mich.e.l.l 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. Vere 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 especial 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 Phillida'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 evening, somehow. Never mind me. Cristina 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 _moo_ regularly every half minute. And I never heard the waterfall over the dam so loud!"

"We've had a wet summer," Vere 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, Drawls. 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 the spray," I suggested.

"Yes, Cousin Roger. But there is no wind tonight."

A discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder. I fancied Vere 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 grapes shall hang through like an Italian picture," Phillida antic.i.p.ated, 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-b.a.l.l.s 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 Lilliputian _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, Vere followed me into the hall. His dark face was distressed and anxious.

"Let me go with you," he urged.

"No, thanks. Stay with Phil, 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 covered it by stroking Bagheera, who sat on a hall chair making an after-dinner toilet with tongue and paw.

"Well, take care of Phil," I repeated, evading argument.

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 Vere, if what you have said about my feeling toward Phillida's husband was true once, it is true no longer."

His clasp was still warm on 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 bare 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 pomander and fell to studying the intricate designs worked in the metal.