Chapter 15

“Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft sweet woman.”
—Lilith.
The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of a solid mass enclosing the house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam of sun pierced it. Through it sounds reached the ear distorted and magnified. All day I sat in my room reading.

There are books which should not be preserved. I, who am a lover of books, who detest any form of censorship, I do seriously set down my belief that there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed. With this few people will agree. My answer to them is simple: they have not read the books I mean.

Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were of that character, of course. Nearly all of them were well known to classical students, at least by name. Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were, but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there were two that clung to the mind like pitch. I have no intention of giving their titles.

Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I was in a mood akin to it. Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously blended with contempt for my companions’ childish light-heartedness. As soon as possible, I left them.

Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table again, I pushed aside the pile of books and sank into sombre thought. What should I say to Desire Michell if she came tonight?

Who was she, who was claimed by the Unspeakable and who did not deny Its claim? Was I confronted with two beings from places unknown to normal humanity? If she was the woman that she had seemed to be throughout our intercourse, how could the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common man with full measure of mankind’s common faults and weaknesses, could hold Its clutch from me by right of the law that protects each in his place.

Was she one of those who have stepped from the permitted places?

“Sara the daughter of Ruel—who was beloved by an evil spirit who suffered none to come to her.”

“There was a young gentlewoman of excellent beauty, daughter of a nobleman of Mar, who loved a foule monstrous thing verie horrible to behold, and for it refused rich marriages ... Until the Gospel of St. John being said suddenlie the wicked spirit flue his waies with sore noise.”

I put out my hand and thrust the pile of books aside from my direct sight. But I could not so easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these books had implanted. I could not forget that Desire Michell herself had alleged jealousy as the Thing’s reason for attacking me.

What if we came to an explanation tonight and ended this long delirium? Was it not time? Had not my weeks of endurance earned me this right? Resolution mounted in me, defiant and strong.

The evening had passed to an hour when I might look for the girl to come. I switched off the lights, and sat down to keep our nightly tryst.

In the darkness of the haunted room, the thoughts I would have held at bay rushed upon me as clamorous besiegers.

Desire! Desire of the world! Desire of mine and of the unhuman Thing, did we grasp at Eve or Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold phosphorescence of swamp and marsh?

A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A delicate stir of movement passed by me. I raised my head from my hands, expectant.

“I am here,” her familiar voice told me.

“Desire, you had to come, tonight.”

Some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words. But she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might. She was mute, as one who stands still to find the path before taking a step.

“You are angry,” she said at last. “Something here has gone badly for you; I knew that before I entered this room.”

“How can you say that?” I challenged. “If you are like other men and women, how can you know what happens when you are absent? How do you know what passes between the Thing from the Frontier and me?”

“I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I feel from afar when you are in sorrow, why, so do many people feel with another in sympathy.”

“You feel more than ordinary sympathy can,” I retorted.

“Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy I have for you, Roger.”

Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood. Was she trying to turn me from my purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted me anything so near an admission of love until now.

“It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne for these meagre meetings where I do not see your face or touch your hand,” I answered. “But that must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come with me. Let us go out of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with my cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to New York or Boston. I am asking you to be my wife. Let us have done with phantoms and spectres. I love you.”