CHAPTER XI
A RESPITE FROM THE RITES
I DRANK a stiff whisky and soda, ate some biscuits with it, and went to bed. I awoke next morning languid, still shaken by the upheaval of my being the night before. The thought of Pamela, her transformed face, and her kisses was very restoring. The image of her passionate, moonlit face was very present to my mind; I filled with a burning eagerness to see her.
I could not wait till the evening. I was going out of London to take a proof of the evidence of a witness who lived at Chipperfield, in Hertfordshire. It was a surprise visit; I might not find him at home, be detained, and not reach home till late. Then I had the happiest thought: I would take Pamela with me.
I opened wide the door into my garden, and as I ate my breakfast—I found myself uncommonly hungry—I listened for her coming into the garden. I was sure, quite sure, that she would come. And when I heard the garden door of No. 19 open, my heart leapt.
I went out into the garden and half-way down it I called to her softly and she answered. I told her quickly of my plan, and she seemed to hesitate. Then she said, and I caught a new note of shyness in her voice, "Yes, I'll come. I—I should love to. I'll put uncle's food ready for him, and then I can come."
"I will be ready in half an hour, then," I said, and I went back and finished my breakfast.
I did not go right to the end of the road to wait for Pamela. I waited at No. 16, in the middle of the block of empty houses. Presently she came on rather halting feet, with a fine flush in her cheeks, and shy eyes. I glanced up the road, saw it empty, and caught her to me and kissed her.
Then we turned to go up the road.
"You're all right after last night? Those rites are rather a nerve-racking business," I said.
"Oh, yes," she said; but when the flush faded from her cheeks, I saw that her pallor had lost some of its warmth.
"Well, last night you saw all of them that is to be seen, and now you're satisfied?" I said.
"Oh, don't let's talk about them," she said, with a shiver. "They're fascinating and thrilling. But they're horrid. I don't want to see them again."
"I'm glad of that," I said. "I'm sure that they are the forbidden thing. Certainly, the day after, they do seem on the appalling side."
"Oh, they are," she said. "At the same time I suppose that there are hundreds of people who would give their ears to be thrilled as we were thrilled last night."
"Yes, we were thrilled," she said.
"And it was an extraordinary thrill. I don't suppose that many people in the whole course of their lives get worked up to such a pitch of emotion. I felt in a kind of ecstasy. But it was dangerous, too; and I think we're well out of it."
"Oh, we are," she said earnestly. "And, oh, I did learn a lot last night—not only about the mysteries but about myself, too. But I want no more of them."
"What did you learn?" I said curiously.
She shook her head. Then with an enchanting smile she said, "Oh, Heine, dear, let's talk about the weather, and where we are going to."
I told her that we were going to Chipperfield, and then fortune brought an empty taxicab down the road, and it carried us swiftly to Euston station.
When our train had started I took my fill of kisses.
Then I said, "How old are you, Pamela?"
"I'm eighteen on the fourteenth of September."
"That's older than I thought you were. I'm afraid you're not old enough for us to get married at once. But I don't see why we shouldn't get married in about a year."
"Get married!" she cried, startled, and blushing.
"Of course. You will marry me, won't you?" I said, and kissed her again.
"I—I—never thought about it," she said.
"But you will? I do love you so; and if you won't, I shall be awfully unhappy."
She hesitated, and the flush deepened in her cheeks; then with her enchanting smile she said, "I couldn't make you awfully unhappy, could I, Heine?"
We spent a delightful day. We walked by field paths to Chipperfield, and I left her to stroll on the common while I did my business. We spent the rest of the day in the pine-wood on the common, only leaving it to have lunch and tea and dinner in the village inn. The enchanted hours passed swiftly.
After dinner we had an hour before we need start for our train, and we went back to the pine-wood. The shafts of bright moonlight smote down, here and there, through its dimness; but it had suffered a change since the setting of the sun and had grown full of mystery. Pamela seemed invaded by a vague uneasiness. We sat down at the foot of a great pine growing out of a round barrow, the tomb of some old-time chieftain. She nestled close to me, and now and again she would draw herself upright and peer about, or seem to listen with intent ears. No uneasiness invaded me, though the sense of the mystery of the wood was strong on me.
At last she said, "What a place for the celebration of the rites, Heine!"
"It is indeed," I said and held her closer to me.
We were silent a while, and for my part I was abandoning myself freely to the influences of the place. I should have been very little surprised to see a nymph or a faun come stealing through the tall tree-trunks.
Then I said, and unconsciously I spoke in a hushed voice:
"After all, I don't really know what happened last night. The incense was a thick veil. Were there other dancers on the lawn besides the celebrants of the rites?"
"I did not see them; I could not. But I knew that there were. I knew it well," said Pamela earnestly. "Oh, don't let's talk about them."
"We won't," I said, drawing her closer to me. "But I can't believe that all the creatures of the Abyss are harmful. Your sisters, the nymphs, now—if one of them came to us through the trees, I should not feel frightened in the least. Would you?"
"No; and the wood is full of them—and other things."
"It is mysterious, and you're not quite happy here. Let's go out into the moonlight," I said, and kissed her.
We had time and to spare to catch our train; and we walked very slowly across the moonlit fields.
We were a long while saying good-by in the Walden Boad. When I came in I had the leisure to ponder the change I had observed in Pamela. I had not been able to make out what it was, and I puzzled over it. At last I understood what had happened; Pamela had become a woman. I did not know whether to be glad or sorry. I was too new to the change; and I had found her such a delightful child.
Then at last I began to enjoy a full life. Pamela broadened and widened it for me; she rounded it off. As far as the rest of the world went, we might, in the Walden road, have been on a desert island. She fell into the way of slipping into No. 20 whenever the fancy took her. Her uncle, as long as he found his simple, spare meals ready for him when he chose to take them, troubled no more about her. He never asked how she had been spending her time, whether she had been in the house or out of it. Often she dined with me; often she came in after dinner. Sometimes we talked the evening through; sometimes she brought her sewing and sewed as we talked; sometimes we read, now and again laying down our books to talk. They were delightful evenings. Always she was reluctant to go; always I was reluctant to let her go.
In a few days our dread of the rites of the Abyss had begun to wear off. And for my part, as the dread wore off, I found that my curiosity, my desire to know once and for all the truth of the matter began to return. Pamela confessed one evening that she, too, was beginning to grow curious again, but her curiosity was far weaker than mine, and I did nothing to foster its growth.
At the end of a fortnight I was in two minds whether to watch the next celebration of the rites; at the end of another week I had made up my mind that I would watch them.
On the fourth evening before the full moon Pamela had dined with me, and after dinner we were sitting in my study talking, when we heard a knocking on the door of No. 19. It was opened; we heard a mutter of voices: someone went in, and the door was shut.
"This is awkward," I said. "Suppose, just as you went into the house, your uncle and his visitor came out of his study and met you in the hall. You'd be called on to explain."
"There's no hurry for me to go. I can wait till the visitor leaves," said Pamela, and with a little sigh of content she settled herself down more comfortably.
"And after all, if he stays on and stays on, you can always return along the gutter into your bedroom."
"Yes, the window is open," she said.
We took up the broken thread of our talk.
It was rather more than an hour later when we heard the door of No. 19 open and a boot crunch the gravel of its garden path.
Then the voice of the rich man, deeply aggrieved, said: "You'll have to reconsider it; you will really, Woodfell. You can't let us down like this, hang it all!"
"I've told you forty times, and I tell you again that there will be no more celebration this year," said Woodfell; and his hoarse voice rang angry. "It's all very well for you three amateurs; you're content with what we have got. I'm not; it's child's play."
"I don't know what more a man could want," said the rich man almost in a whine of appeal.
"You don't; and you're not likely to. But I tell you what; you and Parmenter and Goskin can celebrate the rites by yourselves. I'll lend you the garden and the shrine—no, I won't; I'll hire them out to you—and you'll see what you'll get," jeered Woodfell.
"That's no use. You know it isn't. "We must have you," cried the rich man in a sorrowful voice.
"Well, you won't," said Woodfell. "I won't celebrate the rites again till I have added the rite of Ashtaroth; and her priestess will take long finding."