CHAPTER XIII
WOODFELL
F OR two or three days after this fright Pamela was nervous and shaken. I was careful to take her into the country for a good walk every evening; and her healthy nerves soon recovered their tone. If they had not, I would have married her out of hand and taken her away from No. 19. It would have meant a tussle with Woodfell; and he was likely to prove no mean fighter. But for that I did not care. I should have had every right, except, perhaps, a mere legal one, to take her from a house which was wrecking her health. But a week assured me that it was not wrecking it; the fright she had suffered had been the result of Woodf ell's carelessness, and he would not be careless again. Several months had still to elapse before another celebration of the rites of the Abyss. It seemed safe to wait.
One evening a fortnight later Pamela and I were in my study after dinner; and there came a knocking at my front door. I went to the window, looked through the side of the blind and saw Woodfell. It was a startling sight.
"It's your uncle!" I said; and we looked at one another with some dismay. Then I said, "Oh, it's all right. He hasn't come after you. If he had, he would have come sooner. He must be merely returning my visit."
"Yes; that must be it," said Pamela, but she looked scared enough.
"Well, you'd better go into the dining-room; and if I can get him into the study, you can slip out and into No. 19," I said quickly. I opened the study door and stood still while she slipped along the wall of the hall behind me into the dining-room. Then I opened the front door.
"Good evening," said "Woodfell. "I hope it isn't too late to pay you a visit. But I felt a strong need on me to talk to someone; and my niece has gone to bed."
"Not at all too late. I'm delighted that you came," I said cordially. And I was. I welcomed the opportunity of learning more of him.
I ushered him into my study; and he sat down in an easy chair.
He looked about the room with approving eyes; sank back in the easy chair as if he found himself in a place to his liking, and said, "I've been wondering at your courage in coming into my study and staying in it that night. It must have required a strong effort of will—an uncommonly strong effort of will."
"It was uncomfortable," I said.
"Uncomfortable!" he said with a short laugh. "Devilishly uncomfortable, I should think."
"It was."
He nodded his head. "I've been wondering, too, how it affected you exactly, and what you saw."
"It affected me with a cold perspiration; and I saw shadows—shapeless shadows," I said.
"Ah, they were shapeless? I wondered," he said slowly.
He paused, thinking; then he said, "What did you think of them?"
"I thought they were devils," I said promptly.
He laughed his short laugh and said, "Well, perhaps it's as good a name for them as any other. Certainly they were called devils for a good many hundreds of years."
"Then there were things there," I said quickly.
"Things, or shadows of things—you saw."
"I felt even more than I saw," I said slowly. "But you—when you came to, you saw the things of which I only saw the shadows?"
"How does one know what one sees? Perhaps I saw shadows more clearly shaped—once beyond the tangible, the thing you can touch and handle, how can you say whether you see, or whether you fancy?"
"That's what I have thought myself," I said.
"Then you've certainly been talking to that sceptic Marks," he said smiling.
"Oh, yes," I said. "I have talked to him about these matters. But if your shadows took on flesh; then you would know."
He rose in a sudden restlessness, and walked across the room:—
"If they took on flesh for you in your sober senses, you might know. But suppose that a degree of nervous exultation, illumination, ecstasy, intoxication, call it what you will, were necessary to that incarnation. Then what can you say?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "You get results even then," I said.
"Results? Yes. But the question is not what you get, but what it's worth."
"I think—I think that you're not like Marks—you don't believe that it's all fancy," I said slowly.
"You're shrewd," he said in some surprise. "That shows insight. If I may ask, what is your business or profession1?"
"I'm a lawyer."
"Heavens!" he said and laughed.
I laughed, too.
"Well, I like you," hp said after a pause. "You said nothing to Marks about that other fancy of yours—the beast in my garden. I like a man who can keep his mouth shut till he has a reason for speaking. Though it would have been safe enough to tell Marks. He is to be trusted—absolutely. And he knows."
"Does he know?" I said doubtfully.
"Yes; I tell you that Marks knows. He would never admit it; but deep down in his heart he knows."
"Well, he acts as if he knew; and after all that is the test," I said.
"It is," said Woodfell.
There was another pause; then I said, "Suppose you had died the other night, what would the shadows, or the devils, have done?"
"Vanished to their limbo," he said with assurance.
"You're sure of that? They wouldn't have worked havoc on anyone near them?"
"They would not. They would have vanished to their limbo. Perhaps they might have taken me with them." He made a wry face. "But I can assure you that no one else had anything to fear from them. They would not have wrecked your house or injured you."
"I wasn't thinking of myself," I said.
"I suppose you were thinking of my niece. If I had died, they would not have injured a hair of her head," he said.
It was a great relief to me to hear this. Heart disease kills suddenly; and I had been now and again harrassed by a fear lest it should kill him in the night and Pamela become the helpless prey of the unchained powers of the Abyss.
I had been so interested in our talk that I had forgotten my duties of host; and I offered him a wbisky and soda and a cigar.
He shook his head and said, "No, thank you. My quest forbids. I haven't smoked a cigar for twenty years; and as for liquor, I have tasted it five—no, six times, counting the brandy you gave me the other night, in the last year."
I guessed that he spoke of the wine at the celebration of the rites.
Our talk fell on Marks for a while; then he rose and said, "I must get back to my work. Our talk has refreshed me."
"By the way, what is the rite of Ashtaroth?" said I, rising.
"The rite of Ashtaroth?" he cried sharply, startled.
"Yes. One evening I was reading here, and through the window I heard you tell someone that you were going to try the rite of Ashtaroth."
"Oh, that," he said slowly. "I'm working out the rite of Ashtaroth; and I am of the opinion that the priests at Eleusis knew a good deal about it."
I went to the front door with him; and he took his leave. Pamela was not in the dining-room; and next morning I learned that she had slipped out of the house the moment my study door had closed on her uncle.
That was the first of several visits from Woodfell. He came at no regular intervals. Sometimes ten days passed between two visits, sometimes no more than four or five. It seemed to me that the restlessness which comes from the strain of work invaded him; and he came to me for refreshment. Naturally, therefore, we did not talk always, or even much, about the mysteries; he came to me to get away from them. I gathered that he was working at them very hard indeed; and I conceived that to discover a true rite of Ashtaroth would indeed be the most laborious business.
But from his talk, and excellent talk it was, I gathered many things about him. He had been a guardsman and a great traveler in the wilder parts of the world. Often he had to carry things with a strong hand; and sometimes he told of his more dangerous adventures, adventures through which he had not come with out shedding blood, with a fierce truculence which left me no doubts that at heart he was a very savage creature. But none of the less I liked him; and little by little I began to understand his tampering so stubbornly with the forbidden things. He was the true seeker, seeking the ultimate revelation for the ultimate revelation's sake, with no thought or, at any rate, very little thought for the power which that knowledge might give him. But apart from that the danger of the search had the very strongest appeal for him. He loved it.
Once he said with full-hearted enthusiasm: "The forbidden things are the most dangerous things in the world."
But never an evening passed that he did not say something interesting.
One night we had been talking of the mysteries, and since my mind was never quite at rest about Pamela's presence in No. 19, I said, "Is your house really a safe abode for your niece, with these terrifying shadows in it. You say that she would be quite safe, if you died, that the shadows would vanish with you. But is she safe when the shadows are about while you are still alive? Can they not then turn their malignant effort from you to her? I know that they're malignant, you know."
He frowned and tugged at his thick, coarse beard:—
"She's quite safe as long as I'm there," he said slowly. "And if I have to leave her to go somewhere, I take precautions.
"How can you take precautions against shadows?" I said.
"You can always set shadows to fight shadows," he said.
On another evening he had been walking restlessly about the room, with a strong suggestion of a tiger in a cage, as he talked; and now and again he had paused at my bookshelves and scanned the titles of the books.
At last, with a wave of the hand towards them, he turned and said: "Once I knew them all; and how far away it seems—great writers about shadows. What an unsubstantial world they present!"
It was to dismiss human effort and human history, the whole human scheme in ten words; and it indeed took me aback. But he spoke with utter sincerity; and I knew that he at any rate did not believe that shadows danced in the garden of No. 19.
During most of his visits the name of Pamela at some time or other crept into our talk. I introduced it always, for I could not quite rid myself of my uneasiness about her safety.
One night he said suddenly, with very searching eyes on my face, "You seem to take a great interest in my niece."
"Yes; I do. Apart from the fact it makes one uneasy to see a young girl in danger. She's very pretty and charming."
"Charming? Then you see something of her?" he said quickly.
"Yes; I sometimes meet her on her way to the High Street to shop. And if I hear her in your garden, I talk to her over the wall."
It seemed to me unwise to tell him more.
"Pyramus and Thisbe," he said slowly and fell thoughtful.
Weighing the advantages and disadvantages of being open with him, I was two or three minutes making up my mind; then I said, "I should like to marry her."
"Marry her? I never thought of that. I suppose she is reaching the marriageable age," he said slowly.
"Yes; we could marry in a few months. I'm not a good match by any means. My salary is two hundred a year. I own this house and have a few hundred besides. But the firm for which I work, Stryke and Hodgson, are a good firm. They like my work; and Howard Stryke, the senior partner, is my cousin. I can safely look forward to a junior partnership in four or five years. I should insure my life for a thousand pounds, so that if anything happened to me she would not be left stranded."
"I suppose she is bound to marry," he said in a grumbling tone. "I suppose, too, that, buried as she is and without any money, some such match as this is the best she can expect. I like you, too. You would probably look after her well. But she's very useful to me. Working at these things, I need someone about me who will not talk—not that she knows anything to talk about." He was silent, frowning; then he went on. "Look here, after all this might be the best arrangement for me, if you would agree to let her go on looking after me after she was married. Indeed it would be much better than if someone else married her and took her away. Nothing must interfere with my work."
It was a selfish way of looking at it; but his selfishness was the selfishness of an enthusiast, hardly personal; and after all it was not for me to find fault with it, since it served my purpose.
"Yes; I would agree to that. She could look after you after cock-crow till sunset. I shouldn't object to that at all," I said.
"Yes; that would be quite safe. So far I am only dealing with the children of darkness. Why, hang it all! I believe I should prefer it to the present state of things; I shouldn't have to bother about her at all. Yes; it would suit me much better. Why shouldn't you marry her at once?"
I was sorely tempted to take him at his word. But after a moment's consideration, I said, "No, she is too young. I will marry her next autumn."
"Good," he said in a cheerful tone. "September is a very good month."
I did not thank him; there seemed no need for it. I was plainly doing him a service. In practical matters, which do not touch his enthusiasm, the enthusiast is often very easy to deal with.