ears
esUniversity of Virginia Library
PS3092 .E4 1918

D

Il

XO

Wnes

Rl
He

es
a

rt

be

ti: ze ,

: St Bee on

Peweeneerer rise eee

PES ee tae

2

Staten

pret)
Pin sioke

2

Cet res
eee See rs Ls
Seen

ao
SSS

saver

ae

i}
* Hike
Put
Hse
irae
ae
uy M
bt :

4
i
a

Ba

rs
be
Saray

a= r%
SSeS

mae
=

eee

rina
Sy
Bape
i
Sea

srs
aoe

aay,

ce
eer
a13
hie
Hr
ahs
ages,

eee RE!

RORY Te et al

Preteen

THE ELUSIVE: LADY

ebobAy ness

ee

%.ia
AE

 

BY

AMELIE RIVES

Each bound with an attvactive wrapper, 1/9 net.

 

WORLD'S END

84th thousand.

SHADOWS OF FLAMES

3,
S

Saeea
SREB

SSS

ee

 

 

 

Saher sees
SS

Sra.

Se

 

SS

eK

rere een ceKLUSIVE LADY

BY

AMELIE RIVES (Princess Troubetzkoy)

Author of ‘ World’s End,” ‘Shadows of Flames,’’ &c.

 

~ / as i
\ SJ RD Rates
.. Sit P - ;
\ io Te aw fy he f
\ <i he ns a wr
~ A, qo 4 cy) / os
% . j ; “) “Sy
\ a CFG oe
ha: : sor ge
~~ ge
we Oh a8

LONDON

BURST 6 BUACK ELT Bip.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE,
1918ee

 

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE ANCHOR PRESS LID. TIPTREE ESSRXTat eal o re tsar hase aes Teen
; : artes

riveree tenets ner or
Hes bia ttt fi

i H EBe
i H

ee ef)

wert yey

TO
MY DEAREST

SISTER
LANDON RIVESa
i
i

a =
rsa

Pe
tae;

p55 csaphot
CS ee

sets

esa
Se

emer or
Bai

alan Ragignsenaee

HRSTHE ELUSIVE LADY

CHAPTER I

in ‘ hants’? ’’ observed Joel Carver, turning
from a last fruitless survey of the interlaced
branches above them.

“** Hants’? ” repeated Radford.

‘“** Ghosses’ some folks call
Carver.

‘‘Oh—ghosts. Why not? Why shouldn’t town-
people believe in ghosts as well as country-people? ”
asked Radford. ‘‘ And what made you think of them
suddenly like that? ” |

‘‘ Well,” said Joel slowly, “* we’ve got to go by the
old Horsemanden place to get to Mr. Warrenger’s,
and they say it’s hanted.”

Radford was keen in an instant, far keener than he
had been to find the wild turkeys in search of which
he and Joel had been tramping over the mountains
for three hours. He was a half-hearted sportsman at
best. The stalking of game was the only part of the
sport that he really enjoyed. He disliked killing
things, and nothing could have induced him to shoot
a, deer.

It was because of Steve’s insistency that he had
set off on this ‘turkey hunt” with Joel Carver.
Steve had been called to Washington on business the
night before, but he assured Radford that if the man
existed who could be sure of knowing where wild

“<6 I S’POSE, bein’ from the city, you don’t believe

2 39

em,” explained8 THE ELUSIVE LADY

turkeys were going to roost that man was his manager,
Joel Carver. As for Radford’s leaving Virginia
without a shot at a wild turkey, it was simply out of
the question.

However, when they reached the point on Smoke
Mountain where Joel had made sure the wild turkeys
would be roosting, there was, as he disgustedly
observed, ‘‘ Nary a turkey.”

“Some darkey’s got after ’em, darn him!” he
told Radford.

It seemed that the way to hunt wild turkeys was
to find them roosting, flush them, then come back
before daybreak next morning, build a blind, and call
to them on a queer little instrument made out of one
of their own wing-bones.

A neighbour and friend of Steve’s, a Mr. Hamilton
Warrenger, had kindly offered to put the two men up
for the night.

It was November, a still evening of Indian summer,
The sun had dropped behind the mountains, but a
full pale moon shone in the east. All about them was
the forest. The only sound came from the dead
leaves through which they walked.

“ This ain’t no wild turkey hunt,” mourned Joel,
“it’s a wild-goose chase, that’s what it is. I’m sorry
to ’a’ brought you on such a fool climb, Mr. Radford,
T cert’‘n’y am.”

~ Well, you needn’t be,” said Radford cheerfully.
‘I never enjoyed a tramp more, and you know I told
you I wasn’t much of a shot.”

~ Yes, sir; you did. But every man had ought
to shoot a wild turkey befo’ he dies. It cert’n’y
is disagreeable to get disapp’inted like this, it
cert’n’y is.”

~ Look here,” said Radford suddenly, smiling and

meer et TT TUE Cerery a teebcea eatin]THE ELUSIVE LADY 9

stopping short. “I’m going to make a confession
that will comiort you. I’d a great deal rather hear
about the ‘ hant ’ at the old Horsemanden place than
shoot a wild turkey.”

Joel fixed his pale-blue eyes on him wonderingly.

‘“*°S that so? ”’ he asked, incredulous.

‘** That’s so,”? answered Radford.

Joel shifted his gun and fingered it lovingly.

‘* Well—that cert’n’y is cuyous,”’ he said at last.
‘Wild turkeys is so oncommon, and hants is so
common.”

‘“Common!” exclaimed Radford. “ Have you
ever seen one?

= Yes, si, 2 certmy have .../. more) enc:
Mountain-folks jest naturally sees hants, I reckon.”

He trudged on, his pale eyes still peering upward
right and left among the trees, in case a roosting
turkey might escape him.

“Do you mind talking about it ? ” asked Radford.

The pale eyes came down to him, surprised.

“Why, no, I do not. It’s right interesting when
you come to ponder it. It cert’n’y 1s.”

‘“When did you first see one? What was it
like? ”? urged Radford, eager as a boy.

‘The first one? Well, I was a little feller and I
was coming along a piece of hanted road at dusk. A
coach-and-four was what hanted it, and I seen the
coach-and-four.”’

‘““ What was it like? ”

‘Well, it looked real. I jumped outer the road,
and it passed me and the swingle-bars was a-swinging
and the horses lathering; but what was cuyous was
the way it went along without no noise—like the
shadder of a buzzard over snow.”’

‘¢ And what else have you seen? ”

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

Re a a te

Mae AE eee treet te ty te atsTHE ELUSIVE LADY

“Well, I met the Man in White that hants
another piece of road on Buck Mountain. He come
up to me looking: mighty ugly, and I hit at him with
a hickory-stick I was carryin’. I didn’t know he
wa'n’t real till the stick went through him.’:

* What was he like? ”’

* Like a natural man.”

‘“ You feel sure you’ve seen these things? ”

; Well, I cert’n’y wa’n’t dreaming. After I hit
through that hant on Buck Mountain I ran nigh two
mile home, I was that startled—come near busting my
heart, the doctor said. But I’m used to ’em now.
Our preacher told me how to treat ’em. They
cyarn’t speak to you lest you speak first. You must
say: ‘In the Lord’s Name, in the Name of Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, what do you want?’ Then
they can answer. It’s right disagreeable sometimes
when they do answer. It cert’n’y is.”

Radford looked searchingly at the countryman’s
long tranquil profile as he walked beside him. If he
was a liar, or crazy, he was certainly the most placid
of his kind. He talked of “ hants”’ as naturally as
he talked of wild turkeys. Radford was about to
question him further when they came out of the forest
into a little clearing on the mountain-top. The after-
glow was still too vivid for the moon to cast shadows,
but it was the hour when colours are felt rather than
seen.

On their right the mountains fell away toward
the valley, rose again, interlaced, parted, to give a
glimpse of the vast blue rampart of other mountains
more distant still, brooding against the dead gold
of the west. To their left the Piedmont country
Swept away far below them, one hundred and twenty
miles straight to the sea. That distant band ofTHE ELUSIVE LADY il

mauveish pearl Radford could have sworn was the
sea.

“When we get round that rock,” Joel was saying,
pointing to the south-west, “you can see ‘° Her
Wish.’ ”

““* Her Wish’? ” repeated Radford. ‘ What’s
that ? ”

‘““The old Horsemanden place. It’s on the
southern flank of Mist, Mountain, a mighty rich,
pretty-laying piece of land it cert’n’y is, too—but
mournful seeming. The shadows fall early there.
The mountain ’s so nigh over it.”

They passed round the big lichen-crusted boulder,
and Joel, pointing again, said :

© Where’ tis.”

Radford did not say anything. The strangest
sensation had come over him with the sight of the old
house among its terraces and sombre, crowding
evergreens. It was not only that feeling that almost
everyone has had at times—the feeling of having
been in the same place under the same circumstances
before; it was less vague, stronger. He had the
emotion of one who, long absent from a beloved
home, sees it after years of exile. It was a rush of
moved reminiscence, as poignant as that which
perfumes sometimes bring.

Those old creamy stucco walls, appearing and
disappearing among their clustered trees, seemed
more familiar and more dear than the walls of the
house in which he had been born. The gardens with
their solid hedges of tree-box, plumy on top for want
of trimming, gave him a pang as of a half-remem-
bered romance that had ended in tragedy.

This queer “‘ possessed ”’ feeling only lasted a few
seconds, then he emerged from it as from a dive into12 THE ELUSIVE LADY

dusky waters among strange sea-beings that had
touched and claimed him; and there was Joel still
pointing downward, and speaking in his soft, slow
sing-song. He was saying :

» “ Hér Wish’ it’s called now, but the name’s writ —

in two words with a big ‘H’ and a big‘ W.’ And it
really had oughter be called ‘ Hér Wish,’ even like.”

~ That’s a strange name for a place,” Radford
answered, feeling that he must say something. ‘ Do
you know how it came to be called that ? ”

~ Yes, sir, I do,” said Joel. ‘Everybody does.
It was built by old Colonel Horsemanden in 1766 to
pleasure his only daughter. The first house was
burnt down by the Injuns in 1764, They say as how
Miss Melany—that was her name—was right wilful,
and she set her heart on building a house to suit her
own idees. So the old man let her. It’s a mighty
nice house to look at, but they say it’s because of a
woman’s plannin’ it that the front do’ ain’t in the
middle, and the colyums are more in the right wing
than in the left. They say Colonel Horsemanden was
mighty proud of it, though, and that’s how he come
to name it ‘ Her Wish.’ ”’

They had begun walking down toward the hollow
as Joel spoke, and now a rise of ground brought them
so near that the bitter, fresh scent of the box-hedges
floated to them. Again that eerie feeling of remin-
iscence swept over Radford.

~ Do you like that smell ? ” Joel was asking, when
he came to the surface of things a second time, «J
do not. It minds me of graveyards. And talkin’ of
graveyards, there’s a grave right in the middle of < Her
Wish ’ garden—the one they call the ‘ ghost-garden.’
They say Miss Melany Horsemanden set her wil on
being buried there, and the old Colonel didn’t cross

ea Wl GSTHE ELUSIVE LADY 13

her no more in death than he done in life, so buried
there she cert’n’y is. They say it used to be her
rose-gyarden. Right in the middle of the roses she
tended when she were alive, there’s where she lays in
death. It do seem a pretty idee, but distressin’. ”

" Is it her ghost that haunts the place? ” asked
Radford in a low voice. As they drew near that
garden with its lonely grave it seemed to him that he
must speak in hushed tones. |

~ That’s what they say,’’ answered Joel, also in a
more subdued voice.

Near one of the outlying hedges, above its low
stone wall, Radford stopped short. The moon was
bright and strong now in the darkened heaven. It
struck little glitters from the box-leaves, and showed
the two men’s faces to each other rather pale.

m Would you be .).)..a..)2) Would) you mid
going into the gardens? ” asked Radford.

Joel answered by another question :

** Would you mind seeing a hant ? ”

** No—I don’t think I should,” said Radford.

" All right, then,” agreed Joel; ‘if you do not
mind, J do not mind. The gates ain’t locked.” He
smiled with some grimness. ‘‘ There ain’t no need
to lock the gates of ‘ Her Wish.’ ”’

They followed the curve of the box-hedge for some
ten yards, until they came to high gates of wrought -
iron, rough with rust. The delicate tracery stood out
in sharp relief against the bleached wild grass that had
overgrown the lawn beyond. They stood gazing
through. It was so still that the silence surged in
Radford’s ears. |

From this point they could see the house, longand
low, above its balustraded terraces. The moonlight
had not reached it yet. It looked like a shadow or aTHE ELUSIVE LADY

cloud shaped like a house, resting upon the top of the
gently-sloping hill.

“You reely want to go in? ” asked Joel, his hand
on the gate.

““ Yes,” said Radford.

Still Joel hesitated.

“If you see anything that startles you, you won't
blame me? ” he suggested.

“No, of course not,” replied Radford.

“‘ Well, then,” said Joel, and he pushed open the
heavy gate.

It gave on its hinges with a grinding noise that
jarred on Radford’s nerves. It was like the hoarse
erowl of an old watch-dog, too old to bite, but not
too old to protest. Radford’s heart was beating
rather fast. It seemed to him that in passing through
that gate he had passed some definite boundary-line
of Fate. It was as if he had entered a spellbound
region that claimed him. ‘‘ Spellbound ”—that was
the exact expression. That shadow-house drowsing
above him was spellbound; there was a spell over !
these quiet, deserted lawns and trees and terraces and
over him.

Suddenly he turned sharp to the left and walked
on quickly. |

* Wait!” called Joel; “ that ain’t the way to the
house.” He came after him, protesting. “ These
grounds is full of tricks. You can get lost in ’em as
easy as nothing.”

IT shan’t get lost,” said Radford. “I want to go
to the rose-garden first.”

* But that ain’t the way,” urged Joel. “‘ You’d
better let me show you. We might get wandering
round here for an hour or two. They’re laid out
that-a-way, these grounds air.”’

 

  

pttart! Preverrerer is tt Pat ae :
SEMI attri psrtL ie iit essres rr tt berhensCHAPTER II

  
    
    
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
   
     

ADFORD said nothing, only walked on faster
than ever. He knew the way. He knew
every turn and tangle. Now he went up

four old stone steps sunk in a terrace, turned aside,
and struck into a flagged walk that led between high
walls of euonymus. The stiff, glossy leaves brushed
against him on either side, so long had they been left
unclipped. Nesting birds, disturbed by his passing,
“ quhirred ” and “‘ cheeped ” in the branches.

Joel followed doggedly. He was not afraid of
** hants,”’ as he had said, but he rather wished at that
moment that one would frighten the ‘‘ Yankee
gentleman.” It would be a fool thing to go and lose
themselves in the tricky grounds of ‘‘ Her Wish,”
with a good hot supper waiting for them at their
journey’s end. |

Then he gave a little gasp of astonishment.
Radford had come out into the well-known ‘“‘ maze ”’
of “* Her Wish,” and was threading it as swiftly and’
accurately as if he had planned it himself.

“ Gre’t Gawd! That’s cuyous!” thought Joel.
* That’s darn cuyous. I never heerd tell of anybody
as could get in and out of that place. It’s worse to
get out of than a quagmire—and he’s doing it!”

Radford had turned at Joel’s ery.

“ Just follow me,” he now said. “It’s quite
simple. You turn back at the third row, and go right,
then left, then back again, then right.”

“Joel did so. He emerged beside Radford in a
circular flagged court, still walled in by euonymus.16 THE ELUSIVE LADY

An arbour of lattice-work, held together by a huge
rose-vine, stood before an opening in this wall.
Below them, down a flight of stone steps sunk in a
grassy terrace, lay the rose-garden.

‘Well, sir! That beats me,” murmured Joel.
“ You come here and through that mixed shrubbery
as if you’d knowed it all your life! It’s cuyous. It
cert’n’y is.” And he stared intently at Radford with
his pale eyes.

Radford had no wish to share his mystery. He
answered practically and rather curtly that he was
used to such things, and that it was easy to guess that
a rose-garden would lay to the south.

“It’s mighty cuyous, all the same,” was Joel’s
slow retort.

Radford, gazing down at the old sunk garden, did
not answer. Then he said:

‘If you don’t mind waiting for me, I'll just go
down these alone.”

“No, I do not mind,” replied Joel tranquilly.
‘‘T’l] just set here on these steps till you come back.”

The moon was clear of the trees now. It shone
upon the neglected beds of the garden and turned
their matted covering of wild grass into a silver fleece.
On every side old unpruned rose-trees threw out
fountains of thorny branches. The terrace that shut
in the garden was surmounted by a thick hedge of
box. The mounded beds looked like the graves of
little children. The whole place had the wistful
sadness of a lovely woman grown old: of a woman
beautiful in her youth, and deserted in her age.
Radford came upon a moon-dial. It seemed ex-
quisitely fitting that’a shadow should tell him the hour.

Then, hat in hand, he went along a little path set
with dwarf-box. He knew where that grave wouldTHE ELUSIVE LADY

be. Andas he for
trees he found it.

But at the very instant that he c
something sent the blood flying
This he had not fore-felt,
were carefully trimmed. Th
wild grasses: more than this,
it—fresh flowers—roses.
tinctly from where he st
side by side with a lovin
blossoms each with its ¢
the grass coverlet of the

17
e-felt, there among a tangle of rose.

ame upon it
back upon his heart.
The rose-trees about it
¢ grave was shorn of its
there were flowers upon
He could see them dis-
ood, ten paces away, laid
§ care that left the fragile
heek pressed softly against
Stave, but not touching one
another. Hehada swift thought as he gazed at them
that the hand that placed them there must be delicate
and deft—a woman’s hand. Then he went nearer,
of marble, with raised lettering

under a carved maltese cross, set between two Sprigs
of laurel. The letters Said :

My DEARE DAUGHTER
“ MELANY HORSEMANDEN
** Born 1746—Diep 1780.”

Who was it that laid fresh flowers on the grave of

a woman dead a hundred and thirty-six years ago ?

He closed his “yes a moment, trying to picture
this wilful, charming Melany as she had been at
twenty, when her father built that lovely old house
for her and named it ‘‘ Her Wish,” In an instant,
gushing about him, warm as if with sunlight, came a
surge of perfume—the scent of damask roses. Almost
he remembered, almost he saw .. . what his open
“yes could not discern. He shook with this ‘‘ almost.”
Unclosing his eyes, he stepped to the grave, bent over
i But those late autumn roses, chill with the
moonlit air, gave forth no perfume.

   
 
 
   
  
 
   
     
  
  
    
   
  
  
  
   
   
 
   
 
    
     
  
  
   
   
 

<2et A vs ; vey ‘ sere
, A . o 5 wees
ee eee ees

Se reer rer titrateTHE ELUSIVE LADY

18

Again he closed his eyes, but this time there was
only about him the fresh, bitter scent of the box-
F from

hedges and, the dank odour of autumn leaves
the strewn pathways. He gazed and gazed at the

white name on the headstone. :
‘* Melany Horsemanden,”” he said aloud, ‘‘ Melany

Horsemanden.”’

No one answere
of damask roses came to
feeling as if rose-scented hair,
years, had blown against him.

“ Now let us have a look

rejoining Joel on the steps.
“ Al] right,’? responded Joel; “but it’s half-past

six o’clock, and Mr. Warrenger’s a long mile further.”’

He eyed the young man curiously as they went
ds the house.

along the weed-grown driveway towatr

“Did you get a feelin’ of hants down there by that
grave? ” he asked.

“<The whole place has a haunted feeling,” evaded
Radford. ‘It would be easy to imagine a ghost in
the moonlight between those trees.”

“Yes, the autumn mist do look hant-like in the
moonshine,” Joel assented. “But your real hants
looks real.”

A wide curve in the driveway disclosed the house,
spread long and columned against massed evergreens,
box and euonymus and yew. It was not a large
house, but so exquisitely proportioned that it had the
nobility of largeness and also the homely charm that
great size so often destroys. ‘The porticoes were low,
the columns supporting them and the in-curved
wings, of the simplest Doric. The windows were set
deep, and venetian blinds closed before them. As
they looked, the moon, clearing the great beech-trees

d. Nothing stirred. No perfume
him. But he turned away,
dust these hundred odd

at the house,’’ he said,THE ELUSIVE LADY
to the right, lit up the c
It was like a chord of
lighting of the white colu
as though each column

19

olumns of the eastern wing,
noble music, this sudden
mns. It seemed to Radford

gave forth a silver note,
singing magically with the moonlight, as the stone

statue of legend Sang with the first rays of the sun.
And he knew those columns ; they had chimed
long ago in the moonlight for him. That he knew ;

with him, he could not remember.
bered, though; he knew their
counting. In the east wing they were eight, and in
the west Wing seven. A gul’s mistake, carried out
faithfully by the builder. And yet, could one eall
anything mistaken when the whole result was so
lovely ? No, the old house had! the: chan of an
irregular face, doubtless the charm that had been
meeeiy Ss. . . . “Her Wish?) 22 teas well
named ; doubtless in some strange way it was like
her, held her wilfulness in its irregular columns and
the strange turns and twists of its inner stairways
and floors built on different levels.

~ Can we go inside? ” he asked Joel.

~ No, sir. The house is kep’ locked. But Mr.

Warrenger has the keys. He'll give you a look in
to-morrow if you want. Hadn’t we better be goin’
how? That mile is right rough walkin’.”?

~ Just a look around to the back—then I’ll go,”
said Radford.

They pushed their way through springy masses of
box along the flagged walk leading to the back, The
house was certainly capricious in form; no less than
two wings sprang from the main building, forming
courtyards with ivied walls.

Radford merely glanced at these as he passed, but

Them he remem-
number without

 
  
  
   
   
 
  
    
     
 
    
   
 
   
   
  
  
 
 
   
   
  
 
 
 
   
   
 
  

oT tse

. Brn as aD ates20 THE ELUSIVE LADY

after looking at the somewhat austere back, with its
big arched doorway and low pediment, he retraced
his steps and entered one of the courtyards.

There was a carved stone basin in the centre, and
a niche in one of the walls held the stone figure of a
The inner wall was blank. In the
Gve windows, two round and small,
Under these last ran
sin of the empty

piping faun.
third there were
set high, three like all the rest.
a stone seat, carved like the ba
Fontan, ‘The ‘sills were low. Kneeling on the
bench one could have leaned easily and talked to
another in the room beyond. A sensation of having
so leaned—and talked—often, swept over Radford.

“It’s cuyous,” remarked Joel in his soft drawl,
watching the young man as he stood with eyes fixed
on the ivy-grown shutters ; “it cert’n’y is cuyous yo"
pitching on that room.”

Radford started, jarred from his dream by the
plain everyday voice.

“Why?” he said.

“ Because that’s the Spinning-room, the room
that’s hanted.”

“The Spinning-room ? |

“Yes, sir. They say Miss Melany Horsemanden
was a prime spinner. She did it for her pleasure, of
co’se. But they do say as how enduring of the war
against England, she carded the wool, and dyed it
and spun and knitted it into a fine suit for her father,
he not being able to get his clothing from England as
were his habit. That was the room she did her
spinning in. Her wheel’s there yet, they say.”

A skein of cloud had drifted across the moon.
The stillness was as intense as polar cold. Suddenly
a strange minor humming rose through the taut

silence—a strange scale of sound, rising and falling,

99

SEERa Beets
Pre ree Lan thy saa abi ca

THE ELUSIVE LADY 21

after a pause repeating itself,
repeating itself,

* The wind’s rising,” said Radford, with a shiver
that he could not control.

Joel drew a step nearer,

~ That ain’t no wind,” said he. His eyes were on
Radford’s, and they were no longer pale, but quite
dark, with pupils spread like a dog’s when he hears a
strange step in the house at night. The low minor
hum, rising then dying away, came again—a pause—
then again.

Joel grasped Radford’s arm with heavy fingers,
His dilated eyes held ‘him, not with fear, but with a
sort of warning, a be-on-your-guard look in them.

“ That ain’t no wind,” he repeated. ‘‘ That's the
hum of a spinning-wheel.”’

Again the sound came, then the pause. Joel’s
face had a rapt look. He Spoke in an even, ex-
pressionless tone. The humming chord began softly.

‘* Now she’s drawing out the thread... .” The
humming rose and fell. ‘ Now she’s twisting it,”
The pause. ‘Now she’s reeling it back on the
pobbiny |, .2?

The droning sound swelled louder now, almost
angrily. The countryman’s face grew fanatically wild,

“ She’s spinning snares for men’s souls. In the
Name of the Lord let us be gone from here.” He
turned, dragging the young man with him, and made
for the iron gates at a pace that was just short of a
frank run.

They were some yards from the house before
Radford succeeded in freeing his arm. He felt an
ignoble if natural desire to punch the countryman’s

Shaggy head, but this head towered to a considerable
height above him, and was, moreover, attached to a

then pausing and again22 THE ELUSIVE LADY

singularly powerful body, whereas Radford’s five-
foot-ten was slight, though well-knit.

He contented himself with demanding in angry
scorn :

““ Why the devil did you act like that? I thought
you said you weren’t afraid of ghosts? ”’

Joel went through the gates of © Her Wish ” and
clanged them behind him before answering.

‘So T ain’t,” he said, wiping his drenched face
first on one sleeve, then on the other. ‘‘ Not of
or’nary ghosses. .. . That one give me a feeling I
never thought to have. It were like what the Bible
says about ‘ her whose feet lead down to Hell.’ I felt
her a-drawing me. I felt like she could draw me in
through them closed shutters like I was water. It
give me a dizzy feelin’ in my soul.”

“ Come along,” said Radford shortly, repelling a
strong desire to go back to “Her Wish” alone ;
‘Mr, Warrenger will be thinking that I’ve shot you,
or youme. That was nothing but the wind in one of
those old chimneys.”’

Joel looked at him with the keenest look he had
yet given him.

‘“‘ Asking you to excuse me,”’ said he, ‘‘ there ain’t
been enough wind this evening to make that noise,
whether in or out of a chimney.”

“Oh, come,” said Radford impatiently, * let’s
suppose it was Miss Melany Horsemanden’s ghost at
her spinning-wheel. I really can’t think of a more
harmless occupation for a ghost.”

* Well,” retorted Joel with a politeness that veiled
sarcasm, “I cert’n’y am glad it didn’t make you feel
like it made me feel. I cert’n’y am, Mr. Radford.”

Radford said nothing. His own soul was rather
dizzy, too, from what he had felt.

TOM Uitte spar toest bart etA a seater aos tad
SEEPS Thastt +

 

CHAPTER III

Ee HEY spoke little for the rest of the way.
As Joel had said, that mile was “ long,”’
and certainly rough. Most of it lay

through uncut woods that intervened between “ Her

Wish” and Hilton, the Warrenger estate. After

crossing a brook—a “branch,” Joel called it—set

thick in willows and tangled in loops of wild grape-
vine, they came out upon quiet rolling pasture-lands.

A star of orange light appeared and disappeared

kehind the trees in a wooded hollow.

As they drew nearer and Radford saw that it was
“shining from the open front-door of Hilton, a vision
of the dark and empty hall of “‘ Her Wish” came to
him. How long since a lamp had burned there, and
who had last lighted it ?

Nothing could have been more different from

“ Her Wish ” than the house now before him. It was

not much larger than a roomy cottage, its shingle

roof and snowy paint gleaming gaily in the moonlight,
and hospitable smoke uncurling against the pale sky.

On either side of the front porch stood big round box-

shrubs, and old locust-trees hemmed in the grounds.

A dog barked furiously, then lolloped towards them,
wagging its tail as Joel called it by name. Mr.
Warrenger came out to the already open door—a
tall, spare old man, with a shock of white hair that
stood out in a haze against the lamplight. His voice
reached them, full and warm, a voice much younger
than himself,at

  
  

24 THE ELUSIVE LADY

“That you, Carver? I was afraid something had
happened. And this is Steve’s friend, I suppose, Mr.
Radford? How d’ye do, sir? Come in. Come in.
Supper’s been ready this half-hour.”

He went before them through the small panelled
hall and flung open a door, disclosing a wood-fire and
a room cheery with faded chintz and old mahogany,
but turned before following them in and called up the
low stairway : a

“Melany!... They’re here! Tell Cynthy : to
begin on the waffles !”

Melany!.. . The name fell sharp on Radford as
‘© called from another world. Melany! .,. . Who
was this Melany? He had never even heard of the
name until to-day. Now twice he had heard it, once
as belonging to the dead, once to the living, His
mind gave a queer swing—giddily. What was the
connection between the two? Or was there any
connection? Was it merely a coincidence? Was
Melany, perhaps, only a favourite woman’s name in
this part of Virginia ?

“My daughter Melany,” said Mr. Warrenger,
rejoining them and closing the door, “is a rather
anxious housekeeper.” He smiled. “It doesn’t
come naturally to her. She has been worrying about
those waffles.”

Waffles and Melany!...It had a_ prosaic,
steadying quality. One Melany lay under the wild
white grass in her deserted rose-garden, the other
Melany was’“ careful and troubled ”’ about waffles !

Mr. Warrenger had gone into the next room, and
now returned, walking gingerly, a brimming glass of
mint-julep in each hand.

‘““My daughter: Melany made these herself,” said
he, and pride was in his tone. “It’s a lost art

SOLUS ttt tier teertti bt orecun Ui Leeteni eectsTHE ELUSIVE LADY 25

nowadays, but I’ve passed it on to her. Let me offer
you,’ he wound up, to Radford, “ a goblet fit for the
gods.”

Radford, who as a rule enjoyed alcohol as little as
he did killing things, drank the aromatic concoction
to the last drop. He did not realise until the drink
was offered him how much he felt the need of it.
Something had shaken him to the deepest point of
being. “It takes one out of one’s self,” is a common
expression inferring a pleasurable experience. He
had been taken out of himself. The dark fascination
of the feeling was with him still, but he did not think
of it as pleasurable—or, did he? He set down the
empty glass, irritated against himself. All his
attempts at self-analysis ended in a question. This
was not the usual way in which his mind worked.
His tendency was, if anything, to be too cocksure
about his convictions and emotions rather than not
sure enough. That feeling of having passed a
boundary of Fate when he entered the gates of “ Her
Wish ” came back upon him.

He roused from his abstraction to find Mr. War-
renger urging Joel to stay to sup with them at Hilton,
and Joel insisting that a friend of his, Wat Bruce, was
“ looking to see him sure, and had a ’possum and
sweet potatoes waitin’ for him that minute.’’

Joel gained his point and went out, saying that
he’d be round again for Mr. Radford by nine o’clock
next morning.

“A fine fellow. ...A fine specimen of our
mountain men,’? Mr. Warrenger said to Radford as
the door closed on Joel. ‘‘ But shy—mighty shy
. . . Shy as that ’possum he’s going to eat. It would
have given him real discomfort to sit down to supper

with us. Yet, in Virginia, men that go out huntingTHE ELUSIVE LADY

together lunch and sup together, no matter what the
difference in class.”’

He caught himself up and changed the subject ;
there was a vagueness in Radford’s politely attentive
look. He thought that his guest was probably too
hungry to be interested in anything but food just then.

“My daughter will be down directly,” he said,
“then we will go in to supper. You are an artist,
Steve tells me.”

‘““Ves—a painter,” assented Radford.

“T too,” said Mr. Warrenger, and smiling his
warm, kindly smile, he waved a hand toward the
walls of the little room. They were covered with
pale, romantic water-colours in the mid-Victorian
style.

“Ah!” said Radford, “‘ those are yours?” He
went closer and looked at the sketches one by one. It
moved him with the pathetic waste of things that this
charming old gentleman should have spent long years
in producing painstakingly what was of no worth.
““ 'They’re most interesting . . .”’ he murmured civilly.

“No; I have not succeeded ... but I have
enjoyed,” the old’man replied with gentle dignity,
“both music and painting. My daughter Melany
drew her artistic gifts from me—but hers were far
greater, as the river is greater than its source.”’ And
he sighed, his face clouding.

‘* Why do you say they ‘ were’? ”’ asked Radford
impulsively.

* Because,” answered Mr. Warrenger, ‘“‘ my
daughter’s greatest gift was a wonderful voice—and
she lost it.”

“* ‘Radford turned pale. A wonderful voice that
she had lost! . . . In his imagination the woman that
he had not seen became worthy of her name. As the

CULMS T erate tne Seti rrt eres eecesresnetr TY EE navet eee SiH rr erasTHE ELUSIVE LADY 27

ghost of that other Melany haunted “ Her Wish,”’ so
the ghost of her wonderful voice must haunt this
Melany. |

The pallor of his look and the unfeigned distress in
it,struck to the old man’s heart. From that moment
he liked Radford dearly. A quick thought leaped in
his romantic fancy: “I should like my Melany to
marry a man like this.”

The door opened without sound and Melany
Warrenger came in. She was very slight, not very
tall, and her small bronze-bright head was set high
on a long throat. What struck Radford first of all
about her was the whiteness of her forehead and the
way that her hair sprang back from a deep point in
the middle. ¥For the rest, her eyes were dark and
veiled under eyebrows that had a tragic arch. Her
lips, delicate yet full, seemed to close too firmly one
upon the other for so young a woman. They were
closed, Radford told himself, as though sealing the
silence of that wonderful voice that had been given to
her and then hushed.

She smiled, however, when her father introduced
Radford to her, and gave him her hand—the loveliest
hand that he had ever seen. But her eyes did not
smile with her lips. Then she spoke, and her speaking
voice was slightly husky, but delicious . . . low and
delicious. And at the same time that he thrilled to
this exquisite quality of her voice, Radford had a
nervous impulse to laugh out at her words, for what
she said was:

* The waffles are ready, father.”

What she might have said that would have been
in keeping ‘with his impression of her he could not
supply. But he wished that the first words uttered
in what was left of “‘ the wonderful voice ” had been28 THE ELUSIVE LADY

words that he could have remembered as béing fitly
set to its low music. And she only spoke once again
during supper. It was when her father, who had
been talking eagerly with Radford about painting and
his life as a painter in France and Italy and England,
turned suddenly to her and said :

“You look pale, daughter. And you are eating
nothing? Do you feel poorly? ”

She had lifted her veiled eyes; and in her veiled
voice answered quietly :

“No, father. Only a little tired. The wind was
from the south-west last night, and I can’t sleep when
the wind is from the south-west.”

Instantly Radford imagined the soft wild wind
blowing straight over the lonely grave in the garden
at “Her Wish” to the bed of this living Melany.
That was the quarter from which the south-west wind
would blow. As he gazed at her, thinking this, the
veiled eyes turned to his and—the veil lifted for an
instant. Her look quickened on his, and in it was
surprise and questioning and a faint trouble. Then
she turned it from him to the moonlit evergreens
outside the window.

A few moments later, when they were again in the
other room, something impelled him to say :

“IT saw that lonely old deserted place ‘ Her
Wish’ by moonlight. No wonder people think it
haunted.”

He spoke to Mr. Warrenger, but what he said was
meant for Melany. Somehow he felt beforehand that
his words would bring to her just that slight tremor,
as of a flame in the sudden opening of a door. She
looked at him again, and now her lips parted, but she
said nothing, only sat quite still looking at him above
those rather pale, but beautifully carven, parted lips.

STELaeSAe LTT Teeter eesesteeete ashe ceerecsat Tf 11 Eereetits feeeennres trees Etre et rentTHE ELUSIVE LADY 29

Mr. Warrenger smiled, an indulgent paternal smile
for the credulous superstition of a childlike world.

VLG as haunted—by beauty,” he said charmingly.
** We love the old place, Melany and I ; indeed, she
has what might be called an adoration for it. It is
in the blood, I suppose; and then, too, names have a
certain magic in them, I believe. You see, not only
was her grandmother a Horsemanden, but we, her
mother and I, named her Melany Horsemanden—
after that beautiful unfortunate creature who lies
buried among her own roses.”

" Why do you call her unfortunate? ” asked
Radford, and though he did not turn his eyes on the
girl, he saw her bosom rise and fall with a quick
breath, then lie still as if she were now withholding
the breath that had troubled it.

~ I call her unfortunate,” said Mr. Warrenger with
quaint and stately deliberation, “ because, though she
was beautiful and gifted, she was also wilful and
selfish and very cruel. She roused a great love in a
great heart and then tortured it—if not to death at
least to silence.”

The living Melany here spoke:

* Yes, she is cruel,’? came from her pale lips with
a sort of still bitterness in its tone of quiet affirmation.

“She is... you say?” Radford heard himself
asking, and the girl made him the strangest answer:
* The cruel never die.”

 
 
  
    
    
    
  
 
 
   
   
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 

Pee ks hie abanCHAPTER IV

R. WARRENGER smiled again at the
young man’s look of impressed arrest-
ment.

“You mustn’t do my Melany -the injustice of
thinking that she believes her poor ancestress to
survive in the lurid guise of an ordinary spectre,”’
said he. ‘‘ What she means, I am sure, is that there
are certain personalities so strong that their influence
is felt, even after death, in the places where they have
lived out their lives. Have I interpreted you rightly,
my daughter ? ”’

The girl returned his questioning look with grave
eyes over which the veil had again fallen. She
hesitated a moment, then said vaguely :

“Tt’s hard to put certain feelings into words,
father—but I daresay you’re right.”

“TI believe I am,’’ assented the old man. ‘“ Just
such feelings have come over me in old castles and
palaces abroad. . . . Places famous for revenge and
murder. . . . Cruelty does survive its perpetrators
like a dark presence.”

* Would it be indiscreet
then broke off.

‘ Indiscreet to ask for the story of the Melany of
* Her Wish’? ” Mr. Warrenger finished for him, with
a pleasant, quizzical look. ‘‘ Not in the least, my
dear sir. But it is a romance lacking in all outward
adventure—a mere record of the wanton waywardness
of a darkly wilful spirit.”

 

” began Radford,

Shee Nutl ttl Matt st HepetsHeesrett eter arhe mire et tr iT Tt Peresyets tfewcen pany erty Petey Br eecepentg set re] Cele ene amtnere UeSRTOE CPSCOS ect pr et ccutc reve net reat uny EepeempeE RS TEC eo nscrerretcyer eaeTHE ELUSIVE LADY 31

The night had grown chill, and as they sat close
around the hearth the reflection of the flames shone

in the unshuttered window-panes against the pale,

moonlit lawn and fields without. It was as if the fiery
spirit of the dead woman were symbolised by that
bright leap of flame at the quiet window. A sudden
soberness seemed to fall upon Mr. Warrenger, as he
leaned in his big Half-way-house chair, his eyes on the
spectral flame against the moonlight,
~ Tragedy is always a more tragic thing when it is
brought upon oneself by one’s own act,” he said, as
if thinking aloud. “From all I can gather the
Melany Horsemanden of my story was a most beauti-
ful and gifted being, one on whom nature and circum-
stance had showered every good thing of life.” He
turned his eyes on Radford. “There is an old
painting of her still at ‘ Her Wish ’—not of any great
value in itself, but interesting—most interesting.
You have seen portraits that struck you as being vivid
likenesses, though not well painted, have you not? ”
~ Yes, I know what you mean,” Radford assented.
~ She must have been’ very beautiful—strangely
beautiful,’ mused the old man. “She must have
blazed among the other beauties of her time like a
cardinal-bird among its less brilliant kind. In this
portrait her hair is red as sumach—she would never
wear powder—and her eyes sloe-black. It seems as
if her very colouring had been wilful like her
nature. ...” He sat erect suddenly, and seemed
to shake off his musing mood.
~ Well,” he said in a crisper tone, “ you shall hear
her story. She was the only child of old Airlie
Horsemanden, a famous soldier and statesman and
gallant in his day. Yes... she; came by her
waywardness directly, and not from the distaff side.THE ELUSIVE LADY

Hier mother, it seems, was a sweet, docile creature,
who died at her birth, and it is said that when she was
three years old Airlie Elorsemanden was no longer his
own master. The snip of a witch ruled him with a
rod of iron wreathed in roses ; she was always mad
about roses, it seems—damask roses in particular.
She lies now among their roots in her own garden.
Strange that she should choose for her burial-place the
spot that she had made for her pleasure. . . But she
was a strange being.... He checked his gentle
moralisings and resumed.

‘Yes, When she was three years old her reign had
begun. It began with her own father and ended .. .
but I am anticipating. When she was five she gave
herself the name that is now carved on her gravestone.
It seems that her father had loved her mother so well
that he neglected the child for some years after his
wife’s death, even to the point of omitting to choose
a Christian name for her, and to have her given the
rite of Christian baptism. When finally he decided
to call her ‘ Charlotte,’ after his own mother, the mite
announced to him... But perhaps you might hke
to hear his own account of this curious incident ? ”’
Mr. Warrenger broke off to inquire of Radford.
‘¢ There is a letter there in my desk from him to his
brother Henry relating the matter with a sort of
gleeful pride in it—God knows why! It is quaintly
told, however, and might amuse you.”

“T should like tremendously to hear it,” said
Radford, and as Mr. Warrenger returned to his chair
with the yellowed paper the young man gazing at it
was conscious of a queer thrill. It was as if im that

squarely-folded sheet of time-stained paper with its
wafer of black wax he was looking on the visible link
that connected the vivid image of the dead woman,

 

PW tia eicteabactas ti eiadsy ai hidtdiss r . 2
WMP ICTR a Tibi Si ahishikga alee Aaa Haltiolihipaket
SETA RB Na eeTHE ELUSIVE LADY

already created in his mind
Wiulful sprite that she had been, might she not have
sat on her father’s knee as he wrote of her, and
touched with small imperious fingers that very paper !
He had a sudden lustrous vision of 4 little form,
vibrant and already regal with the force of its im-
passioned will, grasping in both hands that ancient
letter, and with sloe-black eyes fixed on the writer’s
face, and rose-red mane tossed back, demanding to
hear what had been written there.

Mr. Warrenger was now reading those very words
aloud :

, with the living present.

“I must now acquaint you, brother,” so the lettér
ran, “‘ with the name you may use in your prayers
when you recommend your only niece to the grace
of the Almighty. You will recall how often in your
brotherly anxiety for my behaviour, and the welfare
of the child, you have urged upon me the duty of
bestowing a name upon her in accordance with the
customs and obligations of a Christian community.
Behold, then, the duty achieved, and my little maid
the proud possessor of a Christian name. Albeit, I
am not so sure, now that I reflect a little, but that you
may consider it, if not Pagan, at least something less
than Christian. I must therefore tell you, without
more ado, that it is none of my choosing. In a word,
brother, my imp hath named herself, and with a
decision and firmness worthy of a Columbus naming
his new continent! It befel] in this wise: taking
the child upon my knee one morning, I informed her
of a decision that I had come to overnight. SaidI:
My poppet, you are to be named at last, with all
due pomp and ceremony, and the name that I have

chosen for you is the name of your dear grandmother
ca4 THE ELUSIVE LADY

—your dad’s mother—Charlotte.’ Brother, will you
believe me when I tel] you that this tender shoot, this
seedling from the tree of my maturity, regarded me
with knitted brows and a look of stern dissent ?
Quoth' she: ‘I are not Tharlotte—I are—Melany.’
Judge of my surprise, who had never before heard
this fantastical name! When I was recovered from
my first amaze, I made bold to ask Her Bigh Mighti-
ness where she had heard the name by which she now
called herself? Wer reply, I think you will admit,
contained more than ordinary of that mysterious
quality which I have come to recognise, in my brief
career of father, as informing the broken speech of
babes. It was as follows :

***¥ do not know where I heard it, but I hear it
when I think of mr.” Whereupon she repeated, with
such a royal heightening of her small person as you
may picture to yourself: ‘I are Melany—I are not
Tharlotte. I are Melany Horsemanden.’

“The Powers above alone know where or how the
midget came into possession of this most unusual
female name. Upon pondering the question I am
come to the conclusion that her old English nurse,
Joan Grubb, dead these two years, poor soul, must
have told it in some nursery song or fable. ’Tis
evidently of Grecian origin, and should signify
* Dark’ or ‘ Melancholy.’ A more ill-suited name to
my bright-glowing elf *twould be hard to think upon.
Be that as it may, she hath chosen it, and she shall
wear it. So, as I have said earlier, do you, dear
brother, petition God to send down His choicest gifts
and benison upon one Melany Horsemanden, whose
sweet body hath dwelt five years in this His in-
explicable world, but whose soul, I verily believe,

SIL UULURU CI hit steer es srecesen mn tT Eoeege teeerensferiret hteTHE ELUSIVE LADY 35

intending no blasphemy, was with Him and Wisdom
when its foundations were laid.”’

There was a “‘ postscriptum ” to this letter, which
Mr. Warrenger also read aloud, as giving another

vivid picture of the heroine of his story in her queer
babyhood.

“ Knowing your partiality for our y
will jot here her latest Whimsy. For
her naming she hath demanded of me a ‘ frock like a
rose.’ With her ‘r’s’ she hath no difficulty, tho’
‘ch’ and ‘s’ are still beyond her power. She hath,
moreover, announced her Sovereign distaste for
mittens, and required me to furnish her with a pair
of white gloves, laced with silver, against the same
momentous occasion. I have therefore ordered them
by her measure, from London. But ] misdoubt me
they will be bungling fits for her fairy hands—
Titania’s glove-maker alone could undertake the
matter successfully. ‘Truly, brother, the exquisite
completeness of those little hands, when she doth lay
them upon me, do often spring the lock of my tears,
You are-smiling, brother, but behind that smile there
are also tears, for you remember the lovely hands
now hid away from me forever, of which these tiny

perfections are the counterparts.”

Mr. Warrenger stopped reading, and there was a
silence. In that silence Radford seemed to see again
before him a little figure, very straight and stately now
in a “‘ frock like a rose.” And it gazed at him with
still, black eyes, as if saying: ‘* Yes, I am beautiful,
but I shall be more beautiful ‘still. And my hands

will spring the lock of tears in other breasts than my
father’s.”’

oung lady, I
the ceremony of36 THE ELUSIVE LADY

“‘'There is on the back of the second sheet,” Mr.
Warrenger continued, “a tracery that I cannot but
think was the first ‘measure’ of one of the little
hands that were to wear the ‘ white gloves laced with
silver.’ It really does seem as if it might have
belonged to a fairy.” And he smiled, looking down
at the unfolded letter.

Radford rose and went over to him. In outline on
the yellowed paper he saw, as it were, the phantom of
a tiny hand. The father must have traced it by the
child’s hand spread out upon the paper. And that
hand, which had afterwards grown to be a woman’s
hand and was now only a pinch of dust, if even so
actual a thing as that, lay there in outline, perfect as
its own shadow, and had laid there for over a hundred
years.

‘It’s strange,’’ murmured Radford, “‘ how a little
thing like that can make the dead seem alive again.
That baby’s hand was there—that paper was warm
with it . . . it ‘sprang the lock of tears ’ in a man’s
breasts 90%

‘* Ah, if it had done so only in one man’s breast ! ”
Mr. Warrenger took it up. And again the small
shape in the “ gown like a rose ” shone out against the
background of a century and gazed at Radford with
eyes calm and fateful, the eyes of one born to a dark
but sovereign destiny.

All this time the girl in her low chair by the fireside
had not moved or spoken. Radford glanced at her,
and saw that she was leaning back, her beautiful
hands—evidently an inheritance in her family—one
over the other, her eyes on the flames. In the im-
mobility of her whole figure, in the still arch of her
wide brows and close-folded lips, there was a curious
majesty. Young as she was—and he guessed heree mete eee cee ots) hak

  

THE ELUSIVE LADY 37

not to be more than twenty-two or three—she seemed
to him at that moment the embodiment of quiet
tragedy. He remembered some great words: ‘“
shall go softly all my days, in the bitterness of my
heart.” Melany Warrenger must have communed
with herself in some such words. They expressed so
perfectly her attitude, her quiet silence, her still
indifference, as he interpreted it, to all but her one
great loss—the hushing of her “ wonderful VOICE:
And, at the same time that he took in this impression,
he became also conscious that there was about her
something rare, something worth one’s while to bring
out ; he felt a sudden strong desire to hear her laugh
and make the tragic arch of her brows unbend with
gaiety. As he thought this she stirred, and her eyes
lifted, turning to him. He spoke on an impulse :

~ Does it make you sad to hear this tragic story
over again? ”

She smiled her brief, rather chill but sweet smile.

*‘ No,”’ she said gently, “‘ it doesn’t make me ”’—
she hesitated the fraction of a second, then, with a
faint emphasis that suggested other things that it did
make her—“ sad . . .”’ she ended.CHAPTER V

a N fact, the story that Mr. Warrenger related,
4 when they had again drawn.close about the

& hearth, was rather calculated to rouse indigna-
tion and a somewhat unwilling admiration-——as for a
tremendous vital force darkly misguided.

““Melany Horsemanden the First,” as Mr.
Warrenger called her, with a fond little glance at his
daughter, which Radford noticed she seemed rather
strangely to avoid, had not only been the beauty and
“toast? of her day, but the heroine of several
tragedies other than her own. With the fatal affinity
that supreme feminine beauty seems to have with
blood, no less than three men were said to have
killed themselves on her account. Others failing in
their desire to win her, ruined themselves in various
ways ... some with drink, some gambling away
fortunes and estates.

“I don’t doubt,” Mr. Warrenger charitably
interrupted himself at this point in his narrative,
" that all this has been much exaggerated, but I’m
afraid there is little doubt that young Gavin Lindsay
did find his death in a duel fought because of an
affront that she confided to him. However, beauty
to the extraordinary degree in which she possessed it
has a way of making the sanest men occasionally act
like lunatics—-so that those are not the incidents in
her life that I most blame her for. No,’’ and he
thrust out a stern underlip, frowning at the fire, her

SU reisrpsvate ita it Setter Tee pet Teesrete ever ee cesta arr Ty | rcTen ner Tesee RSTRNT Pistetine ery tic cath cal sin een eerren4 x ~ mt
yee Bass sc fyt es eset Gn (Bh

  

THE ELUSIVE LADY 39

worst offence—the thing that stamps her as cruel and
ruthless—is the way that she treated the splendid
man who loved her as no other had loved her, and,
strange to say, whom she loved.”

He then went on to tell the name and circum-
stances of this “ splendid man.” He was from the
North, of English descent like herself, one Geoffrey
Branton, the surname having become extinct with
him. He was young at the time of his first meeting
with Melany Horsemanden, about seven and twenty,
and she was then just turned twenty-three, and in
the height of her beauty and its power. But already
Branton was recognised as a statesman of great
promise and brilliant parts, and a character of noble
generosities. To condense a little from Mr. War-
renger, who evidently loved to dilate on the gloomy
Tomance: after they were ‘ betrothed,” as they
became shortly, there arose a difference between the
lovers, and for this reason.

ft seemed that the beauty was extravagantly
proud of her position and lineage. She had heen
presented at Court in England, and on good authority
(Mr. Warrenger produced His Grace’s letter to
Colonel Horsemanden, in which he requested his
daughter’s hand), she might have married the Duke
of Treviston, then in the height also of his glory. This
nobleman, moreover, declared baldly in his epistle
that he did not, after due consideration, consider it
unworthy of his high estate and name to seek what he
termed “ an alliance ’’ with even the colonial branch
of the house of Horsemanden.

~ What an old bounder!’? Radford could not
refrain from here interpolating, and Mr. Warrenger,
pleased with the neat fitting in of his flotsam French,
murmured indulgently ;40 THE ELUSIVE LADY

“ Autres temps, autres meurs.”

If the name of Horsemanden seemed to His Grace
of Treviston not too direly beneath him, to Melany
Forsemanden it was of stupendous worth and
importance. An old great-aunt had prattled once of
a Plantagenet as having figured in the dark backward
of time among the first progenitors of the family, and
thereafter Mistress Melany had had golden sprigs of
broom embroidered on her gloves and kerchief. Yes,
such was the amazing fact. In the portrait at ‘‘ Her
Wish ”’ there was a gilded sprig, much tarnished by
time, ornamenting one of the gloved hands. Her
pride of race, confirmed by such an azure-blooded
personage as His Grace of Treviston, must have
swelled beyond all bounds. The Duke’s letter to her
father had been found in a small ivory box among her
belongings. Indeed, it was only her extravagant and
headlong love for Geoffrey Branton that had kept her
from making that dazzling match.

~ And yet,” said Mr. Warrenger, fixing his
romantic old eyes impressively on Radford’s, “ ex-
travagant and headlong as it was, it did not prevent
her from demanding from him—within a month of
their marriage—two sacrifices, so preposterous, so
appalling, that it is hard to think of their having been
imagined by a woman in love, no matter how super-
human her self-love and pride.”

He was rewarded by Radford’s almost incredulous
stare when these two demands were disclosed. The
first was, that Branton should give up his own
surname and adopt legally the name of Horsemanden.
The second seemed a natural consequence of the first
—it was that he should sell his estates and houses in
the North, and live permanently at “Her Wish,”
which was entailed upon her and her descendants.Pte teal ett easel

  

THE ELUSIVE LADY Al

Unless he would agree to these demands she would
refuse to become his wife.

 He—refused ? ’? asked Radford.

’ He refused,”? answered Mr. Warrenger. Then
he added with a sort of youthful impetuousness quite
delightful: ‘‘ He was a man, and a fine man, not a
slave! What else could he have done? ”

“ Nothing . . . of course,” Radford agreed.

~ Oh, I assure you,” Mr. Warrenger continued, “‘ it
was not settled in a day, no, nor in many days. They
wrestled over it; those two strong wills wrestled like
athletes over it for weeks and months. There is a
story in the family that the last scene took place in
her rose-garden, and that in his exasperated pain he
fiung her from him so violently that she stumbled and
fell on the very spot where she is now buried. It is
said she cried out to him: ‘ You have flung me upon
the ground that you scorn and I adore. Here in this
earth I will be buried and the body that you love shall
mingle with the soil that you despise—for I will die
before I marry you.’ ”’

The old man declaimed this speech with such
dramatic abandon that afterwards he looked a little
abashed, and explained :

“ That is the way my grandmother used to repeat
that shocking speech. It was almost as if she had
heard it fiom the lips of that beautiful, savage
being.”

* You mustn’t let father get too excited over this
story,’’ came the voice of the living Melany from her
corner by the fire. ‘“ He loves to tell it,” she went on,
with a pretty maternal smile at the old man, “ but if
he lets himself go too entirely he doesn’t sleep’ well
afterwards.” a
Mr. Warrenger smoothed down the soft mane that42 THE ELUSIVE LADY

he had ruffled up in his eagerness, and murmured in
some confusion :

“I don’t know how it is... but Strange) os.
somehow, that vivid personality gets hold of one. . . .
It’s almost as if . . . yes, as if she had left vibrations
in the air . . . the air round about . ... here.” He
lifted his hand towards the window in the direction
where “ Her Wish” lay still and forsaken in the
moonlight. .

“ Father .. .”? remonstrated the eink and.) fan-
tastic as was the idea, it seemed to Radford that he
could tell by the tone of her voice that she had turned
pale.

“ Now, now, my dear,’’ smiled her father, “‘ you
must not be too strict with my phantasies; the
diversions of old age are few, and this is surely a
harmless one.’’

* Not if it disturbs your rest, dear,”’ she answered,
and now her voice that had risen in warning before
recovered its low tranquillity.

How,” Radford asked him, “did it end? ”

“In their parting for life—or, I might say, for
death. He was killed in the early days of the
Revolution against England. She died when she was
thirty-four, ‘ still beauteous as a maid of seventeen,’
Colonel Horsemanden wrote in his diary.”

"And he never married ? ” Radford said after a
pause, almost as if he knew that Geoffrey Branton had
not taken another woman to wife.

““No; he never married,’ said Mr. Warrenger.

" And she?” Radford asked. “ How did she
live? What was her life like—afterwards? I mean
after they parted? Did she never relent? Was
she quite). | 7?

“ Quite ruthless? ._ . yes,” the other finished in

: feperere ae ee CEE RATEE CG ates hisshiiien ogi ape he OR Mee
STU TALLMULLUStRSt UTC este fessest ETE estecetree PrTE TT TT eeree nen ececeer en Teves a fTTet ML BCom rey tr ry *THE ELUSIVE LADY 48

the way he had when anticipating a question or a
ae ‘ How ruthless I can let you judge for your-
Sele?

He took a few steps towards the old desk from
which he had produced the letter of Colonel Horse-
manden to the Duke of Treviston.

“ Father . . .” remonstrated the low voice again.

“I shall not read it to Mr. Radford, my dear,’ the
old gentleman said, docile to her affectionate concern
forhim. “I am only going to let him see that
extraordinary fragment for himself,”

This fragment, which he then handed to Radford,
was indeed so extraordinary that the young man felt
that the imperious dead might very justly resent his
having read it. Nevertheless he read it a second
time before returning it. It was written in a singular
square handwriting in which there was both delibera-
tion. and impetuosity, as if the writer had dug her
pen into the parchment-like paper with the slow
vehemence of her determination over certain phrases,
and had let it skim breathlessly in her hurry to record
others. It had erasures and interlinings as of a first
draft, and had certainly been crumpled in a
moment of petulance, then smoothed out under a
more cautious impulse. It was as if the implacable
woman had decided after all to keep some record of
her last message to her unhappy lover. It had been
found, Mr. Warrenger explained, among the odds and
ends of letters, in one of the many shallow drawers in
Mistress Melany’s bedroom escritoire. She had died
suddenly of a heart trouble that’no one suspected, else

this recklessly impassioned shred from her fierce spirit
would certainly have been destroyed by her before
her death.

“To be placed with such papers as shall be

6ir arirt

 

THE ELUSIVE LADY

burned,”’ was written across the back. It was the
fifth page of what had been evidently a long missive,
and the first sentence was only the end of one that
had besun on the page before... “soul and
body,” it concluded. Then came the rest :

“ Whereas you write that I know not love, and
have never loved you—you know well that you write
a lie, Geoffrey Branton. I love.you as myself, but
myself I love also with a jealous and strong love, which
you have not the greatness to comprehend. And as
I love myself, so do I love this red soil from which I
sprang, and so would I have you love it—to tread
upon it hand in hand with me in life, and in death—
to mingle with it by my side. What! You call
yourself a lover and yet do put your name and your
estate above the wish of her you love? Your name
is not to you what my name is to me, for my name
came to me in mystery, and what the souls of others
are to them, it is to me. And to me this red earth of
my home is dearer, and ever will be dearer, than
aught else that ever was created; so that should I find
myself upon the golden pavements of Heaven, I
would dash my head against them and blaspheme,
until God cast me back again upon its breast. Yet is
my love for you as great, so that I am in torment.
But your love for me is cool and melteth quickly, like
a snowflake in your proud wrath. I tell you again, as
I have oft told you, Geoffrey Branton, that you might
as well strive to tear a spirit from its body and fit it
with another body, as strive to tear me from the
sheath of my name, whereto I was born, and from the
soil which bore me. And you might repeat to me an
hundred thousand times that your name and lands
are as dear to you as mine to me, yet will I neverTHE ELUSIVE LADY

believe you, for it is not love for them, but hateful
pride that keeps you from yielding to my wish. Oh,
thou ingrate and stiff-necked man! Thou sweet yet
poisonous liar—to say I do not love thee! Hearken
to me, Geoffrey—tread these words till they eat into
thy dear and detested eyeballs like fire: so well do
I love thee, that I would have thee cold in death, ere
know thee burning with another love: so fiercely do
I love thee, that should an hundred years pass away
—yea, a thousand—and my ghost be wandering
through the empty air, and thy ghost housed in
another body, yet would I draw thee to me: yet
would I suck up thy sweet, thy hateful life into my
own. Beware then, Geoffrey Branton, how thou
lovest or livest without me! And now for this life,
farewell.”

The feeling with which Radford handed back this
amazing letter was distinctly one of awe. That a
spirit so long passed away could strike such ringing
chords in the breast of the living overflowed him with
the sense of the fevered gruesomeness that might
pervade some of the regions lying beyond the light of
everyday. The poetry of poets long dead had this
power, yes. But it was the power of art; this silent
outburst that had so stirred him was only the echo of
a private passion—a strange wild passion that had
died long ago with the woman who experienced it.
There was no art of literature in that letter, only the
explosive, unruled force of a lawless personality
dashing itself in a paroxysm of futile rage against the
barrier itself had raised ; wounding itself and what it
loved with an unswerving ferocity of purpose.

However, at the same time that he vibrated to its
infuence jhe had a clear perception of that very letter46 THE ELUSIVE LADY

as being the probable source of the legends about the
ghost-garden and the haunting of ‘Her Wish.”
And as this thought came to him Melany Warrenger
rose from her chaiz in the shadow of the chimney and
drew near them. Radford was not sorry when she
said that she had come to take her father off to bed.
He felt there was no word the old gentleman could
have added to the story of Melany Horsemanden that
would not have marred the effect of her astounding,
her almost ineredible letter.

SoS Ria She Ga paaen HAATIRSnis Sold BIL isnlons MRRMOET tae

  
   
  
   
 
 
 
 
    
    
    
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

CHAPTER VI

y HEN Joel Carver came by the next morning
to take Radford back to iivergreen,
Steven Campbell’s place, the old gentle-
man would not hear of it. Since Steve had to be in
Washington for at least ten days, what more natural,
more delightful, Mr. Warrenger put it, in his charm-
ingly cordial way, than that Steve’s friend should
spend that time at Hilton? He added that if the
young man could realise the pleasure he would give
two lonely people by doing so he would surely not
refuse. This decided Radford, who was really
longing to stay, and Joel went off alone, charged with
directions for the young man’s servant, who was to
send over such of his belongings as he would need
during his visit. |
The day was soft, pale and fragrant as one of the
late autumn roses blooming by the front door. From
the south Jawn, where the three strolled bareheaded
after breakfast, could be seen the crown of trees that
marked the crest of “Her Wish.” Radford said
again how beautiful he thought it, and how much he
would like to see it by daylight.
~ Nothing easier,” said Mr. Warrenger. “I have
an engagement with my attorney at ten, but Melany
can take you over. I will give her the keys so that
She can show you the house as well, and I will join
you as soon as I am at leisure.”’
It seemed to Radford as if the girl were about to

protest. Her lips parted, but she closed them again48 THE ELUSIVE LADY ~
without speaking, and went silently to get the keys
and fetch a hat for their walk across the fields. The
day was indeed like summer in its warmth, though the
autumn foliage, blurred and tempered by a dim blue
haze, lent it a subtle poetry, a vague magic that
summer lacks. And this wistful charm of a loveliness
flowering on the edge of winter was repeated in the
girl walking at his side. She was far more lovely by
daylight than she had seemed by lamplhight. Her
skin, pale and pure, had the most winning surprise of
sudden colour.

‘ Tell me,” said Radford impulsively, “ you don’t
mind taking me to * Her Wish,’ do you? ”’

‘“ No,” she answered. ‘‘ Why should I mind? I
lOve tbe:

| But T thought perhaps ..°. astranger . . -
Radford suggested.

* You see,”? Melany replied, looking at him with
one of her quiet, detached smiles, “‘ you are not quite
a stranger. Steve has talked of you ... often...
when you were still abroad.”

And suddenly Radford remembered that Steve
had also talked of her, only her name had slipped his
memory. ‘This, then, was the girl who two years
before had set all Paris agog with her marvellous
voice. “The daughter of a%neighbour of mine in
Virginia,’ Steve had said. But then, he had not
mentioned afterwards that she had lost her voice.
Suddenly he found the only possible explanation.
Steve loved her, and could not bring himself to speak
of the tragedy that had overtaken her. And he
understood now. the reason of her father’s casual
allusion to it. In his simplicity the old man had
spoken of it as of some public calamity. He said,
without any apparent pause before his words:

29

 

     

netic)

MCA TR MsoRhiBn eros ANAS S Taalikeae7 Perematete Laas tT taen tr oi tes based
Sescairioctt ss Hi
i

  

THE ELUSIVE LADY AQ

~ And he has talked to me of you.”

The sudden gush and ebb of colour in her face was
Startling. Then she said tonelessly :

“Yes. He believed in my future.”

Radford felt in an inner whirl between his anxiety
not to be intrusive and his desire to Say some word of
fellow-feeling to a creature hurt in her dearest fibres
as this girl had been hurt.

She exclaimed before he could Speak, with swift
divination :

~ Don’t, please . . . but I thank you as much as
if you’d said it.”

Her head lifted itself a little more lightly on the
long throat, and she walked a little faster. There
was in this lifting of her head and quickened pace a
singular nobility. He repelled the rush of pity that

assailed him as something she would have splendidly
resented.

They had by now reached the vine-looped stream

at the foot of the pasture-lands, and in helping her
across he had a feeling as if he were also helping her
across the flow of her bitter memories on to a surer
footing.

“I forgot to ask your father this morning some-
thing that I wondered over a good deal last night,’’ he
said, as they went on through the woods beyond. “It
was about ‘Her Wish’ . . . how it happened to go
out of the family.”

~ It went by entail to Henry Horsemanden—her
uncle, you’ll remember—and my great-great-grand-
father. Then to his son, and so on, till thirty years
ago, when the last heir sold it to a rich man from
Brooklyn.” |
"St “ A rich man from Brooklyn!” Radford echoed
cher. “ What would your proud Melany have thought
D

 
  
 
   
  
     
  
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  

SR ae

  

FEE tetra e eee entire50 THE ELUSIVE LADY

of that? And why aren’t the Brooklyn person’s
children living there? ”

* He sold it again,’ she answered. ‘“‘ It has been
sold several times since then.”

** And now ? ” asked Radford.

* Now it is for saleagain . . . has been for twelve
years.” ;

pis.at ibecause. ..7 7 ‘he, hesitasea. 2 ihey
think . . . they really imagine . . -”

‘““ All of them have said so,’? she admitted evas-
ively, ‘‘ None of the people who bought it lived a
whole year in it.”’

Radford looked at her intently for a second or
two, then he brought it out bluntly :

“ What do you think ? ”

“I?” Her colour welled, then ebbed.

~ Yes, you,” the young man insisted.

* About what ? ”

* About ‘ Her Wish.’ ”

) Dowou mean 4 ie

1) Wes, he said again,

She was silent for at least a minute, then she
turned her face full on him, and it was very pale.

‘ Before I answer,” she said, “I want to ask you
something. . . . Do you believe in . . . such
things . . . I mean at all—even a little or—do you

laugh at them? ”

“No,” replied Radford, “I certainly do not
laugh at them. As for believing . . .” Again® he
put it bluntly. “In ghosts, do you mean?” ~~

The girl was gazing at him with a breathless look,
as if something vital to her depended on‘his ultimate
full answer.

p iesences|.)) influences 4)... something .. .”’
She stopped, her brows knitting while her eyes

 

Siu Etter Strat Tera STE pee ore trpretbaTHE ELUSIVE LADY 51

remained fixed on his, seeking the exact expression
for her meaning, “ Something that is alive . .
though one can’t see it,” she brought out finally. °

He didn’t keep her waiting.

“Yes. And more than that,” he said. .“* When
I was a little chap I sawa... well, yes, it was a
ghost.”” He smiled. “The ghost of a dog—a little
white, woolly dog, like a toy.”

~ The ghost of a dog ! ”

She still gazed at him, but her delicate, tragic
eyebrows flickered as though one to whom she had
inferred a rare confidence had permitted himself to
mock at her. Radford understood in a flash,

“No. You mustn’t think I’m joking,” he assured
her. “It is quite true. I was rather a forlorn little
chap, left to the care of an old great-aunt, hard as
nails. She didn’t approve of playmates for children,
human or otherwise. My wild, my delirious dream of
joy was to have a little dog all my own—something
warm that I could hug and take to bed with me in the
horrid dark. . . . Well—just as I told you—one day,
when I was trying to play rather forlornly with my
small lone self—it was in a far corner of the old
garden, as far as I could get from my aunt—I looked
up, and there was the dog of my dreams! I could |
never get quite close to it, but it came several] |
times . . . while that garden was my playground,

and circled about me. . . . I was only five years old.
It never occurred to me till long afterwards that it
had any connection with a little gravestone in that
same garden on which was carved, ‘In memory of
Flash, dearest and faithfullest of dogs and friends,’
Years afterwards I came across a photograph of my
mother with this same little dog in her arms Why
my mother couldn’t come to me, and her little dog52 THE ELUSIVE LADY

could, is... well, one of the eternal ironical
mysteries.”

He drew out this quaint anecdote for the sheer
pleasure of watching the play of varying emotions
that it caused on the sensitive face before him.

‘‘Oh,”’ she breathed when he had ended, ‘‘I do
think that is the most pathetic thing I ever heard !
But beautiful. ...” She turned away her eyes a
moment, then looking back at him, said: “If you
saw that—perhaps...” She turned away again,
and began walking forward.

*’ Perhaps what ? ’? uryed Radford.

“Nothing; just a half-formed thought,” she
said, keeping her profile towards him.

* If I guess it, will you tell me? ” he persisted.

" It was nothing,’’ repeated Melany.

* Was it that perhaps, as I had once seen some-
thing—well, not strictly speaking real—I might see
ab eer Wish ts. Something Olmthe, (Same
sort? ”

Her face turned now with a look of real pain on it,
apprehension, almost fear.

“Oh, don’t speak of it—please,”’ she said.

“But why? We’ve just been speaking of such
things.”

“I know, but . . . can’t explain. . . . It’s only
a feeling I have about—about ...No, I can’t
explain,’’ she wound up on a more decided note.

~ You think your ancestress might resent my
intrusion? Especially as I am from the North, as
Geoffrey Branton was? ” he smiled, trying to rally
her.

Melany murmured something in her lowest, most
husky voice. He could just make it out by bending
nearer.

   

Sa

 

Beerrestiaatit Lareettert Hey trerefersen pater eetecenemeary Ty (frre reper tEn :** She does resent intrusion ie

Radford stood erect sharply, and stopped short in
his turn.

~ You don’t mean that she resents you?” he cried
with a sort of queer indignation.

Melany laughed, and there was a Suggestion of
nervous tears behind her laughter.

“ Why not me, please? ” she asked with a visible
effort to carry it off lightly. ‘ Haven’t I intruded on
her proudest right? ... Haven’t I dared to take
the thing she counted more precious even than
love?” Her voice was becoming deep and earnest
in spite of her attempt to keep it bantering.
“ Haven’t I,” she ended, fixing him with her dark
eyes, “‘taken her name? ”

Impressed by her manner, but not showing it,
Radford answered in matter-of-fact tones :

~ No, you haven’t taken it, it was given to yOlied

~ It was given to me, yes, but I’ve taken it all the
same. I accept it. I wear it. I am called by it.
I, too, am Melany MHorsemanden....” She
shivered. ‘“‘ And she would not forgive that offence.
I am sure of it... .” She had cast aside now all
pretence of lightness, and fixed him again with her
sombre, haunted-looking eyes... . (Haunted! He
had the word for them at last.)

"know it...” she added in a whisper that
underscored the assertion.

THE ELUSIVE LADY 53ests tatt sect

CHAPTER Vil

ADFORD was intensely aware of the delicate
uniqueness of the situation. Something

mB “% about him had drawn this unusual girl into
a partial, almost unwilling confidence that he felt sure
was rare with her, and his whole thought was bent on
how to meet her with the exact measure of compre-
hension ; how to take her with just seriousness enough
to make her feel that her instinct had not been
mistaken, and yet not so seriously as to let her think
she had revealed too much of what evidently, as a
rule, she kept so jealously to herself. He said at last
quite simply :

““I understand, I think. From what I have
gathered of her character, I feel as you do.”

* AsI do?’ She seemed to hold in her breath on
the words.

~ That she would not have forgiven,”’ he explained.

He felt rather than heard the tense breath released
little by little ; then she said, looking not at him now,
but before her at the fine network of the woods :

“It must take a sort of genius to be relentless.”

“ Yes. There was that sort of genius in the
fifteenth century.”

"Oh... Her voice had a dissenting note.
7 the thing I mean isn’t of ay particular century.
It’s a question of personality.”

. Exactly ; ; there were many such personalities in
the cinq ue-cento.”’
“ Many? How terrible!”

 

METH teae re seeteerten Fit suse DUT teebeyr ea FReBCOD) Fat BATY TPs MLR E RS EESEy 209 Cer TEL CPN Pht Seer eM eg ATSC TERT E. CMCIET: te Set uniy ett. cee atay aetr eaeen Ep eRaEeSSener mrtr Laas ct SOSER cpt) tad

  

THE ELUSIVE LADY 55

* Terrible, but wonderful,”’ Radford ventured to
qualify.

~ Terrible, but wonderful...” she repeated
Slowly, as if fitting the words to some image in her
mind. “Terrible, but wonderful . . .” she said
again.

Her tone put before him, as if painted against the
hazy background, a vivid picture of the fierce, bright
Melany of ‘“‘ Her Wish,” a picture whose black eyes,
steadily malevolent, were focussed upon the living
Melany’s pale, brooding face.

~ It must interfere with your pleasure in the old
place to feel that personality so keenly,” he said,
wishing to let her see that he had not taken too much
for granted.

~ “ Interfere’? ”? she echoed; then on a dropped
tone: “ Yes, it doesrather . . . interfere. I mean,”’
she interpreted herself quickly, ‘‘ that one feels an
influence, as if . . . well, as if one weren’t wanted.”

© Don’t you think a lot of it may be just wha
has been handed down about her? The tradition
and that letter? ”’

~“ Of course that’s part of it,” she admitted.

* But you feel there’s . . . more? ”

He was afraid he had ventured a shade too far,
for she didn’t answer at once. Then, to his surprise,
she said quietly :

*’ Much more.”

A revelation came to Radford, at that, of the
imperative need urging her to share these impressions.
He felt as if he had arrived only in the nick of time to
keep the tension of her secret mind from snapping
with silence. And the sure intuition, that had told

her his hidden mind would comprehend, drew him closer
to her. He measured his words carefully this time.THE ELUSIVE LADY

“You feel it’s not only an infiuence, but her
influence ? ” he asked.

“I want to see what you will feel in that house,”
she countered.

Radford thought that the best way now was to
come forward with a confession of his own.

They had turned into the long avenue of fir-trees
that led to “Her Wish” gates. He could just see
the chimneys of the house and a bit of the dark
hedges, which even in the sunlight struck him afresh
as a fateful boundary. His heart quickened, as it
had done the evening before, with the feeling of
mysterious recognition.

He told her of it, keeping back his fancy about the
scent of damask roses near the grave, and that
strange humming chord, which he still believed to
have been the effect of some draught in one of the
chimneys.

* Yes,”’ she said, ‘“‘I know. What is it, I wonder ?
Have we lived before and remember, do you think ?
Or do we—slip out—in our sleep, and make strange
journeyings? ”

~ Both, perhaps,”’ said Radford.

She just raised her eyes to his, then looked again
at the gates they were approaching.

Was it a—pleasant feeling?” she then asked.

~ Not pleasant exactly—more excited—ewalté. It
made me curious to know if anything was to come—
afterwards. Whether it...” He was puzzled to
express Just what his feeling had been. ‘‘ Whether

it meant anything, you know,” he ended rather
baldly. ‘It seemed like a queer sort of riddle.
I felt there was a meaning, but that it was—well, ‘ up
to me’ to find it.”

They had reached the gates now, and the girl stoodTHE ELUSIVE LADY 57

gazing through the iron flower-work and tendrils at
the dreamy house.

~ Perhaps,” she said, “ you'll find it . . . there.”
Her voice shook suddenly. ‘ Oh, I pray you will!”
she cried, and her hands went to her breast, and in
her eyes that sought his with supplication there were
tears.

Radford spoke with a tenderness as frank as her
appeal.

* Why do you pray that? ” he asked.

** Because,’’ she answered, her eyes never leaving
his, ‘‘ because I believe you were sent here—to
help me.”

pele, 1 cans you may be sure I shall,” said the
young man.

“Oh, you can! You will—I feel it,” she said
even more fervently.

“ Against .. . that influence? ”’

~ Against her influence!” cried the girl, at last
wholly unveiling her inner self to him with mystic
passion.

Radford was as amazed and thrilled as if some
supernally shy, fugitive being, a wood-nymph, say,
fleeing from panic danger, had appeared before him
in appeal. This, then, was the meaning of that look
in her veiled eyes. Her wound was crueller than mere
loss could make it, had been dealt in her belief by a
weapon not only sharp, but poisoned. It was strange
how certain he felt in that instant of revelation that
she believed the loss of her voice to be the dreadful
result of the influence she had defined for-him in her
cry of surrender.

* I won’t fail you,” he said; “‘I’ll never fail your
beautiful belief in me.”

Now her words rushed eagerly, stammeringly.THE ELUSIVE LADY

“IT knew it. I knew you—almost at once. I
didn’t talk last evening because I was feeling you... .
trying to make out whether it was only my fancy . . .
or ’’—her smile was quite lovely—‘‘ whether you were
what I thought you. . . . I couldn’t tell you this.
. . . | couldn’t have told you anything . . . but for
what you told me . . . just now in the woods. That
little dog . . . Oh! ’’—she broke off, and her breast
struggled against nervous laughter—‘“‘ think what
that quaint little ghost did!—it showed you to
me as you are . . . it broke the seal . . . the awful
seal I’ve had to set . . .” She could not finish, but
laid her hand on her lips, telling him without words
where that seal, broken now for him, had been so
tragically set. At the same time she held out her
other hand to him. It was an extraordinarily
beautiful gesture, full of the implicit trust that a
child sometimes signifies in giving its hand.

Radford took it gently, and bent over it, moved
to the quick of a nature as sensitive as her own.

I will not fail you,” he repeated, as he touched
his lips to it. He felt as if with that kiss he were
signing his fealty to a gentle exiled princess.
“ Exiled !”’ Again he had found just the right word.
That was what so exactly she seemed to him, a
creature exiled from the joy that was surely her right,
if beauty and sweetness did give rights in this queer
world, as he had always rather ardently believed.

They remained silent for a few moments, she
trying to control some of the curious ecstasy that had
mounted in her with the breaking forth of that sealed
inner fountain; he searching for words that would
not seem too abrupt or commonplace to link them to
the next phase of their very real yet exquisitely
fragile relationship.

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 

We EHRs Sid Boe N Raita STA thnk gaccmi one Lie penowacindugteidaTHE ELUSIVE LADY 59

He expressed finally what just then he wished
most.

“Shall we sit there, under that fir, and talk
together a while before we go in?” he suggested,
pointing to an aged fir-tree with foliage that lay in
silverish-green clouds upon its gnarled branches
above a carpet of fragrant brown.

* Yes,” she said, ‘“‘I should like that so much.”
And her sigh was one of content, as if he had given
her by his suggestion what she, too, just then most
wanted.

She took off her hat when they were settled upon
the brown fir-needles, and, leaning back her head
against the tree, closed her eyes as if it soothed her
to feel its sunny, aromatic breath playing over her
loosened hair. Her face, with its closed eyes, had a
sweet exhausted. look that went to Radford’s heart,
plucked at its finest strings. The pure fragrance,
aromatic yet chaste, was like the fragrance of her
personality. And there was something, too, in the
trustfulness of those closed eyes that touched him, as
the confidence of birds touched him. Ever since he
could remember, birds had seemed to him the most
magical, the most endearing of living things, and
their trust in man the most moving of miracles.

She opened her eyes, and, meeting his, smiled
gently.

“I am tired,” she said. ‘“ We have come a long
way—far longer than from Hilton to ‘ Her Wish.’ ”’
‘* Yes, a long way, but a very beautiful way.”

‘“* And I burned all the bridges, did I not? With
a vengeance ! ”’

She gave this a rueful quaintness, and her colour
flickered.

‘‘ It was a glorious conflagration,”’ smiled Radford,THE ELUSIVE LADY

giad that she could give things this natural, half-
jesting turn. He knew what it must have cost her to
break that seal of silence. “‘ Some bridges are only
built to be burnt.”

Well . . .” and she sighed, ‘‘ mine are certainly
in ashes,” \

" There’s a better way back,” he ventured, “ and
you won’t need bridges.”’

~ Back? ” she echoed quickly.

* Back to the serene, bright place where you
velong—that I am to help you reach again.”

Her face took on its tragic pallor.

~ Serene, yes, perhaps . . . but not bright . .
never bright any more.”

He knew so well how she was hearing the echo of
her hushed voice.

“ Ah, but there is brightness and brightness,’’ he
said, holding her with his young, kind eyes. “We
are not to walk by one star only .. .”

“Yes, yes, we are!’ She caught it from him
with passionate vehemence. “The star of our
greatest gift. ... That lights us. ... That draws
us on. . . . When that goes out . . . we Srope ...
we stumble. ... All the other stars in heaven—
in our heaven—are only pale freckles against the
darkness ...the dreadful darkness, .. . Their
rays don’t reach our path... don’t light our.
Wayne ty

He couldn’t answer this ery of desolation with a
phrase. He sat in silence, looking down at the play
of shadows, fine as the brush-strokes in a J apanese
drawing, that made a pattern over her white gown
and the slender hand she had clenched in its folds.
Fer face was turned away from him.

She broke this silence herself, Speaking in the soft,

PUL MutT Hirer te Test t Sener Ty EeeTHE ELUSIVE LADY 61

husky tone that always followed her outbursts of
emotion.

* Would you care,” she asked, “to hear how it
began? ”

~ Ah, but you know I would,”

She accepted this with a simplicity that he was
beginning to recognise as one of her chief rarenesses,

“ It began,” she said without waiting for further
protest on his part, ‘when I was a child... . J]
think ”—her fine brows puzzled over it for a second—
‘that I was about twelve.”

Radford’s heart jumped. This “it,” then, was
not only the tragedy of her voice. She was going to
tell him about that other thing also.

“ Yes,’ she went on, ‘“‘I am sure I couldn’t have
been more than twelve. I was there —she looked
towards the iron gates—‘“‘ inthe house. That portrait
—the one father spoke of last night—always had an
intense fascination for me. I stood looking up at it
that day until the eyes seemed to move on mine, and
all at once—something chill and dreadful rushed
through me—I don’t know how to describe it to you.
It was as if the invisible part of me... soul...
spirit . . . what you will—the essence of me, was
being shaken—rocked to and fro . . . loosened from
my body. Iran, and ran, andran. .. . It was then
that the thought first came to me... .” She
stopped, catching in her breath.

~ The thought . . .” Radford prompted.

~ The thought that she hated me for wearing her
name. That she would . . . punish me for it. Take,
in her turn, something of mine. . . .”Deventer irc.

  

CHAPTER VIII

ADFORD seemed to see the flying figure of
a child, the wind in its hair, fear in its
mB “& darkened eyes, skimming down the ter-

Peed lawns towards them. And atthe same time he

saw also the whole thing—the childhood haunted by

a nervous dread that with years had grown into an

obsession—l’tdée fiwe that found in the loss of her

voice the fulfilment of a dark prescience.

“Did you tell anyone of this feeling ? ”’ he asked
gently.

‘‘ No—no one. I’ve never spoken of it till to-day.
There was no one who would have understood.”

"And it never left you? =). . 1 mean) you were
always conscious of it . . . of a dread? ”

“Always. I used to wonder...’ He saw the
hands that she had clasped together tremble. “If I
couldn’t do something . . . to propitiate her.”

The smile she turned on him was like the piteous
effort of a child to be brave in darkness that terrifies it.

‘IT used to put fresh flowers before her portrait
and on her grave... .”’ Shelooked down a moment.
Pade at still?

And Radford, glancing again at her clasped hands,
remembered his feeling that the fresh flowers upon
that grave in the ghost-garden must have been laid
there by a woman’s delicate hands.

‘“‘Tt’s the feeling, I suppose,” she added with a
sad bitterness, “‘that made the Greeks call the
Erinnyes the Kumenides, and still makes the Ivish.
call the fairies they fear so much the * good people.’ ”’

 

Sees eesti te Pup ssrenern TULL Teree atesTHE ELUSIVE LADY 63

Radford did not dare show h

is pity, but he could
not keep back his admiration.

~ I never imagined such beautiful courage!” he
exclaimed.

“ Courage? Whose courage ? ”’ she asked.

“ Why, yours! Yours! ... To keep such a

thing to yourself . .
and never speak of it
She flushed again.

“I didn’t speak of it because I was afraid to
speak,” she said slowly. ‘‘ You are the only one J
ever knew who wouldn’t have thought me mad.
Father—Steven—no. I could never have told them
such a thing. It’s because you know 14 3 (tor
yourseli—because you’ve felt such things—that I
can speak to you.”

Radford replied, his voice shaking a little:

~ Tell me how I can help you.”

“ Ah,” she sighed, her eyes turning to him in

- wistful confidence, “I can’t tell you how, I can only
feel that you will.”

He hesitated an instant before asking :

. to live with it all these years

~ You think I shall have some power to . . . come
between you? ...To—as one might say—ward
new of?”

‘,Lo propitiate her,” the girl corrected softly.

“You feel one wouldn’t be strong enough to—
well, to dominate her? ”

Melany gave a sort of moan.

“Oh, you don’t dream how terribly strong
she is!”

“ You really feel it to that extent? ” he mar-
velled. “ As if she were a dark power?”
The girl whispered it :
“She is all Will . . . arelentless, implacable Will.”

 
 
  
    
  
   
   
   
  
 
 
 
   
  
   
   
 
  
 
  
 

Ta aT Tae

  

SY erent:64 THE ELUSIVE LADY

“ But,’”’ began Radford, and he did not finish his
sentence until she said urgently :

“Go on, goon... . You may say anything you
like—anything.”’

‘“‘ Then—hasn’t she’’—the young man’s voice was
very low, modulated to the tragic allusion he was
about to make—‘‘ hasn’t she already satisfied this
Will. 00am regard to you!

She accepted it as the kind cruelty of a surgeon’s
knife, without wincing, but her face went white.

‘“¢ You mean—when she took away my voice? ”

Then, as he nodded, with the most extraordinary
mingling of scorn and dread, she replied :

““No! She is the daughter of the Horse Leech;
she cries without ceasing, ‘Give! Give!’ ”

‘“You think,’ murmured Radford, appalled by
the depth of her obsession, “‘ that she means to take
more from you? ”’

‘* All—if she can,”’ said Melany. “If you can’t
help me, all—everything.”

Radford knew now, with a leap of his intelligence
that had in it no disloyalty to her, that he was either
in the presence of a piteous dementia or one of those
psychic mysteries that neither science nor religion
has yet succeeded in explaining. Perhaps, he told
himself, trying to bring all his rationality to bear on
the amazing question, there might even be a mingling
of both in the dark fabric—an over-sensitive nature
too easily reacting to such an influence, exaggerating
the unseen power that very possibly existed, but that
had no such evil limitlessness as her dread imagined.

He turned to her, feeling that while they were at
this abnormal pitch one screw more to the key
governing the taut string would not matter, and that.
if, as she so touchingly repeated, he was to help her,

9

ate Mt Chee ET HT AP HT ee ‘ , . s :
Pe LLULLACSUM USE Tbe sbert ther ELoe ter co mc Rec Coven Te ORGS ESTOS RTE ts bt aL ecemmnteEy ay Weaenlswy e r ‘
zi ey te ca hee be CORTE SET CLS Oy eT Tote oats CL ak Lo Se aaa eee me TR eR OMRONET EL oF oc oes oh Pat rereTHE ELUSIVE LADY 65

he must know the full extent to which she had suffered
this strange assault.

‘‘ Have you ever,” he asked, ‘‘ seen anything ? ”

But she shook her head.

~ Thank God—no,” she said fervently.

An instant later she added with a slight confusion,
as if confessing against her will, but in the effort to be
utterly frank with him:

~ I thought I heard something once, though. . . .
I felt that she was laughing at me, and then suddenly
I seemed to hear a queer, soft laugh—running up a
little scale and stopping short; it was more in my
mind that I heard it than in the air. . . . It was the
way one remembers a bit of music... .” She
looked at him anxiously, trying to make out whether
he understood. “JI know, though,” she ended,
~ whether it was with my mind or—or really that I
heard it—I know that she was there, and laughing.”

All at once she caught his arm in both her slight
hands, and with the most heartbreaking desperation
cried to him:

~ If you think me mad J shall think so, too! And
then I shall be mad ! ”

Radford took her hands in his and held them
firmly. They were wet, and cold as ice.

‘ Listen,”’ he said, his eyes on hers; “if we are to
be good comrades in this business we must trust each
other absolutely ; we must be absolutely frank with
each other. How can you trust me if you think me
capable of such wrong ideas about you? And
remember this, please—no madman ever yet thought
that he was mad. If you were mad,” and here he
ventured to smile at her, ‘‘ you would be the last
person to think so! ”

Her eyes closed again for a few seconds, and
E66 THE ELUSIVE LADY

then, gently drawing her hands from his, she
whispered :

‘You are very good to me, and—very patient. I
think you know what I heclsy,

“Ves, I think I do,” he said. ‘“‘ And your
beautiful generosity makes you feel rouch more than
there’s any cause for.”

“No,” she returned, and now she too smiled,
though it was rather a wan little effort ; ‘‘ if we are to
be good comrades, ° absolutely frank with each
other,’ you must admit that I couldn’t feel too
grateful. Why,” and she showed him now the
loveliest illumined look, ‘‘ you found me wandering
alone in a black wilderness—and you held out your
hand to me! Since I have taken it,” she ended, her
voice quivering, “ the darkness isn’t so dark.” And
rising quickly, she turned towards the iron gates.
“Come,” she said in another tone; “I long to know
what you will feel when you are in that house, when
you see that portrait.” |

SOU e siti aantert Te ereTe eT Ee TET ert reeree rrr tl | er eeares ener ee Tren Reet
= JRA RB TERS a BY Ae 4 ACHAPTER IX

HEY passed through the gates and went
silently up the faded lawn on their strange
adventure. The lovely old house, its

walls and columns now quickened with blowing
Shadows, gave forth no impression of hostility,
looked rather gently benign in the sunlight. And
there was a grace about it, an elusive charm quite
feminine, as if in some subtle way it had become
permeated by the charm of the woman whose visible
thought it was.

On the steps of the low tesselated portico Melany
turned and handed him the great key.

~ I want you to unlock the door,” she explained in
answer to his look of surprise. “I fee] as if—it’s
queer, but I do feel as if she would not mind so much
your doing it.”

Radford, his eyes on the huge silver key with its
handle roughened by the crest of the Horsemandens,
had an odd sensation as if in holding it he were
holding literally the key to some portentous mystery.
Between him and the mystery were the massive double
doors of ‘‘ Her Wish,”’ under their arch of patterned
glass. As he had felt last night, in crossing the line
sentinelled by its dark hedges, that he was crossing
some boundary of Fate, so it now seemed to him that
by turning this key in the lock guarding the mysteri-
ous house he would of his own will become an intruder
on what it hid. It was as if a voice within him said :
~ You will be entering upon this mystery of your own68 THE ELUSIVE LADY

volition, by your own act. Think well. This de-
cision matters—is momentous.”’

The next moment, with a reaction of mood into
something almost exultant, and a faster heartbeat,
he stepped forward and thrust home the key into its
lock, It turned with the easy click and spring of old
hand-wrought English workmanship, and opening
one side of the great door, he stooped first, then
reaching upwards, drew the bolts that held the other,
as if from long habit; he knew just where to feel for
them. ‘Then he waited for the girl to enter, but she
drew back.

“JT have a feeling,” she explained, “that you
must enter first.”’

“Well then .. .” he said, smiling to lighten the
solemnity of what she showed so plainly to be for her
a most solemn, even dread occasion, and as he spoke
he stepped across the threshold.

Without in the sunlight the girl stood quite still
looking at him. Then for a second she seemed to
vanish—a thin, yet dense curtain seemed to have
fallen between them. It was the queerest optical or
mental illusion, but for that instant he seemed to be
quite alone in the beautiful panelled hall—quite alone
im an intense silence that was like sound. The next
instant there she was beside him, and the sunlight in
following her lit up her white dress and crown of
spun-bronze, so that she looked a more. vivid creature
against the dimness than she had looked in the
diffused glare outside.

“¢ Well? ” she whispered.

“‘ Tt’s adorable,”’ said the young man, peering about
him, “all that 1 can see of it—perfectly adorable.”

Her voice dropped a little, as if for the first time
he had failed to meet her quite comprehendingly.

REN TU Teter tterietr tcsrergt citi t tebe eeecnes Fen tener rey a i
RESCH eres MeeteR teeny Pip eee ce aey Citar Yenc, Per eeemeTRT RTT eres Sener re Stemi ey aTHE ELUSIVE LADY 69

“I meant—that feeling) (of 8). oe. (0? 7 Che
didn’t finish her sentence.

Ol familiarity, 7, recognition ? ’? he completed
it. “‘ Yes—that’s there, but not so strongly as last
night. In a way it comes back to me, but vaguely ;
the way that poetry sometimes comes, you know,
with a line missing here and there—rhymes that one
can’t fill out. . . . Perhaps,” he ended, looking up at
the tall, arched windows, ‘‘ if we could open some of
those blinds . _ .”

Under her direction he opened one of the windows
and pushed back the venetian blinds. The light
stole in, tempered by the frail yellow foliage of silver
poplars just outside, and its mellow discretion revealed
with exactly the right measure of wistfulness the
proportions of the charming arched hall and the
delicate intricacies of its carved cornice.

~ Yes,” he said, gazing at the closed doors on every

side, “it comes back’. | . in snatches’) . | like an
Ola CURE. 177
The hall, after its first fine regularity, became
whimsical, narrowing here, widening there. Three
staircases led from it, the main one springing with a
noble curve to the front of the upper floor, the two
others, set far back, leading, as Melany explained, to
rear wings. Above short flights of steps one saw dark
corridors winding off to rooms built on another level.
The planks of the oak floor, converging in fine per-
spective lines to the last of the three arches, in which
was set a big double door corresponding to that at the
front, had evidently been hewn the entire length of
the trees. Yellowish stains on the bare walls showed
where portraits had once hung. 3
He wondered at the lack of dust and the polish of
the planks under their feet, and Melany told him that70 THE ELUSIVE LADY

the people who now owned “ Her Wish *’__Higgson
was the jarring name—“ kept it up” to a certain
extent, under her father’s superintendence, always
hoping by some lucky fluke to sell it again.

She showed him through the rooms to right and
left, rooms that impressed him with a renewed sense
of exquisite proportion ; then led the way to one of
the corridors at the back. Here she stopped before
ascending the three shallow steps that led up to it.

“We're going now to her special wing,” she said
under her breath. ‘‘ The portrait is in the room
they call her breakfast-room; her Spinning-room
adjoins it.”

She looked up at him so pale in the dim light that
he had a sense of seeing her face through the green
dimness of water.

‘Would you rather not—after all? ” he asked,
considerate of what must be her shrinking, even while
his own heart burned with a romantic curiosity and
the desire for a closer contact with the personality
who had created this enchanting abode.

But she had recaptured her firmness.

“No,” she said, ‘I want to go with you. Only
keep close to me in your thought. Don’t let ’—it
was with an effort that she uttered this—‘ don’t let
your thoughts be drawn too far away. That—I can’t
tell why—but that would make me—afraid to be
there with you.” 7

He held out his hand, smiling.

‘* Come, let’s go hand in hand, if you’re nervous.”’

But she did not reflect his mood.

(No, she said seriously, ~ no. © feel) (that
wouldn’t be best.”

‘“Why.?,” he asked, not at all seeing what she
could mean.

eos Lt Ei ST ERT teria ir UL cer benies freee eT eeTTHE ELUSIVE LADY 71

She did not falter this time.

~ I feel—since I have been here ”—she couldn’t
keep back a slight shiver—‘< that she prefers you to
see her portrait alone.”

Radford frankly stared.

~ You mean you won’t come with me?”

~ Yes, Pll come with you, but I won’t look at it
with you. I'll stand by the window while you
look at it. ”

~ What an odd idea ! ” he couldn’t help exclaiming.

“ Oh,” retorted the girl with one of her sudden
outbreaks, ‘“‘don’t stand there talking! Hurry !
Let’s get it over.”

Tke corridor, long and dimly lighted by two
round green-shuttered windows set high, led along
the south-east side of the little court where Radford
had stood that first evening. “His feelings as he
followed the slight figure of the modern Melany were
strangely blent of an eagerness to come within
sensible perception of that other Melany, and of a
desire that can only be termed chivalrous to “ ward
her off ’’ from her terror-ridden kinswoman.

He was as keen over the possible sensations that
he might experience in locking at her portrait, in
being at last precisely in the middle of her most
concentrated influence, as a young scientist noting in
himself the progress of some rare disease. It was
curious, he reflected, how, up to this present time, he
had shrunk, had even very decidedly recoiled, from
any development in himself of possibly latent powers
in this direction. Now, just as he had longed to
return alone and listen for a repetition of the cerie
humming that Joel had pronounced the hum of a
spinning-wheel, he caught himself wishing that he
were going to visit these haunted chambers un-

iis AY rete ee ty Cee a72 THE ELUSIVE LADY

accompanied—even by the girl he wished so much
to help.

She paused before a door at the end of the cor-
ridor, and standing aside, said :

‘ You open it.”

And this time, without any hesitation, with, on the
contrary, a perceptible increase of his secret eager-
ness, he turned the tarnished silver handle and
stepped into the room beyond.

The infiltration of greenish light through the
closed blinds showed him a vista of open doorways
and bare, shining floors as in a French palace. The
girl, without waiting for him to speak, went swiftly
and threw open the shutters of the long window. As
she stood there, with her back to him, he could see
over her shoulder the stone faun in his niche among
the ivy.

‘‘ Tt’s there before you,”’ she said without turning,
‘‘ above the mantelpiece.” |

There before him!: ‘He withdrew his eyes
slowly from the little sunlit stone figure, and with
God knows what sensations of being at some crisis
of hidden things, lifted them to the wall opposite.

 

CPU ue LULU MUS Chteitsss tenteL Opt sree MTL ICL ee cetmen eemcen) ey te pt ete ML BpeReREAEy Set rer cet EL Line Nent, eee eR RRICRCTTrer er MP TTts ceenie: Orta Teens cea 5 pe recaea tastePe eae ite bah
stateless eters fae
;

CHAPTER X

T’ was indeed “there before him ”’—simply the

most extraordinary semblance of a woman he
had ever seen.

That first prolonged stare of his held no criticism ; »

he was merely taking in the incredible crimson of the
air heaped so overwhelmingly above thé low fore-
head, and the intense malicious sweetness given to
the sidelong eyes by the almost Chinese lift of their
eyelids toward the temples. Then presently, recover-
ing a more dispassionate sense, he saw that the face
was rather short, a trifle angular, with a queer,
charming mouth which he felt sure the painter had
tried to beautify by making too small for the chin
that nicked so deeply into its rounded underlip.
“Where the bee sucks there suck {,”’ this mouth
might have described itself. It looked, though, as if
it had sucked sweetness from many another thing than
flowers,. things rarer and more subtle—strange
thoughts, fantastic day-dreams, wayward surmises
concerning the dark romance of death. There was a
sort of perverse occult greed in the dart outward of
the upper lip, a look of honeyed rapacity that recalled
to him the girl’s speech about the daughter of the
Horse Leech. “Give! Give!’ this mouth said
without speaking.

He drew nearer, eager to find out how the thing
had been done, how the painter had worked out his
astonishing effect. Immediately he saw why Mr.
Warrenger had called the portrait “bad.” It was

    
    
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
     
  
 
 

bgTA THE ELUSIVE LADY

not of its time, had none of the smoothnesses and.
glazings of that school. It had not been produced by
a series of preparations, but transferred direct with a
full, nervous brush to the canvas under the guidance
of a vision that had evidently adored what it beheld.
The colour was crude, the drawing at times execrable,
as in the hands, which looked like slender gloves
blown out as women sometimes breathe into their
gloves to make them keep their shape; but the
triumph was there—the undescribed, indescribable
something that makes a likeness “live,” which gives
one the feeling that in the dead paint there has been
absorbed an impalpable essence from the personality
of the sitter—that, in fact, some film of the soul has
been caught and held by the mysterious image.

As he gazed, Radford thought it probable that the
man who had painted this portrait had never done
another of equal merit or, indeed, anything approach-
ing it. This was so convincingly, to him, at least, the
result of an impassioned enthusiasm, a fevered
“‘ possession,” as it were. In his effort to immortalise
what he worshipped the painter had been lifted above
his ordinary power, had been given, for that one time,
a power outside himself, an evanescent magic of
perception and execution that might very well have
left him gaping over his own achievement.

Radford looked in vain for a signature. There was
not even an initial to tell who the dead painter might
have been. It was as if he had made this offering of
herself to his divinity, content after its accomplish-
ment to sink into oblivion. ‘‘ Poor devil!” thought
the young man. “Poor devils, I should say,” he
corrected himself whimsically, “‘ for there must have
been almost as many of you as the legend has it.”
He took in finally the audacious fact that this

TST TiasertaTLTaAErETT Cpr TSP ILETTET ate cesrien grr Tf fs rer eg es EeReanT eS Tort fy PET EE Ste a bss tires 4 re
Ree res neenettney geri Cana, Veen Ser emeM nen rte re weer TrasTHE ELUSIVE LADY 75

Sumach-haired beauty was dressed in pink—a
"\gown like a rose ”—and that in the full tide of her
_-red tresses a damask rose was half-submerged, held

there by a long pearl-headed pin thrust through its
heart.

‘So you were cruel even to your roses,”’ he smiled
inwardly, finding a quaint completion of the whole
perverse charm of the thing in the stabbing of a rose
with a jeweiled pin.

With their look of malicious sweetness the uptilted
eyes smiled back at him, inscrutable, gently mocking,
heavy a little as with the opiate of secret dreams.

He looked away from them, about the room.
Most of the furniture had been removed, but a small
spinet, rather prettily painted, stood against one wall.
She had been musical, too, then, this Melany ; and
again he gazed at the portrait, trying to imagine the
quality of the voice that had issued from that odd,
alluring mouth. And he stood very still now,
waiting to see whether some sense of her invisible
presence would waft to him—whether, through the
perfect quietude, an influence would come stealing, as
though behind the veil of her pictured face she herself
in some strange, inexplicable way were watching,
observing in her turn.

A soft movement in the room made him start
violently, jump to face it; then he saw that the girl
at the window had partly turned. There was in her
attitude a constrained anguish of expectancy. It
called to him more poignantly than any words could
have done. He went over and stood beside her.

* Well? ” she just managed to murmur, and from
the pulsation in her low tone he knew how hard her
heart was beating.

~ Well,” he echoed, his own voice sounding a little

lan

 
  
   
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 

eer as76 THE ELUSIVE LADY

queer to him, ‘‘ it’s a most wonderful portrait, but’’—
his hands made an expressive, rather foreign gesture,
signifying an utter lack of anything worth while to
offer—— but that’s all,”? he ended. |

She searched his face anxiously, almost in-
credulously.

mvVoubavenct felbin 6

“Except a tremendous sense of the charm and
what must ibe the fidelity of the portrait...
nothing,” he answered.

Her anxious look passed over his shoulder, then
came back to him.

‘Nothing at all... really nothing?” she per-
sisted, veiling her voice to its huskiest tone as if she
were afraid of being overheard by the presence he
had not felt.

** Nothing of what you mean,”’ he admitted with
a ruefulness that came half from his own disappoint-
ment, half from having to disappoint her so much.
“ Of course, I felt her personality—-who wouldn’t,
looking at that marvellous likeness of her? But I
had no sense of her being there—of her watching me,
you know.”

The girl gave a little downcast sigh, and again her
look went over his shoulder to the room beyond.

' I can’t understand it. . . . I was so sure . . .”
she breathed disconsolately. And as she stood there,
gazing past him with that troubled questing ex-
pression, he saw her eyes dilate.

“ Tell me,” he blurted, ‘‘ do you feel her—now ? ”

But she only gave him a forlorn headshake in
reply.

~ Then ”—he felt that he was blurting it again—
~ why do you look so anxious—almost frightened ? ”
Her look was all reproach now,

Lista iL Hert itRestt Teer ssree anti Lire keds Peeecenr est epr hy feet ret eaeRERes mre ot tates enn eee eee TREE eer. tyr re ceemee tt tree Te TERRI Tacs ry nt ratters toniTHE ELUSIVE LADY 77

“ Can’t you think why ? ”

~ No,” he answered honestly. ‘In fact, I’m so
stupid that I’m wondering why it doesn’t come as a
relief to you.”

“A relief! . 2. When you may be wondering,
too, at my morbid imagination ! ” :

She flung this out with passion, her head thrown
back ; then, as he exclaimed, reproachful in his turn,
hid her face in her hands.

~ It wouldn’t be your fault. . . . How could you
believe in me . . . with nothing to prove it? ” came
in stifled sentences from behind this piteous shield.

Radford found himself arguing about the character
and habits of ghosts as if he were one of their most
privileged intimates.

~ But, my dear girl, don’t you see,” he protested,
“ that there is nothing final in this ?—even granting
that I were such a gross-grained donkey as to doubt
you. There’s so much that must be exactly—to the
finest hair—right, for them to make themselves felt
get through, you know. It’s as if there were invisible
decors between them and us, decors with complicated
locks—combination locks, yes, that’s the very word.
And they must get the secret of the combination,
possess it perfectly, before they can open the doors.
Now you and I, you see, have probably made a new
combination for the lock on her door. . . . She’s
doubtless there, just on the other side, as it were,
listening at the keyhole, but she can’t come through
—not this time. Besides ’’—he risked a smile as her
hands dropped from her face and her eyes turned
again to his—“ don’t you think that possibly I may
have ‘ exorcised ’ her? . . . that she’s felt you have
a knight to break lances for you now—that you aren’t
any longer a poor little Una alone with the lion ? ”

 
  
 
 
  
  
   
      
  
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
  
   

si]THE ELUSIVE LADY

She drew a deep breath as if this interpretation
really brought her relief.

‘And if that were so,” she said, ‘you would
believe in me, all the same? ”

““ My dear girl!” he flung out again, again smiling.
‘“‘ Haven’t I seen for myself? iiaven’t I had my
own queer little experiences ? ”’

Something rustled softly in the next room—a
gentle shimmer of sound like the stir of silken skirts.
Both started, and the girl seized his arm, clinging
to it.

‘“¢ She’s there! She’s there! ”’ she reiterated in a
whisper that had the effect on him of a piercing cry.

He put his hand down hard over hers, and they
stood rigidly waiting, their eyes on the open doorway
of the Spinning-room. Then, all at once, she felt
him relax. He even laughed, a little shakenly, it
must be confessed, and pointed to some dry leaves
that had blown in through the open window and
were drifting lightly along the floor, indicating the
source of the silken rustle that had petrified them.

But she only repeated firmly :

* shes there...) 1) know: sheis<theney.) ) 27
feel her now.”

‘““'Then let’s go to her, since she won’t come to
us,’ Radford suggested, holding fast to the tone he
had taken when he laughed.

She still kept a hand upon his arm, and he could
feel through his sleeve how cold it was. So they
walked, as if about to enter some ceremonious
dining-hall, towards the door of the Spinning-room.

Dea MLM L ast Tire Seer ear esos ty Tt) Leer tsyea EeecOns esi tePe ft EN EO ERE ESE Sere OTT veh er seoRORTR CECE SOT er Soe ites caecunte tere nace neemCHAPTER XI

HEY stood still just beyond the threshold—

“ with bated breath,” is the only way to

describe it. Radford said at last, keeping

up the half-playful tone that wasn’t at all the ex-
pression of his real feeling :

“Well? ...Is our hostess here? Or has she
retreated afresh ? ”’

“ Don’t joke about her .. . please don’t,” the
girl pleaded.

They stood silent and still again. Presently she
took away her hand from his arm. He looked his
question this time. ,

~ Yes,” she whispered. “She’s.. . gone.”

~ Then Tl let in the good, commonplace sun-
light,”” he whispered back.

It gushed happily in, revealing the most cheerful,
homelike room imaginable, smaller than the one they
had left, and panelled in dim green from floor to
ceiling. Corner cupboards cut off every angle, and
in sunk rounds, above each panel, were paintings of
Macaws, still bright as bits of Oriental jewellery.

The mantelpiece was of dark orange marble set
with white medallions on which danced little negroes
of black. marble in low-relief. Above hung an
enormous “sampler ’’ done in crimsons, blues, and

yellows with queer, formal animals, vases blooming
with impossible flowers, and, at the bottom, after a
row of brilliant foliaged lettering, the name in gold
thread—Melany Horsemanden.

  
    
   
   
   
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 

Diab atoe eee

ae Per vebe treerty rere yt taea80 THE ELUSIVE LADY

The fireplace was deep and wide, and its throat
still dark from the smoke of fires long gone out. On
one side of it stood a large wooden spinning-wheel, a
wool wheel,” Melany explained. He had never
chanced to see one before, and thought it charming
with its prettily turned spokes and ‘‘ staunchion,” and
alert-looking ‘‘ head,’’ on which the long iron spindle
was held in place by leather “ ears.” Its rearing body
and spread legs, together with this pert head, reminded
him altogether of an insect—the ‘‘ praying mantis,”’ or,
as it is called even more expressively in Virginia, the
‘¢ devil’s riding-horse.” °

He took it in bit by bit curiously. This, then, was
the famous spinning-wheel, the ° hanted wheel,’ as
Joel had called it. He put out his hand suddenly and
set it whirling. Beautifully balanced, it turned so
fast that the spokes became a greyish blur. Then,
astonished, he appealed to Melany.

‘‘Why, it makes no sound whatever!’ he ex-
claimed. “I thought a spinning-wheel made a
humming noise when one turned Cy)

“ Not unless the band is on,” she answered.

‘¢ And what is that, ‘ the band’? ”’

““A piece of cord. It’s there, wrapped around
the ‘ head.’ ”’

Radford glanced where she pointed, and saw what
he had thought only a white string used to mend some
break in the ancient wheel.

‘“ But it?s new; she can’t have used that!’ he
said, bending closer.

“ Ves, it’s new,” the girl admitted reluctantly.
‘<7 put it there.”

“ Vou did?’ He was struck by another thought.
“Can you spin? ”’

She nodded.

ey POT ee tt Meer T PTET
CUTE UL MUG at rHe rps Ties bLiettoserecumriT it I cereeeea feeke ey ian
omer ate Pit Fistetet tes Tie 214 Leu bes apart eee eee TT StELe ees igagedes .THE ELUSIVE LADY

“ And you’ve gs
charming ! ”

She began to ex
twisting her fingers
down at them.

I thought she might like it—to have someone
of her blood—spin with her wheel again—make it
seem alive again, you know. So I got an old moun-
tain woman to teach me. Then I came one morning,
and lit a fire—it was in October, you can’t spin if the
room is cold—and I Spun two or three bobbins full.

I remember I felt quite light-hearted that mor
as if she really were pleased.”
these words.

veand then’. .°,? 7

~ It wasn’t long after that I—lost my voice,” she
faltered.

~ But you can’t think...” Radford began
impulsively. ‘I mean, why shouldn’t she be pleased
with your idea?” He continued: “ [t was a lovely
one! It ought to have delighted her.”

He was becoming quite used now to mentioning
the elusive phantom as if she were a sentient being.
Melany was silent, her eyes still on her interlaced
fingers.

“Come ! ”’ he said, going close to her. ‘I’m sure
I'm right. I’ve a feeling that she does like it. Now
that I’m here, you know, everything’s going to be
different—quite different. Come,” he coaxed again,
~ you told me you felt that too, didn’t you? ”

Her “ Yes ” came on a sigh, but she half smiled.

~ Good!” said Radford gaily. “And we must
go on proving it.”

omcoying at 2 2?

~ Yes. By all sorts of daring little liberties. For
F

8]
pun with this very wheel? How

plain in a low, hurried voice,
nervously together as she looked

ning,
Her voice died out on82 THE ELUSIVE LADY

    

instance he disregarded the startled look with
which her eyes flitted about the room then back to his
—‘‘ you're going to put that cord—‘ band’ you call
it ?—into place, and spin for me! e

She looked simply aghast.

‘Qh, don’t ask me that! > she wailed.

He thought he was doing the right thing to say
in a hurt voice:

“Then you aren’t sure of me, after all.”

This she met with a wave of crimson to her
forehead, and. the little back toss of her head that
showed a spirit only very partially subdued.

“Tt’s not kind of you to say that when I’ve said
so much ! ” she cried in a throbbing voice.

Radford humbled himself instantly.

“Forgive me,” he pleaded. “It was only my
rough way of trying to let you see how much I want
to be kind.” , ,

Though the rose of indignation still burnt brightly
in her cheeks, she gave him at this a wistful, abashed
glance.

‘‘Y think,” she murmured, “ that I must ask you
to forgive me—I ought to have known you only meant
to be kind, after your having been so very kind
already !”’

Radford wished heartily just then that young men
might on occasion put brotherly arms about young
women without seeming impertinent. He had to
content himself with assuring her again that he had
never felt so touched, so honoured by anything in his
life as by her confidence.

“Tf you will help me kindle a fire I will spin for
you,” was her response to this, and, opening the door
of a little cupboard near the chimney, she disclosed a
store of “‘ light-wood ’”’ and some hickory logs.

RDAs iaebaDabacPas bib tas hi badge ssi jantaza issia deca teszgran Spada HAMM Sataletids Go Metta luthedpshadadionadaamsiean sll hntenhicle , ae ;THE ELUSIVE LADY

They knelt side by side on the hearth, absorbed as
two children in a newly-invented game, and together
built up what promised to be, as Radford said, “a
roaring success.” He laid the big “ back loge
carefully in place under her direction, then, with a
leaf torn from his note-book, set fire to the resinous
kindling.

The first flame leaped up, charming as a bed of
yellow tulips in the dark fireplace. There was a
delicious smell of wood-smoke as the cold chimney
coughed back the first wreaths, then, with gay
snappings and flutterings, the whole mass “ caught.”
Golden spark-serpents ran to and fro over the great
back log, blue and lilac tongues licked round it ; then,
superbly, it too ignited, sending forth a banner of
orange flame, sighing and roaring like a giant in the
throes of passion. The hearthstone of “ Her Wish ”
was warm once more.

[This was the very thought, that occurred to
Radford as he stood there gazing down at the gorgeous
result of their united effort,

= Pleased !???) he Tepeated on a ring of his
pleasant laughter. “I should think she jolly well
ought to be pleased, your elusive lady ; why, we’ve
warmed her own particular hearthstone for her ;
we've lighted, you may say, the beacon of good-
will!’ He flourished a dramatic hand. ‘‘ Look how
the room answers to it! I say, you know,” he added
with conviction, ‘“ it’s really the most enchanting

room!” |

Melany was fetching a box of carded wool “ slips ”’

from another cupboard. She followed his look about
the green-panelled walls on which ruddy lights were
now gleaming and waning. It gave her an impression
_as of a sleeping face that had opened its eyes,

8384 THE ELUSIVE LADY

 

Yes,” she forced herself to say, “ it does look
pretty in the firelight. My fire wasn’t a splendid one
like this.”

Then he gave another exclamation of approval.

“By Jove! I hadn’t noticed what a beautiful
old clock this is! How did ‘ they ’ come to leave it
here!

And he stood, hands in pockets, head thrust
forward, gazing at the old “* subject ”’ clock of ormulu
and enamel that stood on the mantelshelf under the
big sampler.

Melany, who had gone to close the window before
beginning to spin, stood there fingering a trail of ivy
as if glad of this living green link with the outer world.
She answered him without moving :

‘© Tt was in her will that her portrait and spinning-
wheel and that clock should never be taken away.”

‘‘ That’s all very well,” the young man threw over
his shoulder, still curiously examining the clock, “ but
how was the miracle accomplished? Why did the
Brooklyn person and all the others obey her? Did
she leave a malediction also in her will as the alter-
native? A sort of ‘curst be he who moves my
bones ’ codicil? ”’

‘““ Yes,”’ said the girl.

Radford positively sprang round to look at her.

‘No! You can’t mean it!’ he cried, his eyes
shining.

‘“ Ves,” she said again, rather wondering at his
look. ‘‘It’s true. Don’t you think,” she added
sombrely, ‘‘ that it’s like what one knows of her? ”

‘It’s only too wonderfully, too delightfully
like!’ he cried. ‘‘ It completes the whole thing to
such a degree that I can’t take it in. And this clock ”
—he turned it again—‘‘ she must have designed it

Pree Ce LUC tt tabs Eup Losec Tt LLch eetian eeeeaet aTHE ELUSIVE LADY 85

herself ; it’s so exactly like her—almost as much like
her as that portrait must be. Ina way, it 7s a portrait
of her—of her strange, perverse mind. I simply can’t
imagine a queerer mixture of beauty and gruesome-
ness, can you? ”

~ To me it’s only horrible,” said the girl, looking
away.

It was rather horrible. Ona golden wheel poised
the figure of a youth running. He held in one hand
a black sickle and in the other a mask cunningly
enamelled to represent a young, smiling face. When
one looked at the clock in profile, however, one saw
behind this mask the real head of the figure—a skull,
with serpents knotted through the empty eye-sockets.

Some words in black enamel ran across its base:

© Aprés Mot—La Mort. Apres La Mort—Muaintes
Choses.”’

© What an extraordinary creature!” the young
man kept murmuring, his eyes on this sinister time-
piece that no longer kept time.

Something roused him with an efficacy as startling
as the icy douche that taught Grimm’s young man to
shiver. It was, indeed, as if a hand of ice had clapped
him on the back, sending its shocking thrill to his very
marrow, for behind him had sounded suddenly a
strange, humming minor chord that rose and fell,

paused, then repeated itself.etterectiate: ity

 

CHAPTER XII

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

LMOST simultaneously with the eeriesome

shock came a flash of comprehension in

‘(a which he realised that Melany had adjusted

the wheel and begun to spin. But he did not turn to

her for an appreciable moment ; he felt that by doing

so at once he would have shown her too extraordinary

a face. And the wild fact drove itself home to him,

as he stood through this moment of waiting, that

there was, after all, more in the legends than the mere
power to work on her impressionable nerves.

When he did turn at last, however, what he saw
was so winsome, so warmly lighted by the glow of
immemorial associations with all that was most
gracious in the homely commonplaces of life, even of
poetry—did not Homer speak of the violet wool on
Helen’s distaff ?—that he felt the chill in his blood
dissolve as by white magic.

How, he wondered, watching the girl’s absorbed
movements, had women ever come to give up an
occupation so perfectly graceful as spinning wool !

Here she looked round at him with a smile, and
reversing the wheel, wound back the thread that she
had just spun.

“Ah, don’t stop,” he said; ‘I could watch you
allday. I’m painting a picture of you like that in my
mind. In fact, I think I shall have to do it really.
Don’t stop—please ! ”’

She selected one of the rolls of fluffy wool, and
holding it against the point of the spindle, turned the

RSM USEHtPter test sth teLie t eeres ort Ts ter cope teemcenTess Tones td CPt EE atTHE ELUSIVE LADY 87

wheel rather slowly, at the same time stepping
backward and drawing out her thread to the full
length of her arm. It was as if the wool changed to
fine elastic under her delicate touch, Then, when she
had it long enough, in order to twist it she set the
wheel whirling rapidly, and as it whirled it hummed
forth its minor song.

Radford’s mind veered back to last night, when he
had stood under that very window and listened to this
very sound. Was it really possible? . . . He turned
with a sudden impulse, and, going to the window,
opened it and swung himself out over the sill. The
thread that Melany was twisting snapped short, and
she gave a cry and ran forward.

‘“Oh, don’t leave me! ”

He smiled back at her reassuringly, leaning on the
low sill as he had seemed to remember having leant
often before. .

~ Faney my doing such a thing! I only want to
see how you ‘ compose’ as a picture, you know, from
outside,” he explained mendaciously. ‘Do go on
spinning, just for a moment, won’t you? ”

She went rather laggingly towards the wheel,
looking back at him over her shoulder as if afraid he
might play her some boyish trick.

“I promise you I shan’t leave this window,” he
called, reading her thought; ‘‘ on my honour! ”

And so, a little pale, a little troubled, she took up
another “ slip ” of wool and began to spin again.

Yes, it was the same sound that he had heard
last night, rising from the cold and empty darkness
behind the shuttered window. He stood a moment
or two listening, then swung himself back into the
room.

* Do you know,”’ -he said slowly, looking into her88 THE ELUSIVE LADY

eyes, “‘I’ve got a real impression that I have * exor-
cised: ’ her ? ’’;

“ You have ? ?.”’ she asked, and he noted the timid
hope in her voice.

‘““T have, most positively,” he affirmed. “‘ And
—think a bit—haven’t you got it, too, deep down,
somewhere underneath your natural dread? ”

She glanced about her, still timorously, and there
was a surprised, lightened look on her sensitive face.

“Why, it does seem—different,”? she admitted
finally.

‘* Of course it does, because it is /’’ he let himself
exult, delighting in the soft wonder that darkened
her eyes.

“ Don’t you see? It’s our being together that’s
done it. It’s the two of us together that she can’t
outlive. at? |

Her “Oh!” of protest at this crass temerity of
expression didn’t check him; it was like a Ly
thrown into a gleeful torrent.

‘* We’re too one in our feeling against her Hennig
for her to get through. We're, as I said ’—he
laughed happily—*‘ the lock on her door that she
doesn’t know the combination of! But I’ll tell you
the secret. It’s that my feeling for you is stronger
than my feeling for her. Oh,’ he continued, answer-
ing her astonished look, ‘“‘ I’ve had my temptations,
let me tell you! As far as I’m concerned, you know,
I'd adore seeing her! I hoped awfully at first that
I'd get at least a glimpse. . . .”

She did interrupt him this time.

“You want to see her?” she whispered
strickenly.

His gaiety didn’t give an inch.

“ “ Wanted,’ my dear girl, ‘ wanted,’ ” he correctedTHE ELUSIVE LADY 89

with the same self-acclaiming jubilation of tone.
~ You see how delighted I am with myself because
unselfishness has conquered curlosity ; for your sake
—for the sake of our friendship—I’ve given her up—
utterly ! ”

And he threw out his hands with the foreign
gesture that she liked. She stood without speaking
for a time, smoothing out his crumpled sentences in
her thought so as to read their full meaning. Then
she said simply, if somewhat shyly :

~ You mean you’d rather be kind to me, than
have ’’—one of her quick tremors came with the next
words—‘‘ some strange experience ? ”

“I mean that I’m your friend, not her friend.
There’s the whole situation. There’s the lock we’ve
put on her door! ”

A third time Melany looked round the pretty
Toom, now warm with firelight. A tremer ran
through her again.

‘ Locks can be broken,”? she murmured.

* Not this one!” he exulted. “JI defy her27

And as the girl clung to his arm, moaning in an
access of her old dread :

~ Don’t! don’t!” he repeated, waving his free
arm as if addressing someone invisible. ‘‘ Yes, I
defy you, elusive lady !”

He might have continued longer in this strain, for
he was being driven by a novel, very pleasurable
excitement ; it was really delightful to play knight-
errant and break lances for such a sweet lady against

the powers of darkness. But the white misery of her
face stopped him.

“I’m awfully sorry I’ve upset you with my
nonsense,”’ he said. ‘‘ But I’m so sure she isn’t here
—can’t possibly be here. Try for yourself; I’ll be

 
  
    
  
   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
  
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

et. eee et eae

  

A eeesettee elarbciene ;

to feel.

 

90 THE ELUSIVE LADY

quite still. ‘Try to see whether you feel her in any
way.”

During their silence the fire fluttered softly andia
mouse played with a nut that it had hoarded inside
the wainscotting. There was no other sound.

He bent down his head to her.

“Tt’s so, isn’t it? She’s not here . . . not any-
where near, is she? ” a.

Her face turned toward him slowly, and he had the
impression of someone half-dazed by an unhoped-for
rescue.

““ No,’”? she murmured in a voice that matched her
look, a voice dim with happy amazement, * you’ve
come between us.”

‘Ah, and I’ll stay between you!” he cried.

They covered the fire with ashes before they went.

‘“‘Tt’s really ‘ashes to ashes’* this time,” said
Radford, as he heaped the last shovelful over the
embers, yielding once more to the daring desire to
jest that beset him. “I’ve ‘ laid’ her for you on her
own hearthstone.”’

But Melany only gave him a beseeching look,
paling again. It would take a long time for her to
feel as secure behind that invisible lock as he seemed

 

UCHR GLAU hish ih Raper MMH Mian elie oi hia li hiiikiauains hore MAMAN aiteCHAPTER XIII

HIS singular visit to “‘ Her Wish ” was the
beginning of an even rarer intercourse.
Love at first sight is supposed to be an
exquisite and unusual experience, but the spiritual
intimacy, almost as of spirits disembodied, that had
sprung up between them on that occasion was
altogether of a subtler, more unique quality. No
actual person or circumstance, Radford reflected,
with a somewhat amused tenderness for the queer
source of it all, could have brought them so really
together as they had been brought by that elusive,
fascinating phantom. He had not, indeed, lost his
sense of her as fascinating, though his loyalty to the
gitl’s lovely confidence in him kept him staunch in his
determination to ‘“‘ ward her off,” “to stay between
them,” as he had declared that he would.

However, there are as many paths to love as there
are lovers to take them, and when, at the end of two
weeks, there came a letter from Steven stating
lugubriously that he would be compelled to go to New
Orleans for at least a month, Radford was delighted,
in spite of his affection for Steven. He thought by
this time that he knew quite well why the box-hedges
of “ Her Wish ”’ had seemed a boundary of Fate, why
the whole place had been so mystically familiar. It
was in his Scots blood—his mother had been a
Stewart—and also in his individual sensitiveness to
occult impressions, to believe in their hidden meaning,
as of mystic signposts pointing the way.92 THE ELUSIVE LADY

He even by this time felt that he had also
‘“ known ”’ Melany when he first looked on her. She
was his ‘‘ dream of fair women’ made actual, his
artist’s vision in the delicate flesh. Ah, the wilful
phantom had her perverse kindnesses after all, for if
the living Melany had not lost her “ wonderful
voice ’’ would she not have been lost tohim? Hehad
the grace, it is true, to blush for this leap to light in
him of the hidden primordial selfishness of love, but
his shame made it none the less true. He could not,
he felt convinceed—though hating himself for the
conviction—even for her sweet sake have played the
rdle of semi-detached husband to a successful prima-
donna. And he had desolate pictures of himself
waiting in the “‘ wings”’ with wraps and cordials,
while Melany, to the music of her most wonderful high
notes, died in a blonde wig and the arms of the primo-
tenore. But in that case, too, he consoled himself,
neither would she have consented to play the réle of
wife to any man. Her charming old father had
described her once as “ dedicated ”’ to her art. How
much more fitting 1t was, he further consoled himself,
that a being so exquisite should be dedicated—“ set
apart and consecrated ’—to love, such love as he
would give her. He felt a shudder of revulsion
through all his sensitiveness when he thought of her
as surrounded by the gross rivalries and amours, the
heart-killing excitement and soul-stifling successes of
an operatic “ career.” But he had also the largeness
to realise that art, in whatever form, is to its devotee
still the highest. He ached for her bitter disappoint-
ment even while he could not help rejoicing in his love
for her, but when he thought of how her love for him
might drown that disappointment in its radiant waves,
this ache of sympathy dissolved into exultation. His

 

  

Petit ta tarucstirl itr epererurserte estTHE ELUSIVE LADY 93

whole existence would be spent, if she could but love
him, in proving to.her that her loss had really been
her gain; proving it by a thousand beautiful in-
directnesses, previsions, revelations.

Radford was peculiarly free from the ordinary ties
of life, was eminently fitted both by fortune and his
own delightful personality to play magician extra-
ordinary in the life of the woman he loved. But
though he had few relations—some cousins here and
there and the grim old great-aunt who had brought
him up—he had many friends. He imagined how
these friends would welcome Melany : the fineness of
their appreciation, their charmed wonder when he
described to them the wild, unlikely, though beautiful
place in which he had discovered her. Yes, myster-
lously discovered her, that was it. She was his
discovery—the sleeping princess in the wood, only
waiting to awaken to the fulness of beauty and joy
with his first kiss.

Not that he had lived to thirty without falling in
love till now. In fact, he had fallen in and out of that
agreeable state—he was one of those who had found
it agreeable—several times. But, as Syanarelle
wisely observed, “Il y a des fagots et des fagots,” and
this time he felt that his “‘ fagot ’’ was a veritable twig
from the Hesperidian tree, a twig to which clung an
apple of mystic gold, the final, the perfect love. That
it should be a little cold, a little hard, as it were, to
the touch was only what might have been expected
in a fruit the rind of which was pure gold. And here
he had laughed, suddenly aware that his poetisings
had landed him plump in the middle of a simile which
if carried out must end in the idea that his love before
satisfying him would have to be peeled! Fc #7!

It was true, though, that something in the natur94 THE ELUSIVE LADY

of a fine rind intercepted his contact with the girl’s
innermost heart. It was curious, he reflected, how,
when she had so unveiled her spirit to him, there
should be still a portion of herself so completely
withdrawn. In a word, he could not make out
whether her feeling for him, beyond that marvellous

‘sympathy of spiritual understanding, was more akin

to love or to gratitude, or merely an affectionate
blending of both.

His pain, when these doubts assailed him, was an
evidence to himself of the reality, at least, of his love
for her. At the end of his third week at Hilton he
decided that he could not endure them any longer.

They had been for a long walk in the mountains,
and on their way back lingered to watch the last
effects of the sunset. Indian summer was late this
year, the air was still wonderfully mild, but the sky
had put on its winter splendours. A huge pinion of
cloud, springing from the ruddy shoulder of the west,
swept out above them and lit the extreme east with
its tapering golden quills. Except for this one
gigantic magnificence the heaven was austerely bare.

‘* Look,”’ said Melany, pointing to the plumage on
the curve of the great wing; ‘‘ I’ve never seen clouds
like that, all gold-green and rose, like opals ; I’ve seen
the sky itself look so, but never clouds. . . .”

, Radford’s reply to this was somewhat peculiar.
He drew down the pointing hand and held it against
his breast. ~

“TI think’ you know,” he said, ‘‘ how I love
you.”

Her face, illumined by the reflection from the
gorgeous immensity she had been gazing at, was
pathetically his to read, and even in that reflected
glow he saw, to his dismay, how white it went, andTHE ELUSIVE LADY 95

how her eyes fixed helplessly on his spread as if with
fear. The next instant she had slipped into the arms
held out to her as sweetly, as inevitably, as water
slips into some natural hollow. He felt her all fluent
in the refuge of his arms, as if love had dissolved her,
body as well as spirit. Or was this only his fond
imagining ? Wasn’t it love, after all, that kept her
so still against him, that made her light weight almost
a heaviness? Had some dread overwhelmed her
suddenly? He knew perfectly that though he had
allayed her mystic fear he had not quite overcome it.

He stood holding her in silence for a full moment.
Then he had to speak.

© Won’t you tell me,” he said, “if I can think
that you love me, too? ”

At this she drew herself tremblingly together, and
with her face bent down, whispered :

“Tam afraid . . . I am afraid to love you.”

‘Oh, my own! ”’ he cried, and drew her back into
his arms.

But now she resisted him.

“Don’t keep me,” she said. “I must tell you.
I must tell you first.”

* At least your hand, then,” he smiled; ‘“‘let me
Keep that much of you—for the present. What,
dearest,”’ he continued, as she did not speak, “‘ are
you afraid of? ”

She left her hand in his and he drew off her glove,
| murmuring :

* How cold this poor little hand is! Perhaps
, you’d better wait to tell me till we get back.”

She seemed not to hear him, not to realise that he
/was kissing and fondling the hand she had yielded
| him.

**T had.a dreadful dream last night,”’ she at last96 THE ELUSIVE LADY

brought out, shuddering. “It was a dream—but
more than a dream.”

“More? How more? ”

‘He held her hand fast between his own now, as if
he would reassure her with his steady clasp.

“T thought,”’ she went on in the curious toneless
voice he had first heard during their first walk to
“Her Wish,” “ that I was awake. I was lying in my
own bed in my own room. And something said,
‘Come!’ Then I thought that a dark wind ’’—she
shuddered again—‘‘ a cold, strong current of air like
a... yes, it was like a resistless river—tifted me and
bore me out into the night, over the fields and woods,
up to that door—that terrible door . . .”

She was shaking so now that he put his arm about
her without more ado, and held her against his side.
She pressed close to it as if only for warmth, for
human warmth in her cold ague of fear caused by the
supernatural; there was no sense of his being her
lover in that straining of her shuddering body against
him. Now she tripped and stumbled over her
thronging words:

“YT thought the dreadful air-river pressed me
against that door and it opened. . . . I was sucked

 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

in... into the darkness ... into the emptiness
. . . through that corridor . . . through that other
door ... into that room... up to her portrait.
.. . It was alight, glowing ... it was looking at

nd

mew. .ehe lips parted... 4. ltispoke tome. a0
With frantic horror she repeated twice: “It spoke
tome ey. Lt spoke to mel 7

“My darling,” said Radford, his cheek to hers,
‘“ my darling, it was only a dream—a hideous, beastly
dream.” .
‘It was more. . . . Oh! it was more,” she wailed,

AA Aaa ETNA Gee AN Aue sds lihisheTHE ELUSIVE LADY 97

and her soft cheek felt cold to his as death. “It was
a warning ...a command. ‘Do not dare to love
him}? 20). it said: * Donot dave to love him ! ’ :
Oh! the black malice of those eyes—those awful
painted living eyes!”

_ She shook and shook with the memory of that
grisly visitation.

Alarm began to mingle with the ardour of his love.
Could it be as he had first feared, that her insistent
dwelling on these dark things had slightly destroyed
the balance of her mind ? Well, if it were so—and
he had a rush of thankfulnéss that his love was real
enough to meet even this test—the sooner he could
persuade her to marry him the better. There could
be no better proof than the passionate completion of
such a love as theirs that her terrors had no foundation
in reality.

~ Now that you’ve told me that, tell me one other
thing,” he said, holding her so close that she felt his
violent young heart against her side, “Tell me
whether you love me.”

But she only kept gasping :

~ Tam afraid ...Iamafraid . .. for you
TOR VOU...’

~ For me?” He caught at it joyously. ‘* For

me?” herepeated.. « Why, you dearest thing, haven’t
I told you over and over that I’ve no fear of
ner 27
~ Yes, but through me. . . . She might hurt you
through me.”
At this he fairly laughed, a laugh of angry defiance.
“ Let her try to touch you!” he cried. “ Just
let her try to harm a hair of your darling head ! ”’
Though how he would have punished the presum-
ing ghost even lovers might fail to imagine.
Ga 1)

     
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 

98 THE ELUSIVE LADY

‘“ Why, as to that,” he rushed on, “ how could she
hurt me more than by frightening you into not being
willing to marry me? There would be a devilish
cunning, if you like—though I don’t admit for a
moment any reality in your abominable dream.
Why, my dearest, dearest girl, fancy allowing not
even a ghost, but a dream about a ghost, to come
between us ! ”’

“You forget,” she said, resuming her first sad,
colourless tone, “‘ that things I’ve felt . . . this way
2. have come true,

He had a quick answer for this.

‘IT spoke of you allowing her to come between us
—but haven’t we agreed that I’ve already come
between you and her ? ”’

‘““Oh, I did think you had!” was her piteous
response.

‘* ‘You don’t think so any longer ? ”’

‘“How can I, after what I’ve told you?” She
il| had drawn herself away from him, but he still kept
AT firm hold of her hand.
| ‘* Dearest,”” he said, after a slight pause, with a
tender modulating of his vibrant young voice to her
dejected mood, ‘‘ you’ve told me more than perhaps
you meant to. . . . You’ve told me, in spite of words,
that you love me.”’

Her hand quivered in his, trying to release itself,
and she stammered in great distress :

niNoje. 2 no... LT said Twas atratd to7e. =

‘““Ahs but that’s just it!’? He subdued himself
again. “‘Isn’t it precisely your love for me that
makes you afraid ? ”’

VC can bel... . it mustn't belie.) 42 she
cried, half-rismg, and he heard the tears that he
wouldn’t look at, in her voice.

319)

  

Sy sLisetistei tat oceteri nit pete tesesteerters Pre UN MaMMisssiialiknae©

THE ELUSIVE LADY 99

He drew her down beside him and, gently in:
exorable, again folded his arms about her,

» Listen, dearest,’ he said in a grave voice quite
new to her. ‘* You said something to me once that I
may seem cruel to remind you of, but for both our
sakes I must do it. You spoke, that first day, of
being afraid of something much more terrible than
she is. . . .” He pressed her so jealously to him now
that it was hard for her to breathe. “ Of being
afraid of . . . madness. My own ”—his face was
bent to hers, and in the gathering dusk she could see
the bright anxiety of his eyes—" that is still what
you must be most afraid of. . . . That you must fight
against with all the terror of your soul. . . . And with
all your love for me, and mine for you.”

She lay quite still on his breast, her face, white
and clear as pearl even to the lips, upturned to his,
her look clinging to his, as if that steady gaze were all
that held her from slipping into an abyss. And it was
on those cold, pale lips that he sealed and pressed
home the assurances of the love that would rescue her,
and hold her from the depths forever,St

CHAPTER XIV

LTHOUGH the shock that he had admin-
istered with such daring wisdom had the
effect he hoped for, of turning her from her

shadowy terror to face a more real one, he was forced
by that very whirl of hers in the direction he had
pointed out, to act as if he took into account a certain
reality also in the phantasmal influence against
which she struggled.

It had wrung his heart during the first days after
their tragic love scene to see her eyes clouded with
that new fear, to have her say to him again and again :

** But how can you want me to love you? ...
if there’s this danger. ...1I am more afraid than
ever to love you!”

Over and over he explained to her, coaxing,
conjuring, that there was no danger, so long as she
didn’t “‘ give way,” didn’t let her will slip from her
keeping, didn’t, as he paraphrased it with his warm
smile of confident love, ‘‘ let herself see dreams as
ghosts walking.”

‘* All that you’ve got to do, my best belovéd,”’ he
urged on her, “‘ is to love me with all your might,
and resist dark thoughts—dark powers, if you like—
with all your love for me! They’re, after all, less
than shadows. We are the real thing!”

But her attempts at smiling back at him were
desolate little failures. It was when she said to him
one day, with the most heart-breaking note of wistful
aloneness in her voice: “ 'Then—you never really

LUM UTC SEE Ts tcp tere series OUI CTL bE CepP en EeeSUnT Ps Teeth At nrd MteTeRepeney fay ter ce Set yCunhe Yete, COMeeereRnanTeRCT Petts NoeeT to cteoneeet tics FiTHE ELUSIVE LADY 101

believed I had . . . cause—to feel so?” that he
felt the imperative need of qualifying his position, of
making her sure, once for all, that he had never
deceived her, that it was not the truth of her assertions
concerning the dark influence that he doubted, but
her magnifying of it, her letting her fancy make her
think it there when it had been withdrawn.

He took, in his perplexity, a wounded, reproachful
tone with her. How could she bear the sight of him,
he demanded, if she thought for a moment that he
had feigned to believe just to ingratiate himself with
her? How could she tolerate the idea of a love that
had been based on a cheap falseness from the first ?
If that was her opinion of him, he had better go at
once. He even piled it on rather, by saying bitterly
that he could fight ghosts far better than such mis-
conceptions.

Here, to his unspeakable chagrin, she had burst
into tears, shaking like a frail sapling under the blow
of an axe, and just managing between her sobs :

gy Yes go. goeut oo Ob) wall bem anuem
better for you to go... .”’

Then he had a thought which struck him, like so
many of his thoughts about her in those days, as
inspirational.

 Melany,’*\he cried, "1 willigo. 3). but tohenl

She looked stunned, staring at him through her
tears with the senseless eyes of stupefaction.

“IT mean,” he hurried to explain himself, ‘“‘ that I
so believe in her . . . the way you believe in her—
that I shall try to . . . how shall I put it? ... to

get in touch with her. J am not afraid of her. I
rather feel, as I’ve told you, that she’s afraid of me!
. .. 1 shall go and .. . have it out with her!” he
wound up.aisle ttl tetendtentl Kehipichiceekibic cans sionanbelact -
ng oh) é pa be eee

  

102 THE ELUSIVE LADY

This amazing declaration dried her tears as if with
a hot iron, dried her throat and lips.
» Youll’ co... . how? Where? ” she got “out

‘finally.

oo Po stler (Wish). 2 by myself...) ton 7a
night.”’

Now she was clinging to him as unashamed as a
wite.

No! no tno!” she cried. “No! Nevers! %

They were out of doors, in the wood above Hilton,
and he leaned against a tree with her in his arms,
soothing her, caressing her, trying to get her to
understand his point of view.

‘It’s this way, my dearest heart,”’ he said, when
she was quieter at last. “If go there—in this way—
I give her her fullest chance. If she means you harm
she'll have to get past me. . . . And if she can’t get
past me .. . and I know she can’t . . . why, then,
she can’t get to you . . . as you’ll have me with you
always.”

“But .. .” the girl moaned, “‘ if she should harm
you 2 29

“My dear child,’ he returned patiently, ‘“‘ she
simply can’t. I have ‘feelings’ ”’—he threw his
bright, assured smile over her gloom—‘“ as well as
you. Why, for one thing, should she want to harm
TIC 1) ba

~ Because I love you,” said Melany.

He forgot their strange trouble and made her
forget it for a moment in the kiss he gave her for
this.

“ There’s my invincible armour!” he cried
happily, coming out of the sweet trance.

** ‘What ? ” she breathed.
~ Why, your love for me, my love for you—our

22

Rou ML ihr ort eip tear re tect cementTHE ELUSIVE LADY 103

love. That’s the flaming sword that will turn any
power of darkness ! ”’ |

She pressed her cheek against his arm, looking
down, twisting her fingers in his.

“If only .. .” he heard her murmur,

“If only what, dear? ”

“If only you hadn’t defied her . . .”

“I do defy her! I do! I do!” he reiterated.
“ Isn’t she the fiery dragon I’m going to fight for you ?
That I’m going to seal up in her dark cavern forever
and aye! ”’

He drew the girl round in front of him and took her
face in his hands as if it were a chalice that he would
drink from.

* Look at me and see how sure my love makes
me,’’ he said. “ Look deep in my eyes; don’t you
see the will you’ve put there ?—the will to overcome
anything, everything that troubles you? ”

She sighed with that full look, and her eyes closed
as if to keep the love he had poured into them from
brimming over.

“You must do as you think best,’’ she said.

* And you'll trust me? You’ll trust the power of
my love? You won’t sit up all night imagining
horrors ? ”

“Oh, I couldn’t sleep! I couldn’t lie down!”
she cried a little wildly.

 Hasn’t what you have seen in my eyes made
you know she can’t hurt me? That J can control her,
but that she’ll be helpless against me? My God!”
he broke out with passion, “‘ if you don’t feel that, you
don’t feel the power of love ! ”’

** Yes, I do feel it,’’ she said, life coming into her
voice, and the ring of courage: <1 doi feel i) f
shan’t be afraid. I’m not afraid any more,”a:

eS

rast

acon ced

  

104 THE ELUSIVE LADY

And with her hand on his neck and her eyes closed
again, She murmured over and over, as if it were a
strong charm against evil,’ which in truth it is:

‘The power of love. .£. . The power of love.”

Radford was a little astonished at the way the old
gentleman took it. They had decided that he must
be told of his guest’s intention of spending a night
alone in the old house, and Radford had imagined
him slyly amused over such an ingenuous desire. On
the contrary, however, the dear old man looked
decidedly uneasy at the suggestion.

‘Alone?’ he asked. ‘* Quite alone? ... You
wish to spend the night in that great cold house . . .
and alone? ”’

* Well, I have an idea it might be more—in-
teresting alone,’’ the young man said lightly.

Mr. Warrenger took a nervous turn about the room.

“ My dear young friend,” he then said, “I feel,
I confess, a responsibility . . . a responsibility, you
know. I mean,” he shuffled off again in his delightful
slippers that had cross-stitch dog’s heads on the toes,
~ there are always chances of unfortunate coincidences
may these.) ai... these, 6 )0\ca 0.) clventunes i
He became more blunt in his evident aversion from
the experiment. ‘‘ Very serious consequences have
been known to follow such...a... under-
takings.” He evidently hated to put a pat name to
it, “Shocks to the nervous system. ... We are
all human, you know . . . the bravest of us.” He
was charming in his attempts to soften what Radford
felt now he meant to be a refusal. ‘“ Caesar himself,
I am sure, would have felt as unnerved as Brutus, had
the cases been reversed at Philippi!’ And he smiled
at the young man uncertainly.

ASAE ASSARYS ARISE MSS Hi AAS HAS Gasa UAHA Se pike HUA AEG 405 Ai. ST dae Ln Ua bp sak a fsb Np beg ga As baa MAS ON ee AEA nap ted nn IRIE ie,THE ELUSIVE LADY 105

Radford seized the opportunity.

“ Then‘you do believe . . . in such things? ”? he
asked.

The old gentleman winced as if Radford had —
tossed the classic glove in his face.

pa Belicve isa 28 aweny weighty word,”
.he pronounced gravely. ‘“‘ But I am convinced . . .
yes, I may say convinced that there are...a...
influences that might perhaps...a... linger

. . . ina house so ancient, and that has sheltered such
-..@.. . vehement personalities.”

~ Ancient !”’ Radford thought of Glamis Castle
and a few other venerable ghostly strongholds, and
smiled inwardly at this term as applied to ‘“ Her
Wish.”

He said quietly, however :

~ TP’ve seen what you might call an apparition
before now, sir. I think you may count on my not
being unnerved even if I do chance to see one at ‘ Her
Wish.’ In fact,’’ he beamed it at the old gentleman,
“ to be quite candid, that, of course, is why I want to
spend the night there.”

Mr. Warrenger actually paled, to Radford’s
imcreasing surprise, and ruffled up his flossy locks.

‘’ My dear lad,” he protested. ‘‘ My dear lad...
why should you? ”’

“Don’t you think yourself, sir,”” Radford couldn’t
help putting it to him, “that it would be rather
wonderful to see that famous lady, in a ‘ gown like a
rose ie)”

“If I might suggest,’’ returned the other, more
and more uneasy, ‘‘I would not jest about her... .
That is,’’? he explained a little incoherently, “‘ she is
associated with misfortune . . . tragedy, I might say.
Come,” he produced his most winning smile, “ givevies Paris rare hcicetgaia) nial
ne ye hse ts

  

106 THE ELUSIVE LADY

up the idea. At best you would most likely catch a
severe influenza.” :

Radford shook his head gaily.

“T’m no more afraid of influenza than I am of
ghosts,”’ he said.

Oh of .:.. ghosts... 7? the “oldman? ssard
vacuely, «It jis mot qprecisely ... . 3a") ee ohosts
that ©... a s..,. refer to... bubdeven (cubbtlien
influences.”

He drew near the fire, warming his hands as if
suddenly chilly, and looked over his shoulder at
Radford.

» Pray, pray give it wp,’
seechingly.

“My dear Mr. Warrenger,”’ said the young man,
rising and crossing over to him, “ of course, if you
really object to my going, there’s nothing more to
say. But I’m probably the least nervous person in
the world about such things, and—vwell, I’ll confess,
I’ve simply set my heart on it.”” He emphasised this
by adding: ‘“‘ You see, Steve wrote me you’d be
sure to let me ‘have a shy at the “Her Wish”
ghost’... those are Steve’s disrespectful words,
not mine. But ofcourse, asI said, if you object .. .”

He left it thus in the air, dangling with its sugges-
tion of weird inhospitality before the old Virginian,
to whom hospitality was the chief mark of gentle-
hood.

With a dissenting sigh he gave in.

~ Well,” he said, ‘“ since you have set your heart
on it I consent. But at least you must have a fire to
keep you company, and rugs, and a lamp... .”

Radford couldn’t help laughing.

“ All my thanks,” he said; ‘I’m most grateful,
but do spare me the lamp... . A candle—a taper

> he murmured be-

9THE ELUSIVE LADY 107

it’s called in ghost-stories, isn’t it ?—would be so
much more in keeping.”

“No, no. A lamp—I insist,” said the old man
positively. “ When,” he added, “do you propose
making the—the visit ? ”’

* To-night,” said Radford.

~ Then I must arrange for these preparations im-
mediately. Let mesee ...” He reflected with the
knuckle of his forefinger against his lip. “‘Isaac is a
sensible fellow. Isaac shall take over the parapher-
nalia for your ”’—he smiled dubiously—“ let us hope
it will be for your comfort.”’

Melany, of course, had not been present at this
interview, and Radford thanked his stars that she had
not. As for that, he reflected, smiling again over his
host’s foreboding reluctance, it was surely a lucky
thing that he, Radford himself, was not of a nervous

‘tendency in regard to the supernatural.

He realised just then, with an inner start at his
own credulity, that he was indeed looking forward to
that night’s experience with peculiar zest, an almost
romantic eagerness. It was as if, secure in the
chastity of a supreme love, he were going to risk an

interview with some famous seductress !CHAPTER XV

 

ADFORD decided that he would walk over to

‘* Her Wish ” shortly after tea, while there

was still some daylight left. In reply to

Melany’s distressed protest at the idea of his going

without his “ supper,’? he said laughingly that he

didn’t think a feast of Cynthy’s waffles a fitting

preparation for mystic adventure, and reminded her

that Mr. Warrenger had insisted on Isaac’s taking

over, with the other articles, a bottle of wine and some
sandwiches.

~ It’s quite as if I were going on a ghostly picnic,
I assure you,’ he ended. ‘‘ Besides, when one is
screwed up for such an occasion, the last thing in the
world that one feels is hunger ! ”’

At this assertion her eyes quickened with the most
piercing question, and she came closer, laying her
hand on his breast, as she looked up at him.

‘* Oh yes,” he admitted, “‘ I am screwed up a bit,
but I find it rather pleasant ! ”

The day had begun in mist, which instead of
melting into sunlight by eleven o’clock, as it usually
did on these mountains, had increased as the hours
wore on, so that by now its milky gauze hung in the
nearest trees.

They were standing on the front steps together,
while Mr. Warrenger, who would not hear of Rad-
ford’s walking over without him, put on his long cape
and hat in the hall. Radford noticed as he looked
down at her how prettily each loose strand of her
bronze hair was threaded through beads of moisture.THE ELUSIVE LADY 109

He told her of it, Saying, “ You should never wear any

jewels less delicate,” and managed to leave a kiss on

its damp softness before Mr. Warrenger turned
_ to join them, while Melany had time to whisper :

“I shall be with you . . . I shall be asking God
all night to watch over you.”

She stood gazing after them as they walked away,
until they were only dark blurs that grew less and less
behind the veil of mist, vanishing finally into its blank
whiteness as into the heart of mystery. As this
thought came to her the girl clenched her hands, and
gave that little back-toss of the head, fighting against
her own dread, as she had promised him to do, with
all her might, and with all her love for him.

~ At least nature seems in accord with your strange
desire,” the old gentleman said with a rather rueful
attempt at pleasantry, as they reached the door of
~ Her Wish” and stood looking back over the lawn
to the great hedges that loomed dim and phantasmal
through the mist. ‘“‘The very landscape looks

. ghostly.”

~ It looks marvellously beautiful,” said Radford,
his artist’s sense charmed with the faint etching of
| bare branches against the mist. Even close at hand
the trees were veiled with it, so that they rose pale
; and indistinct, as if transformed by magic into some
; finer substance—as if they might be growing at the
| bottom of an enchanted, pearl-coloured lake.

And this dense, pearly vapour closed down beyond
| the great hedges, blotting out hills and fields, blotting
) out the world, hemming in the quiet place with blank
‘whiteness. The thought came to Radford that the
) day was like a pale, patient blind woman waiting in
perfect stillness for some revelation.

“IT am very glad, however,” Mr. Warrenger110 THE ELUSIVE LADY

pursued, “‘ that the weather is not cold, and that I
have provided some cheer for you within.”

As he spoke he entered the house, and opening a
door on the right, disclosed with pride the room he had
selected for Radford’s vigil. A good deal of the
original furniture had been left in “‘ Her Wish” by
the various owners, he explained, as a possible bait to
future purchasers, and in this apartment were some
fine pieces of black mahogany, a big “ settle ’’ covered
with green leather, and a folding card-table. This
table Isaac had unfolded and spread with a white
cloth under the direction of Mr. Warrenger, who had
driven over with his servant earlier in the afternoon,
and upon the cloth was a cheerful array of silver, glass,
and china, flanked by a bottle of claret and lit up by
the reflection of a log-fire.

“I was determined,” the old gentleman said, in
reply to Radford’s exclamation, “that whatever
might be lacking in your ghostly consolations you
should not want for creature comforts.”

His amiable pleasantries had a quavering note, and
Radford suspected him of indulging in them as one is
supposed to whistle in the dark to keep up one’s
courage. For his own part, he felt no need of keeping
up his courage as yet. The big room looked friendly
and protective in the firelight, and the green armchair
that matched the settle seemed almost too comfort-
able a nook from which to watch for spectral visitants.
One might doze off and “‘ miss the whole show,’ so
to speak.

He thanked his host profusely, and helped him to
light the lamp—a simple affair with a green shade—
before he went. :

When he parted from him at the front door, how-
ever, Mr. Warrenger had a more serious word to offer;

IEPA UL iets T Meret hsrni terres gs he esreeeat Ty | cerenones PEeReunT EET pT TS Stns WEteRenEReg Parone er Cee erTHE ELUSIVE LADY 111

My dear boy,” he said, his hand on Radford’s
arm, his old face looking wavering and queer in the
last of the queer, misty daylight, “let me beg of you,
let me, indeed, implore you, as one who has some
experience—don’t try to brave it out if your nerves
begin to fail you. Give it up. Leave this place and
come straight back to Hilton. What is it you young
fellows say nowadays? Cut and run—that’s it
euband rum... 2) 2

Radford assured him that he wasn’t a bit above
cutting and running if things became unbearable :
indeed, that he promised to do so; and with this
promise, and a wringing handshake, the old gentleman
took his departure, somewhat comforted if not
satisfied.

Notwithstanding his assurances to Mr. Warrenger,
however, it was with a certain sense of being ‘‘ ma-
rooned ” that the young man watched the figure of
his friend fade gradually into the mist ; ‘‘ marooned ”’
ona hauntedisland. He stood on the porch watching
him until the last vague outline had vanished and
there was only before him that blind white wall
shutting out the world, shutting out all living creatures
but himself.

He decided that before settling down to his
night’s watch he would take a turn about the grounds,
and he found himself, after five minutes of this lonely
prowling, gazing up at a holly-tree in full berry with
another queer feeling. He had no flowers, but would
not a sprig of the flame-coloured berries be a suitable

propitiatory offering to lay on the grave of so fiery a
lady ? He broke off the handsomest one that he
could reach and went down a flagged path towards the
“maze ’’ and so into the rose-garden.
“ Surely,” he thought, his heart quickening a littleai Sec e eee ee eee _
Ei Sciam TL

Seamus mast ML CMTC StStresrsitee et usttesren

 

112 THE ELUSIVE LADY

in spite of his will to be perfectly calm and matter-of-
fact, “if I am to see her, what better place and
hour ? ”

But the grave lay quiet as a child asleep. The
rose-trees beaded with silver drops gave forth no
fragrance, and he shivered a little, noticing how the
fine white grasses on that grave were also jewelled just
as the bronze hair he loved had been. He stood
there long minutes after he had placed the sprig of
holly on the pale grass, but no presence made itself
felt, there was no hint of another consciousness beside
his own. 3

He went back to the house, and after mending the
fire, which had somewhat died down, lighted one of
the candles that Isaac had left on the mantelpiece and
went out for a general survey of the irregular halls and
passages. He had not closed the shutters, and the
mist drawing in with night was like the blind, white
face he had imagined, pressed close against the glass.

He found the door of the corridor leading to the
haunted wing shut, and opening it, passed down the
corridor and opened also the door of the first room.
Then, with the candle lifted, he went and stood before
the portrait.

And now suddenly the thought of his poor Mel-
any’s fearful dream came back to him: the painted
lips above him seemed to move in the wavering
candlelight. He forced himself to go nearer and to
look steadily, and afresh he was struck by the
malicious sweetness of the sidelong eyes and the
honeyed rapacity of the mouth.

‘““ Seductive and cruel you were,’ he mused.
‘“* Seductive and cruel, elusive lady. No wonder my
poor love ’s afraid of your wilful wraith.”

He spoke these last words aloud, rather from the

9

Ue etn eect anTHE ELUSIVE LADY 113

motive of which in thought he had accused Mr.
Warrenger, the instinct to whistle for courage in dark
places; and suddenly the candle-flame flared high,
then dropped to a blue point and went out. Radford
set his teeth and struck several matches before he
could relight it. That natural effect of some
draught, as he told himself, had given him a start—
frankly a rather disagreeable one. He forced himself
again to stare at the portrait, then left the room and

returned to his fire and the book he had laid near the
lamp.

:
ECHAPTER XVI

T was one of three that he had discovered on the

mantelpiece when he took down the candle—

a worn, calf-bound version of the “ Travels of

Sir John Mandeville, from the Cotton Manuscript.”

This curious old book he had long wanted to read, and

he could think of no more impersonal and fantastic

companion for his eerie vigil. It chanced to open at

a chapter whose headings caught his fancy by their
quaint juxtaposition of highly differing subjects :

“ Of the lands of Albania and Libia. Of the
wishings for watching of the Sparrow-hawk: and of
Noah’s ship.”

Leaving the door into the hall wide open, and
placing his chair so that it faced the darkness with-
out, he drew the lamp toward him and began to read.
It was not till he came to the story of the Castle of the
Sparrow-hawk that he found, by the odd fatality
which is so often shown in trifles, and left out of
greater things, that he had chanced upon a ghost-story.

* And in that country,’’ wrote Sir John, “‘ ts an old
Castle that stands upon a rock ; the which is clept the
Castle of the Sparrow-hawk . .. where men find a
sparrow-hawk upon a perch right fair and right well
made, and a fair lady of faerie that keepeth it. And
who will watch that Sparrow-hawk seven days and seven
nights. .. . Without company and without sleep, that

fatr lady shall give him when he hath done, the first

thing that he will wish of earthly things ; and that hath
been proved often times.

  

PPIve tat MrT ttt hoe teetpreste sores ir itt Ferereney PeeenT eenTHE ELUSIVE- LADY 115

“ And one time befell, that a King of Armenia, that
was a worthy knight and doughty man, and a noble
prince, watched that hawk some time. And at the end
of seven days and seven nights the lady came to him and
bade him wish, for he had well deserved it. And he
answered that he was great lord enough and well in
peace, and had enough of worldly riches ; and therefore
he would wish none other thing, but the body of that fair
lady to have it at his will. And she answered him, that
he knew not what he asked, and said that he was a fool
to desire that he might not have ; for she said that he
should not ask but earthly thing, for she was none
earthly thing, but a ghostly thing. And the King said
that he ne would ask none other thing.”

The legend concluded by telling how the lady put
a curse upon him for his boldness, so that “ never
since, neither the King of Armenia nor the Country
were never in peace ; ne they had never sith plenty of
goods ; and they have been sithen always under tribute
of the Saracens.”

Laying down the book to light a comfortable pipe,
the young man spent some amused moments in
thinking over this singular reason for the misfortunes
of a people, misfortunes that have certainly endured
to the present day. Then taking up “ The Travels ”
again, he re-read the story of the fair lady who called
herself “ a ghostly thing.”” It was an odd coincidence.
He pulled out his watch. Only ten o’clock ! Did one

always have to wait till the accepted hour of midnight
for ghostly happenings? he wondered. Then he
remembered how the hum of the spinning-wheel had
sounded from the “haunted room” at an earlier
hour than this.

He went to the door, out into the dark hall, and
listened intently. Nothing stirred in the great empty116 THE ELUSIVE LADY

house, but outside the wind was rising. It sighed in
the bare branches of the trees with an infinite melan-
choly, as of a creature whose wings were tired, as if
now and then it must perforce sink to earth to rest
them.

He turned back again, and finding that he was
prosaically hungry all at once, poured out a glass of
wine and ate a sandwich; then lowered the lamp,
finally extinguishing it altogether.

The fire, fallen now into a mass of embers, lit the
room with a steady but subdued glow. The night
was so mild that he decided to let it go out entirely.
He had matches, and in his pocket was a small electric
torch.

Having thrown over his knees the rug that Mr.
Warrenger’s kindness had. provided, he settled himself
in the armchair to wait, his eyes on the dark doorway.

He had no memory of his eyes closing, but he
started up as if from a blow to find the fire completely
out, and the room surging with a feathery darkness.
The rug had slipped from his knees, and it seemed to
him that the air had grown intensely cold. A strong
icy current was sweeping through the room—pro-
bably, he told himself, the draught from the open
door to the fireplace.

The sudden plunge from sleep had unnerved him
for the moment, so that he did not wait to strike a
match, but hurriedly turned on the little torch. His
watch said five o’clock. Five o’clock! He simply
could not believe it, that he had stupidly, ignomini-
ously slept through the greater part of what was to
have been a unique night! He gave an exclamation
of annoyance—then held his breath, the nerves of his
skin pringling as from an electric contact. Still
holding his breath, he listened, but the blood soTHE ELUSIVE LADY 117

rushed past his ears that he seemed trying to listen
through the noise of surf. Then, distinctly, domin-
antly it reached him, a low, minor chord rising and
falling, pausing, then repeating itself again.

Fle went as if drawn by some magnetic force he
could not resist—as if impelled by the icy current in
which he stood—out of the door along the hall, down
the corridor towards the Spinning-room, and as he
went, the memory of Melany’s dream rushed over him,
and he thought, “I am dreaming of a dream. This
isn’t happening.”’

But this was only for a second ; in the next he put
out all his will-power, clutched himself hard, realised
where he was and what he was doing, and that his
own will and nothing else impelled him.

He went through the first chamber where the
portrait was into the Spinning-room, and stopping
in the middle of the floor, turned his torch slowly
about him. There was no sound, no stir of any sort.
The wheel stood motionless where Melany had left it.
He even noticed that the band was still wrapped
about the ‘‘ head.” )

Turning off the torch he remained quite still in
the darkness, listening as if with a sense finer than
that of his body. He stood there for some ten
minutes, then turned slowly towards the door,
guessing his direction. He was rather flatly sure now
that he had imagined that sound, with perception
muffled by sleep; still, he would “give her her
chance,” as he put it in his thought, with a mocking
irritation for his asinine flounderings in the slough of
sleep. The least he could do was not to light up her
mystic chamber again with the beastly commonplace’

of an electric torch.
Then it was that it came, with nerve-shattering118 THE ELUSIVE LADY

suddenness—a pang of sound, sharp as a stiletto
through the darkness, ringing, vibrating, keeping up
with a congealing insistence of reality its clear note.

He whirled to face it, aiming the white light like a
weapon at the spot whence it had come.

The glare fell on the “‘ subject ” clock below the
sampler, revealing its every delicate curve’ and
chiselling ; and as Radford stared, with clenched
teeth and damp forehead, the golden figure lowered
its mask and the ivory death’s-head turned slowly
towards him.CHAPTER XVII

OR some seconds he stood, in the immemorial
phrase, “rooted to the spot with horror”;
it was so terribly, so odiously different from
anything that he was prepared for, this living move-
ment of dead matter that had been always ‘‘ dead.”
Then, with a sense of being jerked to ordinary
consciousness from the slime of nightmare, he per-
ceived that the clock was ‘ going.” From whatever
cause, the mechanism had been set in motion, and it
was its astounding effect that he was now witnessing.
This effect, though, was still ghastly enough: the
faint ticking of the old timepiece in that sinister
stillness of the haunted room was like the sudden
beating of a heart from a closed coffin; and the stiff
movement of the figure above it horribly suggested
the movements of a bewitched corpse.

But though the chill of his first dread was still upon
him, Radford watched the extraordinary pantomime
with an absorbed curiosity. The figure, after having
lowered its mask and turned on him its expressionless
grimace, had begun little by little to sink with its
wheel into a hollow space behind the enamelled
“rock”? that had supported it. It disappeared
entirely, and there was for a second or two only the
faint ticking of the clock. Then slowly there began
to emerge, from the space where it had disappeared,
first the foliage, then the lovely perfection of a flower
—a, full-blown rose, so exquisite in its artifice that the
enamelled petals seemed transparent in the roundSET.

    
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

120 THE ELUSIVE LADY

of electric light. There was a click, a whirr, then
silence. The clock had stopped again.

As he stood there, fascinated by this lively
dénouement of an episode that had begun in stark
horror, a conviction began to steal over Radford with
the slow sureness of a rising tide. There was a
meaning in it all, a message. The rose, blooming so
sweetly above that vanished image of death, meant
something, something for him in particular—was
there as a sign, a token, a guarantee. He noticed
suddenly, with an inner start, that its colour had
changed; it had at first an almost vermilion glow,
now it had taken on a tone of mauve. At the same
time he realised that the whole wall above it was
lighter, and, glancing round, he saw that the dawn had
come, was filtering in through the faded green of the
venetian blinds.

He shut off his torch and turned again to the
mysterious rose that now revealed itself palely,
purely pink in the cold daybreak. It was, indeed, a
lovely reproduction of the old-fashioned rose called
~ damask ”’—the flower she had loved best. He
sensed its meaning, the whole amazing purpose of it
all. ‘There, alone with the dawn and the mystic
flower, his thoughts had the simplicity of a child’s
working out a fairy-tale. The hand that from that
strange “ other world ’ could reach to turn a spinning-
wheel, had set the quaint mechanism of the clock once
more in motion, had caused the image of death to
disappear and the rose of life to bloom above it as a
sign of good-will, of the withdrawal of enmity. Had
he not come to “ have it out with her,’”’ to seek issue
with her for the sake of the one he loved and whom
she had so darkly obsessed? And was not this her
message of capitulation? her beautiful admission

  

  

te TELUS M ILM LTL TET SST STE TE este cesreceey Trt TT careers PRORCmRT ER TUept TS Senet REETHE ELUSIVE LADY 121

to him that her power was less than the power of his
love? The hour had struck, the hour that marked
the relinquishment of her weird sovereignty, that set
the rose of life where death had reigned,

His thought grew in clearness with the growing
daylight, until when at last he turned to leave the room
that was now so gaily empty of any “ presence ”’ save
that of the first sunbeams, he had a twinge almost of
remorse for having so thoroughly ‘“‘ exorcised ” her.
How would she fare now, where would she wander—
the passionate earth-bound ghost of the woman who
had written that she would ‘“ beat her head against
the golden pavement and blaspheme until God cast
her out again on the red soil that she adored ”?? For
he found himself, in the first hour of a new day,
believing in the existence of her bodiless ghost as
firmly as he believed in the ghost within his own flesh.

He went again to look at her portrait, and again
he spoke aloud to it :

Forgive me,” he said, “‘ forgive me that love is
stronger than death.”

The inscrutable eyes, sweetly, even languidly
malicious, held him with their sidelong gaze. From
the mere painting of her face there emanated such a
suggestion of will, bottomless and indomitable, that
he could scarcely credit its submission to any power.
And yet—she had withdrawn. The surrounding air
was as empty of her as though she had never been.
He felt it as one feels that one lives. He was there
quite alone with the semblance of her body. Her
spirit was as utterly absent as though it had retreated
to some star in another universe.

With this last emphasising of his first conviction
there leaped in him the triumphant joy of what this
would mean to Melany. His experiment, thought ofTHE ELUSIVE LADY

in perplexed desperation, had gloriously succeeded.
Even she would feel the fulness of its result, must
become aware of the positive, complete banishment
of the influence that had so long terrorised her. As if
to accent his inner jubilation, he flung wide the
shutters, letting in the full effulgence of an east all
gold and scarlet. The morning, clear as ice, was like
a promise. No shred of mist had been left by the
wind that had also blown away the last softness of
Indian summer. It was like a different world from
yesterday’s—a, world swept and garnished, fresh and
sharp, supremely, cheerfully the world of natural
happenings, of the tried, delightful “‘ every day.”

But he had scarcely looked on it a moment before
he saw something that sent him flying from the place.
This was nothing less than the figure of Melany
herself, who stood on the terrace, gazing, with God
knew what apprehension, at the window of the room
where he had passed the night.

And when he pounced on her like a whirlwind,
clasping her to him, he found—the touching homeli-
ness of it !—that there was something in her arms
already—a Thermos bottle of hot coffee.

“In case,” she explained between tears and
laughter, “‘ you should still be there, you know.”

* Ah,” cried he unable to keep it back for
a quieter disclosure, “‘ it’s she who’s not there!”

And as she looked i him from under the hood of
her cloak, trying to make out hether this was one of
love’s tender lies, he began to draw her towards the
house.

~ Come, if you don’t believe me, come and feel
for yourself! You'll know . . . the moment you're
over the threshold you'll hooey y»

He almost lifted her over, then rushed about

122

 

RL MIL inti tt reer site tras peste TyTHE ELUSIVE LADY 128

opening the shutters of every window in the hall.
The dawn poured in its ruddy light as if from a huge
hearthstone.

~ You feel it? You feel it?” he kept saying.
He came back to her, looked eagerly into her face,
pushing back the hood.

~ Can’t you almost see it?” he repeated. ‘“ The
emptiness, the clearness she’s left ? ”

But he saw that he was bewildering her with his
excitement, so he said:

“ Never mind—wait a little. Come in here and
Pll light a fire, and then we'll drink that coffee you’ve
brought, like a darling seraph! And when you're
quite warm and comfy I’ll tell you the whole story.
By George! It 1s a story!) 17

Over that queer meal, than which surely no lovers
ever partook of a queerer, in the sunrise that now filled
the old room with gay domestic friendliness, he told
her of his night’s adventure and its astonishing
conclusion. Not till they stood hand in hand before
the clock, however, with its enamelled rose replacing
the image of Time as Death, did the last shadow slip
from her face, leaving it one pale gleam of wondering
love.

“And it’s you who’ve done this for me!” she
cried at last in a voice of soft yet passionate triumph.
“Ah, I felt something of what you would do for me,
that first day—but I never dreamed of this!”

‘““And yet,” said Radford, smiling, “it was that
first day I began to love you.” ,

She kept the sweet gravity of her wonder.

‘**It’s all a miracle,” she breathed, “a beautiful
miracle, .... Then, flushing suddenly: ~ Youre
my saviour, and you’ve turned the waters of Marah
into wine for me!”124 THE ELUSIVE LADY

That evening they told Mr. Warrenger of their
engagement, and his unaffected delight added to their
joy. He, too, it seemed, had had “‘ a premonition.”
When, on the following day, Radford, to whom the
idea had occurred in the night, disclosed as another
surprise, which he felt would delight the old man, his
intention of buying “Her Wish,” Mr. Warrenger
actually embraced his future son-in-law.

My dear boy!” he exclaimed, ‘“‘ now that you’ve
so gallantly proved that that charming old place is
not the habitation of spectres, what more could I wish
than to see my children’s children playing there!
Ah, my dear, my fine lad,” he concluded, “‘ you little
know what a burden you have lifted from my heart
by bringing happiness to my Melany.”’

(But Melany herself received the news of the
intended purchase with one of her most startled looks.

‘You want to buy it—for us to live in?” she
asked.

..° I want to give it to you as my wedding-gift,”
answered Radford.

But at this she had all her old dismayed recoil.

“No, no!” she exclaimed earnestly. “It’s you
it must belong to—if you really feel you must have it.
To give it to me would . . .” She shivered just as
she used to before he had ‘exorcised’? the other
Melany. ‘“ Yes, I am sure it would spoil everything.”

~ But I thought—except for what’s gone now—
you loved the old place so dearly ? ”

“I do love it,” she admitted. ‘It’s in my blood
to love it; and yet . . .”

\“* And yet ’?’ he prompted.

‘She gave a perturbed sigh.

‘For me to live there . *. . wouldn’t it be, after
all——to risk angering her again? ”

 

 

SeTHE ELUSIVE LADY 125

My dearest girl,” Radford exclaimed buoyantly,
~ she isn’t there to be angered!”

It ended by her leaving it to him, only she would
not hear of the deed of purchase being made out in her
name ; and by the middle of December everything was
settled, and “Her Wish” the property of Evan
Radford, Esquire, of Buckleigh, Mass.

~ You see,” he told Melany with a lover’s plee,
~ how much better J love you than Geoffrey Branton
loved his Melany! I don’t own a rood of land in New
Kneland except what my father’s house stands on,
and here I’ve bought two thousand acres of the red
earth of Virginia just because you love it and sprang
Pron 16 17? Ae

She had a retort for this so perfect that it could
only be answered by a kiss.

* Ah,” she said, “‘ but J, too, love you far better
than she loved him—for I love you more than the
whole earth and all that’s in it!”

   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
   
 

ee a Te

|
|
ee
—CHAPTER XVIII

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
 
 

ND now began a time of great pleasure for
them both. Radford was bent on restoring
to “ Her Wish” as nearly as possible the

exact guise that it had worn in the height of its
prosperity. In order to do this old furniture had to
be hunted up in Virginia and New York, even in
Kingland. On discovering, in one of the letters which
filled Mr. Warrenger’s bookcase-desk to overflowing,
that the Spinning-room had been “right tastefully
garnished by my daughter Melany, in puce and
apple-green sarcenet,’’ nothing would do but that
they should procure old stuffs that displayed these
colours. A sufficient quantity of material answering
more or less this description was found by an antiquity-
dealer in London to whom Radford wrote, also a
charming old set of chairs and a sofa belonging to the
period.

When all these different articles began to arrive,
so great was Radford’s interest and so keen his desire
to make the place into something that would allure
Melany into forgetting her old dread, that he took up -
his quarters in “Her Wish” house. His man, a
shrewd, adaptable Belgian named Blanc, had rejoined
him, and he engaged by the day such other servants
as were necessary for the rougher work.

He had succeeded in tracing here and there in
Virginia a considerable amount of the old Horse-
manden silver, and it was a service that had belonged
to the first Melany herself that Blanc arranged one

 

Ie LveoL Lull actin Titer rier te rer este esnercat Tr TTL Per esees PReRCRRT PST Spt Rett ht OteRenEney See eneT ET eenTHE ELUSIVE LADY 127

afternoon in the Spinning-room, against the arrival
of his master’s fiancée to tea.

The afternoon was a biting one towards the first
of March, with a low grey sky that let through gleams
of sullen orange, and ground ringing to the tread
like metal.

Radford, eager and exhilarated in his part of
* host,’? moved about the room giving last touches,
now to the tea-table, now to the curtains of “ puce
and apple-green.’’

Mr. Warrenger was to have come with Melany to
this small house-warming, but when Radford looked
from the window for at least the tenth time he saw
that she was mounting the front portico alone. He
went to meet her, and she explained that a twinge of
lumbago had kept her father at the last moment,
greatly to his disappointment. Much as Radford
liked the old gentleman, he wasn’t at all averse from
having Melany quite to himself on such an occasion.

Telling Blanc that he would ring if he needed
anything, he led the girl in triumph along the corridor
to the rooms that had once been haunted-—and, for
her, so terribly haunted.

The breakfast-room charmed her with its old
ehintzes and china, but when he pushed aside the
curtain from the doorway leading to the Spinning-
room she gave a little gasp of admiration. It would
truly have been hard to imagine anything more lovely
than this room had now become, with its ameublement
as in a picture by John Morland, and the faded
Aubusson carpet that seemed literally to strew her

way with flowers. A bright fire burned on the
hearth, the tea-kettle chirruped like a fantastic bird.

Oh,” she cried, “‘ you’ve made it look happy as
well as beautiful! I never thought it could look to128 THE ELUSIVE LADY

me like this!’? And as she went towards the tea-
table she told him prettily that it was a lover’s thought
to put flowers under her feet in March.

‘Yes, but I meant to have real flowers for you,

’ he said regretfully. ‘‘ Jnly Blane assures me
he’s ’phoned twice to the station, and they’ve certainly
not come. There, however,’ he ended, brightening
with a glance at the old clock, “‘ is the rose, our rose of
assurance which can’t fade.”

She followed his look, her hand on the silver kettle
where the other Melany’s hand had so often rested.

‘* It’s like a fairy-tale,” she said pensively. “‘ Who
would believe it ? ”

‘It’s our fairy-tale and we believe it, and that’s
enough, isn’t it ?’’ he smiled, bending to kiss her hand.

“ 'That’s everything,’? she murmured.

“And to the very end,”’ he continued gaily, “‘
will be a perfect fairy-tale, for we’re going to ‘live
happy ever after.’ ”’

‘* My own love, my dear love,” the girl whispered,
laying her hand on his shoulder as he knelt beside her,
*“‘ Tm so afraid the gods, or the fairies ’’—-she smiled a
little uncertainly-—“‘ will get jealous, for one oughtn’t
to worship a mortal, you see!”

“Ah, have you ever read the English Marriage
Service?” Radford asked. “ There’s one lovely
thing at least in it: ‘ With my body I thee worship.’
And that’s how I love you, too, my dearest.”

He paled suddenly, and she thought it was with
love for her, so her eyelids drooped to hide their dark
delight ; and further to conceal it she began to pour the
hot water from the kettle upon the tea-leaves in the
little silver pot. The smoky fragrance of Souchong
rose warmly, but there was a stronger fragrance in the
room that overpowered it—at least, for him,THE ELUSIVE LADY 129

He got to his feet and went and stood near the
fire, glancing about the room, and then at her. Very
composedly, with the sure, graceful movements that
he loved, she was pouring more water into the teapot,
having waited a moment for the tea to “ brew,” and
with her other hand arranging the cups and sugar-
basin more to her convenience. There was no
slightest sign on her grave yet happy face that she
was aware of anything unusual. 7

Yet that perfume grew and grew. It was exactly
as if someone with a great armful of freshly gathered
damask roses had entered the room, as if-—and now,
had Melany been looking at him, his pallor would
surely have startled her-—as if this someone had
drawn near the fire and were standing close to him,
while the heat of the flames drew forth the perfume
of the roses that she held until he could have sworn
the blossoms almost touched his face. }

“ Le thé est servi, monsieur,” the girl called gaily,
and held out a smoking cup to him.

Radford took it from her and stood stirring it, his
eyes on her face, with what she suddenly observed
was a rather strange look.

“ What is it?” she asked quickly. ‘‘ What are
you thinking of ? ”

He smiled with an effort, and said:

© Nothing much. I was only wondering if Blanc
hadn’t made a mistake about the roses I ordered, if
they hadn’t come after all, you know, and got left
about somewhere in the box. We’ve unpacked such
a lot of boxes to-day, he might have got confused.
I think I'll just ring and ask him.”

He pulled the cord of an old-fashioned bell near
the chimney as he spoke. They could hear its faint
tinkle somewhere far away. Melany, sipping her tea
I130 THE ELUSIVE LADY

contentedly, gave him a little glance and headshake
over the cup.

“Take care!’ she smiled. ‘‘ You mustn’t spoil
me too much. ‘The fairies are jealous of mortals.”’

Blanc had appeared at the door.

‘“¢ Monsieur a sonné? ” he inquired.

Radford explained that it had occurred to him
that one of the under-servants might have put the
box of flowers somewhere and forgotten it—perhaps
in this room.

* Tei, monsieur ?”’ asked the man, looking blankly
about.

“ Oui, c’est ce que j'ai dit,” said Radford with some
impatience. ‘“‘ Dans une de ces armoires, peut-éire,”
he ended, pointing to one of the corner-cupboards.

‘“‘ Mais pardon, monsieur, elles soni toutes vides,”
Blanc replied, and opened them in succession to prove
his statement.

‘“* Bien,” said Radford ; ‘‘ alors c’est tout. Merci.”

Blanc went out with a correctly expressionless face
(his idea was to resemble as closely as possible a valet
Anglais), but his Gallic heart felt sympathy for his
master, who was evidently so much in love that this
faute @arriver of an offering to his lady made him pale
as over some really tragic event.

‘* You dear ! ’”’ cried Melany, when Blanc had gone,
laughing softly. ‘“‘ One would think those flowers
were a necklace of rubies ! ”

“IT hate to fail in anything I try to do for you,”
he said in a low voice, turning and going over again
to the fire.

The scent of roses, which had somewhat died
away, came waiting near again—nearer—now warm
as with the fiames: he could almost feel the effiewre-
meni of their petals. He gazed at the enamelled roseTHE ELUSIVE LADY 181

upon the clock, Was it possible that in some un-
heard-of way it distilled this living fragrance? He
leaned closer. No. Its enamelled petals were quite
Scentless ; and suddenly, for the first time, he felt that
presence so often described to him by the girl now
quite unconscious of it—a presence as real as her own,
near him, near enough, indeed, to be just not touching
him. He could not have told what precisely were his
sensations—excitement, an unsuppressible curiosity,
the queerest flattered emotion as of one “ singled
out,’’ but most of all dread for Melany—his Melany,
who sat there so unconscious Sipping her cup of tea.
It must penetrate to her finally, this wonderful,
fresh, honeyed yet pungent fragrance. ... And
then? . . . He simply couldn’t face what this “ then ”’
might hold for them both.

And he was helpless, for if he suggested that they
Should go she would at once suspect something. He
could not even propose, with an effect of naturalness,
a turn through the gardens that he had begun to
restore, for a bleak wind with the edge of a chipped
Tazor was tearing through the shrubbery, and the
sun had withdrawn even those dull tatters of orange
which had been gleaming when she came.

But how, then, was he to “ go) on’ 777? In) that
presence he felt awkward, ill at ease, as though one
Should contemplate ‘‘ making love”’ in the presence
of a third person alive and visibly mocking.

Somehow he felt sure that “ she” was mocking
him; not fiendishly at all, but with a quiet sense of
amusement in her power over him.

She certainly had power over him to the extent of
making him feel rigid and unnatural. He glanced at
one of the empty chairs near the hearth. He imag-

ined her so vividly seated iin it, the roses across herSa anc ae :
east ; , oct a

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

 

182 THE ELUSIVE LADY

lap, her black, sweetly-malicious eyes fastened on him
with a sort of lazy triumph, that for an instant it was
almost as if he had actually seen her there.

But what, in the name of all that was most eerie,
did it mean, this sudden manifestation of herself to
him, while shutting out, as she was indubitably doing,
the girl whom she had formerly so tormented ?
What, then, was the real message of the rose that he
had read so differently ?. Was it the oddest instance
that surely had ever happened of mischievous,
spritish trickery, or had it meant some other thing ?
Was it still before him to “ have it out with her”?

One of the strangest facts about the whole im-
pression——and all these thoughts which take so long
to record in written words had come to him during a
moment in quick flashes—was the fact that his sense
of her being there wasn’t in the least gruesome. Ifa
man who believed in fairies were to think that
Melusine wearing the cap of invisibility had drawn
near him he would feel much as Radford felt. All
that could be called an approach to gruesomeness in
the extraordinary experience was his sense of the
dreadful danger—as she would think it—of this
presence so close to Melany, and yet of which she
remained so totally unaware.

RCSL AL UL TUT rit ioe tere iste eee etic 1 Lert cemees ener eTCHAPTER XIX

N spite, however, of his feeling no fear at this
perfumed manifestation—she had certainly a
charming way of announcing her presence !—

a chill had come over his mood. He could not have
kept up the tone with which he had welcomed Melany
if both their lives had depended on it. That em-
barrassment as of a lover under the cynical regard of
a third person paralysed all spontaneity, and he was
relieved beyond words when Melany herself solved
his dilemma by asking him to show her over the
house—everything that he had been doing, iy

The strange fragrance did not follow them from
the room, but the spell that it had laid upon him
lingered all during Melany’s visit ; and even after he
had walked home with her, in the orange light that
had flared again at sunset.

He returned earlier to “‘ Her Wish” that evening
than was his custom. He felt the need of being alone,
of threshing out for himself the peculiar riddle of this
wilful, unexpected return. .

He sat long in the room where he had held his
vigil four months ago, a room now one of the
pleasantest in the house, with its fire-drawn scent
of old leather bindings, its time-toned rugs and
demask draperies: and he came to the conclusion
that after all, in a way, she had kept the compact
suggested by the rose. She had not revealed her
presence to Melany. THe was still, as he had said he
would always be, “ between them.” But this veryfi
1}
i
tt

if
if
if
if
i

   

184 THE ELUSIVE LADY

fact was just what was so perplexing. For what,
then, had she come again? Was it for something
that only a living being could do for her, that he could
do for her? Some question he could answer, some
assuagement of her wilful spirit by an act done in
accordance with its wishes ?

The old desire to come into closer contact with her,
to see, to hear if possible, was upon him stronger than
ever. After all, there was no disloyalty to his
Melany in this desire. Since he hadn’t been able to
exorcise the other as completely as he had thought
at first, what choice was there between weakly sub-
mitting to a vague “ hantise’’ and seeking, or rather
willing—since he didn’t in the least know how to
“‘ seek ” such a thing, a more explicit revelation? If
she would only make known to him her purpose, the
object that she must have in her strange return. ...

He rose finally, and went to the Spinning-room.
It was still warm, though the fire had died into ashes.
He rekindled it himself, not caring to call Blanc for
such a service at that time of night, and sat there in
the firelight until one o’clock, waiting, hoping, in the
end eagerly longing for some sign of her presence.

None came. The perfume of roses had entirely
dissolved. There was no faintest inkling of anything
beyond the personality of an unusual room accent-
uated by firelight.

But, a week later to the day, something occurred
which at the time quite overcame him.

Melany had just left that afternoon for a visit to
a cousin who lived in New York. They were to be
married in May, and she had gone to make certain
purchases for her trousseau. He returned from
acco apanying her to the station and entered ‘‘ Her
Wish”? at that hour before the lamps are lighted,THE ELUSIVE LADY

when the dusk is most confusing to one who has just
come in from the brighter atmosphere without.

When he was halfway up the curve of the main
staircase he’ became suddenly aware of that perfume
of damask roses. The next instant, drawn swiftly,
delicately across his face, he felt the contact of the
flowers themselves. He stood stock still, petrified by
that soft but terrific touch of something that was
unreal yet tangible—petrified all but his heart, which
gave one sick bound, then beat to suffocation.

And as he stood there he seemed to hear light feet
running up the stair before him. What he did hear,
beyond all question of his dismayed senses, was, in
the far distance above, a laugh, faint but clear,
ascending a little scale, then stopping short.

He found himself later in the room, not at all
remembering how he had got there, lighting with a
hand that shook the lamp beside his bed. When a
moment after Blanc tapped at the door, having come
for a like purpose, he could just summon enough
naturalness of voice to say that he didn’t wish
anything; yet such was his craving—a craving as
apart from his will as thirst or hunger—for the near-
ness of some human creature, that he had to make a
prodigious effort not to call the man back when he
heard his footsteps dying away along the passage.

He had wished to see, to hear, but this unspeak-
able, actual contact with something thrust as from a
fourth-dimensional fulness—a “‘ plenum ”’ such as the
ancients spoke of and through which living beings
moved unaware, themselves like phantoms to the
subtler yet more real essence of its denizens—this
he had not bargained for. As to that, he had not
‘bargained ” for anything ; there’was no agreement,
tacit or explicit, between him and the being who hadTHE ELUSIVE LADY

so inexplicably selected him for what he could only
think of as her mocking experiment. Indeed, the
more he reflected on it the more it struck him as being
an experiment on her part of just how far she could
penetrate the dense veils of non-consciousness that
screened off his grosser everyday world from her more
rarefied but as real sphere.

As this conviction gained possession of him he
became also aware of an immense curiosity closely
knit with a shrinking equally great. He had read
enough about such matters and discussed them
sufficiently with men of undoubted standing in the
scientific world to know that they were often attended
by danger, even by horrors, when pushed to the
extreme of the brink on which he stood. And he
brooded with wonder on the fact that the light touch
of a ghostly flower in the darkness had filled him with
more consternation than the coiling of a real snake
would have done; there had been in it something as
of a sinister coquetry that was more appalling than
the rudest violence.

One profound unmixed feeling emerged at last out
of all this inner turmoil—the feeling of thankfulness
for Melany’s absence. He would have three weeks to
himself in which to think out—fight out, if necessary
his way to a rational solution of his really un-
paralleled plight. He felt it'to be quite without its
equivalent in any history of the kind that he could
recall, modern or ancient, because of his position be-
tween the woman he loved and the phantom of the
woman who, for whatever cause, hated her so
implacably. He still, however, had also his first feeling
of being able to cope with her, “ward her off,” as he
had said.

Somehow, even in the recoil of all that was most

% re TH
MOCO eS SRR eae eu alTHE ELUSIVE LADY 137

normal in him from this latest manifestation of the
imperious will that had survived even death, he had
no fear of what she might do to him personally.

It was chiefly his failure to imagine even dimly her
object in thus revealing herself to him more and more,
while, as it were, insulating Melany from all perception
of her, that disturbed him most.

What shock and horror might she not be preparing
to spring, like some ghostly beast out of the jungle of
that dim “ other world,” straight at the breast of his
love ?

As he walked to and fro in his bedroorn, engrossed
with his effort to solve what was only too plainly an
unsolvable riddle, a phrase of Melany’s darted into

his mind: “ To propitiate her. . . .”
He caught at it, held it, scrutinising it from every
side. ‘To propitiate her... .” Certainly, if one

could, that would be a way out. To placate her, send
her “‘ back” satisfied, before the other returned.
More and more he felt sure that her persistent presence
meant that there was still something in this worid,
this particular combination of grosser elements, that
she desired, or at least wished to control.

Before going to sleep that night he had fully made
up his mind not, for the present, to resist her in any
way ; on the contrary, to lend himself by a quiescent
attitude to her evident desire for a clearer, more
intelligible intercourse.

   
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   

A ee ener res siiesiadain bidCHAPTER XX

IS was now the attitude of mind in which a
man ‘“ buried,” as one says, in an obscure,
lonely place awaits tidings by wireless of

some weighty event on which ‘his whole future
depends. He could not dispel his restlessness by long
rides and walks, for by leaving “ Her Wish ” for such
extended periods he would be lessening his chances of
coming more quickly into closer relations with the
personality that seemed as wilfully erratic in its
present form as it had been when living. Even the
hours that he felt it necessary to spend with Melany’s
father were a great drain on his nervous force. It was
so hard to keep up his accustomed tone of light-
hearted gaiety as became a happy bridegroom elect.
One day, as he was returning jaded and downcast
after one of these visits, a thought came to him, quite
overwhelming in the simple commonplace solution of
the whole thing that it offered. He was astounded
that it hadn’t come to him before. It was merely the
realisation of the fact that no one who had bought
“Her Wish” had been able to live there a year.
Might not this be her sole object—to drive him away
as she had driven the “‘ Brooklyn person” and his
successors? One thing was certain, that if she
continued to pursue him he couldn’t continue to live
at “ Her Wish.” . . . If he could only convey to her by
some means his perfect willingness to give it up, and then
see whether her arbitrary, fitful visitations would cease!
He rode his horse to the stables and dismounted
there, returning to the house on foot. The day was

OTL ML EST tren eesy TE ree ty te cesreeert tr Tf | [eet eevneT eRtanT tT OeEE PT Fo bt it Speen eg mer eres ET Een venta jureaee ret ares
(Secrest
r i;

Seaseanra

  

THE ELUSIVE LADY 139

very mild, full of that subtle stir of hidden life—the
mounting of sap in the yellowing stems of willows, the
soft push of crocus buds—that is as if Spring had
turned in her sleep. His walk led him by the little
court where the fountain now gushed again, and he
stopped to watch a cardinal-bird that was drinking
from it. Then, seeing that a blue-bird and some
Sparrows were waiting their turn in a tree near by, he
sat down on the bench under the Spinning-room
window, yielding to the happy charm that birds
always had for him.

The hour was sunlit and very still, yet he had sat
there but a few moments before he was aware that
this stillness had increased in some extraordinary
manner that seemed to affect even the birds on the
fountain-brim. They stopped drinking, darted their
heads uneasily, and were suddenly gone. And the
stillness grew and grew until there was in it a sense of
suffocation.

Under some impulse, probably akin to that which
had made the birds take such quick flight, he sprang
away from the bench and turned, facing the window.

She was there—the elusive, the amazing phantom
—there as any realest woman might have been,
leaning lightly on the window-sill, her marvellous hair
shining in the sunlight, her black eyes fixed on him
with a look that had in it mockery, amusement,
conscious power—ah, such power, and such conscious-
ness of it !—and, yes—he was not dreaming, nor was
he made—coquetry, the same incredible, breath-
taking coquetry there had been in the light stroke of
those spectral roses across his cheek.

It was fixed in his mind forever how a little tendril
of her red hair stirred in the breeze that rose like a
sigh from the utter stillness, then died away.Sree eerie eee eee <r
ns) atin He )

  

"140 THE ELUSIVE LADY

He stood staring, incapable of speech, incapable
even of thought, given up to the astounding sensation
of the moment, as a spent swimmer gives himself up
to the overwhelming sea. And there came to him
from her, not, as the old Quaker said of Cromwell,
a “ waft of death,” but a “ waft of life ” so thrillingly
abundant that in the living world about them it was
not she but all the rest that seemed what men call
medead.”

Still he stood there, held by that dark, ineluctable
gaze, shut in with her, as it were, by the weird stillness
as of an eclipse which seemed to have hushed all the
innumerable vague murmurings of everyday, leaving
them cut off as on an island of silence.

Little by little, like a half-awakened sleeper who
struggles to recall clearly a magic dream, but cannot
possess himself of any circumstance that befell in it,
only of the vague, enchanted atmosphere that has
drifted with him into wakefulness—little by little,
through the spell that numbed him, he grasped
weakly the conviction that what the window now
framed it had framed often before, that he was not
looking for the first time on that matchless, perverse
loveliness, but had marvelled before at it, standing
where he now stood. I have called it a “ conviction,”’
but it was scarcely that—rather a mystic apperception
which had come to him through what Giordano Bruno
called “the flower of the mind.”

And as it brushed him with its evanescent thrill of
something apprehended but not understood, she
smiled. |

He saw then not only the miracleof a faulty
mouth turned into perfect beauty by the curves of a
smile, but received from its mute eloquence a message
plain as words.THE ELUSIVE LADY 141

~ Foolish man,” it said, with its soft yet proud
‘imdulgence, “‘ I come to do you a favour, not to crave
one from you!”

As if she had cried it to him, he started, broke as
from the loosened clutch of ether into his normal
consciousness. But at his first step forward she
withdrew into the room beyond, yet as she went
turned on him over her shoulder the sweet malice of
sidelong eyes in which the smile that had faded from
her lips still lingered.

He saw distinctly the wave backward of the long
scarf or kerchief that she wore, and which until then
he had not noticed. It was not rose-coloured, but of
a dim, tender green like the flecks on a snowdrop. He
sprang recklessly to the window, but only in time to
catch a last gleam from that marvellous hair as she
passed into the next room between the curtains of the
doorway that fell together again, swaying a little just
as though some living woman had passed through
them.

Without pausing to think or reason, he swung
himself over the low sill as he had done on the day
the other Melany, his Melany, had spun for him, and
ran in the direction the phantom had taken.. But
there was no glimpse of her either in the next room or
the corridor beyond, only that densely sweet fragrance
of just-gathered roses that faded as he ran on, guided
by it, out of the house, down the path towards the rose-
garden, until it died quite away in the mild sunlit air.

He stopped then, and feeling all at once curiously
light and faint, threw himself on the grass, his hands
under his head, his eyes fixed on the serene pale blue
of the March sky, as if needing to look up into un-
measured heights after having run giddily along the
brink of an abyss as unmeasured. Yes, he had justTHE ELUSIVE LADY

that:swimming faintness of one who has been leaning
above a huge gulf with not so much as a cobweb
between him and an ultimate plunge into nothingness.

This sensation was distinctly a repercussion from
the numb trance which had been his state while
actually looking on her, meeting the inflexible,
ineluctable gaze of those black eyes, had been latent
in his spellbound wonder, and, now that the whole
miraculous happening was over, leaped up quivering
in him like a spring released.

He lay there gazing upward into the calm blueness,
until it dazzled with swarms of. little crystalline
globules ; then closed his eyes, feeling that he closed
in with them a secret that he did not wish to share
with the bland candour of that daylight blue. It was
the secret of his strange spiritual vertigo put into
words. Heknew.now that what his dizziness had con-
sisted of was a mingling of horror and fascination:
of horror that he couldn’t analyse, but that was
somehow made sweet by the wildness, the dual
irresistible quality of the fascination that accom-
panied it. It was as if, out of his own being, his own
substance, the exquisite spectre had created her
visible body ; as if this part of himself in her drew
him towards that which he had sensed afterwards
as a measureless abyss.

The mountaineer’s words, uttered on the night
when he had first heard the minor hum of her spinning-
wheel, came back to him:

“I felt as if she could draw me up through those
shutters like water.” That was it—“‘like water ”

- . as if the soul, the quintessential part of himself,
had flowed towards her like water. . . . Asif his secret
self had been a spring deep buried, and she had held
towards him a divining-rod of magic hazel

e ® e eCHAPTER XXI

HEN he had recovered from the state f

queer, almost light-headed exhaustion

that had followed his first encounter wi h

her visible seeming, he pondered with a more normal
outlook on its significance.

That strange message that her smile had sent to
him over the impalpable threads: that certainly
stretched between them, puzzled him more and more.
What favour could she, in the name of all things sane
and blessed, have it in her power to bestow upon him ?
Wasn’t the greatest favour possible to imagine that
she could do him, just the withdrawal of herself across
the border that separated his commonplace world
from her inconceivable one? And yet, as he thought
this, he was conscious of a desire to see her, if only once
again ; to have with his vision of her a more complete
understanding of its object; to have her express it to
him, with that strange telepathic silence, quite fully.

He could not now, recalling the fact but not his
sensation at the time, make out why there had been
‘horror ” in his feeling, for her look while mocking
had not been malevolent. What had struck him as
the ‘‘ sweet malice’ of even her pictured eyes had
been only the malice of one who knows an extra-
ordinary secret, withheld from others, but that
concerns them. ‘This expression had been also in the
_long look she had given him from the window, but it
had no threat in it, no hostility.

As the days and nights went by with no further
sign from her until almost another week had gone, his144 THE ELUSIVE LADY

nervous tension grew to such a pitch that he felt as if
a slow fever were harassing him. He could not bear
it, he felt, if before Melany’s return he had not come
to some definite adjustment of the incredible affair.
She would read the strangeness of his mind in her
first glance at him; she would question, she would
suffer all sorts of doubts and fears. To confess to
her would be to bring back redoubled all the torment
from which he had striven to save her.

He had reached the point now where he sometimes
spoke aloud when he was alone and sure no one would
overhear, trying to penetrate with his physical voice
the silent impalpability with which she, that other
Melany, had wrapped herself.

‘For God’s sake . . . in God’s name,” he would
say, “come and make metknow what it is that you
want... D0 am not afraid..." Come now. 3
Here. 5

And only the silence flowing gently about the
usual, homely sounds of everyday within and without
the old house would answer him.

When but five days lay between him and the time
of his Melany’s return, he felt justified in excusing
himself from his visits to Hilton under the plea of a
recurrence of the malarial fever from which he had
once suffered. He did, indeed, look rather ill, so
much so that Blanc ventured to suggest one morning :

‘“* Pardon, monsieur,,mais st monsieur consentirait
a voir un médecin? Monsieur a besoin dun tonique
quelconque ... jen suis sar.”

Radiord, with an irritability that convinced the
man still more of his master’s need of a doctor, replied
by advising Blane not to be an “ imbécile,” and
declaring that it was precisely this particular morning
that he happened to be feeling much better.THE ELUSIVE LADY

That day he spent much of his time in the Spin-
ning-room. It seemed to him as if here she might be
able to manifest herself more easily ; and though he
had near him some books that he wished to look over,
and a packet of neglected letters, he found that he
couldn’t concentrate his attention sufficiently either
to read or write.

As he sat there turning the wheel of his monoton-
ous thought which would only revolve about that one
subject, he found himself gazing at the beautifully
inlaid writing-desk in which had been found her last
letter to Geoffrey Branton. It had been removed
from her bedechamber and placed here with the other
objects that had belonged to her. He had gone
through it once to see whether it were quite empty,
but he had never examined it meticulously, and now
the thought came to him that perhaps there might be
some drawer, even “‘ secret compartment,” that he
had overlooked.

How strange it would be to find a scrap of her
handwriting, something perhaps that might bring her
nearer, that he might construe into a message. At
all events the search would help to pass this heavy
interval of waiting.

He rose and went over to the desk, determined
that this time no nook or cranny should be left
unexplored. The drawers in it seemed innumerable,
those at the top bearing the names of the different
months, spelled quaintly, as ‘ Aprill,” ‘‘ Novbr,”
ete. The lower half was shut in by doors, that when
opened disclosed a labyrinth of little compartments
and still other drawers.

After a half-hour spent in minute examination he
suddenly felt a rounded unevenness in the wood back

of a smal] drawer that he had quite pulled out. He
KCes
a

seahbbbhiaiea aiaseiiee

   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

146 THE ELUSIVE LADY

pressed hard on this unevenness with his thumb, his
heart quickening nervously, and was rewarded by no
less a sight than the “‘ secret compartment ” he had
conjectured. Now his heart beat with a vengeance !
He slipped in his hand and felt about in the darkness,
for the compartment was so far back that he couldn't
see its contents; there was something there...
something soft like fine velvet.

Taking it out, he saw that it was a glove, a woman’s
glove of soft undressed buckskin, having embroidered
on its back in tarnished gilt a sprig of broom.

He spread it out upon his own palm and sat
gazing at it, his blood ruffled as under a chill breeze
blowing from that other world where the hand that
had worn it now was—the hand that could yet touch
and dispose objects as it willed in this material world
where he was immovably fixed. It must have been,
indeed, a lovely hand that this glove had covered,
long and slight as the idealised hands of Vandyke. .. .
Why, he wondered, had she shut the glove away there
in that hidden place? Even as he wondered, how-
ever, he feit that he knew. It must have been a love-
token that she had given Branton in the early days of
their betrothal, and then demanded from him when
they parted. Some softness in the adamant of her
strange nature had kept her from destroying the poor
gage @amour, but her implacable pride had winced
from the sight of it, and so she had hidden it away in
that secure darkness, where it had lain for over a
hundred years.

As he sat gazing at it there stole over him the
most uncanny sensation of being in closer contact
with her than even this movingly personal fragment
could have ‘produced. It was almost as if she were
touching him—the poignant invisibility !_ He recalled

Tourists MIL eMC Tt ra Teer esr e eeterert T(t] Pet eonnty CRCuET ett vet Ht et etme Enes Sor eones eT Cera eventTHE ELUSIVE LADY 147

that impression of his first visit to the “ ghost-
garden,” that feeling as of rose-scented hair

blowing
against him, and at the same time there flashed in
him the conviction that this glove was not a mere

empty sheath—that it contained something | still
more personal, a relic even more closely intimate
than itself... ,

He slipped his fingers into the full gauntlet and
upward towards the palm. They touched a flat
silken object. Withdrawing it, he saw that it was a
little packet of the thin antique silk called “‘ sarcenet.”

Curiously elated, his pulses quickening again, he
put aside the glove and unfolded the faded silk.
What lay before him then, coiled round and round
upon itself like a lovely ruby-coloured snake, was a
tress of the finest, longest, reddest hair conceivable,
dulled a little as by the breath of time.

That night Blane was more than ever disturbed
over his master’s condition, for he would eat no
dinner, and though he retired early he did not go to
bed. The astute Belgian, whose real devotion to
Radford made him rather a Peeping Tom at times,
crept to his door as late as twelve o’clock and heard
him restlessly pacing to and fro. He did not dare
knock at such an hour, but, shaking his head fore-
bodingly, went back to his own quarters, determined
that next day he would make a clean breast of his
anxiety to “ce bon vieux, M. Varrengére.”

At one o’clock Radford, quite worn out with the
strain of unfulfilled expectancy, laid the glove with
its beautiful funereal contents on the little table
beside his bed.

The nights were still cold, though April had come
with largess of fruit-tree bloom and lilac-blossom soro) PEt a Loatiert titrate Ty Pritt rer

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

148 THE ELUSIVE LADY

profuse that it swayed down the branches with plumes
triple-clustered like Prince of Wales’s feathers,
Radford had kept up the fire in his bedroom by
stopping now and then in his nervous rovings to
throw on a handful of pine-cones or a bit of apple-
wood. Now, at one o’clock, it had dwindled into a
bed of coals, on which he placed a bough or two
before undressing. Somehow the fire kept him from
feeling so drearily, so—he had to ‘confess 1t—appre-
hensively alone. And he lay in the huge bed, which
had been one of the original articles of furniture left
in “‘ Her Wish,” with wide-open eyes, watching the
play of light and shadow on the white ceiling, thinking
how as a boy he had loved the winter because it gave
him that solace at night, and almost wishing that he
were a boy again. At least he had been free from
such experiences as now wrung him; though—even
then he recalled with a pale smile its spectral toy-like
woolliness—a ghost had appeared to him. Ah, if
she only would appear, and have done with it! ...
He was drifting off on the first soft current of
sleep when a rustling in the old chintz hangings that
hung about the head of the bed roused him. He had
seen a mouse run up them once in the daytime, and
he had almost a woman’s aversion to mice. He
was about to spring up when something caught his eye
that made him lie still as though seized by catalepsy.
Stealing slowly, delicately around the edge of the
curtain, which was held out from the bed by a gilded
rod, came a woman’s hand. He could see from
beneath his half-lowered lids, which he dared neither
to lift nor to close wholly, so great was his breathless
desire to lie motionless—the fine whiteness of its
texture in the brilliant firelight, and the gloss of the
nails like pale coral. Softly, cautiously it emerged,

PU ece Oram emer tite Stet) bt etiee tees Thee cack oTHE ELUSIVE LADY 149

till the supple roundness of the wrist was revealed,
then the curve of a lissom arm. This hand, ex-
aggeratedly lovely as in Vandyke’s idealisations,
reached slowly towards him—oh, how slowly !—
touched the table, pausing an instant, then creeping
across it with a wary, questing touch, nearer, ever
nearer to his face as it lay with its gelid look of a
death-mask, clay-white on the white pillow.

He could not have moved though one had come to
seal him in a coffin and bury him living in the earth,
He could not move or ery out, and yet he knew that if
that small hand touched him he would die. It was
not in mortal man to endure that touch and live.
And still it crept nearer, delicately, almost cunningly,
and with it stole an exquisite fragrance of dewy roses.
The skin of his cheek contracted as though at the
approach of a searing-iron; his heart seemed pressed
between splinters of ice; ice like powdered glass filled
his veins. It was death—death by sheer, unutterable,
unnamable terror that was approaching him with the
soft approach of that perfectly beautiful slender
hand; then, as he thought its touch was upon him,
as there was a sick swing of all his frozen consciousness
towards the depth of some measureless abyss, as softly
as it had stolen towards him it began to withdraw,
slowly, delicately, with little questing movements
that he could feel upon the pillow, until once more it
rested on the table.

Then he realised. It was for that lock of her hair
she had come. The wild surge of his blood as he
thought this gave him the pang with which sensation
returns to those who have been half-frozen. His
heart laboured so loudly that he was sick again for

fear she would hear it. But as if some benign
influence had intervened to keep him from death orsituated

ahaa he Ree eens

150 THE ELUSIVE LADY

madness, he saw the slight: fingers suddenly dart
and close with a grip as of passion on the silken
packet.

Now there was no more slowness; the white hand
had pounced like a white hawk; it was as quickly
withdrawn. He heard light steps, no longer cautious,
go rapidly to the door, pass through it, and die away
along the hall. . . . Ignominiously he swooned into
such abject depths of human weakness that the dawn
was white upon the ceiling when he regained con-
sciousness.

The next afternoon, still lying languidly in the bed
that had indeed been a “ bed of anguish ’’ for him, he
yielded to the combined entreaties of Blane and
‘* Monsieur Varrengére,”” whom the Belgian had
desperately sought out and implored to come to his
assistance with a master who was at once very ill and
very “‘ entété.” A doctor was sent for and arrived:
within an hour—an intelligent country doctor,
who pronounced Radford to be suffering either from
nervous shock or a sudden collapse from overwork.
When Mr. Warrenger explained that his future son-
in-law was a painter, and had come to Virginia for a
rest after an unusually arduous year of artistic labour,
Dr. Borridge looked enlightened. ‘‘ Then that’s it,
sure as sin,’ said he. “ These artist fellows are
always burning their brains at both ends. Painting
still in imagination, that’s what’s settled him.”

He forbade Radford to think of any subject even
remotely connected with his art, and left a powerful
heart and nerve tonic in the grateful care of Blane.

Radford had been quite willing to see the man of
medicine, for he had presupposed a tonic of some sort,
just as Blanc had; and for what his spirit was evidentlyTHE ELUSIVE LADY 15h

to be called on more and more to endure, his body
certainly needed, as Mr. Warrenger expressed it,
* bolstering up.”

After only two doses of the stuff he felt much
stronger, and it was with a huge relief, but a mortifica-
tion equally great at his own lack of ‘‘ stamina ” (the
doctor’s word), that he heard Blane moving about in
the next room, where he had taken up his quarters for
the night.i iW Hl

CHAPTER XXII

   
 
 
    
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

Y the next day he felt almost himself again,
though to his own eyes in the mirror
perceptibly thinner and paler than he had

been two weeks ago. Blanc was ordered, protesting,
to return to his former room in the back of the house.

Mais, monsieur,” he pleaded, “ monsieur a
encore Vair tres souffrant. . . .”

“ Vous m’agassez enfin,” his master had retorted,
“ avec votre air de vieille femme qui renifle la mort!”

The man had muttered with devoted impertinence
as he went, shrugging, to do as he was told:

“ Crest, peut-étre, que monsieur me rapelle un
squelette, tant il ’a maigri ces derniers jours |”

But although Radford had regained outwardly
his normal poise, he was inwardly still vibrating with
what he had felt as the unendurably close approach
of that from which by nature man is set furthest
apart.

The emotion that had seized him when he looked
on that wonderful tress of hair—the sense, when
touching it, that in some occult way he was touching
her—was as nothing compared to that dissolving of
the very spirit within him, when he had feared that
her hand, living again with a life so like and so unlike
the life by which he lived, was about to touch
him ae

And he wondered, half-stupefied by the vanity of
all conjecture in regard to such a thing, why she should
have come so secretly, in such overwhelmingly human

  

Te Meipa an Ulan ti Heper reset teeter ettcesrec ari rT EL teres yeaaTHE ELUSIVE LADY 153

guise, to take it from him. Was it that in some
mysterious way her power to reveal herself in the
actual world was interwoven with those shining
strands that had once been so exquisitely a part of
her earthly self? Had she feared that he might
destroy them? Or, perhaps, would their possession
have given him some hold on her? Some power to
draw her nearer than she cared to come? He had
for this an inward shudder oddly mingled with a sense
of the well-nigh ludicrous superfluity of any such fear
on her part. And the shudder renewed itself as he
remembered that touch of ghostly roses on _ his
cheeks...

The chief result of these vain musings was a
conviction that, whatever had been her object, his
object, now and always, must be to keep his will
ready to his need, like a sword.

With his breakfast there arrived a letter from
Melany that said she would be unavoidably detained
for another week. He felt as if he had been lightened
of at least half of the strange burden laid upon him.
With a whole week more before him he must be able
to arrive at some definite conclusion of the pre-
posterous matter. And he must not shirk a single
issue. If, as he now felt, it was to be his will against
her will, no other being’s will could help him. The
nearness of his servant, for instance, at night, would
only delay things. What he wanted was to quicken,
to precipitate them.

Yet though he gave her every opportunity by
remaining alone for hours, both within and without
the house, there was for two whole days no intimation
of her presence. He decided on the third day to go
down into the rose-garden at sunset, to go and stand
beside the grave over which by now the grass mustrea)

    
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

154 THE ELUSIVE LADY

be green as emerald. He had always avoided doing
this, hating the idea that connects the escaped spirit
with its dust. But he had sent for something that he
wished to place there—an armful of roses as near the
type of the old damask rose as was now produced.
Perhaps, after all, it was only that lock of hair that
she had come for, and having obtained possession of
it was now content. His offering of her favourite
flowers was to be half-propitiatory; half in recognition
of what might prove her final withdrawal. She had
given him as a sign arose. These roses would be his
sign to her of comprehension and good-will.

The grave, as he had imagined it, was beautifully
green, but as he stood looking down on it he felt that,
whether growing on a grave or on a hillside, there is
nothing more exquisitely melancholy than the first
grass of spring stirring gently under light airs. He
laid his roses on it, and was turning to come away
when he saw something swaying to and fro in one of
the rose-trees now in fresh leaf that hung above it.
He thought at first that it was an oriole’s nest, that
most delicately swung cradle in the world, but on
parting the branches he saw it to be a glove—a slender
glove of undressed buckskin, which had caught on one
of the thorns by a gilt thread of its embroidery.

Somehow he could not have been much more
startled had a pale hand emerged from the grave
itself, as if to draw closer its emerald coverlet. There
was in all these ghostly procedures something so
erratic, so capriciously without apparent reason. Why
in Heaven’s name—and Heaven’s name was one he
used often in those days, as if it were a protective
amulet—why, in the name of all that there must be of
logic even in the actions of one under the sway of
subtler laws, should she have taken away the glove,THE ELUSIVE LADY 155

to forget it there on a rose-bush over her own grave ?
And if she had not forgotten it, for what earthly or
unearthly reason had she left it there ?

Detaching it from the thorn, he looked to see if
the lock of hair were still within it. The glove was
empty ; of that splendid ruddy tress there remained
not even a strand... ). .

Suddenly there swept over him a quite different
sort of fear from any that he had yet felt; not
exactly the fear of madness, but the fear that he
might be the prey of nervous hallucination. He
remembered in that moment having read years ago
a little book on Demonology by Sir Walter Scott,
and especially a story in it of an hallucinated man who
saw phantoms and even heard them speak—a touch
more than he had yet experienced, thank God!
Somehow he felt that it would be far worse to be the
enteebled victim of such illusions than to suffer a
terrible but real extension of vision and perception
beyond the normal powers of man.

This glove was real enough, at all events, and yet
—might he not have dreamed the whole thing? He
had walked in his sleeo sometimes as a boy; mightn’t
he have walked to this very spot in his sleep, and hung
the glove there himself? He placed it finally in the
inner pocket of his coat, and taking the shortest way
back to the house, went up the stone steps and
entered the Maze. It struck him all at once that the
air was stifling between these dark walls of evergreen,
and that a heavy stillness saturated them like rain.
It was when he had reached the heart of the labyrinth
that, turning one of its abrupt angles between the high
enclosing walls, he came face to face with her. She
was standing about five yards away from him with
her head thrown back a little and one foot advanced.iil ek i pie

ae

rates

aaah tees bt ioe bdelendh

  

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

156 THE ELUSIVE LADY

In the intensity of her steady gaze there was a
difference. | Ineluctable }and proud as ever, it yet
contained also a sort of imperious pleading, as it were
a prayer that was half a command, a prayer to him
for something that he possessed and yet was hers by
an inalienable right.

With eyes held fast to hers, he could see at the
same time, from head to foot, the tall perfection of the
figure in its dim green draperies, the delicate, half-bare
arms straightened among the folds, with slight hands
clenched as if to help the intensity of her deep, diving
stare.

And he had again that appalling sense of being
poised on the brink of a measureless abyss. It was
as if the black eyes wailed to him:

~ De profundis! ... De profundis!” .

Now came the curious lightness, as if he stood on
air, as if the power of her look was all that held him
suspended above gulfs as dark and fathomless as her
eyes.
He broke, drenched with cold sweat by the terrible
effort, from the bands of silence that held him vice-
like.

“In God’s name what is it that you want ?”’ he
eried aloud; and was alone with the quiet afterglow in
the narrow walled passage.

With the strange feeling of exhaustion upon him
that he had before experienced, as if she had drawn
her visible seeming from the subtler substance of his
body, he managed to regain the house and Hie down
upon a lounge in the library. He had failed in his
supreme effort to communicate with her directly, but
he was conscious that she, too, had failed in some
effort directed towards him and that was also supreme.
It was as if she had abandoned another method forTHE ELUSIVE -LADY

this that she had just tried, and seeing its failure had
leaped back across the boundary over which he could
not follow.

He tried to puzzle out her meaning, and was
overwhelmed in the midst of his vain endeavour by
the most profound sleep that had come to him in
many a day.

He woke from it refreshed and calm. The
thought that woke with him was in itself invigorating :
* My will is as strong as hers. At least I can prevent
her from advancing on me, obsessing me, when I
summon all my will to my aid.”

But remembering that look, half of prayer, half of
command, and how it had seemed to cry to him, “‘ De
profundis !” a great pity wrung him. It was as if
he had failed himself as well as her in summoning all
his will to his own aid instead of to hers. Yet when
he remembered that unspeakable vertigo of the
spirit—which was like the dread of a bodiless con-
sciousness, shrinking from suction into the inmost
vacuum of lightless space—he felt that he had acted
from blind instinct, as a man half-etherised fights for
breath.

As after this nights and days succeeded each other
calmly, uneventfully, with a normal commonplaceness
that he had the inconsistency to feel emptily dull, it
seemed, indeed, as if that meeting in the close laby-
rinth of the Maze had been the final tug of two strong,
opposing wills, and that his had conquered. But it
was with a flat feeling at the smallness of the result
obtained by what must have been her prodigious
efforts so to reveal herself, that he tried to reconcile
his idea of her imperious will, directed in its finality
towards so petty an object as a lock of hair.

It contradicted his whole conception of hereee te)
sa eta haa

   

THE ELUSIVE LADY

character ; it contradicted the presentment of it in
| her pictured face; how much more was it contra-
| dicted by her face as he had actually seen it! Her
| look had been that of a rebellious angel bent on
plucking by her own might the heart from some
mysterious desire refused her by God Himself.

ea That abnormal restlessness came over him again,
HT much the restlessness of the man fighting against the
| a opium habit, who wills ardently, and at the same time,

i both to have and not to have the cherished poison.
The time between her last appearance and that
Bi fixed for his Melany’s return passed, however,
i | without the least sign from the capricious phantom.
ee He sighed as he left the house that last morning for
the station, under the oppressive sense that what he
knew he ought to feel as a deliverance insisted on
presenting itself as a frustration. In spite of the
undoubted completeness of her withdrawal he had an
odd sense as of a web incompleted, hanging in the air
i above him from some huge, invisible, and fateful loom.
He was wholly thankful, however, that in those
days of placid monotony he had recovered much of his
usual look. Even Blanc’s glances showed a restored
cheerfulness and the content with which one regards
a promising convalescent.

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
    

ereor b feritastata ut oietest titrant hearerCHAPTER XXIII

K drove alone to meet Melany, feeling that
the attention required by a fidgety pair
of greys would prevent her from making

too uninterrupted a study of his face.

Then when he had her close beside him he forgot
everything for a moment in the renewed sense of her
delicate, poetic charm that had in it always an
underlying pathos, that stirred as nothing else had
ever done the tenderest chords of his heart.

“ Ah, but you’re thinner, you’re thinner,” she kept
murmuring. “ You’ve been iller thanI knew. They
ought to have sent for me.”’

‘“* My dearest,’’ he rejoined lightly, “* you wouldn’t
have me miss you as I’ve done, and gain weight? I
assure you there’s been nothing more the matter with
me than just your absence.”’

The off-mare made a plunge at a little negro with
a shining pail who emerged suddenly from some
‘bushes. He was glad of the chance to let Melany’s
dissatisfied, anxious eyes dwell only on his profile.

‘“‘'No,’”’ she said presently in a low voice, “ you’ve
been ill . . . really ill.” |

‘“* At all events,” he smiled, “ I’m quite well now.”’

She said nothing for a moment or two, then she
brought out with repressed feeling :

‘““¥ wish, oh, I do wish—you weren’t staying all
alone je) 2. there.

‘““My dearest girl,’’ he hastened to answer, * I’m
surrounded by people! Darkies are tumbling overnes RO er ae eee Te eg
(sii aaa setile ei.  aaa

      
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

Hn 160 THE ELUSIVE LADY

each other all day long, and Blanc fusses about me
Hi like an old woman.”
“Does he stay near you... at night?” asked
Melany.
‘He did when I was feverish.”
) i “Then he doesn’t now ? ”’
Wi ‘““No. It fidgets me to be pottered over.”
ae Melany looked down at her hands, twisting them
together in the way he remembered.
ak hate you to be alone. : .<m that house): 2.
: | at night,’’ she said, and her voice had its veiled
hil huskiness.
‘| Radford replied in his kindest, but most matter-
of-fact tone :

** My dear darling, I thought we’d settled all that.’’

“Tt . . . comes back,”’ she said, so low this time
that he could just hear her above the brisk clapper of
the greys’ hoofs.

‘* What‘ comes back ’ ? ”’ he forced his voice to say
i naturally.
| “ My dread . . . of that place.”

“Ah, Melany, Melany!’’ he exclaimed, and she
took the ambiguous expression in which he had sought
refuge for a reproach.

“I do fight against it, Evan, I do! I do!’ she
protested. “ But sometimes ...no matter how
hard I fight ’—she let her interlocked hands fall
apart with a helpless gesture—“ it comes back,” she
ended.

He pulled the greys down to a walk at this, and
slipped one arm about her, holding her hard against him.

* There’s one thing please remember,” he said,
with his cheek to hers, “‘ that in less than three weeks,
now, you'll be far away from here—with me!”

She gave herself up to his kiss with more passionTHE ELUSIVE LADY 161

than she had ever shown him, a passion both of love
and a sort of desperation.

~ Oh,” she cried, as he lifted his face from hers,
~ if you would only keep me away—keep both of us
away!”

~ Give up ‘ Her Wish’? ”’ heasked slowly. “Sell
it again ? ”

And there was even more passion in her answering
cry of * Yes! yes! yes!” than there had been in her
kiss.

It came then to Radford, with the double shock of
surprise and bewilderment, that nothing, not even her
pleading, would induce him to part with ‘‘ Her Wish.”
He couldn’t remain silent long enough to digest this
queer revelation of something in himself that he had
not suspected till that moment, so he said, again as if
with reproach :

** But I thought you loved it? I thought you had
enjoyed with me making it beautiful again ? ”’

“I thought so, too,’? she answered humbly,
ashamed for so disappointing him, yet incapable of
lying to him even to save him and herself pain. “ And
in a way, I do love it. But... you see, though I
don’t feel her there any longer, I think of her; all the
time I’m there, if I’m not thinking of her I’m just
fighting it off. It’s as if she’d left something of,
herself soaked into the very walls. ... And now
. - . when I see you so changed .. .”

‘* * Changed’ ?”’ stared Radford.

‘* So thin, so pale,” she explained. “It’s as if I
felt her harming you, willing harm to you.”

They talked to and fro in this strain until Hilton
was reached. When he left her after dinner, driving
back alone through the fragrant A’pril night, he felt
mortally tired, fagged body and soul by the strain to

Lp Yate ys tty
rs re ad rh A a
(ii Se i caucaanaha

     
 
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

162 THE ELUSIVE LADY

~ keep it up.” He longed, more asa release from

| : intolerable effort than with alover’s ardour, that his

Vai wedding-day were to-morrow. He almost conceded

in his own thought that he was in some obscure way

“il.” A flatness had come over the savour of life,

over his thoughts, his ambitions, even his love. He

had read often that psychical experiences of the sort

he had been undergoing “ take it out of one.” Some-

thing had certainly been taken out of him. A queer

image of profound rest came to him just as he was

: falling asleep that night—the idea of himself stretched

ah comfortably out in a sunny grave, pulling over him

dh the April grass as a coverlet that would never be

disturbed, for a sleep that would never change again
into wakefulness.

However, he was to be cheered and not a little
surprised by the way in which his strength and a more
| normal frame of mind returned to him during the long
ll hours that he now spent at Hilton, |
i At first this enforced absence from “ Her Wish ”
had got sadly on his nerves, convinced as he was that
there was some ultimate revelation yet to be made
him on the part of her whom he had once called “‘ the -
elusive lady.” And with his recollection of this title
there also came the memory of his having defied her
in sO many words. It disgusted him that he should
feel a rill of superstitious awe flow through him with
this memory. Indeed, his abashed humiliation before
himself was such as to make him sure that he had no
right to go on ‘ mawkishly tampering,’ as he some-
what severely put it, with psychic phenomena, over
which he not only had no control, but at the mere
thought of which he couldn’t control his own shrink-

ing. Especially had he no right in the face of
Melany’s distressed dread.

  

 

=e rem are TET ETT nel OCTET ee tr Tere ee
pe WLLL ce CTT Coetifhossiee pier toesten tt Ute Ceo eenones Litt sete Ste ocean oatTHE ELUSIVE LADY 163

The idea of parting with “ Her Wish,” of selling it
again, was as painful to him as ever, but he had come
to the conclusicn that it would be as well if they did
‘ keep away ” after their marriage for at least two
or three years. He had a small but delightful villa
near Florence, and Mr. Warrenger could come and
Stay with them there.

This idea was met with such sparkling, breathless
joy by the girl that he felt he had been rather a
particular sort of brute not to have decided on it long
before. To the old man it seemed simply as if one
of the dreams of his youth had flowered as miracu-
lously in the winter of his age as a Christmas rose in
snow. Radford had to describe the old Tuscan house
to them inch by inch, and the whole podere not less
minutely.

‘ Now,” Melany cried, ‘‘ I can breathe ! ”

And under her beautiful hand, that was so like
another he had seen in circumstances which chilled
him even now to remember, she lifted her young
breast in the profoundest sigh of relief, as if throwing
off an intolerable weight.

JA week before the wedding Steven Campbell, who
had been called from New Orleans to New York, and
then to England for some months, arrived at ‘“ Her
Wish.” He was to act as “‘ best man”’ to Radford,
and his letters had been full of such an unqualified
and jubilant delight, both in his friend’s engagement
to Melany and his purchase of the old place, that
Radford decided he had been mistaken about Steve
having been in love with the girl.

‘’ Well done, thou good and faithful Yankee!’ he
exclaimed, as he sprang up the steps at “‘ Her Wish,”’
where Radford, Mr. Warrenger, and Melany stoodMert tes co

Litre che aan

164 THE ELUSIVE LADY

awaiting him. “A Virginian bride and a Virginian
estate at one whack are ‘some’ overcoming of
prejudice ! ”’

‘You dear old ass,” was Radford’s retort.
‘“* You are the prejudiced one, as you well know! If
Melany had been half the Southerner enragé that you
are she wouldn’t be standing here by me.”

‘Ah, you dear child,” Steve was now saying to
the girl about whose shoulders hé had flung a great
arm. ‘“‘ He might be a Timbuctooian, for all I’d care,
since he’s brought that look to your face.”

And bending. down he kissed her, while she
whispered :

~ Dear Steve ... oh, I am happy!”

‘“She’s my only little sister, you know,” said
Steven, meeting his friend’s moved look, “‘ and I warn
you I shall kiss her whenever I please.”’

At which, being a little embarrassed by too much
feeling, they all laughed as at some exquisite piece of
wit, and took Steven off to show him the restored
splendours of ‘* Her Wish.”’

It was after tea, which had been served this time
in the library, that Radford and Melany found them-
selves alone. ‘They could see from the open windows
the two others walking back and forth on the lower
terrace, while Steven smoked one of his big cigars.

~ lam so glad,” Melany said dreamily, “ that you
don’t like cigars. I do so loathe them.”’

And as Radford laughed out at the contrast of her
dreamy tone with her prosaic statement, she added
quaintly :

* But what I was really thinking was, that Steven
might smoke even horrors instead of good ones, and I
wouldn’t mind, I’m so thankful he’s here with you! ”THE ELUSIVE LADY 165

Radford was sitting on the sill of the window
opposite her, and she was leaning back in the low
armchair that Blane had placed for her before the
tea-table. The latter had now been removed, and,
leaning forward, Radford put his hand on hers.

“ Darling,” he said remorsefully, “has it really
troubled you so much, my staying here alone ? ”

She looked up at him as if it couldn’t be put into
words.

“Oh!” she said at last, simply unable to express
otherwise the fulness of what she had felt about it.

Then, before he could begin to tell her of his
immense, repentant regret, she flushed and paled, in
the quick succession that was so characteristic, and
exclaimed under her breath :

“ Evan! Y’m going to make you a confession.”

** Well, dear ? ”’ he smiled.

~ Hivan : . .7 she began, then stopped; then;
with the nervous tremor he remembered: ‘“‘ Evan
. . . ’vethought sometimes . . . I’ve wondered...”
She bent forward so that he could hear the whispered
words, ‘‘ Have you ever . . . felt her here?”

The afternoon sunlight poured in through the
gently blowing white curtains and danced upon the
opposite wall. He thanked such gods as are that he
happened to be sitting with his back to it, and he
reflected on the three kinds of lie that an honourable
man may tell with honour: the lie that guards a
friend’s secret, the lie about a woman for her own
sake, and the lie to a woman for the same reason. He
brought it out with no perceptible hesitation and with
a really magnificent effect of truth :

moNever |

Still she kept on his face her anxious, questioning
eyes,rit Rgeh gee ead dea aetha

    

166

   
 
  
   
   
    
 
  
    
 
 
  
  
  
  
    
   
    
 
 

THE ELUSIVE LADY

“ You’ve never had a hint... a sensation ?
Never . .’.”,here she clasped her hands as if imploring
him under some stress of conviction that she couldn’t
conquer, Never)... . heard or. (. seen) amy
thing ? ”

““ Seen’? I?.” he asked, as if the preposterous-

ness of the idea really staggered him. ‘‘ My beloved
child !”
ee His laugh was as splendid a success as his
Hine " Never!” had been. A more natural sound could
Ht not have been uttered. And yet the tenseness of her
Hh | look and her clasped hands didn’t relax under it.
i ** You don’t know,”’ she said, “ you couldn’t know,
ql how I’ve been haunted... .” The tremor ran
| through her again. “ Yes, haunted by the idea that
she might have given me up just to put us off our
guard, to make it easy for you to come here, and then
- . . Oh, are you sure she hasn’t been near you? ”

wv Quite sure,” he lied with the same admirable
| imitation of candour.

“You see,” she went on, her fingers twisting
together now, and her pale face bent towards them,
“I... I dreamed that you had seen her.”

Radford caught it from her with a ‘tone that had
the effect of a shrug.

* Oh, my dearest dear! If yow’re going to talk
BH Oncams 0). 1??
| ‘But tell me once more,” she pleaded. “It’s
| such a blessed relief to hear you say it. You really
never, never have? ”

“ Never !” he said again.

And then, shocked as if a fork of lightning had
split the soft shadows of the room beyond, he saw
what he had so gallantly lied about—the beautiful,

almost insolently smiling image of that other. In aTHE ELUSIVE LADY 167

“ gown like a rose ” this time, she had Sprung up like
Some magic flower directly behind the girl’s chair.
Over that unconscious head she sent across to him a
look of exquisite mockery, a look at the same time
sweet and stinging, disdainful and indulgent, assured
and reproachful.

The imperious expression that had yet been half a
prayer was quite gone. Nothing could have exceeded
the calm arrogance of that smiling gaze.

And. as he gazed back, no more able to withdraw
his eyes from hers than had she been the fabled
basilisk, instead of simply the most enchanting
presentment of a woman possible to imagine, her eyes
released him suddenly, dropped for an instant ta the
girl’s dark head, then lifted to his again.

A hundred poets could not have expressed her
meaning more perfectly. It was as if she said to
him: “Compareus...! Here we are together—
the living woman and the ghost. Which in truth
seems more living—she or I? ”

“Her sudden appearance, her look of subtle raillery
that seemed to him of such endless duration, had
lasted but a fraction of time, as time is counted by
men, yet in that infinitesimal space he had the
impression of a reality so stupendous that in its
presence he and the girl before him were but as films
of gossamer. It was as if life, raised to a pitch above
all his possible conceptions of it, sent out to him
terrible vibrations that shook the molecules of both
mind and body, as a strong musical tone will cause
particles of sand to leap into fantastic patterns. For
one wild instant the phantom seemed the real being,
and Melany the phantom. That glowing face with
its honeyedly rapacious mouth—never more honeyed
or more rapacious than now with that faint subtle

    
 
 
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  

WE ree tehaptcpReaentiereeuetesery es ariPTT EAP"

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
    
   
   
  
 
  
  
   
 
 

ret S
Beers

168 THE ELUSIVE LADY

smile compared to which the famous smile of Mona
Lisa was mere craftiness—that web of gorgeous hair
redder than any red of earth, the whole supreme effect
in her utter stillness as of the stillness of incan-
descence—these dimmed the grosser life of flesh and
blood as a shaft of sunlight dims a candle-flame. He
felt himself to be such a flame; this conscious paling
in him ‘of the thing he had known as “life” was
a slow facing towards extinction . . . towards
nothingness. ... And she, too, his Melany, was
waning, in that intolerable glare of something more
real than reality. ...

He started at what seemed the shrill rending of a
silken curtain close to his face, then found himself in
the mild light of common day, with Melany clinging
to him, pleading out of a white, stricken face:

* Oh, dearest! Don’t look so . . . !- Don’t look
so! Oh, what’s the matter? Is it your heart
again ? ”’

He caught at this, sinking down upon the window-
Seat.

pes .. omy. heart) (Buti at's nothing ...
only ’’—he dived in the frightful confusion of his mind
for the medical term and brought it out with a sigh of
relief— only functional, old - Borridge says.” He
succeeded in producing a weak smile. “If you'll
just, like a dear darling, ring for Blanc... My
tonic, you know.”

‘Then he drifted helplessly off into a swoon like
that which had followed the terribly real manifesta-
tion on the night when the lock of hair and the glove
had been taken from his bedside, only this time he
was unconscious for a much shorter period.CHAPTER XXIV

HREE things helped Radford to carry off
this unfortunate collapse with a good
front. One was the fact, gathered almost

immediately from Melany herself, that the appearance
which had seemed to him to last so long had only been
in reality a matter of a few seconds.

** You were talking to me so perfectly naturally
one second, and the next . . . oh! you looked as if
you were dying ! ’’ she had wailed, when he was quite
restored and the others had left them together again.

His tremendous desire to shield her from any
possible suspicion that what she had feared was
so dreadfully the thing to be feared, gave him the
strength to say, even in that moment :

“I’m horribly ashamed of myself for keeling over
like this, darling; but you see now it’s only a most
commonplace ailment and not in the least super-
natural.”

‘* All the same,” she had replied, holding his cheek
close against hers as she knelt beside the lounge on
which Steven and Blanc had firmly placed him, “ I wish
there were fen oceans rolling between us and ‘° Her
Wish.’ . . . I couldn’t Jeave you to-night, except for
Steve’s being with you... .”

The other things had to do with this same fact of
his being able still to ‘‘ ward off,” from her at least, all
knowledge of that overwhelming presence. They
consisted of Blanc’s triumphant “ I-told-you-so ”’
attitude when summoned by Steven to administerUf} cal fe done a Rass ea Gg oe

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 

170 THE ELUSIVE LADY

Dr. Borridge’s heart-tonic, and Steven’s and Mr.
Warrenger’s ready acceptance of the man’s conviction
as to the cause of Radford’s fainting-fit.

* Jai dit souvent & monsieur—ce matin méme,” he
declared, “que monsieur a trop vite cessé de prendre
sa médecine . . . et voila que j’at eu raison!”
ae You see, old boy, I’ve come home just in time
| I ie to bully you for your own good—and»Melany’s ! ”

a Rad Steven had exclaimed, on hearing this. ‘ That
heart-physic shall go down as regularly as the sun—
ri or I—go off! A charming bridegroom you'll make
i if you crumple up in a heap at the altar-rail,”
| : Radford promised from that time forth to take the
the ' tonic meekly until he should have quite emptied the
bottle, and Melany returned to Hilton with her
: father, somewhat comforted.

\; You know,” Steve, who walked part of the way
home with them, explained, “‘ the dear old man rather
did himself up by overworking last year. That’s
why I had him down here. He’s perfectly sound
. . . but high-strung. My eye! awoman.. . even
you, you dear child, aren’t a bit more high-strung
than Evan. But all he needs is to get away and
play fairy prince with you, little sister. And, mind
you, only let him play. No more work for another
year at least. Then he'll be right as a trivet.”

“ He shall be the idlest man that ever lived,”
Melany had laughed back in her relief. ‘ You'll be
ashamed of him, I’ll keep him so idle.”

“Ah... well, as to that,” Steven had replied
with smiling dubiousness, “ love-making is a very
busy idleness ! ”

And now it was sheer dogged pride that fixed
Radford in his determination to see things out to the

bitter end. How bitter that end might be he could

  

 

erterti a lott titre eset erie mtecesres at Tit] iceeeeeees Teencunt Ps TOrEt Ey ott Stetemettney Sevres et ESD S anesTHE ELUSIVE LADY 171

not tell, but of one thing he was sure: nothing could
possibly be bitterer or more of an “ end ” to his self-
respect than to feel he had funked a thing which he
was equally sure depended on the strength of his own
will to carry to a definite conclusion. The next time
—if there was to be a next time—that she confronted
him, he would not remain passive, as heretofore the
mere soul-staggering unusualness of the thing had
stunned him into being. At the first elimmer of her
approach, even at a pounce so lightning-like as had
been the last, he would clench himself hard against
her—make what he had heard Theosophists call an
* auric shell ’’ about himself, case himself in an armour
of will and positivity that at least, if he died in the
effort, would let him die fighting, and not merely
dissolve like vapour, sucked up by some powerful,
occult fire.

He almost wished, in the stress of his unshared
predicament, that he were what is called “‘a good
Catholic.” ‘He had heard from those who he had
every reason to believe “ knew,” that the Jesuits,
those most learned, probably, of the world’s spiritual
directors, did not scorn or shrug at the idea of such
perils as this by which he was beset—had, indeed, a
method of dealing with them. How restful, how
marvellously sustaining it would be to have under
the roof with him this last week some wise and kindly
priest, to whom he would seem neither a lunatic nor
a fool, and who would arm him with a weapon of
ghostly defence. But a little more thought on the
subject made him feel certain that the priestly advice
would be a sprinkling of holy water, both actual and
metaphorical, and that the weapon would consist of
a firm ‘“‘ Vade retro me Satana. ...” Whereas it was
no more in him to believe in the efficacy of holy waterae é A Pret err Ts PTs ly bet ty tt ct ot eee
Veet tet do acne etek seed cea bate enone eT teas a eretere Rest aM reed eae dees Ship teal ade aie

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

172 THE ELUSIVE LADY

than it was to think of the lovely and capricious, if
somewhat overwhelming, phantom as Satan.

Not that he was an irreligious man; on the
contrary, his religion only seemed vague because it
could not be circumscribed by any of the creeds that
men had set like hard vessels in the infinite sea of the

iI divine, thinking that the forms thus filled with some
| drops of its boundless essence contained the whole.
That there was a centre without circumference
(which most men called God), and to which the centre
Bt of his own being directly responded, he felt as he felt
Waa that he lived. According to this faith there was
| ae nothing supernatural, as all that lay between this
th ' centre in limited space which was himself, and that
supreme centre of limitlessness which was God, could
but of necessity be “natural.” It lay with him,
therefore, to fight against this extraordinary manifes-
tation of the betweenness (he could think of no better
word), just as he would fight against any other
mighty and impalpable force—say the force of his
own passions.

And yet “ fight ” was not the exact expression for
the course that he felt he must take; rather it was a
need of obtaining on his side a dominion over her
that would prevent her from advancing too far and
too potently into the sphere set apart for creatures of
flesh and blood. The peril, it seemed to him, was not
so directly from her as from a certain essence of that
other world that she brought with her, as if—the
image presented itself fantastically but with a perfect
expression of his felt, not reasoned, meaning—as if a
mermaid seeking a closer rapport with some inland
mortal should bring with her a tidal wave that might

sweep him away.

He realised, too, very clearly, that one of the chief

  

 

Pee Levi iu allan Tiitest esr tereteTHE ELUSIVE LADY 173

perils lay within himself ; in the undoubted fascination
that the whole strange adventure had for him, that
she herself exerted over him, quite as, in some Irish
legend, the fairy queen draws to her some mortal at
once willing and unwilling, fearful and yet not so
fearful but that one of his fears is to lose sight of her
for ever.

He simply could not endure the thought that all
he had seen and suffered was to end in the vague
idiocy of so-called ‘‘ spirit manifestations,” so usually
brought to a climax by the frantic movements of
furniture that seems capering of its own volition. He
could not believe, he absolutely refused to believe,
that the whole amazing drama had been played to the
end that a phantom hand should remove a piece of
hair, and hang a glove in a rose-tree! No, she had
a meaning, an object, and what his object must be
was to hold her far enough off to keep his mundane
senses from being submerged by the tremendous
current she brought with her, yet not too far to make
communication impossible.

There were four days and nights left him in which
to experiment from this new point of view.

He brought back from this descent, or ascent into
things, a remarkable sense of quiet strength. 3lanc
had returned permanently to his quarters in the
extreme back of the house. Steven occupied a room
in the east wing, a room removed from his by a
corridor as long as that which led to the Spinning-
room. He was punctilious, as he had promised, about
taking the heart-tonic, and without a doubt felt much
braced by it. His talks and manner with Steven were
models of what one might call normality. If his
whole air was rather deliberately quiet it seemed very
natural in a man whose heart, whether ‘‘ functionally ”’- . — ‘pie jabra tnbery
rfl atts bake cide RSLS a ea

he

  

 

174 THE ELUSIVE LADY

or “organically,” had been, as Steven put it,
" kicking up like the devil.”? Steven had used this
expression when urging on Radford the necessity of a
lamb-like behaviour for some time to come.

His behaviour was, indeed, so entirely and re-
assuringly lamb-like that Blanc felt no misgivings at
being exiled, and Steven having insisted on eleven
o’clock as the latest hour for him to go to bed, left
him each evening at his door without the least doubt
that bed was where he went forthwith.

{ft was from this hour on, however, that Radford
felt himself particularly wide awake. He would sit
by the open window waiting till Steven should be
soundly asleep; then he would rise and go down,
wandering about the house and grounds, watching,
listening, waiting. Somehow, though for two nights
he waited in vain, his nerves were quite steady. He
had a perfectly assured feeling that he was to see her
again, and that all was to be made clear to him.

~The third night, at about one o’clock, as he was
approaching the house after a long rest in a hammock
under one of the horse-chestnuts, he stopped. short,
feeling his heart give a hot plunge, in spite of all his
determined preparation for just such a sound or
seeming.

There had stolen to him, above the rustle of a
night full of blowing leaves, the low hum of a minor
chord, rising and _ falling, pausing, then repeating
itself,

He only stopped long enough to summon all his
will, reason, fortitude—-all of that power of a man over
the lesser part of himself for which metaphysics has
so many hames and none adequate. Then he went

quietly along the house to the court of the Spinning-
Toom, and as he had been there only a half-hour

 

pepreer ere Vy Trerere rte PPSTTOMET TS Pots mcoreneeesey tee ah rte
MeTeTE MILT TU SiH pcr tr sestterepi ery aren fT (Ute be mena tee mcmsr est Teeey Tt? 5THE ELUSIVE LADY 175

before he knew that the shutters were wide open, as
he had left them.

‘The moon was nearly full, but hidden by thick
swathes of silverish cloud, between which showed
black-blue depths, and now and then the cold glitter
of a star.

But though the clouds flew on above him the
lower breeze seemed suddenly to have dropped, for
there was now no sound of blowing leaves. In
entering the court he seemed to have stepped into a
well of silence. Even the fountain, strangely hushed,
was like a rod of glass twisting silently in the heavy
atmosphere. With a deep breath, as though he
sought to inhale some force more subtle than the
actual air by which his body lived, he turned and faced
the window.

Here, again, was something new, something that
he was not prepared for. The whole unshuttered
aperture was glowing as though lighted up from
within, but the glow was of so strange, so inexplicable
a nature that he brushed his hand before his eyes,
thinking that his keyed nerves were tricking him.
When he looked again, however, it was the same.
The window seemed to be partially filled with the
finest iridescent cobwebs, or, more literally, with the
most fragile threads of glass spun finer than cobwebs.
It was as if these gleaming filaments gave forth the
glow that lighted, or rather shimmered, a soft iri-
descence upon the room within. They extended even
beyond the window, as a light cloud of thistledown
might cling together before a breeze blew it apart
and float like a transparent curtain in the air.

He drew nearer, cautiously, slowly, forcing his
reluctant body as a rider forces a shy horse; and as
he went he had the strangest feeling of wading

eats or
hoesSee UT Gyre neers teste een cen ei aa tae? roel aia iyinrtionsicemen la rbatsaane

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
    
    
 
 
  
  

176 THE ELUSIVE LADY

ed through some element quite new to him—of being in
| some inexplicable way half in, half out of the atmo-
sphere of the solid earth. He had the same sensation
Wd of breathing with difficulty that oppresses men on
UAE great mountain-heights, and he seemed to tread a
\| substance at once elastic and clogging that dragged
| at his feet yet buoyed him up. It was as if, in this
| sudden swimming and swaying about him of all that
had a moment ago been most stable, the one strong,
inflexible solidity was just that rod of his own will to
| which, with every faculty, every tendril of his spirit,
HiT he clung like a man clinging to a steel rope above the
| glassy funnel of a whirlpool so swift that it seems
@uieb. = 4. a.

And now, rigid with that desperate clenching of

himself upon his own central reality, he knelt upon
the stone bench and looked into the room.
! The room itself gave him back as in a mirror the
| impression of his own state. It was haif in, half out
| of the atmosphere of his cognised world—the same
yet not the same. If inanimate objects had each a
diaphanous counterpart, something corresponding to
what are called the souls of men, then in this room
one would have said that some mysterious spell had
released them. He could not express it more clearly
to himself, then or later. The room was there, but
transfigured, subtilised, and to its walls and ceiling
clung the same fragile web of iridescence like fila-
ments of glass finer than cobwebs. She stood there
beside the spinning-wheel, but transformed, trans-
figured like the room—yet so real that .he wheel
hummed beneath her touch, giving out its low minor
chord.

She was not looking towards him, but away, as if
into vistas of unimaginable delight, as if the thread

sTRUTLOMESUASTY Ty Fy Ubet fee seene rtpt ephecsares nf ri] Tt egreenees teebcunr fs towed Of Orth SLMbeReRteey ont ter ora Lean araTHE ELUSIVE LADY

she spun were to be her clue to them, as if when her
task was done one leap would send her flying to the
very heart of joy. And what she spun and wound
back upon the bobbin were loose lengths of those
iridescent filaments that she caught carelessly from
the air about her, never changing her fixed gaze as
upon vistas of unimaginable delight. . . .

One instant he looked on this astounding vision—
for it seemed to him even then only a vision, a glimpse
behind a dream-curtain woven of spun rainbows—
the next, the diffused light from high-blowing, silverish
clouds shone tranquilly about him and he heard the
rain-like patter of the little fountain. .. .es as ~
aN ad ecc th ec ev yar _s

Pm
sh

eine

 

Priced tae seth beaeietess ctr aha
| ohohd mid | aida

Dae:
ees bt

Beart ute RAGE ae Lecitess Sie he aca a aha tae)

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

CHAPTER XXV

Ki did not return to the house after this ex-
perience—so much the strangest and yet
so much the most elusive that he had yet

had. When he was somewhat recovered from the daze
in which it left him he went slowly back over the fresh
wet turf to the hammock, and lay down again under
the canopy of leaves. He felt this time no exhaustion
or giddiness, only the natural “let down’ sensation
that follows a supreme effort of will. But his mind
seemed to ring with the memory of it, as one’s ears
ring after some tremendous peal of sound ; or a closer
analogy would be to think of his mind as a breathless
pool over which an elfin bird had skimmed, dipping
a fugitive wing, then vanishing. His thoughts, like
the ripple from such a contact, spread in circles
widening out to a misty shore—widening out on that
deep of conjecture which has, in truth, no shore.

The one clear impression that remained with him
was of the supernal beauty of the face thus seen by
him for the first time in profile. It was to her full
face what one might imagine the soul of a mortal to
its body—yet it was not “ spiritual,” as men use the
term, merely of a loveliness so passionately unearthly
that one marvelled at seeing it in a form familiar to
earth.

On every former occasion when his eyes had been
~ opened,”’ as the saying is, her eyes had held him;
this time they had been fixed on a vision beyond
what it was in her power to reveal to him, on vistas,THE ELUSIVE LADY 179

as it had seemed to him, of unimaginable delight. It
was as it he had clenched his will too hard against her,
and she had turned from him back to the beauty from
which she had emerged to‘seek him. . . . Yes, with
@ light painfully erude, it flared on him that he himself
had turned her from him with her secret untold;
sent her back like a wistful Peri, not from the gates of
Paradise, but from the heavy portals of this his own
~ unintelligible world.” |

He lay with his hands under his head, gazing up
at the blowing leaves through which now and then
dartled the spiky brilliance of a star. He was
searching in his mind for something to which to liken
her. “ Ghost,” “ phantom,” “ apparition,” “‘-wraith ”’
—all these seemed too mundane, too crude to express
that magical, enchanted beauty which was yet in
some way, beyond all reason, “ real.”

He thought of Bran and his voyage to the island
of Heart’s Desire, of Lamia and Melusine, of Fata
Morgana and the lady in the queer tale he had read
on the night of his first vigil: of how she had told the
king “ that he should not ask but earthly thing, for
she was none earthly thing, but a ghostly thing,” and
of how the king had replied that “he ne would ask
none ovher thing...) 7

Since the far, dim beginning of romance, before
even the story of Lilith, when the Apsarases, ‘ fairy-
like beings, beautiful and voluptuous,” had appeared
to the Aryan heroes, men had sung and told of such
happenings. . . . There must be some common source
for all the legends ; a few men here and there having
caught such a glimpse as he’had caught through the
grey veil of every day, parted for a moment by a
mystic breath from the beyond, must have wrought
songs and poems about it, filling in the blank spacesfaa ee te et Cas
m4 pin 5 4

Temata te ese tee nee aes ea ub Se

180 THE ELUSIVE LADY

with the purfling of imagination. What easier, for
instance, than for a nervous, high-flown boy, with the
green-sickness of romantic youth upon him, placed as
he, Radford, was placed, to fancy himself the object
of an exquisite eeriesome passion like that by which
‘“¢ La Belle Dame sans Merci’’ held men in thrall? He
wondered, indeed, if he himself as a boy could have
stood the test of an adventure so opposed to all that

is called “‘ natural’? and so prolonged. He quite

comprehended how those who gave themselves up to
such impressions—those vulgarly called mediums and
the like—so often ended by becoming insane.

The slightest tip to the perfect balance of mind
needed to withstand them, and there would be the
plunge down into chaotic mysticism, into what he had
already at times sensed as a measureless abyss.
Perhaps after all it was just as well that he had forced
her farther back into her airy caverns behind her
impalpable, shredded 'veil of iridescence.

'He had heard much prattle at one’ time about
‘* astral planes,”’ about a sort of rainbow succession of
such “‘ planes ” or “‘ worlds ’’ up to what was called,
in the Oriental nomenclature of a certain sect, the
Devachanic. In fact, with a really magnificent
impudence a certain person of that sect had written
a little volume describing how he had attained above
the humbler St. Paul, who only claimed to have
been “caught up” for a brief space to the third
heaven—even to the seventh heaven of this series;
how he had promenaded there as on Piccadilly, and
how he was now recounting all the marvels he had
there heard and seen.

Even such preposterous, barefaced inventions
Radford was fair enough to suppose must be based
upon some faint glimpse of things forbidden to manTHE ELUSIVE LADY 181

except in glimpses. And yet it irked him that such
glimpses should have no meaning, no import for
those to whom they were vouchsafed, whether of good
or evil—for one could hardly dignify by the immense
term “evil”? the nervous strain under which the
whole thing had put him and from which he was
suifering now, even to the extent of having his heart—
what was Borridge’s word ?—“ functionally ” affected
by it.

Thus, in the soft May night, alone but very far
from being lonely, he tried to reflect logically and
Sanely, as upon another’s predicament, upon the
strange unsolvable situation in which he found
himself. No sooner, however, did he cease actively
to think than he found himself in the haunting
atmosphere which some dreams project into the
following day. He had the uncanny sensation that
though he could neither see nor feel them, those
delicate multi-coloured filaments were swaying gently
in the air about him, spangling the grass, hanging
from the leaves overhead. It was as if some im-
palpable mesh, fine as thought and as strong, had
been cast about him; so lightly that he was not
aware of it except in thought, so surely that not even
thought could release him from it... .

Springing up as if a physical effort might rid him
of the eerie fancy, he realised that the dawn had come.
With it came a realisation even more wholesome and
uplifting : this dawn so refreshing in itself held yet
a fuller meaning than the mere return of the sunlit
candour of day; it was a very special day that it
heralded, a day to be marked with a white pearl, just
the beginning of the last twenty-four hours that lay
between him and the day of his wedding with Melany.
And at the thought of her, there in the quickeningiY § eed Pare ; Om the
. ' a er eee ET Toy Ts ihe er oc. ane Ma ei
Tere Led eames beet tH Get reat eet be SMC ea cesta Lact a eaecenrect tectter embers itt SER SHDN Lite note : othesiih il

      
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
   
 
 
  
   
 
  
   
 
 
  
  

182 THE ELUSIVE LADY

re light with the first bird-calls showering clear as drops

1 of rain about him, the spell of night dissolved, and he
wondered whether he hadn’t dreamed fantastically.
He recalled having had dreams, not all unlike it, as
a child . . . puzzled sleep-wanderings through woods
of glass tangled in rainbows, with a lovely fairy who
was kind to him and showed him the way, but whose
face he could never see.

The sun rose in tranquil splendour, and was
greeted by the waking earth as jubilantly as though it
had never risen before. With that sweet sanity of
| exultation enfolding him, Radford was sure now that
i ti he had only dreamed. The very difference of what
Hey he had seemed to see last night, for that fleeting

instant, from all her other appearances, made him
doubly sure. Even her face, so strangely trans-
figured in delicate profile, was just the way that
dreams metamorphose a familiar face, making it like
and yet unlike.
| dle regained his room before anyone had come into
the house, and lying down in bed so that Blanc might
not suspect his night’s absence, fell profoundly asleep.

The sun that had risen in such effulgence even
exceeded his promise of bringing with him a perfect
day ; he had with his dazzling magic turned May into
June, and as the hours wore on the dry, intense heat
grew almost oppressive. The sky was without a
cloud, so blue that at the zenith it looked purple.
The bourdonnement of wild honey-bees about the great
hedges, now covered with tiny rosettes of yellowish
bloom, added queerly to the effect of being in the
breath of a great furnace, as if their continual droning

hum might be the throb of the engine that con-

trolled it,THE ELUSIVE LADY 183

Steven, looking huger than ever in his shirt-
sleeves, paraded restlessly, seeking a cool spot. He
announced that the thermometer in the hall stood at
eighty-eight, that it was the most dashed unreasonable
weather he had ever known, and that if it were really
June, or July, as it seemed to be, he would certainly
predict a thunderstorm.

Radford, who enjoyed great heat like any lizard,
smiled drowsily from a long wicker-chair on which he
was stretched out, and said that for his part he found
the weather perfection.

Steven with a grunt retorted that he wouldn’t find
it perfection in a stuffy railway-car to-morrow ; or at
least, that if he would, he was sure that ‘‘ poor little
Melany ”’ wouldn’t.

“ Ah yes,” Radford used, his face changing,
“by this time to- orrow we'll be married and off,
won't we? Somehow I can’t take it in.”

“It'll take you in all right. ...I1 mean this
deuced hot wave will,” Steven retorted, ‘‘ when
you find yourself in a * Pullman’ with a hundred and
ten degrees of it submerging you. Ouf! I’m melting.
Isn’t there a cooler place in this house ? ”

Radford didn’t answer at once; then he said:

““ The rooms in the east wing are always cool.”

“You mean the ‘ haunted ’ wing ? ” asked Steven.

i‘ Yes. Why ?” Radford asked in his turn, staring
a little at Steven’s use of the word “ haunted.”’
‘** You haven’t any objection to them on that account,
I suppose ? ”’

Now it was Steven who didn’t answer at once.

“¢ {ll tell you a rather rum thing,” he said at last,
speaking slowly and not looking at Radford. “ You
know what poppycock I consider ghost-stories -and
all that sort of twaddle, but upon my soul, there’s

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
   
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
    
 

PE a a ela aee) WA lott
Te Lr Ter tet ether eT eRe ERT cos hel brea Go St ae i) it ar Beg?
Ascent eet test shee eaaaeit Gate eieigtas i teeeatesies eeceieed cet ete eae : is 4 A tat ta

iishenl hatibeth te tone iee eeterl atta

    
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
  
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   

THE ELUSIVE LADY

i something about those rooms—the one with the
i portrait, you know, and the one they call the ‘ Spin-
ning-room,’ that—well, the fact is, they depress me.”’

“ Depress you? How?” said Radford, whose
Janguor, if Steven had been looking at him, he would
have seen was completely gone.

“I don’t know how,” he replied bluntly. “I
only know it’s a fact. I may go in there as gay as a
bushel of larks, and before I’ve stayed there ten
minutes I’m as blue as indigo. Not exactly ‘ blue,’
either, but all fussed up with a horrid sort of feeling
as if things were going to happen .. . unpleasant
li il bi | things, you know. Now please don’t think,’ he
ee | exclaimed, holding up a big hand in protest, as

Radford gave a suppressed exclamation, ‘“ that I’m
for one second even inferring that it has anything to
do with such rubbish as those old ghost-tales about
her. . . . What I’ve made it out to be is the force of
| association. There’s not a native about here, white
or black, high or low, who hasn’t for a hundred years,
at least, handed about those legends; and the
thought sticks—do you see what I mean? It’s the
sort of feeling I suppose one would have if one’s
house was built over a place of execution. There is
a house in London built where Tyburn gallows used
to stand; well, though I don’t believe in ghosts, I
wouldn’t like to live in that house, d’you see ? ”

Radford had sunk back and resumed the lazy smile
that was now a matter of artifice.

“ The proud lady of ‘ Her Wish’ would be greatly
flattered by your comparison,” he said.

~ Stuff!” said Steven; ‘“ you don’t catch my
meaning, that’s all. Ill even grant that some of her
thoughts have stuck—but it’s all a matter of thought,
mine as well as hers and the others. Perhaps thatTHE ELUSIVE LADY 185

portrait has something to do with it. Whenever I
take a look at that infernal face of hers .. .”

‘““* Infernal’ ?”’ interrupted Radford, sitting up
again.

Steven was frowning as if at the puzzle of his own
disjointed thoughts which he was trying to fit into
some sort of coherence.

“Well, infernally beautiful, if you like,”’ he said ;
“but to me it’s got a look on it that simply shrivels
me ... shrivels up any admiration I might feel . . .
the look that Lucifer’s twin-sister might have had, a
‘ damnation-in-my-own-way-before-heaven-in-God’s ”
sort of look. Br-r-r!” and he shook his great
shoulders boyishly. ‘‘ To me it’s a horrible face, like
what I imagine the face of those medieval what-
you-may-call-’ems. . . . vampires! That’s it....
She’s the spit image to me of a vampire.”

There was a pause in which Radford stared at him
curiously.

“At least she seems—in her portrait—to have
made a deep impression on you,” he said dryly.

“Qh, I don’t mean a great human bat that sucks
one’s blood,” Steven returned, still very much in
earnest. “I only mean the sort of will that would
suck out a man’s soul . . . his own will as a man, you
know. Why, my dear chap, think of her real story !
Could you beat it for vampirishness ? ”

Radford laughed.

““ She’s even set you to coining words for her,” he
said.

“ But could you?” Steven persisted.

“Could I what? Think of anything more like
the behaviour of a vampire—if vampires have got
behaviour !—than hers towards Geoffrey Branton? ”
“¢ Just that.”e See, hh
RAD tice iestantcot oa tee mea 4] i ada:

See a iret eee estate etc es as Nbeeareeeed ene og ened cagA a al

186 THE ELUSIVE LADY

Radford pondered it.

~ Branton seems to have got away from her pretty
successfully,”’ he then remarked.

~ Got away, yes—but how?” retorted Steven ;
~ without his heart—sucked dry of everything that
makes life worth living. A fine ‘ getting away ’ that
was! Besides,’ he growled, as if really angry at a
dead man’s cruel treatment by a dead woman, “ look
at that last letter she sent him—a regular vampire
scream of menace from the other side of the grave |
Woh ty:

He rose with a wrigglé that was half a genuine
shudder, half the effort to shake off the unpleasant
sensation that merely talking of her caused him,

“ve always thought her the most odious,
loathsome creature possible to imagine! Her
beauty’s no beauty to me, I can tell you, whatever
you as a painter may find in it.”CHAPTER XXVI

E took a turn away, then came back.

‘The whole honest truthis . . .” he began,

standing over his friend and rattling some
loose objects in his pocket, decidedly embarrassed at
the prospect of telling the w hole honest truth. “* Well,”’
at jast he blurted, bunching his shoulders as if for a
plunge into cold water, “ the fact is that I wouldn’t
have talked in this strain except for Melany. . .
My dear old man,” he sank down suddenly opposite
Radford and laid his hand on his knee, ‘‘ what J feel
is just nothing to what she feels !”

Radford looked back at him with all the amaze-
ment that this declaration caused .him. If Melany’s
dread was such as to have led her into confiding in
Steven about it, then all that he had endured was
quite in vain. Steven’s next words, though, some-
what softened his former statement.

‘‘Not,’? he pursued, “that she has any more
feeling about ghosts than I have... it’s only a
shrinking from the whole place that she can’t control.
. . . It’s all the queerer because she’s fond of it ma
way ... thinks it quite beautiful, and all that; but
it seems that she would rather leave Virginia for good
than live in it. It’s a sort of ...” he paused,
searching for the right expression.

.“ A sort of obsession ? ” supplied Radford quietly.
“Yes, exactly ... an obsession, She told me
she’d fought it desperately, with might and main—
the poor child cried at last—she feels so ashamed, so: a — Peer o e irite set. tae
bree tate ccece ab roi Ceeeate cts acca ee)istiod ic et sla ih cmsst Lect kei eee es

    
  
 
 
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
 
  
   
    

188 THE ELUSIVE LADY

‘ungrateful,’ she said, but . . . Well, I promised I’d
talk to you, so I’m doing it. It does seem an awful
pity ; it’s a stunning place and you’ve rigged it out
stunningly, but what’s there to do, with Melany
feeling like this about it? You see, she’d never have
told me, I suppose, except that I happened to mention
how those rooms affected me. She felt that I’d
understand then, and... well, she even said as
much—make you understand.’

Radford looked down at a leaf that he had pulled
from a vine near the door, and was fitting between his
hands as boys do to make a whistle,

~ You mean you think I ought to sell it ? ” he said.

, it seems arotten shame,” Steven replied ; “* but
can you suggest anything else? ”

After some moments Radford said, still busy with
the leaf:

“ Very well, I'll tell her to-night that I’ll sell it.”

~ Blessed old boy!” was Steven’s response to
this. “I told her that’s what you'd say the minute
you knew how she felt about it!” And—as a great
tobacco-merchant he was nothing if not practical—he
added by way of consolation: “A whacking price

you ought to get for it, too, the Way you've fixed
it up!”

No stranger feeling had come to Radford during
the past six weeks than that which crept over him, in
spite of all his efforts to resist it, when he saw the
Suppressed but exultant delight with which Melany
received his announcement about “Her Wish,” He
had come to love the place with an intensity fore-
shadowed by his first impression of having always
known and loved it. ‘That she could take delight,
even this veiled, remorseful delight, in somethingTHE ELUSIVE LADY 189

which, if she knew him at all, she must know was a
bitter disappointment to him—seemed to spread like
a thin, transparent hardness between them, so that
he felt rather as if he were trying to reach a lover-like
closeness through a sheet of glass. To him she had
never seemed less near than when in her triumphant
gratitude she felt herself, because of his great sacrifice
for her, quite in his heart of hearts.

There was no resentment in this feeling of his,
only a flatness, something like what he had ex-
perienced when she first returned after her stay in the
north—an unreality in their relations, as if, had their
love been what they thought it, she would have
insisted on braving it out at “‘ Her Wish” with him,
no matter what her shrinking. He wouldn’t have
allowed her to do so, of course, only some obstinate
conviction deep within him made him sure that it
should have been her desire.

It was odd, he reflected, walking home after
having spent the early hours of their wedding-eve
with her, how one woman of that race had made the
keeping of ‘‘ Her Wish ” a condition of her marriage
with the man she loved, and another, to all practical
intents, the giving up of it.

Those who have no love of places, of portions of
the earth for the earth’s own sake, as it were, cannot
conceive of the strength with which such a passion
may root itself in natures that have this capacity.
As he approached the old place this evening, walking
slowly up the avenue of firs that he might catch the
view he best loved of its old iron gates and box hedges,
Radford had the sad, oppressed feeling of one who
has just realised that a dear friend has developed some
serious malady which sooner or later will bring death.
The evening was as sultry as the day had been.SE eee reece
Sistine ees Ss wrteee
- met wie d

  

. - SRE A ttt sh are
eerie accesses) tha iihetateecatt Mictiot is isk tk sich ta ee :

  
  
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
   
    
   
  
 
  
   

190 THE ELUSIVE LADY

The rising moon shone with an almost tropic splen-
dour, and as Radford looked at the upper heaven
strewn magnificently with stars. unquenched as yet
by moonlight, he saw beyond them the pale flicker of
lightning. There was no distant thunder, only now
and then that shaken flag of luminosity spangled with
stars and covering the whole sky with breathless
beauty. He came within sight of ‘‘ Her Wish,” and
stood still to gaze at it brooding on top of its gradual
terraced hillside under that marvellous sky. The
stillness was so intense that suddenly it seemed’ to
give forth sound as of distant surf, and the moon
creeping higher struck glints of light from the dark
hedges as it had done the first time he had looked on
them. And, just as then, there came over him that
obscure, spellbound feeling, as though he had known
and loved them long ago in some wild dream—just as
then, the dark hedges seemed like some boundary of
herbee is.

He passed through them, and turning to the left,
went as he had done that first night, through the
avenue of clipped euonymus to the Maze, and so
down into the rose-garden.

May in Virginia is what June is in colder climates.
The garden might have been Armida’s for richness of
blossom, for prodigal heaping of rose upon rose, in
wreaths, in clusters, in heavy garlands, in veritable
fountains of scented bloom. Only about the grave,
where grew the more reserved beauty of the roses of
Damascus, were the flowers set delicately apart, each
in its frame of dark leaves, each breathing forth the
honeyed fragrance which no other rose can equal. ...

He stood there, thinking of that first night, when

in the November air that perfume had flowed about
him real as now; of the other times, when no tree in

" repre eri Sa hE Dee
: ty Ei tpereteeseeteer er presser grr if [tree tevenr eemcner Pathe et hy oot tt etetemerteey otters
Bee R ip ML OatN Tinto ior tee eet esa PE LE ConeyTHE ELUSIVE LADY

this garden was in blossom, and yet a fragrance like
theirs had filled the room. He thought of her, and of
how in “‘ a gown like a rose ” she had suddenly sprung
up behind the chair of her namesake whom she hated
for bearing her name. He wondered why she should
have come to him, and then, without anything
revealed, any desire accomplished, have withdrawn
at the first real effort of his will to repel her. After
all, though, the life of every day as it was lived by
human beings in the actual world was often futile and
purposeless enough, Heaven knew. Why should he
Suppose that the mere shedding of a human body
would produce logic and reasonableness in the actions
of one who had been so extravagantly capricious when
she wore it? Had he really seen her for the last
time? Was it all to end with this blank abruptness
like some ether-bred extravaganza ?

He bent and put his face to one of the blossoms.
It was cool and heavy with dew, no rosa mystica
-..a mere lovely product of the element called
earth” ... and yet, after all, just for that’ as
mysterious as any phantom rose that ever bloomed.

He felt the stillness swelling in a great chord like
a deaf man to whom sound is only a vibration. He
was sure that if his ears were not sealed there would
be strange music in that silence. .. .

* Good-night .. .” he said at last, turning to go.
‘“* Good-bye. . . .”’. He broke off the rose that he had
touched and laid it on the grave. ‘‘ Good-bye...
elusive lady,’’ he murmured again, and suddenly the
silence broke with the twang of a snapped harp-string.
Towards the south of the garden, from a thicket of
roses, came a light, sweet laugh running up a little
scale, then stopping short... .
He wheeled, his heart galloping. The stillness had% A — a ris ieeotrt ont Teas
Derelict steers Ne rdaks eae k areca tase UR RCC Sha OcT

192 THE ELUSIVE LADY

closed down again, cloyingly scented and sultry.
There was no further sound. The clear notes
remained on his ear as if some bird had sung suddenly
out of sleep. A kind of recklessness took him.

‘““Won’t you come . . . for good-bye?” he said
aloud. ‘‘I’m waiting. . . . I’m not afraid.”

Here Steven’s voice dived through the heavy
stillness like a huge fish: everything more delicate
fled at the great splash of sound.

“Hello! I say! Isthat you, Evan?” he called.
‘‘ What the deuce are you mooning about down
there?’ He came to the head of the stone steps.
‘* By George !”’ he said, as Radford mounted towards
him, ‘“‘ do you know you gave me the devil of a turn ?
I was strolling by, thinking I’d meet you in the
avenue and walk back, and I saw something white
down there near that grave... He hooked his
arm firmly in Radford’s. “‘Do you know,” he
continued, “that this is really a spooky place to be
alone in after dark ? Blanc went to the station about
five to look after some things he expected, and hasn’t
got back yet, so I’ve been quite by myself.” He
paused to give his next words more weight. ‘“‘ My
dear man, there 7s something dashed queer about this
whole place when you’re by yourself in it.”

Radford had all he could do to keep his voice
from showing something of what he was feeling.

“ What’s happened to make you feel it?’ he
managed to utter with sufficient naturalness.

‘“Nothing’s happened. That’s the worst of it.
It’s just the feeling that it’s going to happen—any
damn second—that makes it so horrid. It’s as if
everything were sort of holding its breath at you
. . - furniture and all. . . . Ghosts! My stars! A
ghost would be a relief ! ”THE ELUSIVE LADY 198

“ Perhaps it’s the night,” suggested Radford, who
had withdrawn his arm as soon as he could because he
was afraid that Steven would feel the heavy beating
of his heart through it. ‘‘ It’s a weird sort of night,
- . . Moon and stars and lightning all together.’

“ Don’t know what it is,” growled Steven, “ but
whatever it is, I’ve put in some beastly hours. I
believe Melany’s got me hoodooed with her strange
notion. I wouldn’t,” he wound up with conviction,
“ live in this place—in that house, beautiful as it is—
if you gave it to me! It’s nothing but thoughts, as
I said, but the thoughts are just about as disagreeable
as a churchyard of ghosts ! ”

[As Radford made no immediate reply, he asked
abruptly :

““ Didn’t it ever get on your nerves .. . being
alone here ? ”’

“Oh, I’ve felt nervous once or twice—yes,”’
Radford admitted.

“Well, what about to-night ? You must have
got bravely over it to go down into that rose grave-
yard? Do you feel anything queer about to-night ? ”

‘““Nothing queerer than I’ve felt before,” said
Radford. ‘I don’t mind it, you know,” he added.

‘Well, to-night has put me plump on Melany’s:
side,”” announced Steven. ‘I’m as jumpy as a cat,
and J’ll be dashed glad when the wedding’s over and

we’ve both cleared out.”

They had come within the light of the hall lamps,
and Radford, turning so that his back was towards
them, faced Steven.

‘* Steve,”’ he said, ‘“‘ what has happened ? ”

Steven tried to meet his eyes and laugh, but the
laugh broke short.

“IT don’t know what possessed me,” he then said
Nba a} ik

- shifted his position so that he could see Radford’s face

. 7 ae bh
" os = - PIP Tot ater es Tee
titan Huig {et nt atc Lire a ae tid er Oe TEE UTE
¥

194 THE ELUSIVE LADY

rather shamefacedly, ‘“‘ but when I first began to feel
creepy I rather enjoyed it. You know how boys
love to feel scared. Well, I was just in that idiotic
state. I thought I’d go and have a turn in those
rooms ... have a look at that portrait ... just
to see how much I could ‘ creep.’ a

‘““ Well? ’? said Radford, keeping his eyes on
him.

“ Tt’s all the rankest nonsense, .of course,’”? fumbled
Steven, trying to tell his vague adventure as triflingly
as possible. ‘‘ I went there with a candle—of all the
fool things—and as I was looking up at that devilish
picture ...the candle went out—some draught,
you know .. . just flared, and left me there in the
piteh dark.”

‘Well ? ” said Radford again.

“* Well’! It wasn’t ‘ well’ the least little bit,
I can tell you,” retorted Steven. ‘I got lost in that
confounded room... couldn’t find the door... .
If I’d been a superstitious chap I believe I’d have
ended by having a fit. . . .”

“Why ? ” said Radford.

This time Steven was quite serious.

“Don’t know,” he replied slowly; ‘“* just sheer
God-forsaken panic... . He added more slowly
still after a slight hesitation, as if the words came
almost against his will: ‘I had the damnedest queer
feeling that someone was in there with me...
someone who could see in the dark and who was
laughing at me . . . sneering, you know. .. .”

‘* You didn’t hear the laughter ? ” asked Radford.

_ Steven jumped.
“Good God! No!” he cried explosively.
A thought struck him the next instant. He

  

, v1
Pura tL
Aree tisTHE ELUSIVE LADY 195

more plainly. It was pale and rather sober, but
quiet. Steven put the question he had in his mind.
~ Have you ever . . . heard things ? ” he said.

He thought Radford’s glance and words decidedly
evasive.

“* Oh, one fancies one hears and feels all sorts of
things in an old place like this—when one’s alone,” he
wound up with a smile at Steven.

The latter didn’t say anything for some moments,
Then he hooked his arm in Radford’s again.

** I tell you, old man,”’ he remarked with convic-
tion, as they went up the steps together, “‘ Melany’s
right. The sooner you clear out of this place the
better for you and for her.”

“You think,”’ said Radford, this time with a
smile that was very odd, Steven thought, “‘ that I’m
in danger of becoming ‘ obsessed’! ”

“IT don’t know what I think, as I’ve told you
before,”’ retorted Steven, ‘“‘ but I’ve an all-overish
feeling that there’s ‘ something not just good’ in the
place ; call it ‘ ghosts,’ ‘ thought,’ * association,’ what
you like—especially for you, old boy.”

“Why especially for me?” asked Radford, with
another of those odd smiles—‘ secretive,’? Steven
called them in his mind.

‘* Because,”’ he replied, after a second’s thought,
‘““you’ve got that dashed funny thing, ‘ imagination.’
Now I haven’t a scrimption, so if I’m affected by the
queer old place—thick-hided as I am by nature, thank
the Lord !—you must be a lot more so.”

‘““T’m affected by it in so far as to love it,”’ said
Radford quietly, looking out over the terraced lawns
dappled with moonlight. “I rather think I’m more
‘affected’ by giving it up than by¢staying..in it.”

Steven sat looking at him in silence. The idea
Vype Me hse Tots te ear eter neat nade ekdris eel has decd thesesiceiokic tama ce

      
   
  
  
   
 
 
  
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  

196 THE ELUSIVE LADY

VW had come to him that perhaps Radford’s stay alone
ny at ‘“‘ Her Wish ’”’ had something to do with that heart-
ney | trouble of his. For the first time in his busy, jovial
life he wondered if after all there might be a grain of
fact in the mountain of nonsensical rubbish that he
| called “‘ spook twaddle”’;. whether, perhaps, some
i peculiarly organised people didn’t now and then “‘ see
things.” To bring it down to the particular point at
which he had just then arrived, whether, if such were
the case, Radford, who was certainly peculiarly
at organised, hadn’t “‘ seen something ’—and more than
WaT once—at ‘‘ Her Wish.”’
ai Blanc’s appearance in the doorway, with his suave

92

Ach a A aie ch att tt ten atl hele eiidebdia sv nates at-mnaiee —_—
ary Sets rae ene 5 4 — os oe ee

ny | ‘* Monsieur est servi,’’ came like a personal interven-
tion of the God of Commonsense. There was some-
thing in the solidity of a good dinner to which a
practical man beset by shadows could turn as to a
rock of refuge.

“Come along, old boy,” he said to Radford in
another voice. ‘ Let’s have a good meal, a good
drink, and a good sleep. This spooky mixture of
lightning and moonlight has got us positively drivel-
ling. Here’s to to-morrow’s sunlight ... to your
wedding-day, old bridegroom !”’ he ended, tossing off
at a gulp the cocktail that Blane was patiently
extending.

Peat MLCT tri tos citer Es easter eT Tite oc Dam eeeaee CUTS BEM teCHAPTER XXVII'
TEVE,” said Radford, two hours later, as
they were parting for the night at his bed-
room door, “ there’s something I’d like you
to realise rather particularly to-night.”

' Hin? Well 4 @ said Steven:

**Jt’s just . . .”’ Radford halted, “that I think
rather more of you than I would of half a dozen
brothers.”

Steven plumped a huge hand down on his shoulder,
shaking him a little, as one dog “ worries ” another
in fun.

** Old donkey,” he said affectionately, ‘‘ you’re in
a funk about to-morrow—that’s what.”

‘“ No,” said Radford seriously, “ I’m not in a funk
about anything. I just wanted you to know some-
how.”

Steven took a glance at the pale, sober young face,
then gave the shoulder on which his hand still rested
a painful squeeze.

‘““Same here, Evan,” he said gruffly. Then he
put up his other hand to Radford’s other shoulder
and turned him so that he faced him. “ Now look
here,’? he said, ‘‘ I’ve been watching you all the
evening, my young friend. You’re what I should call
overstrung. You just make a break for the Land of
Nod and stay there till you’re called in the morning,
wil you?”

Radford nodded.

‘““Good-night, Steve,” he said. As they shook

Rests tak .ee taadterm isos: oak! pete rere fects Weisbheaticeaneytiai ttt

198 THE ELUSIVE LADY

hands for ‘“‘ good-night ” he added, turning into his
room: “‘ Don’t forget what I saidjust now ... ever

. will you? ” '

‘Oh, you sentimental infant, go to bed!”
responded Steven in a sort of muffled roar. He felt
uncomfortably choky somehow. Pushing the slight
figure before him quite into the room, he drew to the
door behind it. ‘‘ Go to bed!”’ he called again with
his mouth at the crack.

From within an “ All right’ answered him. He
went off down the passage to his ownroom with an
unpleasantly tight feeling about his heart. He decided
that the queer, unseasonably sultry day and the still
queerer and more sultry evening had got them both
upset. Besides, not only bridegrooms, but ‘“‘ best
men ”’ who happened also to be best friends, were apt
to be upset on wedding-eves. He scrambled out of
his clothes and into bed with depressed irritation, and
in five minutes was sound asleep.

Radford, on the contrary, not only made no
preparation for going to bed but hadn’t the slightest
intention of doing so. His every nerve told him that
this was to be the night of his most intense, his most
carefully self-guarded vigil. If ever that presence —
was going to manifest itself again, something told him,
as surely as though a voice had spoken it, that this
would be the night.

He felt rather tired; the long, stifling day, his
interview with Melany, his decision to give up ‘‘ Her
Wish,” the drawn-out evening with Steven, during
which he had to keep such close guard over his wor ds
and manner, lest they should “‘ give him away ”—all
this had told on him. Without undressing he lay
down on the bed, his hands under his head i in the way

 

OLSEN TH tra E OTT eer eh eters Tr TTL eertenre freee Prt OnvTn or Mtetenrtsey etree TL LOL acaciaTHE ELUSIVE LADY 199

that rested him most, his eyes on the graceful shadows
of vines on the thin window-curtains, now silvery
with moonlight. As a rule there was the most
delicious rustling of leaves from the tulip-trees just
outside, but to-night there was not a breath astir,
not a sound except that incessant orchestral stridor
of insects, as if millions of tiny elves were playing
without pause on flutes and violins. The sound was
so continuous, indeed, that it finally wove itself into
the fabric of silence; the accustomed ear was no
longer conscious of it, so that it seemed the woof of
which silence is the warp, just as those glittering
filaments which spangle the extremest gloom seem
the woof of darkness.

He lay there quite tranquilly, sure that if she were
coming it would be only after the house was still
with that after-midnight stillness which to some
sensitive people is so remindful of the silence of
tombs. He wondered a little, however, why he felt
so perfectly sure that shé would come to-night.
Doubtless it was that soft laugh that had been so
sweetly without malice and yet so mocking, when he
had said “ Good-bye ” aloud. . . . Yes, it was that,
of course. She might even then have been coming if
Steven’s great shout hadn’t shattered the delicate
moment. Perhaps, about one o’clock, he would rise
and go down again into the “ ghost-garden.” ...A
lovely name, that, by the way ... like a poem; she
herself was so poetically the ghost to haunt a garden
_.. with that magical perfume of ghostly roses
always enfolding her... . As for the explanation
_. , such things were no more to be explained than
electricity, or timeless space, or God. . . . Men gave
names to them .. . that was all. Who really knew
what gravitation was? Who had ever known ? Nothi

  

. 4 oT pe Ora he
wnmitalae ce hd oa ie
o = ” rr At bet alba Or ms iC ST Amey ‘ote aa
oer) ingen anoiin Mitithient iin H Asean tte ar ol EE esas Wi
us i pe heat let Saad by (9 " is as :

    
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
   
 
   
   
   
    
   
  
  

200 THE ELUSIVE LADY

Newton! Long before that old fellow in the Bible—
who was it? Job? David ?—had said “a spirit
passed before mine eyes and the hair of my flesh stood
up,’’ such appearances had passed before the eyes of
men ...some hideous, some beautiful like his
elusive lady. He recalled dreamily the odd anger
that Steve had roused in him by calling her face
“infernal,” by likening her to a “ VaIMpite.( «4
Well—he smiled to himself in the moonlit gloom—
wilfulness is properly “infernal” in a way, since
according to Scripture it created the “Inferno.” .. .
And she was wilful, oh, she was wilful, even as a
phantom! . . . One felt that. |. rather) ane
needed all one’s will in confronting her . . . needed
to cling to it desperately, not to be drawn up by the
roots, as it were, out of the firm ground of every
diye...

He remembered now his strange dream of her the
night he had spent in the hammock . . . recalled his
sensation of clinging to the stiffened cord of his will,
like a man to a steel rope above the glassy funnel of
a whirlpool that is so swift it seems still, . . .

He wondered, lying there, watching the moonlight
steal more and more into the room, Spread in a silver
pool upon the floor, if it had been only a dream? If
it had not . . . and if he had not resisted so deter-
minedly . . . what would have happened? Would
he have found himself in it with her? And what did
he mean iby it’? In thal wend cavern of
iridescent gossamer? ...In another world 20.
another “state of being,” perhaps? And what
then? Would he have “returned ’?? Or would he
have been what is called “ dead,” yet knowing
himself so tremendously “ alive?? And why did he
seem to feel that he would have known himself to beTHE ELUSIVE LADY 201

what he thought of as “tremendously ” alive? It
came, he decided after some moments spent in
pondering it, from his sense of her as being so tremen-
dously, even terrifically, alive. It was there, the whole
thing. His fear, not of her, exactly, but the current
that she brought with her, that she came on, rather,
like the mermaid he had once imagined on her tidal
Wave: c.

He wondered suddenly what time it was, and how
long he had been thus half-drowsily musing. Some-
how he felt awfully lazy in spite of being so wide-
awake. Reaching out his hand he felt for his watch
on the little table near by. It had been his father’s,
an old-fashioned chronometer that struck the hours,
quarters, and minutes when one pressed a spring.
With its small crystalline notes it told him now that
it was half-past one. Still he did not move... it
was so delicious to lie there in the moonlit room
thinking over his queer fairy-tale. He had a mutin-
ous feeling that if she wanted him she must come to
him. ... . It: was her © last) chances) © )5 sEe
wouldn’t seek her any more. ... Let her come if
Shei chose. 3...

His eyes closed for an instant, but only for an
instant. They were wide enough the next. There
had wafted to him a fragrance of damask roses, a
fragrance strangely mingled with another that he
couldn’t quite remember, something very faint, yet
heady and exotic. . . . There was no breeze or he
would have thought it had blown to him from the
garden. Strung sharply now, awake and alert, he
sprang to the edge of the bed and sat sideways,
listening.

There were two doors to his room, one opening on
the main hall, one into the passage at the other end ofPetre eae ete eee eee gees ea sce aeeecsesectioel sa akeakto arta hes ae eR

202 THE ELUSIVE LADY

which was Steven’s bedroom. Why he should have
fixed so certainly upon the door leading to the main
hall he couldn’t tell, but as he sat tense and breathless,
gazing at it, the other door opened softly, and before
he could turn to face it she had glided through and
was standing in the moonlight opposite the bed.

He gasped for the sheer beauty of the apparition.
She had never seemed to him before so utterly
phantom-like and yet so real. It was as if she had
clothed herself in the moonbeams, in a web of them
held together by silver threads, crusted, stiff with
them. There was a veil of them about her head more
diaphanous, and through its folds the marvellous red
of her hair flamed even in the cold light that quenches
colour. That new fragrance, faint and exotic, floated
towards him, clung delicately, like a web finer than
that the ancients called ‘“‘ woven wind ’”’—he was
under its invisible tent with her, closed in as by some
magic vapour less tangible than the hues one sees in
a waking dream. And with it there came remin-
iscence, vague yet poignant, a sense of something that
had once been realer than the hour itself... a
memory as of things forgotten but once dearer than
life ...a pang of the heartstrings wilder than
grief, wilder than joy, an ecstasy, unreasoning,
unrelated to reason—the lift within him as of some
prisoned self that he had once known, and lost all
knowledge of, yet that was the very self of his very
self, the innermost vital spark of him, the flame that
burns when all else is ashes. And this self of his self,
fluent like flame, bent towards her as if blown by a
strong wind that came from measureless spaces, that
streamed towards spaces as measureless. . . .

_ Somewhere far, far away—or was it in the depths ?
—he knew there was a thing called “‘ will,” his will.THE ELUSIVE LADY 203

. . . And like a man seeking to force his way down
through waters grown dense with sheer depth, he
struggled to reach it. It was as if some part of him,
almost numb, had yet the power to tell him that
unless he grasped that thing called “ will’? he would
never again reach the surface of this deep that
weltered over him. . . . Then with a shudder of all
his being, like the shudder of a ship dragged backward
by the same wave that sent her on a reef... he
felt the spell loosing him, relaxing. ... He was
conscious with another consciousness . . . knew that
this consciousness was his will.

With drenched forehead and heart labouring he
stood gazing at her, meeting, with all the power of
the will which he seemed to have recovered from
ultimate depths, her dark ineluctable eyes. But they
no longer commanded, they implored; it was as if
they beseeched him for something which was hers
and yet which he possessed ...as if she were
pleading for her own, but for something as much his
as hers. ... And as he stood, bruising his own
spirit with the iron of his will bent against her, she
turned with an infinite soft. melancholy of drooped
head and listless arms away from him. He tried to
call out to her, but his tongue was tied. He took a
step towards her, and at that she turned her head,
and raised again to his her imploring eyes. And
again there floated to him that faint yet piercing
fragrance. . . . And it was as if he had known both
it and her from time immemorial. . . . Where or how,
he could not remember, only that she had implored
him then as now; and then, as now, it had been his
will alone that stood between them.

A blackness came before his eyes. He struck at
it with his hand as though it were a cloth that hadite a oethitti i tttt tor tha ets

  

 

Peon
iM

as ‘ Te
cassmueh cbt FP ae,
Hi phes Chia Set WH isic is t b erie

ee reece eed he beta ese ictises oe oka hear Ze ES ne en

THE ELUSIVE LADY

fallen over them. It passed and he saw clearly.
The room was empty of her... .

«Then a great pangiseized him; he cried out like
a man parting with his soul and rushed headlong to
the door, along the hall, down the staircase, following
like a hound by the scent of that faint fragrance.

He saw her again, passing across the terrace
towards the rose-garden. He could hear the rustle
of her skirts stiff with silver threads that caught the
moonlight. The veil that was like a bride’s dimmed
the outline of her figure. She was real . . . yet she
was like a moonlit cloud floating before him. . . . He
must know. . . . He must know. . . . His will held
her now. She must not withdraw again until she had
told him what she implored... until she had
yielded him her secret. . . . And as he held her with
his will—drawing her back from her strange
escape—he saw, as it were, fine iridescent cob-
webs spread upon the grass where she had passed
along . . . floating filaments that barred his way
like strands of gossamer... .

Now they had reached the rose-garden; even in
that wild moment he noticed how a rose, brushed by
her passing, swayed as from a human contact. He
had the sense of holding her by his will as by a fine,
strong thread.

When she came to the slender grave .. . her
grave .. . she passed to the other side, then turned
and again confronted him, but her face was hidden
now by the transparent moony veil that enveloped
her from head to foot. White flowers held this veil
in place, small flowers with golden hearts...
orange-blossoms. . . . She was dressed like a bride.
On the swimming immensity of the moment their
fragrance drifted to him, faint yet piercing, subtly

204

 

 

erentTHE ELUSIVE LADY 205

honeyed and alluring as the thought of kisses given
and returned on the brink of some sweet death. . .

The thread by which he held her seemed now finer
than a star’s spinning . . . less tangible than a ray
of sound too swiftly vibrant for mental hearing . . .
seemed, indeed, the ineffable filament by which his
own spirit was held to his quaking flesh.

And thus knit to her by the same impalpable bond
with which he held her, and which, though impalpable,
was yet strong as the invisibility which binds the
Spheres to their courses, he felt himself alone with
her in a supernal vast, where the one only other
thing was his will to hold her, to look again upon her
face and read its secret. . .

Suddenly, with a gesture swift and strangely
royal, she put back her veil. In the dark eyes, heavy
a little as with the opiate of secret dreams, there was
no longer any shadow of imploring. Full of a mystic
arrogance, an exquisite, sott malice, languid, deliberate
and imperious, they dwelt on his with a look as
sovereign as had been the air of her unveiling. For
a moment that seemed an immortality those still,
immutable eyes fixed him with their resistless gaze ;
then, slowly, delicately, she smiled. And this smile,
exultant and ensorcelling, seemed not only for him
but for the idea of death, as she glowed there with a
splendour that dimmed such feeble life as could be
touched by death—the marvellous, living ghost,
standing triumphant over her own grave.... .

In a flash of mingled ecstasy and terror that wild
vertigo of the spirit was upon him . ... as if he were
poised on the brink of a measureless abyss . . . as if
he were being drawn towards it by some power
stronger than life or death ; as if she were herself the
abyss that drew him; as if what he possessed and

   
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

aeFa na a tea areca atte ae lel atinlaiadhin v1: ahun sheen? —
ta RA isd loko ; ; eves a,

eee

2 a TO ea te a
en tdi past

Pres relate rtseeieee Sistas tat child hand Sod} sh bee ae ea

206 THE ELUSIVE LADY

that was yet hers was that very self of very self in him
that bent towards her fluent-like flame. . . . And all
at once he knew that the will he clung to had turned
against him, that he had fallen on his own will as on
a sword, for it was his own will that sent him to her,
step by step, nearer, nearer, until he touched airy
hands that clung, that drew him to the heart of
mystery, to the ultimate innermost solution . . . to
a rapture that was death and yet was at the same time
lite exorbitant...CHAPTER XXVIII

HAT night, the eve of her wedding-day, when

Radford had left her to return to “ Her

Wish,’ Melany went upstairs and leaned at

her open window feeling that she should be very happy,

and yet, in spite of this feeling and all her will set on

it, she was not happy. Something vaguer than doubt,

neither as hot nor as cold as fear, rose softly like
a mist within her, dimming joyousness.

She thought that it must be the mood, half sad,
half glad, that comes to maidens on their wedding-
eves, that wistfulness with which one says farewell
to something dear when one is about to turn from it
for ever, although to something dearer. This Melany
that was herself would not be any more after to-
morrow ; not just this Melany, not ever any more.
There had been another time when she had said
good-bye to herself, a self that was never to be again.
It was when her voice had been taken from her. For
a long time after that she had felt as if her voice had
been her soul, and there was nothing left in her that
could hope or pray or desire. Then love had been
given her, and her soul, which was only sleeping, had
wakened and lifted within her. Then she had
longed for her lost voice with a different longing. It
seemed to her then that no words of hers could ever
utter her love, only the voice that she had lost. And
something else happened that was very strange; it
was the feeling that even if her voice were to be given
back, she could never use it for any lesser thing thanBri Hi

er o ane ” a) a i
Pr eee eed esta iheaei ote tots ok ok ord ech

208 THE ELUSIVE LADY

the expression of her love or the gladness that love
had brought her. Yet to-night that gladness was
subdued. It lay within her breast pale and listless.
There was even a heaviness about it, so that though
it was still gladness, it was as if half-asleep. Then
with a pang she realised that she had drawn pleasure
from her lover’s sacrifice. She had been so glad
when he had said that he would sell ““ Her Wish ” that
she had not stopped to think how it must hurt him to
part with it. She recalled his eyes and voice now as
they seemed when he had told her, and she could hear
again her own cry of delight. Yes, now that she
looked back calmly, putting aside her selfish pleasure,
she knew that there had been no pleasure in his eyes
or yoice. They had been very kind and gentle, but
. .. yes, now that she remembered without the veil
of her own feeling to blur them, they had not been
glad. And suddenly it seemed to her as if she had
set him far away from her by being joyful because of
something that grieved him. She felt as if she
couldn’t wait to tell him how sorry she was, as if she
must go now, running all the way to “ Her Wish ” to
tell him that he needn’t give it up, that she didn’t
want him to make a sacrifice for her at the very
beginning of their life together. ... She turned
eagerly towards the door, then stopped, remembering
another thing. This was the last evening of her
girlhood ; she must spend it with her father. Besides,
it would seem very queer if she went to “ Her Wish ”’
now. Even he would think it a strange thing for her
to do. ... And there were Steven and Blanc to
consider. ...

She went slowly downstairs to rejoin her father,
hoping that no shadow of her inner distress would
steal into her face against her will while she was withTHE ELUSIVE LADY

him. ‘Then, as she was about to open the door of the
living-room, a gleam of thought came, chasing away
the Sadeoe: She would tell Evan to-morrow ;. she
would give him back ‘‘ Her Wish ” on their wedding-
IMOLMIMNG! 5.7

It was nearly midnight before she left her father
and returned to her own room. Through the window
which she had left with shutters and curtains pushed
back she could see the whole sweep of sky above
“ Her Wish” sown with stars and pulsant with
summer lightning. She undressed, then knelt beside
the window again and leaned with her arms on its
sill, gazing towards the place of her dread, thinking
how wonderful was love that could conquer such
dread, and of how Evan would smile to-morrow when
she told him of it. But even as she thought this that
dread began to mount again within her, slow, stealthy,
sure, a dark tide of the spirit. The wild beauty of the
night seemed to hold something baleful, to portend
some evil orgasm of hidden forces. The lightning
was like silent mocking laughter, convulsing the
charged air, and surely the heat had terribly in-
creased. It came billowing down above her, fold
upon fold, until she felt smothered in a huge
mantle of plumage under which she struggled for
breath.

She rose to her feet, bringing out of the impression
which had almost overwhelmed her one clear thought.
She must conquer her dread now, here, if she was ever
to conquer it.

«It’s this fearful heat,” she said to herself; «if
I could only plunge into cool water .. . running
Walerys (27
‘., At the same moment a vivid picture floated before

her, Just beyond the garden, near the edge of the
0K e 35 +6 Rte tr ee) Tee
Aika tet ate ae a erate ce ee eater ht ts)

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

210 THE ELUSIVE LADY

woods, there was a deep pool overhung by willows,
and the picture that she saw against her closed
eyelids was of this pool, clear and onyx-coloured in
the moonlight. ...

Throwing a light cloak over her nightdress, she
stole from the house and down through the garden.
It was wonderful to be out of doors at midnight ;
already she could breathe more freely. The dread
was lifting from her. She came to the quiet pool, and
looking in, saw the mild stars reflected and the
arrogant moon trembling a little m her watery
heaven. As she gazed the lightning quickened
beyond the stars and a golden shiver ran across the
pool, but it no longer seemed sinister, only magically
lovely. She loosened her hair, and slipping off her
nightdress, she stood slim and pearly against the
background of pale foliage and clear water. It
seemed to her fitting and beautiful to bathe thus in
living water on her wedding-eve, among the reflec-
tions of stars and moon and summer lightning.

The soil here was sandy, not red as on the higher
lands of “‘ Her Wish,” and the pool was lined with fine
white gravel.

She stooped and let the water close above her.
Deliciously it clasped her, washing away the last
traces of her dread. Rising again, she swam languidly
for a few strokes, then floated, her arms stretched out
behind her head. It was exquisite to rest like this
on the cool elastic element. It was as if she were
being gently rocked by a current of ineffable peace.
The lustral waters purified her body and her spirit
from fever. The sky seemed full now of benediction.
She thought that she could almost hear the music of
the stars . . . and she sent upward to them, with her
look, a prayer for which she could not have foundTHE ELUSIVE LADY 211

words, so mingled was it of feelings for which there
are no words. ...

it was nearly one.o’clock before she lay down upon
her bed, sinking immediately into a profound sleep.
But she had not slept more'than a few minutes when
with a bound she was on her feet again. The very
violence of this bound from the soft depths of sleep,
into a wakefulness so sharp and cutting that she
seemed to have alighted on edged flints, dashed away
from her for an instant the memory of what it was
that had so fiercely roused her. The next it crashed
down on her like the collapse of a suspended wave
that falls all the harder for its brief pause.

She had seen him, Evan (she knew that she had
seen him, not only dreamed of him), with the rigid,
expressionless face of a corpse, yet moving swiftly,
the eagerness of his body contrasting horribly with
that still death-mask of his face—moving swiftly
towards some appalling danger. And this danger was
drawing him along the upper terrace of ‘‘ Her Wish ”’
. . . down the path that led to the ghost-garden . .
to that grave. . . . Yet, im her vision, though he was
going so swiltly along that familiar path, it seemed
to wind on one side above a sheer abyss, as if the earth
there had been rent in half, and that gulf was the
edge of the world, and below only soundless space
and quenched stars... .

She dressed in a frenzy of haste that left her damp
hair hanging about her shoulders and now and then
heartbreakingly frustrated itself. But at last she
was out in the night again, running at full speed across
the lawn. ‘The old setter gave an excited nocturnal
bark, then rushed after her. She did not hear him
or know that he was following.

Bivan was im .danger . >. in danger . 5 a0m , - Perma Epa ter st es C2 0
Chu latehatbeiatd tishi hd List Licht "Sash stb eee ert have ry

   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  

212 THE ELUSIVE LADY

danger .. . and what this danger was she knew.
That was the one thought in her brain, but she
herself, her whole self—mind, soul, and body—was
flaming with a will that had been rekindled as by the
stroke of a sword of flame. She was not the Melany
that Radford had known as she ran tense and
gathered to the height of her bemg through the
strange suffocating night. She felt dread incon-
ceivably greater than any she had yet known, but she
felt no fear. There was in her, she was exultantly
aware, a power of light that throbbed to fling itself
against the power of darkness. She did not even fear
to be too late. The same power that had wrenched
her out of sleep would see that she got to him in time.
And now she seized other thoughts and sent them
flashing before her like flights of arrows. She shot
to him her keen, sharp-pointed thoughts, hurling
them by some wild energy of the spirit, so that to her
they seemed to take form and coruscate against the
air as they sped from her: ‘ Wait for me...
Waittorme,... Dan Love... Tam Bove. 2. 2 i
am Love. ...I1 hold you fast. ... Wait for me.
. Wait for me....’” But now wild fantasies
began to swarm about her mind. She imagined
herself with both hands clenched in the streaming
hair of a comet, striving with might and main to
restrain it from its headlong course. She was
grasping the foamy hem of a retreating tide... .
She dragged it an inch backwards and the moon
staggered in the sky as though the hem of her garment
had been tugged awry. She was holding in both
arms the vast column of black smoke that was an
escaping geni. . . . Andthe smoke looped downwards
and pressed upon her malignantly so that her breath
choked in her throat and her eyes swelled and
burnt.THE ELUSIVE LADY 218

Then suddenly the whirling images dissolved, and
she was conscious only of her steady, flaming will
again, and the beat of her heart that said: “* Wait for
me...) Wait tomme sy. a.

Now she had left the avenue of firs, and was flying
up the terraced lawn as she had once flown down it,
when a child, from that terrible portrait. Some tense
chord in her twanged with ecstasy, as she knew that
now she was rushing towards the more terrible reality,
and was not afraid of it, longed to come near it, to
measure her strength against its strength, that power
of light in her against its power of darkness.aR A an aia
: a are Pe

Wh

| Hh

. . ™ ae wpytagieederitide ;
Pree rarer ested tbetae came sti 12h bd ct a tiie

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

CHAPTER XXIX

T was that last stretch up the slanting lawns of
“Her Wish ”’ that brought her to sudden con-
sciousness of her body as of ahard-driven animal

that was failing her. There was a hot constriction
across her chest, her throat and mouth were parched,
her breast laboured. Light and agile as she was by
nature, the headlong, unaccustomed run of more than
a mile over uneven ground had taxed her forces to the
utmost. She felt, during that last hundred yards to
the upper terrace, as though the clogging medium of
nightmare stayed her, as though she were struggling
up a hill spread with bird-lime. A pang like the sharp
curve of a sickle caught her inthe side. She was forced
to halt a second, gasping hard, and in this second
of arrestment the old dog that, although panting
heavily, had kept up with her, ran a yard ahead, then
stiffened suddenly and growled, his scruff bristling.

She got her breath again and ran on, but the dog,
whimpering uneasily, fell behind, darting now to the
right, now to the left, snuffing and questing as though
seekmg some means of egress through a sudden
barrier.

When she had mounted the last step that led to
the terrace she saw that it was empty. Below her
the setter was still whining and circling. She turned,
and again running, went down the path to the rose-
garden. As she reached the arbour that divided, it
from the lawns the dog, plunging through the box
hedge, joined her again. He was shivering violently,

 

ret w loath titre tor tes tater UaeTHE ELUSIVE LADY 215

and the hair all along his back stood on end. When
he saw her begin to descend the steps he lifted his
grey muzzle and howled dolorously, but didn’t follow.
Back and forth he darted at the head of the steps,
baying his terrified anguish, just as a person who
cannot swim rushes shrieking back and forth along
the edge of water in which someone 1s drowning.
Dogs near and far began to answer him. Their
howling went up in dismal chorus through the
moonlit air.

But Melany was aware of nothing except the will
to be in time, to find Evan, to save him, to hold him
back from that terrible grasp which was drawing him
as the moon draws the tide, which she felt drawing
him, as if her own heartstrings wound with his
stretched and ached under the frightful tension with
which his were being drawn apart from them. Sud-
denly, as the dog had done, she became aware of a
barrier across her way, a veil as of soft impenetrable
stuff that choked her with invisible folds. All seemed
grey about her, vague, formless. She could no longer
tell where she was. The foliage and blossoms of roses
were on every side towering unnaturally like a shadow
forest. She plunged into tangles of thorny boughs,
stumbled on the soft loam of the heaped beds. Her
mind spun wildly like the mind of one falling from a
great height, and now for the first time she heard that
desolate howling, full of helpless terror, of desperate
imploring. .. .

In some strange way the homely sound brought
back her sense of reality. She clenched all her
being against the insidious soft force that had closed
about her like a gigantic cobweb, broke free from it,
realised that she was in the ring of rose-trees that
guarded the grave, and ran, forward crying his name.2 De Ri tees ini ee Or ed Pree

216 THE ELUSIVE LADY

The next instant she saw him. He had fallen forward
on the low mound with arms outstretched as though
embracing it...

Her love found strength to turn him so that she
could look into his face, to lift his face against her
breast, as she stretched herself beside him, leaning
for support against the dreadful grave. Though his
face was as she had seen it in her vision, she refused,
with a sort of wild righteousness of wrath, to believe
him dead. This was something even more awful than
death that had overcome him, something which she
in her turn must overcome. The cheek which she
touched piteously was very cold, so were his hands.
She could not find the pulse in his limp wrist. There
was no stir at his heart when she felt for it, and his
breast under the shirt that she had opened was cold
like his hands and face. Yet she was sure that he
wasn’t dead; so sure, that there Swept over her the
conviction that here and now was to be the great
battle of the powers of light in her against the power
of darkness that strove to overwhelm him. As this
conviction came to her, there came also the sense of
that presence from which for so long she had been
shut out. Personal, tremendous, implacable, it rose
there before her as real, though invisible, as the
senseless body she clasped so jealously, confronting
her across it, mocking her with the assurance which
no words could have made clearer, that it was but
the shell she clasped, while with that presence was
the spirit that had dwelt in it. . . . At the same time
she felt her own being transfused with one im-
measurably greater, yet which was also hers, It was
as if she quickened beyond her normal consciousness,
transcended her body, became in her turn a presence,
tremendous and implacable.

 

Perit Wainer tit hat oe ther tae tos cue eaeTHE ELUSIVE LADY 217

For a moment she was all exultation; then with
an indescribable anguish she felt that darkness
stealing over her like a cloud driven by some resistless,
steady wind. The new self into which she had been
so gloriously lifted seemed dwindiing, smking inward
like a spent flame. She gathered all her strength and
uttered it in one cry; © Evan! 7’

The darkness thinned. She was sure she saw a
quiver in his sealed eyelids. She called him again.
Then her voice failed her. A hand seemed to shut
her throat. She crouched, fierce but paralysed, while
the darkness swelled again, billowing over her. And-
now the new life, the new will in her, flared again, thin
as a spray of fire, but rising, rismg, higher than any
shadow, piercing that violent darkness, severing it.
And suddenly she knew beyond doubt that the evil
power was divided by her effort against it, that it
could not bend its full force on her without releasing
somewhat its hold of Evan. With this knowledge
came a transformation in her conception of the
unseen. It was not only a dark power that she
fought, but that power condensed into the form of a
woman, one who, if her inner eyes could discern the
intangible, would be there before her, visible, actual
to the last strand of her burning hair, who was there
before her, though unseen, against whose terrible
desire she was measuring the might of her love. And
even in the horror of this realisation she felt a wild joy,
the joy of one who has been a coward and who faces
the supreme test with no faintest thrill of cowardice.

Her only fear was that she might fail him, that
her love might not prove strong enough. . . . “ Love
is strong as death. . . Flow often she had said it !
_. , But this was more than death that she strove
against. . . . Her love must be stronger than death218 THE ELUSIVE LADY

to conquer it. ... As she thought this that dark
will surged upon her, until the inner light that was her
weapon concentred to a point. And now her con-
sciousness was strangely shifted. This atom of
supernal brilliance that she seemed both to see and
feel was no longer within her, but she was contained
in it as in the centre of a circle that had no circum-

ference. . . . And all at once she knew that this was
the inmost heart of the love that is stronger than
death. ... Smaller than small... greater than

great ...that moves not, yet is swifter than
thought... . The light that is beyond darkness.
. .. Very light of very light. . . . Was she remem-
bering, or listening to great voices? In this centre
of being that was both infinite and infinitesimal she
became somehow aware that to be safe she had only
to be still, quite still, holding him there with her by
her love that was part of the Love that is stronger than
death or evil; only to be still, quite still, with a
stillness that was unbroken love . . . with love that
was light continuous from eternity to eternity .. .
without end as without beginning. Light that
engulfed like darkness . . . that consumed all things

- even her personality and his. ...She was
becoming this light... . Thought was dissolving

- memory. . . . There was only light. . . . Now
she no longer knew it as separate from darkness, or
herself as separate from it... .. She was blended
with it . . . dissolved in it like a drop of water in an
ilimitable sea. . . . And in this sea of light, one with
it also, was Evan. . . . And he was safe... .

It was past three o’clock when the old setter,
discouraged by his unavailing appeal from the head
of the garden steps, wandered forlornly to the house
and began whimpering and scratching at the frontTHE ELUSIVE LADY 219

door. As no one answered he relaxed exhaustedly
upon his haunches and took up again his plaintive
refrain.

Roused by this incessant howlmg so near the
house, Blanc, unable to sleep again, got up and went
downstairs to drive the dog away. No sooner had
he opened the door, however, than the howlmg
ceased, and old Clip, all one glad wag from nose to
tail-tip, fawned upon him. Blanc recognised him at
once as the dog that so often followed Melany to
‘* Her Wish.”

The shortest way to settle the matter, he thought,
would be to invite Clip to spend the night inside the
house, but the dog suddenly rushed from him, looking
back as he did so and giving short, excited barks.
Then stopping short, and looking back, he waited as if
begging him to follow. When he found that Blane
continued to stand in the doorway, calling in an
undertone and snapping his fingers for him to return,
Clip ran back, but this time to leap upon him-with
loud, imploring whines, and a second later rushed
off, repeating his former manceuvres.

“ Bigre |? muttered Blanc in sleepy astonishment.
“ (est curteux, ca!”

As he still hesitated, Clip came to a stand within
a yard or two, and lifting his nose began to howl
again. Before Blane could make up his mind what
to do Steven joined him, a stick in his hand and wrath
on his countenance. Blanc explained, and Steven’s
angry look changed first into surprise, then into
uneasiness. What on earth could have happened at
Hilton to send the old dog here at this time of night ?
He called Clip, who came eagerly fawning and
uttering anxious whines, then ran off again, looking
back and halting just as he had done with Blanc.Ste
ait

 

hil

  

i

THE ELUSIVE LADY

“ Crest bien étrange, monsieur, n’est ce pas?” the
man said, watching Steven’s face, and beginning
himself to feel a queer uneasiness.

“It is,” Steven assented. “It is so deucedly
strange that I am going to get into my clothes and
follow him. Keep him here till I come back, then
dress and be ready in case anything’s really the
matter.”

He returned shortly in rough-and-ready attire of
trousers and coat over his pyjamas, and bare feet
thrust into tennis-shoes.

“ Now then, old boy,” he said to Clip, who,
yelping with joy as he saw himself understood, darted,
not in the direction of Hilton, to Steven’s great
astonishment, but towards the rose-garden. As he
followed he muttered as Blane had done: “ By
George, that’s curious! .. .”

Back and forth before him Clip ran to make sure
he was being followed, until they reached the arbour
leading to the garden steps. Here he halted, whim-
pering uneasily, snuffing at the air before beginning
to descend, which he did with apprehensive rigidity,
checking on each step, and quickly, gingerly lifting his
feet as if from a surface that he didn’t trust. Once
in the garden, however, he seemed to overcome his
instinctive dread, and, nose to ground, dashed off
without any more hesitation. He went so fast,
indeed, that Steven lost sight of him for a moment
along the turning of the path. A little after, one
loud joyous bark;sounded from the depths of the
rose-trees, but changed the next instant into a long-
drawn wail of utter dismay and grief.

The moon, though westering, was still wonderfully
brilliant. It showed Steven that group of man and
woman and dog, huddled against the slender grave.

220

 

Rerun aietet Ti bi rit rte ener ILETHE ELUSIVE LADY

He thought at first that both Radford and the gil
were dead. But as he knelt down beside them Melany’s
eyelids lifted, and she began to murmur words that
for a time he couldn’t make out, his pulses were beating
so thickly against his ears. At last he understood.
She was saying monotonously, reiterantly, as if the
words were a spell that her voice must keep weaving,
"He isn’t dead. ... He isn’t dead... . He isnt
deade, 0.7

Steven gazed into his friend’s face, laid.his hand
on his forehead, and drew it back, shivering.

“He isn’t dead. . . . Heisn’t dead. . - .” chanted
the low, untiring voice, while the old dog crouched
and trembled, muzzling closer.

Steven fought down horror. 'There was something
so dark, so mysterious in their being here together,
here beside this grave. All the vague apprehension
of something secret and menacing, that the evening
before had clouded his mood, gatheredagam. There
was something in all this more sinister, bitterer than
the immemorial tragedy of death. There was, too,
mingled with it, the threat of a catastrophe that
crept slowly toward a piling-up of horrors, for it
seemed to him that in the girl’s spent voice and eyes
was the shadow of insanity. . . . He spoke to her
now with the cajoling softness of one addressing a
child in the clutch of nightmare.

‘You must be so tired, dear. . . . Let me take
him. .. . Your poor arms must be all numb and
cramped... .”

When this appeal won no response from her he
changed it into another.

_ “My dear... I think it would be better to put
his head lower . . . it’s very bad for him to lie with
his head raised like that. . . .” 3THE ELUSIVE LADY

This brought her eyes to his with a look of fright.

“You think I’m hurting him? He isn’t dead.

_ dae isn’t dead... . 2”

* Yes, yes... that’s it,” Steven stammered
incoherently. “It’s bad for anyone who is...
who is unconscious, to lie with the head lifted. . . .”

At this she tried to withdraw her arms, but they
were so stiff that he had to help her. While he was
domg so Blanc came up. Steven broke in on the
man’s cry of dismay with a sharp order.

* Quick! Help me to carry your master to the
house: 27

But at this Melany sprang to her feet, turning on
him a face unreal with passion, with an abnormal
vehemence of wrath that struck him as not least of
the moment’s dreadfulness.

“ No, never!” she said in a voice he did not
recognise. “ Never to that house. . . . He shall be
taken home ...to my home... where I can
guard him from her... .”

Not until Steven promised and sent Blane off to
make arrangements for the removal of the dead man
to Hilton did she relax again, or her face resume its
usual gentleness. Knecling then, with Radford’s
hand held in both her own against her breast, she
began murmuring to him:

“You aren’t dead, dearest. ... You aren’t
dead. . . . You aren’t dead. . .. .” |

   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
     

 

SLUM CT ities

ngaeCHAPTER XXX

HERE followed three days which for Steven
represented the steady ascent of tragedy
to a pitch of ghastliness almost insufferable.

When Radtord’s body had been brought to Hilton
Melany continued her watch beside it, with the same
inflexible determination, the same unshakable belief
in his being alive. Her cheek to his, her arms about
him, she talked to him incessantly in that low, earnest
murmur, as if her words were a spell that her voice
must keep weaving.

Morning passed into afternoon and night, but still
she knelt there. Nothing could induce her to leave
him. She only consented to drink a glass of milk
that Steven brought her when he told her that unless
she took some nourishment her strength would
certainly fail, no matter how fixed her will might be.
It hurt him to see with what almost fierce eagerness
she drank it then.

Dr. Borridge arrived shortly after sunset. He had
no more influence with her than the others. It was
only when her father, after vainly appealing to her,
broke down in tears that she consented to withdraw
for a few moments so that the doctor might make the
necessary efforts to restore Radford to consciousness.
This, at least, was the merciful way in which it was
put to her. In reality there had been no doubt in
Borridge’s mind from the first glance at the white face
on the pillow. His eyes had said as much to Steven.
Still, as he added in words, when the others had lefttis hh ene toe beeen ene ented

224 THE ELUSIVE LADY

the room, one must always make sure. His tests,
however, proved his first impression to be correct.
No blood answered the lancet, there was no dimming
of the mirror held before the lips and nostrils.

He had scarcely laid the-cold wrist down again and
closed his instrument case, when Melany re-entered,
quivering and defiant as if she guessed the verdict of
their silence. But she said nothing, only went and
knelt again beside the bed, taking up once more her
low monotone of reassurance to the dead.

In the hall outside, to Steven and her father,
Borridge spoke bluntly. Melany’s condition he
thought alarming. He would like a consultation.
To attempt to remove her by force from the body
(Steven set his teeth) might throw her into a dangerous
state, and yet... here he hesitated, and yet...
it might be worse for her to remain. The weather
was unseasonably hot... .

Steven turned short and went out into the sultry
night. A sick, loathing horror at the whole scheme
of nature heaved through him. On the wave of
disgust his grief swam like a bit of flotsam, defiled by
it. Then he fought clear of the brackish tide and
knew that his grief was of the spirit for the spirit.
And at the thought of his dead friend, that spirit he
had loved, tears cleansed his mood and for a little he
forgot the horror threatening the deserted body, the
horror of horrors as it would be for the poor girl
clinging so desperately to it... .

At Borridge’s request a great neurologist was wired
for that evening. The night wore away link by link
through its interminable length. Dawn came, and
the sun, clearing the horizon, blazed with what to
Steven seemed an obscene malignity of splendour, as
if sucking up from the whole earth the fumes of ourTHE ELUSIVE LADY 225

helpless mortality. A gruesome dread settled down,
choking him—the dread of nameless things. A man
finding himself in a cemetery during an earthquake
might feel as Steven felt, the fear of death lessened by
the fear of what the gaping earth might disclose. . . .

And still they were held fast by their terrible
dilemma, to which there seemed no solution, for
after several attempts to induce Melany to leave
Radford’s side she turned on them at last with such
an ecstasy of defiance that Borridge declared any
more active insistence might cost her reason... .

A telegram came from the neurologist at midday
saying that he could not arrive till the following night.
Steven and the doctor looked at each other. It was
a grim look ; on Steven’s side it was also one of futile
rage, but Borridge didn’t misunderstand. He knew
quite well that this rage wasn’t directed against any
person. He had seen that look before. All ex-
perienced physicians have. He went close to Steven
and said quietly :

“Don’t rack your nerves over it. I'l] anzsthetise
her if it becomes .. . necessary.”

Steven stared for a second, then sank down on a
chair, queerly faint under the sudden relief from
hourly growing horror.

“Yes, yes, relax . . . that’s right,” said Borridge,
tapping his shoulder with medical benevolence of
manner.

‘He stood there tapping it absently for some
moments. It had been easy to mention anesthetics
in that confident, scientifically superior tone; it had
had its effect on the overwrought young man whose
shoulder he was tapping ; but inwardly he didn’t feel
the“assurance that his tone had implied; inwardly

he was confessing to himself that he had never had
Ppyt

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
    

226 THE ELUSIVE LADY

to face a professional situation half so painful and
puzzling. To leave the girl with her lover’s body
until the abhorrent frankness of nature’s way with
what she wishes to transform to other uses became
apparent would certainly mean to leave her to
ultimate madness ; to remove her from it, even by the
use of anesthetics, might no less mean to snap the
fine tension of her reason already strained to its limit.
Yes, she still had her reason, though reasonableness
was gone. It was impossible to argue with her, or
persuade. ‘To one idea, and one only, she clung with
all the strength of her being : the belief that her lover
was not dead, that he would finally revive, and that
it was she only who could call him back to life... .
This horrible, unseasonable weather! ... If only
some change would come, a storm, lowering the
dense, sultry temperature. As yet, however—and he
thanked a God unknown to science for the apparent
miracle—no change had taken place in the still figure
to which the girl clung so desperately. It lay there
in austere tranquillity, with that strange, unique
pallor so often likened to wax and marble, un-
blemished by even a shadow of that which they
shudderingly apprehended. Perhaps... for one
might mores...)

The latter part of the night Steven watched alone
with Melany, while Borridge took a few hours’ sleep
to steady himself for the ordeal that must surely
come with the next morning. He had suggested the
day before, as a last possible escape from the dreaded
issue with the girl, that she should not be offered
nourishment. A natural collapse might save both
her and them much suffering. But she seemed to
have called to her need a superhuman power of
endurance. The late moonlight slanting into theTHE ELUSIVE LADY

room disclosed to Steven her kneeling figure, vigilant
and steady. Now and then she moved a little to ease
her position, but there was no sign of faintness about
her, and the low murmur went on and on ceaselessly,
mingling with the reiterant noises of the summer
night. . . . He could distinguish no words, only a
soft cadence that rose and fell, with intonations of
unwearying tenderness. He turned his face to the
open window and shut out with his hands the sound
that had become unendurable. ... And the slow
night wore away at last, and again the sun rose
malevolently sovereign. ...

It was at this hour of the sun’s rising that Melany
called Radford by name in a wonderful great voice
that sent Steven to his feet as at the shock of an
alarm-bell. She was standing now, and had grasped
both of Radford’s hands in hers. Three times she
called his name, and so imperious was the sound of
that summoning voice that Steven stared breathless,
feeling for one startled moment that the dead must
answer; the next, he recollected himself and rushed
forward. This must be the sign of the collapse for
which Borridge had hoped. He reached the bedside
in time, not, as he expected, to save Melany from
falling, but to see Radford’s eyelids quiver, then lift,
and from the deathlike face life look out through eyes
darkly empty of all but life... .

The hours that followed this amazing resurrection
(Steven could think of it as nothing less) were as
painful in another way as had been the dreadful hours
that preceded it; for now it was Radford’s reason
that seemed in danger, if not already gone beyond
recall, left behind in that underworld or overworld
from which his spirit had emerged to reclaim the body
that science had pronounced dead. The situation228 THE ELUSIVE LADY

had changed with amazing suddenness, and the girl,
now in full possession of herself once more, found that
the lover for whom she had wrestled with death
seemed not to remember her ; had, indeed, no memory
of any thing or person in his immediate surroundings.
There was an anxious cloudiness in his eyes, which
still seemed focussed on some supersensible experience
so tremendous that it held for him a reality which life
lacked. Such broken sentences as he uttered were
strange as this look in his eyes. He seemed at first
to see and hear very indistinctly, murmuring that
everything was “in fragments, in parts.”

‘Where is the rest? ... The other side of
things? What’s happened?” he kept asking.
«‘There’s nothing whole here, only halves...
parts... .” Lifting his hand he let it fall again, a
look of puzzled dismay coming over his face. “ What's
this heaviness I’m in? ...Am I all heavy like
that?’ And he lay staring at his hand in a sort of
horrified loathing, repeating over and over: “ Why
is it weighted down? . . . Why isn’t it whole, and
yet so dreadfully heavy ? ”

Borridge, taking a quiet, matter-of-fact tone,
explained that he had been very ill, that it would be
better for him just to lie still and not to trouble about
anything, that his confusion was quite natural.
Melany, who still knelt at his side, clasping his other
hand, echoed the doctor’s words, begging him to
rest, that she would stay with him, that she wouldn’t
leave him till he wished her to. He lay as if listening,
his eyes wearily closed, then asked for water. But
when the glass was held to his lips and he had swal-
lowed once or twice with apparent difficulty, he turned
away his head, muttering: “No. It isn’t real
water.) Jibs heavy J.) Sebid. 1) 17THE ELUSIVE LADY 229

The girl, not knowing how to answer, trying to
humour him, asked what he meant by real water.
And he answered :

“It satishies),< . wholly 2. Jat once... 10
floats to you like music... .” Then he corrected
himself with petulance: ‘‘No. That’s nonsense.
Speaking makes me forget. Words are too heavy.
You can’t talk of there in terms of solids. . . . Oh, it’s
monstrous .. . talking is. . . . Words. . . . Words.
.. . Blocks of lead! . . . I haven’t used them for
ages . . . countless ages. . . . They break through
my thoughts... tear them to shreds... . You
can’t hold lumps of lead in woven rainbows... .
The sixth colour. . . . There it isin words. Do you
understand? Of course you don’t. ... The sixth
colour. . . . There’s no word been made for it... .
Its name is hidden. . . . It’s the secret of space . . .
timeless space. . . . Now you know ”—he laughed
weakly, opening his eyes an instant—‘ what you'll
never know,” he ended with faint derision, and
closed them again, lying motionless.

Borridge persuaded him, with Melany’s aid, to
take some nourishment, and told him that he must
not talk any more for the present if he wished to
recover quickly. He then went into the next room
to speak with Steven and Mr. Warrenger.

The girl, left alone with her lover, knelt gazing
down at him, until one of the tears that she had so
long repressed crept down from under her lashes and
fell upon his hand.

He started, opening his eyes and fixing them on
the fallen tear.

“How heavy it is...” he muttered, ** like
everything . . . here.” Then with a sigh, half of
weariness, half of exasperation at the gross in-230 THE ELUSIVE LADY

explicableness of all about him, he closed his eyes and
turned away his face again.

The girl took care that no second tear should fall,
and he lay without speaking for some hours.

Serer tomers ri Ti tt hare os te eae eeeCHAPTER XXxXI

%, R. ELLERSON, the great neurologist for

 ~=©whom they had telegraphed three days ago,
arrived that evehing at seven. Steven,
who had gone to the station to meet him, was struck
first of all by the fact, somehow disconcerting, that
he looked utterly unlike all his preconceived ideas
of what a famous neurologist would look like. He
was a man of about fifty, very tall and of an almost
Oriental darkness. There was, in fact, about his
face, especially the brow and eyes, a modelling
and an expression at the same time Greek and
Asiatic. And these dark eyes, that never left
Steven’s face while he answered the first professional
questions put to him by their owner, were penetrating
yet reticent to an extraordinary degree. Steven had
a strong impression that the personality behind them
was manifold, and that Dr. Ellerson could have been
celebrated for other things beside neurology had he
chosen to direct his mind towards them. He felt all
at once that there was hope for poor Evan, and that
this hope lay in the power of the famous physician
who looked so like one’s idea of a poet or philosopher,
or, rather, like both in one.

By the time they reached Hilton, Steven had
given him a general account of the situation and the
persons it involved, also the bare facts of Radford’s
latest seizure, its duration, and his recovery of
consciousness that morning. He didn’t repeat, how-
ever, any of the strange things that Radford had said,
merely stating in answer to a question that his mindTHE ELUSIVE LADY

had seemed much confused at first, and that since
then he had relapsed into silence, merely opening his
eyes now and then, only to close them again at
once.

“As if,” Steve added, “ the sight of everything
and everyone fretted him. He doesn’t seem to
remember us . . . noteven Miss Warrenger. . . . Or
if he does, it’s as if we jarred on him . | . almost as
if he resented coming to life again.”

Dr. Ellerson said nothing for a few moments, then
he asked :

‘How did Miss Warrenger happen to find him ?
Had she any reason for thinking he’d be in that
particular spot? I should like to know something of
what preceded this last collapse, and ’’—he glanced
at Steven rather shrewdly—“ all the others.”

Steven met the keen glance frankly.

* ’m going to ask you, sir,” he answered, “ to
get Miss Warrenger to tell you that. It’s a rather
queer story altogether, and she knows move about it
than anyone else.”

"When you say queer,’
you mean psychic ? ”’

Steven’s quick look at him was like a start, and
the great man smiled. :

“ Trance is a mental state, you know,” he ex-
plained, “and from what you’ve already told me, I
gather that some fixed idea has produced it in your
friend ; so when you said ‘ queer,’ I naturally thought
of the ideas that we call psychic. Was Mr. Radford
interested in such things ? ” |

VD a yway. i. |. Yes,”
tantly ; “ but only of late.”

“Of Jate?”? asked Ellerson quickly. ‘“‘ Since
how long is that ? ”

232

2

returned Ellerson, “‘ do

Steven admitted reluc-

 

 

Pei Moat UT hat it tte eeTHE ELUSIVE LADY 233

‘‘ A few months . . . about six months, I: think.”’

‘“ And Miss Warrenger ? She shared this interest
with him, I suppose ? ”

“Dr. Ellerson,” pleaded Steven unhappily,
“lease wait and get her to tell you everything. . . .
I don’t want to give you a false impression of her . . .
of the whole thing. And I’d blurt it clumsily, and
you’d think you were going to a nest of maniacs.”

“Very well,” acquiesced the doctor, with another
irrepressible smile at Steven’s last extraordinary
phrase. “It shall be asyouwish. Only tell me this :
is Miss Warrenger the kind of woman who will speak
out to me—a stranger ? ”’

“JY don’t think that a great doctor is ever a
stranger in a time like this,” Steven said earnestly.
“ And if Melany thinks it will help Evan she'll turn
her soul inside out for you like a pocket !”

“Good,” said Ellerson, with perfect gravity this
time, and he said nothing more until they arrived at
Hilton.

After an interview with Dr. Borridge, and before
going to see Radford, he asked Melany if he might
speak with her alone. She led him to her own room,
and closing the door, turned to him, saying as if in
answer to a question :

“T am going to teil you everything. That’s
what you want, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I want that very much,” replied Ellerson.
“ You can help me greatly by telling me all that led
up to Mr. Radford’s present state .. . all that you
know of his mental condition beforehand, and the
causes of it.”

The girl sat down facing him, very pale, but with
no other sign of emotion except the rigid way that she
held her hands clasped together in her lap. Some-234 THE ELUSIVE LADY

thing in that white, controlled face and the dark eyes
fixed on his, led Hllerson to say :

“I’m going to remind you before you begin, Miss
Warrenger, that science no longer laughs at the kind
of things you may have to tell me. They may be
understood by us differently from the way that you
understand them; we may call them by other
names, attribute them to other causes, though very
great men among us differ as to that; but we look on
such things as essentially real, whatever the cause
may be.”

“Thank you. You are very kind to say that to
me,’’ answered Melany, and he noticed that her
interlocked hands quivered. Then she told him, as
she had promised, everything.

When she had finished, he said to her as she had
said to him before beginning, “‘ Thank you”; only
instead of, ““ You are very kind,’ he added with
feeling, “ You are very brave.”

“* No, I’m only not afraid any more,” she corrected
him simply.

“ You don’t feel that influence any longer ? ”

“Tm not afraid of it any longer.”

* You mean you’ve proved to yourself that you
are the stronger ? ”

& wes, 1 think so.”

““And I know so,” said Ellerson, rising, and
looking at her with a kindliness that she felt like
added strength sustaining her. “That is what you
must help me prove to him—that he, too, is stronger.
Now will you take me to him ? ”

When they entered the room Radford was lying
with closed eyes, as Steven had described. There
was a curious look as of sullen exasperation about
those heavy eyelids, as though they rested like stoneTHE ELUSIVE LADY

on the eye beneath and were sealed stubbornly against
the outer world.

Steven, who had been sitting -beside the bed, got
up as Melany and Dr. Ellerson entered, and moved
aside. No one spoke, and the doctor, taking the
chair from which Steven had risen, drew it round
facing Radford. He studied the set face on the
pillow in silence for a few moments, then speaking
rather sharply, said :

‘““ Mr. Radford!”

Radford started, his eyes flew wide and fixed on
the dark, unknown face. A look of recognition
mingled with resentment lit them.

“ Empedocles,” he muttered. Before Kllerson
could speak he added mockingly : “ You think you
brought me back from the dead, don’t you 1 oath
infinite scorn he concluded: “It’s you who’re dead,
Empedocles ! ”

The doctor answered quietly, as if correcting an
ordinary misapprehension :

“My name is Ellerson, Dr. Ellerson. I’ve been
called in consultation by Dr. Borridge. You have
been very ill, Mr. Radford, and unconscious a long
tome.”

“ Unconscious !? echoed Radford. He stared a
second longer, then with a derisive, secretive smile
shut his eyes again and turned away his head.

‘My, Radford,” said Ellerson in the same prac-
tical, quiet tone that he had used before, “ your
friends have confided certain facts to me. They have
‘nterested and impressed me deeply. If you'd
consent to talk with me I’d regard it as a privilege.”

Radford after a slight pause opened his eyes again
and looked at the physician with an expression
strangely calculating.Mi

236 THE ELUSIVE LADY

“Do you think me mad?” he then asked —
curtly.

‘‘ Not in the least,’ answered Ellerson, * but I
think that you’ve had an experience that doesn’t
come to one in a thousand, and that it has left you
naturally exhausted and over-keyed. If it won’t be
too great an effort I should like to hear about it from
you yourself,”’

Radford lay gazing at him.~ Finally he said:

‘What you think of life, as life, I think of as
death. How are you to understand me?”

“Perhaps I can’t, but I’d like to try,” replied
Ellerson. ‘‘ You called me Empedocles just now ;
I suppose you were thinking of the story of Pantheia,
of how he was supposed to have raised her from the
dead. Now I don’t believe that Pantheia was dead,
but in just such a state as you have been in. I’ve
often wondered what she told Empedocles of her
experience. You can imagine, can’t you, how much
I would like to hear something of yours ? ”

Radford lay still again, his eyes searching the
doctor’s face. At last he said slowly :

“Well . . . but I don’t believe it will have any
meaning to you. Somewhere ... somehow... I
was the whole of myself . . . yet it wasn’t person-
ality, and it was terrible and glorious all in one. . .
No! It’s no use!” he broke off. “I can’t get it
Over tor you. 1 was a whole;. )). free (0 thatis
all... . Now I’m only a part . . . wrapped up in
flesh. . . . Horrible stuff! ’’ he ended, with a shudder
of repulsion, putting his hand away from him as
though it were something unclean. Then he laughed.
“What do you make of that?” he demanded
ironically.

“ That you’ve entered some mental state of beingTHE ELUSIVE LADY

which can’t be described in language,” replied
Ellerson quietly.

Radford’s mocking, defiant expression sobered.
He looked at the great doctor with an anxious
gathering of his under-lids.

“Do you know what it was that happened to
me?’ he asked. ‘‘ Everything .. . just before...
is a dead blank.” Suddenly excited, he started up
on one elbow, exclaiming fiercely: “* Swear on your
word of honour that you don’t think I’m mad!”

“On my word of honour, you’re no more mad
than I am,” said Ellerson with convincing sincerity.
‘¢ You have, for some reason which I don’t know yet,
been in the state called trance. I’ve never before
come in personal contact with such a case. That's
one reason why I’m anxious to have your own im-
pressions of it. Does it annoy you to talk with me,
or is it perhaps a relief ? ”

Radford gave a weary, puzzled sigh.

‘Tf I could put it into these beastly things called
words, it would be. You see,” he added abruptly,
“‘ T asked you to tell me that I’m not mad because I’ve
been thinking that I must be.”

“No,” said Ellerson, “‘ you are not.”

“Then why can’t I remember... all these
people . . . who seem to know me so well ? ”

“Youve had a severe shock. Sometimes a blow
on the head will destroy the memory of events that
happened a good while previous to the accident. It
is like that with you. Gradually you will remember,
and what will help you most will be sleep.”

“T feel as if I should never sleep again,’
Radford.

““T shall give you something that will make you
sleep. When you wake we can talk together again.

> said238 THE ELUSIVE LADY

You will be refreshed, less exhausted. Things will
look very different to you.”

Radford lay silent as if thinking it over.

“Shall I dream? ”’ he asked.

“7 think-not,” said Ellerson. “ What I’m going
to give you is really more a nerve-sedative than a
sleeping-draught. It will calm thought, not stimu-
abet.”

“‘T’d like to sleep . . . without dreaming,” Rad-
ford said wearily.

“Then,” replied the doctor, rising, “ Pll go and
prepare you the draught.”

 

 

Perera lliatirt titi (htt tlh Le Loe cat iiaCHAPTER XXXII

N hour later Radford was sleeping tranquilly.
Melany pleaded to watch beside him, but
Ellerson insisted that she should go to bed

and rest.

“ There’s much yet before you,” he said. “ You'll
need all your strength. ‘To-morrow I shall want to
talk with you again.”

She obeyed, but by five the next morning she was
at Radford’s bedside. The thunderstorm that had
been gathering for several days had broken during the
night, and the dawn was fresh and cool. A breeze
fragrant with wet earth and leaves flickered through
theroom. It brought to the girl the benison of sweet,
normal associations, May mornings of childhood
before that sinister influence had breathed upon her.
She gazed at Radford’s sleeping face, and hope swelled
in her heart. It was so different, so blessedly different
from what it had been yesterday. All sullenness had
ieft it. The brow was smooth and quiet. The eye-
lids seemed to test lightly, not with that terrible
sealed look. Would he know her when he wakened ?
Would he? Would he? ... Dr. Ellerson had said
that he might... that, indeed, it was very
probable. .. .

When it was breakfast-time she asked for some
coffee to be brought her so that she need not leave him.
At twelve o’clock he was still sleeping. Dr. Ellerson
came in and out. Once he suggested that she let him
or Steven take her place, saying that Radford might
sleep for some hours longer. But she looked at him240 THE ELUSIVE LADY

so imploringly that he hadn't the heart to insist.
Blanc, who was always on watch just outside the door,
brought her some luncheon, but she couldn’t eat it.
She didn’t feel physically tired, only weary of the
endless iteration of the sentence that throbbed in her
mind: ‘“ Will he know me? Will he know me?”
Dr. Ellerson came in shortly afterwards and sat
down near her, looking over some note-books. At
four o'clock Radford’s eyes opened on hers. She

thought her heart stopped beating at that look. Full

of a vague surprise, it rested on her face for a moment,
then changed.

‘Melany . . .” he said.

The doctor had risen, but did not come forward.
Steadying her voice, she answered :

“Yes, dear. Do you want anything ? ”

He glanced slowly about him, then back at her.

‘Tye been ill?” he murmured.

“Ves, dearest, but you’re much better . . . so
MUCH. eas:

Her voice failed her. The doctor now came up.

‘“‘ Do you remember me, Mr. Radford ? ”’ he asked.
‘“Dr. Ellerson. .. .”

Radford gazed at him earnestly, knitting his
brows. A sudden look of relief smoothed them out
again.

“Yes,” he said, “you gave me some Sleeping
stuff. But that’s about all I do remember,” he
wound up tuefully. “Have I been delirious?
Have I...” He stopped short, and the blood ran
up into his white face. “ Wait . . .° he muttered.
“ t7sicomuna pack. (2) 405)

Melany gave the doctor a frightened glance. He
motioned her to move aside and sat down by
Radford.THE ELUSIVE LADY 241

"Do you remember my explaining to you just
how you had been ill?” he asked.

The flush still on his face, Radford looked hard at
him. Then he asked in a peculiar tone :

‘Do you think you really know ‘ just how ’I have
been? 7

‘““T know the name for it, at least,” said EKllerson
pleasantly. ‘“‘ But ET rather think that you will always
know more about it than anyone else.”

Radford’s look was still fixed and defensive.

‘““{ must say you’re very modest for one of your
profession,” he murmured at last.

Ellerson replied with unmoved good humour that
doctors were apt to be rather cocksure.

This brought no response from Radford, who still
seemed to be studying him intently. Presently he
sald : |

‘I suppose you don’t believe in anything that
you can’t touch or see?”

‘‘ On the contrary, I believe in thought.”

“Oh... thought . . .” murmured Radford, still
eyeing him.

“ But,” continued Ellerson, “I believe that
thought is a mode of being whose ultimals no one has
ever reached.”

Radford looked at him curiously for a moment
longer, then turning away his eyes, said :

‘“‘T want to speak to Miss Warrenger.”’

As Melany came to him he motioned her to stoop
down.

‘“ Melany,” he whispered, “ I can’t get things quite
straightened out... yet. Are we... are we
married ? ”

‘No, dear,’ she whispered back.
He pondered a little, knitting his brow again.
» Q24.2 THE ELUSIVE LADY

‘How long have I been ill? ” he asked.

“This is the fourth day, dearest.”

“Then it was...’ But he left the sentence
unfinished. As she still bent anxiously over him he
said in another tone from which the hardness had
melted: “‘Melany ... did you drag me back? I
seem to remember you calling me... . cailing me
_. . for hundreds of years .. . till at last I had to
come. But it was horrible . .~. like dying . . . like
entering a dead body.”

He stopped, exhausted, his eyes closing, and the
doctor touched Melany’s shoulder. As she looked up,
he said in a low voice :

“He will be better alone for a while. I'll send his
servant to him with some nourishment.”

Radford did not move or speak as they left the
room. Backward and forward his thoughts shot,
‘“ swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” striving to knit
the immediate ravelled past together, to recall what
had happened to him on the day and night before the
day set for his wedding. It was sponged clean out,
a blank, an irrecoverable gap in being. Had she
come again? Had he seen her? Had she drawn
him from the sheath of his body into that dark
ecstasy of liberation in a region outside of space and
time which, manifest only to the super-rational mind,
was already fading from his earth-bound memory ?
Was this clogging prison of flesh that caged him
indeed not death, as he had first thought on waking
up in it again, but what men hold to be life? And
was this fragment, this infinitesimal part of himself
ealled ‘‘ Evan Radford,” all that remained to him of
such stupendous wholeness? With these thoughts
came suddenly that vertigo of the spirit as if he had
plumbed with his naked soul some measurelessTHE ELUSIVE LADY

abyss. ...As if in some forbidden ecstasy his
delight had been also a supreme defiance. What had
befallen him? To what unspeakable cosmic secret
had he been admitted and cast forth again ?

He had the most extraordinary and torturing
sense of spiritual dislocation, as if his ego had been
sheared in half, and the separated halves were striving
to unite again with throes in which reason dimmed
and waned, a weak flame blown upon by gusts from
malign stars. . . . He sat up with a cry, throwing the
sheet aside as if suffocating, and clasping his drenched
forehead in his hands. 7

Dr. Ellerson, who had returned to the room as soon
as he had’ persuaded Melany to remain away for a
time, was at his side in an instant.

“Talk out to me. You can trust me to under-
stand,” he said. ‘I am not one of the doctors who
think everything is explicable in terms of science.”

“Talk out!’ Radford exclaimed. “ How am I
to ‘talk’ of what I can’t express to myself even in
thought ? ”

Ellerson didn’t reply for a moment ; then he said:

‘There is a state called by the Hindus, if I
remember correctly, ‘ shushupti,’ or the deepest sleep.
When the body is in that condition they believe that
the soul or spirit of a man escapes to the centre of
being, but that on awaking he can’t recall his ex-
perience clearly. Perhaps your experience has been
something like that.”

“You believe such a thing possible?” said
Radford, amazed and arrested. :

“The little that I know, or that anyone knows of
such things, makes me think it may not be im-
possible,” replied Ellerson. ‘“‘ Even ordinary sleep is
a mystery. Of its physiological side science knows244 THE ELUSIVE LADY

nothing. Metaphysically and psychologically it is
scarcely better understood, in my opinion. So you
can gather how profoundly ignorant we are in regard
to the mental state calied trance. All that I really
know about the facts in your case is that you have
been to all intents and purposes what is called * dead,’
and are now what is called ‘alive.’ And yet, from
your own impression of your sensations during
trance, you seem to have been intensely “alive ’
mentally all the while.”

““So ‘alive,’ ’? remarked Radford with grimness,
“that I thought I was dead when I first came, as
you’ve put it, ‘to life’ again . . . here. . nt

He looked for one instant as if he were about to
say something further on the subject, and Ellerson
waited, hoping devoutly that he would; but when he
spoke it was only to ask how long it would be before
his wits stopped “‘ wool-gathering.”

‘“‘ You must remember that you’ve gone through
a mental and physical experience calculated to
unnerve a cave man,” answered Hllerson, smiling.
“Don’t be impatient with yourself ... or dis-
couraged if your mind doesn’t adjust itself at once to
its normal balance. As arule, from what I have read.
and heard on the subject, people coming out of trance

bring with them no memories, no dreams. It’s as if

they had fallen asleep one instant and waked the next-
With you it has been different. You’ve expressed a
sense of countless ages having passed . . . of .

‘“When did I say that?” interrupted Radford.

quickly.

‘When you first regained consciousness, to your
friend and Miss Warrenger. I’m telling you these
things because I want you to realise that what you

must do, if you wish to help me to help you, is toTHE ELUSIVE LADY 245

remain as relaxed, mind and body, as unthinking, as
you can. ... Hasheesh produces that sense of
eternities passing over one. It is said to be a terrible
experience. You can’t expect to regain your normal
state at once, but physically you are quite sound.
Dr. Borridge’s diagnosis of your heart-trouble was
correct. It was strictly functional, produced by
intense nervous strain.”

As he spoke he was observing closely the effect on
Radford of the professional statements, with their
appeal to his reasons rather than to his emotion.

The young man listened quietly, but looked past
the speaker to the open window. When Ellerson
paused, however, he turned his eyes to him, and said
in a level, carefully-controlled voice :

‘* Can you tell me whether I shall be liable to such
.. . experiences) (an future 17

Ellerson’s regard was steady and full of grave
meaning.

‘“‘ That,’ he answered, “ will depend chiefly upon
your own will and actions.”

Instantly there came into Radford’s look a
darkening, as of a veil dropped between his inner self
and the man who was striving to perceive it.

‘¢ He will never speak to me or to anyone about
this from: his inmost thought,” decided Ellerson
instantly. And whether the poet in him or the

scientist most regretted this he could not have told.

‘Please explain,” Radford was saying in a tone
even more carefully modulated than before, “ exactly
what you mean by that ? ”

Ellerson, who had swiltly decided on what his own
tone should be, replied at once :

“‘T mean that you should not think’ of returning
to the place where you went through your strange246 THE ELUSIVE LADY

iF | seizure for a long time, if ever. And that as soon as
‘| you are strong enough you should make an entire
| change of surroundings, leave this neighbourhood and

its associations, travel for some months at least.”

Radford’s face by now was a polite mask.
wae “ That’s a very easy programme,’ he said. “Tm
vit to be married as soon as I’m fit again, and one usually
travels. Is that all? ”

The doctor looked at him consideringly. |
“J should like,” he said, ‘‘ to have you. under my |

observation for a time. Would you consent to

pi that?”

        
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

| My Radford’s own look sharpened.
tT ‘““You mean go to a sanatorium? ’’ he asked
suspiciously.

“No. Ishouldn’t want that. Suppose you come
to New York for a week or two, then go to some
place near my country house, say for a month? ”

Radford looked gloomy and obstinate at this |
prospect. |

“1d rather not... thanks,” he said. “Can't @
you leave directions with Dr. Borridge ? ”

“T can’t leave him my experience,” replied
Ellerson somewhat quizzically. ‘‘ And that’s what I
want to put at your service.” |

“Thanks,” muttered Radford again. “But Td |
rather not. I tell you what I’ll do, though,” he |
added. ‘I’ll promise to come to you for as long as
you like if . . . if this sort of thing threatens to nab
me again.”

They talked over matters at some length, and in
conclusion Radford asked :

“When should you say I’d be strong enough to
be married ? ”’
“That depends a good deal upon yourself also,”

 

Pera tat Tit iat ri: tall ct toe acaiTHE ELUSIVE LADY
Ellerson answered. ‘“* As soon as you feel that you’re
well I shall consider you well.”

“Then Ifancy I'll be all right in a few days,” said
Radford. ‘ And now, if you don’t mind, I think Pll

try for another sleep; . . . that stuff you gave me is
certainly eliective:. 4 1

‘“‘It was only a rather strong dose of bromide of
sodium,” returned Ellerson, smiling and rising. “~ Pll
go and tell Miss Warrenger the good news that you're

going to sleep again. Rest and change are, after all,
what you most need.”CHAPTER XXXITIT

“\LLERSON wished to leave that evening,
especially as Dr. Borridge was to remain with
fk 4 them some time longer, but all implored him
so earnestly to stay until the next day that he con-
sented. In the late afternoon, while Radford was still
ia) sleeping and Melany watching with him, Elerson asked
i] Steven to take him over to “‘ Her Wish.” Beside his

My interest in visiting the scene of his patient’s strange

| adventure he acknowledged, smiling, a great curiosity
to see the home of the perverse ghost whose story had
been told him at length that morning by Mr. Warrenger,
and whose letters he had afterwards read.

Steven, of course, consented, though not en-
| thusiastically, and his evident reluctance, which he
| tried at once to hide, interested the great man as much
as the proposed visit. He thought that there must
really be some very unusual atmosphere about a place
that could affect so many entirely different people in
such a powerful way. He was aware of feeling that
he would have liked, under other circumstances, to
repeat Radford’s vigil there.

After supper, as Melany joined him on the lawn
where he was smoking a very meditative cigar, he
told her rather abruptly where he had been that
afternoon. EKven in the starlight he could see the
sudden rigidity of her slight figure as she stopped
short. )
~ The whole place has an extraordinary person-THE ELUSIVE LADY

ality,” he continued, as if not noticing anything
unusual in her manner; “I can understand certain
things much better since I’ve been there.”

There was a dead pause; then Melany said
falteringly :

“Did you .. .” but broke off again, leaving the
question unfinished.

He replied as if she had completed it.

‘“‘ What I did, what I went there chiefly to do, was
to put myself as much as possible in the place of my
patient when he was there. After doing so, as I said,
I had a clear idea of the present situation and what
led up to it. Given his sensitiveness to certain
impressions of which you’ve told me, your belief in
them, his desire to help you, and the atmosphere of
that place, saturated with what must have been a
singularly compelling and fascinating personality
. . . given these things, your and his belief in them
above all, and it is plain to me that he couldn't have
escaped without some grave mental crisis. I am also
more than ever convinced that he should never return
there, even for a short time, even after he has entirely
recovered.”

As she did not answer at once, he added :

“This is a hard saying, I know. It’s a beautiful

old place. He must be very fond of it.”
“He told me... that last evening . . . that he
would sell it,” Melany murmured. “ But now T don’t

33

know... :

Ellerson interrupted with authority :

“You must keep him to it, Miss Warrenger. Such
things can’t be tampered with. They must be
snapped off short.”

In the pale light her face looked up at him passive

and dejected.nh

ny

250 THE ELUSIVE LADY

‘How can I keep him to it?” she said gently.
“Since he... came back... he’s so different.
It’s as if . . .”? she turned her face away, “I don’t
thinkehe |. . cares, ... as he dids|

Ellerson felt a great compassion for her. Her
gentle self-control appealed to him enormously.

‘¢ Ah, there you must be patient,”’ he said. “ After
such an abnormal experience a man can’t become
normal again at once. But it’s only a question of
time before he returns fully to himself . . . to you.
Only,” and here he stopped in his turn to give his
words more weight, ‘‘ I can promise nothing unless he
is prevented from going to ‘ Her Wish.’ ” |

‘“¢ Oh, I would do anything to keep him from it! ”’
she cried with sudden passion. “‘ Anything... :
Anything! ...”

To check her outburst, which he was afraid might
result in her breaking down altogether after the long
strain, he said smilingly :

“Tf you could bring yourself to burn it down, that
would certainly settle things. But I don’t think
we'll have to resort to such violent measures. I’ve
spoken about it to him already. He will see for
himself as he gets stronger that it won’t do for him to
return there. And he has promised to put himself
under my care if he feels any premonitions of the sort
again. I thought it better not to insist at present.

You must let me know day by day how he progresses.”

Melany made no reply. Her eyes were fixed,
wide and still, in the direction of ‘‘ Her Wish.”

He spoke her name. As she started violently,
turning to him, he said :

** You mustn’t go back to old broodings, you know.
You’ve won. Think of that . . . keep your thoughts
fixed on it.”THE ELUSIVE LADY

She had an abrupt and unlooked-for response to
this :

‘¢ Tel] me,” she said, “ do you think it has all been
just .. . thoughyG |

Ellerson took a last deep pull at his cigar, threw
away what remained of it, and turning to a bench
near by, said:

“Suppose we sit here awhile. No one will
interrupt us, and I'll answer you to the best of my
ability.”

But after they were seated he didn’t speak for
some moments. When he did his words surprised
her.

‘“T know no more than you do what it has ‘ all’
been,” he said. “ Your thoughts and his have, of
course, played a tremendous part init... - You, for
instance, have been clearly under the dominion of a
fixed idea—l’ll try not to be technical—and he,
being so strongly under your influence, felt the power
of that idea in you. Such ideas, dwelt upon and
fostered, are capable otf producing almost incredible
results. For instance,” he looked at her consideringly

as he paused here an instant, ‘it will astonish you,
I think, to know that in my opinion the loss of your
voice was purely the result of such an idée fie. . - -
That it is, in fact, not lost, but as one might say,
mislaid.” . He smiled at her very kindly. “ That if
you continue to resist even memories of what so
overwhelmed you in the past you will find your voice
again as suddenly as you seemed to lose it.”

She stared at him, her hands clasped so tightly

that he saw her arms trembling.
“ My voice?” she stammered. “ You think my

voice . . . may come back again ? ”’
“J do,” he said quietly. “Tf you turn away

gs Sef bio252 THE ELUSIVE LADY

resolutely from this place and the thoughts it has bred
in you. I may even say that I’m convinced of it.”

Her hands went suddenly to her face, and to cover
her emotion he continued speaking.

‘So you see what a great force I consider thought.
However, when you ask me if I think that in this
strange case thought has been ‘ail,’ I can only repeat
what I said at first: I do not know. Scientists far
greater than I would believe thoroughly in the mystic
side of it, the side that you believe in; but there I
find myself agnostic. I simply do not know. This
much I can say, though, and say heartily, that I do
believe there are mysteries which science has never
explained, and never will explain. And even if
some day it should penetrate deeper into them, I am
certain that it will find itself only in the vestibule, as
it were, of still greater mysteries. And I am devoutly
glad of it, because I can think of no more horrible
thing than a universe without mystery. Which
you'll admit,” he wound up, smiling, “‘ is a very queer
statement for a scientist to make, seeing that our
chief object is to solve mysteries.” .

They didn’t talk much after that. Melany was
too absorbed in the wonderful new idea that had been
given her to be able to turn her mind from it, and
Ellerson was anxious that the impression his words
had evidently made shouldn’t be lessened.

Her voice... her voice might come back !
Surely if that were possible all things were possible. .. .

When she said good-bye to him next day there
was a life, a vigour in her look and words’ that made
her seem like a new being. |

"I can’t thank you,” she said; “ but you know.
And I won’t fail. I won’t disappoint you. I'll save
him if I have to take him by force to the ends of theTHE ELUSIVE LADY {6 208

earth. If I have to...” She stopped, her colour
leaping, a note almost of exultant laughter in her
voice. ‘“I’llsave him!’ she repeated. “ No, matter
how !” | :

In confirmation of her intuitive, almost religious,
belief in the wisdom of the great doctor, a week had
scarcely passed before Radford became again the
Evan that she had known and loved. He was still
too weak to do much more than lounge on the upper
porch for some hours every day, but he begged that
they should be married as soon as possible. She was
afraid to tell him what Dr. Ellerson had said about
her voice. They never alluded to the past or to
“Her Wish.” And she was afraid also to try to sing.
Some day, when Evan was quite strong again, when
they were married and far away from here, she would
go out in some beautiful, lonely place and see if the
miracle would come to pass. Now it was quite joy
enough to meet his eyes with that look in them, and
listen to his voice vibrating with the old tender-
MESS s) 2) oc

One afternoon, between her and Steven, he had
walked for half an hour in the garden ; then returned
to his own room, where Melany was to have tea alone
with him. He leaned in an armchair beside the open
window while she prepared it, watching her slight,
swift hands, thinking in a dreamy way that it was
pleasant to feel tired with this languid, almost
voluptuous, tiredness of convalescence, and that one
of its chief delights was the way that it extended even
to his brain, preventing those confused, explosive
thoughts that at first had so exhausted him. The
immediate past seemed very dim this afternoon, like
the vaguely remembered dreams of lever... - Hef

Fy
4
5
a
Ea

|

254 THE ELUSIVE LADY

couldn’t recall them as a clear impression, only that
they had been terrible and confused. Some time,
when he was quite well again, he meant to ask Melany
about everything. . . . Now he only wanted this soft,
fluent peace, where his mind seemed to float as in a
milky medium that obscured thought... .

They had their tea together, and Blanc took away
the tea-things. When he had gone Radford, smiling
drowsily at the girl as she sat opposite him arranging
some white tulips in a vase, murmured :

“I say, dearest . . . let’s be married to-morrow
and go for a long cruise. I’ve ‘a great wish ’ for the
Sea.

“Very well,” assented Melany serenely, though
her colour waxed and waned in the way he thought so
adorable. ‘‘’To-morrow, then .. .”’

“Will you really?” he exclaimed, and sat up,
throwing off his pleasant lethargy with amazing ease.
“Really ? Without fuss or feathers? Just Steven
and your father ? ”’

As she nodded, her eyes on the tulips, he reached
out his hands to her across the table, saying eagerly :

“Come! Put your hands in mine and
PLOMISE yi.

She laid her hands in his, and as she did so a curious
flicker ran across his eyes and face; he went white,
drawing a breath sharply through his nostrils; his
hands relaxed, loosing hers, and he sat stiff and fixed,
his look focussed on some point far beyond her.

saancta NR sg it abate tase pe ace et LiCHAPTER XXXIV

’ was then for the first time that Melany became
aware of that faint, stealing scent of damask
roses, faint yet overwhelming in its strangeness,

for the roses were over in the garden at Hilton, and
even when they bloomed there were no damask roses
among them. She sat for a breathless second as stony
and fixed as Radford, then sprang to her feet and
ran to him, catching him in her arms.

“Ryan!” she cried; “ Evan ey

As if from a long distance his voice came blurred

and faint :

‘“‘Tt’s nothing... .

He was staring into huge, lustrous portals like

those the summer lightning reveals in a towering
cloud. .. . He ‘seemed to remember once having
passed through them. . . . Between him and Melany
a fine, iridescent veil of proken filaments was swaying.
_. , Memory quickened . - - beyond those portals
lay a region of wild ravishment, of rapture keen as
anguish, more wonderful than joy. .- . The inner-
most ultimate solution... - aMelin(S bys c

She grasped his face in both hands, turning it
sharply to hers.

« Evan! Evan!” she cried again.

With a spasm like that which wrenches one from
a cataleptic dream, he recovered himself, his conscious
eyes stared into hers; then he shut them, sinking back
from her and murmuring again thickly :
“ ]t’s nothing . . . nothing. - - at

99256 THE ELUSIVE LADY

But she wouldn’t let him sink deeper into that
delicious stupor; her voice, her hands dragged him
to the surface, held him there.

i Mookiat ime...) You onust look, abyme
she kept repeating. “I’ve something to tell you...
something wonderful. . . .” |

And hardly knowing what she uttered, she began
to tell him what Ellerson had said about her voice.
What she had imagined about finding it again in some
far-away beautiful place where they would go when
they were married ... after they were married
to-morrow. . . . How strange it was, wasn’t it? To
think that to-morrow was so nearly to-day! By this
time to-morrow they would be far from here, rushing
into the future together, the future they had so often
dreamed of together.

He seemed to collect himself fully as she talked
on, smiled at her, said that she was very wonderful
to be willing to marry such a “ blithering invalid.”
She laughed out in gratitude for the bit of homely
slang. It put all ghastly, ghostly things at such a
quaint, proper distance. . . . And his look, too, was
so natural now, rested on her so frankly, with none of
that dreadful flicker in it of a consciousness that she
couldn’t share.

After a while he asked for a glass of wine, and she
ran to fetch it from the table by his bed. When she
came back with it, between his sips he said in a
would-be casual tone, his eyes on the wineglass :

“ By the way ... before we’re married to-
morrow I’ll have to get Blane to drive me over to
‘Her Wish.’ . . . I’ve some important papers there
that no one else can get for me. . . .”

Kivery drop of blood left her face. She couldn’t
suppress a cry, and grasping his chair to keep herself

99THE ELUSIVE LADY

erect, she looked at him in dread and wonder. The
look with which he answered hers horrified her even
more. There was in it so caleulated, so cunningly
moderate a surprise.

“ You surely can’t think me too weak to drive the
short distance to ‘Her Wish’ when we’re going to
start on a long journey soon afterwards ? ” he asked,
still regarding her with that false, subtle look.

She thought in quick flashes while he was speaking,
and managed to answer in a natural voice :

“You know Dr. Ellerson thought you’d better
not go back to ‘ Her Wish’ for a long time, Evan.”

His eyes left hers and he said with some coldness :

““T’m not going for a * long time,’ but for an hour
or two, to collect some important papers.”

She hesitated in anguish, then said softly :

“Tf I beg you not to go there surely you won't

Oo ¢ 29 5

“Tm sorry, but I must. It’s . . .? His voice
caught a second, then he ended firmly, almost
sullenly : “It’s necessary ..- - absolutely necessary.”

Again she thought with convulsive quickness.
Dropping on her knees beside him, she laid her hand
on his shoulders; her voice quivering with tragic love,
she pleaded :

“ Dearest, I’ve never asked you for.anything. I
ask you this as if I were asking for my life... -
Don’t, don’t go back to that place !”’

She saw his eyes fill second by second with
hostility.

“T can’t believe that you'll really ask me to
refrain from something that I tell you is vitally
important . . .” he said at last.

“Youll go?... Hven if it hurts me so

desperately ? ”’

    

R258 | THE ELUSIVE LADY

He turned from her. In a stifled, rigid voice he
repeated twice :

“I must go.

Then Melany trade up her mind what she would
do. The idea had flared in her during her last talk
with Ellerson, a fierce thought reckless and lawless,
that she had felt must be subdued. But now, as it
leaped up stronger than ever, she knew that she would
carry it out to the utmost, beyond chance of failure.

1g

That night “Her Wish” burnedtothe ground. The
fire must have broken out about one o’clock, for
it was nearly two when Steven was roused by the glare
that lit up the near heavens and the trees on mist-
mountain as by a gigantic display of Bengal lights.
He flung on his clothes and rushed out into the hall to
find himself face to face with Radford, who was also

dressed. Melany and Blane were trying to restrain

him from going downstairs, and he was repelling their
efforts with angry impatience. His face, crazed and
furious, was that of a man who had reached the limit
of self-control. He gasped in his effort to speak
intelligently, choked and stammered on the words:

(a amustgo, Ti tell yout! . 6 2 l  maust ea
must! ... Then violently to Blanc: “ Let go of
med ee go of me, you fool!”

Steven sprang forward, and grasping him by the
shoulder, tried to reason with him. Insane with some
frightful emotion, Radford struck him violently in
the face. At Melany’s cry Steven, dazed for a second,
recovered himself, and flinging his arms about
Radford, pinioned him without more ado, calling to
Blanc to help him. The three men swayed to and fro
for some moments, Radford’s frenzied strength being
more than equal to that of the other two. Just whenTHE ELUSIVE LADY 259

it seemed as if he would wrench himself free he gave
a dreadful scream, like the scream of a wounded
horse, and collapsed, hanging a dead weight between
them.

They carried him to his bed, and as soon as Dr.
Borridge had pronounced him to be in no immediate
danger, Steven took Blane and rode to “ Her Wish ”’
in case there might be still time to save something
from the house.

Arrived there, however, they found that there was
nothing to do but stand and watch the conflagration
helplessly.

The old home was aflame from wing to wing, and
from the central hall, of which the roof had already
crashed in, the voluming splendour poured skyward
as from a crater, lighting up the country for leagues
around and roaring with the huge greedy, jeering
voice of fire.

To Steven, still shaken from that painful en-
counter with his friend, it seemed as if he looked on
the burning of a sentient thing; as if more than the
beautiful old house were being consumed in those
savage flames. . . . And though he regarded himself
with contempt for the ‘‘ superstitious ” feeling, in his
secret heart he was glad that “‘ Her Wish ”’ would soon
be only ashes and bare charred walls. .. .

To Melany next morning came one of those
astounding surprises which life sometimes offers when
we have no more hope. Just as the dawn broke
Radford started up in bed, and seeing her, cried
joyously :

“Melany!...I told you I would win!...
that my love was stronger than she was!”

She gazed at him, unable to speak.4 RA

Pere Loe Ut a ical

* 260

THE ELUSIVE LADY

He caught her hand, drawing her nearer. His
face was vivid with life. Weakness had slipped from
him like a shadow.

‘Don’t you understand?’ he

 

said eagerly.

She's gone !’, . \. For good this time!) Weire
rid of her for good . . . for good, darling! You ean
live at ‘ Her Wish’ now without a qualm! Or we'll

Selita) Just asyou like.”

She couldn’t let him see her.face. She clung to
him with her eyes hidden against his arm as he lay
back upon the pillows, smiling triumphantly. The
terrible house was in ashes and he didn’t know it!
The miracle had happened and he thought that it was
his miracle. She would rather have it that way... .
It was best for him to think so... .

Yet, in spite of this “ miracle,” during all the
years that followed, whenever he caught unex-
pectedly the breath of roses, or the gleam of iridescence
on morning cobwebs or flying foam, or clouds, there
would sweep over him a strange emotion sensed with
the flower of the spirit rather than of the mind, a
shudder of the soul fearful yet entrancing, as if there
were interwoven with the perfume a spell that wrought
for the dissolving of personality ; as if the iridescence
might suddenly spread into a vast curtain, drifting
between him and the known world, veiling with its
suave folds the edge of a measureless abyss. .. .

THE ENDPATERNOSTER HOUSE,
PATERNOSTER ROW,
Lonpon, E.C.

Messrs. HURST 8 BLACKETT'S

ANNOUNCEMENTS
FOR THE AUTUMN OF 1916

A Volume for which thomsaads of readers have been calling.

Memoirs of William Hickey

(1775 to 1782)
Edited by ALFRED SPENCER
In demy 8vo, cloth, 128. 6d. net, with photogravure portraits.

A continuation of the famous Memoirs ot which the first volume waa
acclaimed by the press as worthy to be placed by the side of Fielding and
Smollett. In this volume Hickey continues the narrative of his life for another
seven years. He describes his voyage to Jamaica and the life on the Island.
Returning to England he again leaves for India where he practises as an
Attorney in Bengal and comes in contact with many notable people. Leaving
India to present 2 petition to Government, he is detained at the Cape through
the presence of French frigates, then carried to Holland by 2 Dutch vessel,
ultimately reaching London, but not until nearly twelve months after he left
Bengal. Being now in funds and with little to do, he once more indulges in a

round of pleasure.

* Copies of the First Volume of the Memoirs (1749 to 1775), Second

Edition, demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 12s. 6d. net, can be obtained at the
Libraries and Booksellers.

A few short extracts from scores of columns of
Reviews of Vol. fa

The Athenawm: ‘* One of the most interesting eighteenth-century documents that
have appeared for some time. We have touched upon scarcely a tithe of the entertaining
matter contained in this volume and shall eagerly await the continuation.”
The Times: ‘‘ Fascinating for its honesty and vividness ; it is difficult to give
he narration ;_ it is of remarkable interest.”

any idea of the spontaneous vivacity of tl ; i
The Spectator - ‘¢ Deserves, both for its human and historical interest to be widely

ied.”
Daily Telegraph : ‘© a ‘find’ of really remarkable interest, likely to take an im-

portant place among eighteenth-century documents.
Manchester Guardtan : * For colour and zest these memoirs would be hard to beat;
were they fiction they would be called ‘ unmatchable pictures of the time.’ ”

he Globe: ‘* A glorious book. Its period is a little later than Tom Jones, but

the splendid rollicking spirit is the same. No lover of English literature can fail te

enjoy to the utmost the virile jolly picture it presents.”
Datly Express : © One of the most absorbingly interesting books of recent times.”

I

 

 

stud

ea it
: cae ie

Gere eg?

 
 
 
   
 
  
  
   
  
   
    
   
   
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
    
  
 
    
    

he a
fr a

i he
t AS
tratesA brilliant Httle book which will appeal to multitudes of
men and womel.

A basis for a reverent, rational
and inspiring religious faith.

Do we Need a
New Idea of God

By EDMUND H. REEMAN
In crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. net.

This book is an indictment of conventional religion, of the
worship of barren theological dogmas, as practised by the
churches.

Starting from the point of view that a new conception of
God is necessary, the author discusses in turn the accepted ideas
of God as the Creator, the Divine Ruler, the Judge, and comes to
the final conclusion that God is ‘‘ The God of the Struggle’’—z.e.,
of the continuous effort of all the forces of the Universe to attain
ultimate perfection.

God, according to the author, is not ‘‘outside’’ the Uni-
verse, controlling its fate in arbitrary fashion—not ‘‘beyond,’’
‘“‘above’’ us—but one with us. This is the true doctrine of the
At-One-ment.

Wilhelm Hohenzollern & Co.

By EDWARD LYELL FOX
In crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. net.

In this book the author gives very vivid, snapshot-like
sketches of the Kaiser, the Crown Prince and of many notable
military and political personages in their entourage, such as
Moltke, Falkenhayn, Biilow, Bernstorff, Tirpitz, Zeppelin, etc.

‘“‘ Wilhelm Hohenzollern & Co.?? is Germany from within
by one who knows. 2

‘‘ Will figure as an important work—one stuffed from cover to cover
with first-hand intimate knowledge.” Sportsman.

National Reconstruction

A Study in Practical Politics
‘By J. J. ROBINSON.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. net.
Deals in a most thoughtful and suggestive way with the recon -
struction of our national forces, which is already necessary to meet
the conditions arising out of the War.

%

 

 

OMe errs (Lath C1 Tol a a cenaaall

 

Prey eeererer eres Coc TLL Deas accelGENERAL BOOKS

The Fight for the !
Republic in China

By B. L. PUTNAM WEALE.
Author of ‘‘ Indiscreet Letters from Peking.” 13th. Edition.
In one large handsome volume, with many Illustrations on art paper.
£1 Is. net.

A semi-official statement of China’s case to the world, and a
concise, reliable and highly interesting account of the Chinese
Republic, by the author of “ Indiscreet Letters from Peking.”
Anyone who wishes to realize the vitality of the Chinese question
should read this careful conspectus. His sober analysis of the
factor of Japan should be read by every intelligent citizen for the
understanding it gives that the Japanese policy towards China is
not an Eastern Monroe Doctrine.

Disloyalty— ca
The Blight of Pacifism

By HAROLD OWEN

Whose famous play, Loyalty, attained widespread popularity
and was presented at a command performance. A stirring book,
in which the author shows—chapter by chapter—how pacifism
and love of peace have nothing in common. He explains the
«German People’’ delusion, how America was “ worked” tor
‘Pacifism, and discusses the Russian Revolution, the ‘League of
Nations,” and such questions as “ Pacifism and Labour ” and
« Our Aims,” in a manner highly interesting and intelligible to

the ‘‘man in the street.’’

3s. 6d. net.

The Mystery of Death

A deeply interesting analysis of our conception of life and death
(from the creation to the present day) in all its bearing on the
World War and the future. The author has some highly ingenious
and original theories regarding Bible-prophecies.

3General Books-—con,

   

Dr. Jameson  e®y G seymour ForT
Demy 800, cloth, 10/6 net with illustrations s

A new-and enlarged edition, brought down to the great ad-
ministrator’s death; This important book should find a place in

every library:

The First Seven Divisions

From Moas to Ypres
aa) :
i By LORD ERNEST HAMILTON. a

Hh Another new edition (the 21st) of this the most famous book of
the War is now ready.

In cloth gilt, 6s. net. with Maps.

On the Road from Mons

With an Army Service Corps Train,
By its Commander, CAPTAIN A. CLIFTON-SHELTON:
Second Edition, cr. 8vo cloth, with Map and Diagrams, 28. 6d. net. :

‘There has been no better description of the Great Retreat. This remark-
able book. We warmly commend this volume.’’— Pall Mall Gazette.

The Nature of War

By the late H. FIELDING HALL, Author of ‘‘The Soul of a People.”

Second Edition, cr. 8vo cloth, 3s. 6d. net.

 

 

‘The last message of a writer whose place will not easily be filled.”®
ln view of the great interest now being shown in the breeding and
management of Herses, S ecial attention is called
to the following-—

STANDARD BOOKS ON THE HORSE.
By Capt. M. HORACE HAYES, F.R.C.V.S.

POINTS OF THE HORSE

ation, Movements, Breeds and Byolntion of the Horse,

A Treatise on the Conform
and 279 illustrations added.

with 658 illustrations. Revised and enlarged edition,
1 vol., super royal 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt top, 348:

VETERINARY NOTES. For Horse Owners

An Illustrated Manual of Horse Medicine and Surgery written in simple language.
A New (the 8th) Edition, brought up to date by various Mxperts in Veterinary Science.
One vol., demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 15s. net, with over 250 Illustrations. This notable
work has maintained its supremacy for 37 years.

STABLE MANAGEMENT AND EXERCISE: a

Book for Horse Owners and Students

Revised and Enlarged Edition. Jilustrated by Drawings and numerous
Revroductions of Photographs taken specially for this work.
In one vol., demy 8v0, cloth gilt. 129. net.

{LLUSTRATED HORSEBREAKING

nd Enlarged Edition, with 130 Illustrations from Drawings by J. He

Revised a
raphs specially taken for the work. One vol., demy

OSWALD BROWN and from Photog
8 vo, cloth gilt, 12s. net.

RIDING AND HUNTING

Revised and Enlarged Edition. In one vol., demy
upwards of 250 reproductions 0 yf Photograp

FRIEDBERGER & FROHNER’S |
VETERINARY PATHOLOGY Tren ae

With notes on Bacteriology by Prof. R. TANNER HEWLETT, M.D., D.P.H.
Revised and Enlarged Hdition, re-translated. 2 vols., demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 21s. net.

By MRS. HAYES
THE HORSEWOMAN 2 A Practical Guide.

Originally edited by the late Captain M. H. HAYES. Revised Edition, Enlarged.
In one vol., demy 8v0, cloth gilt, 128» net, with 156 illustrations.
y intention of doing so, could not have a better

8vo, cloth, 1GS« Nel, wth
hs and Drawings.

‘ Tadies who ride, or who have an
adviser.” —Badminion Magazine.
By JAMES FILLIS

Ecuyer en chef to the Central Cavalry School at St. Petersburg. *

BREAKING AND RIDING. With Military Commentaries.

Franslated by Captain M. H. HAYES. With 10 illustrations from Photographs and
Sketches taken on the spot. Inone vol., demy 80, cloth gilt, 1Gs. net.

«A higher authority there could not be.’ —Field.
5

eater peereretnt es titiesro a ra

pe ad

®

New Novels, Autumn 1918.

The Elusive Lady

By AMELIE RIVES (Princess Troubetzkoy)
Author of ‘* World’s End.”? 84th Thousand

The story is a most extraordinary one, in which a mysterious
influence involves the lives of the two principal characters, who are
saved only by a woman’s love proving stronger than death. For
imagination, power and beauty of style, this new novel, by the
author of the very popular novel ‘‘ World’s End,’’ would be hard to
beat. A deep interest, aroused at the very beginning, grows into
a tense suspense before the end is reached.

The Pathetic Snobs

By DOLF WYLLARDE
Author ‘* Mafoota,’? ‘‘ As Ye Have Sown,”’ etc.

A very human story, and with the reading qualities which one
associates with this popular author’s work. There are good and bad
people, all treated with the author’s pronounced power of charac-
terization, and:the close interest of the reader is sustained throughouts

Candlelight
By MRS. HENRY DUDENEY

This story of sin and its retribution, from the brilliant pen of
Mrs. Henry Dudeney, will arouse much discussion. It-is Ibsenish
in conception and treatment and one of the cleverest psychological
studies that has appeared for some time.

Morning Joy
By RACHEL SWETE MACRNAMARA

A novel full of all that is best in English life and fiction. The
characters one and all pass through much tribulation and tempta-
tion but find their peace and “‘ Morning Joy ’’ in the end.

Black Sheep Chapel

By MRS. BAILLIE SAUNDERS

Anthor of ‘ Saints in Society,” ‘*Voung Madam at Clapps,’?
“* Captain the Curé.”?
A.singularly original and interesting novel, depicting not only
an old-fashioned and puritanical family but the soul-struggle of
Rody the hero of the book—the theme of which is Flesh v. Spirit.

6|

 

 

Perr | PR ere health teas tet

Love Maggy ®y countess sarovnsKa

Author of ‘* The Honey Pot,’”’ “Ii Wishes were Horses,’ etc.
The tens of thousands of readers of “The Honey Pot ’”’ will be
glad to hear more of Maggie of the tender heart, the delightful
heroine of that book, who moved everyone to laughter and “tears.
But the book will make its own strong appeal to readers who have
not yet become acquainted with this unique character in fiction.

The Assembly

By LORD FREDERIC HAMILTON
Author of ‘‘ Lady Mary, Private Simmonds, and others.”?
The story of two men’s devotion to each other, and how a man
redeemed his past, told in a deeply sympathetic manner.

@ 8 @
The Sister Disciple
By WILLIAM LE QUEUX
This is one of Mr. William Le Queux’s most stirring novels, in
which fact and fiction are skilfully interwoven, in the author's
masterly way. A book that makes sensational revelations regarding
Court life in Russia and the nefarious influence and activity of the
notorious monk Rasputin.

A Novel of Poland

Se e
Love and Sacrifice during the War
By BEATRICE BASKERVILLE
Author of ‘‘ Baldwin’s Kingdom,” etc.

An illuminating and absorbing story of the War in Poland ,-when
Prussians and Russians were fighting there in the earlier days of
the War. ‘There is an uncommon love interest running through’the
story, and English readers will realize what the War has meant to
some of the noble class in a country of which at present they know
so little.

Cecily and the Wide World

By ELIZABETH CORBETT

A delightful, wholesome novel on the vexed question of divorce

and the independence of women. A book that will interest men

and women equally. A problem novel without the customary
sordid atmosphere, and one that ends happily.

The Devil's Problem

By MARGARET WESTRUP
Author of ‘ Blizabeth’s Children,” “‘ The Coming of Billy,’
‘Roger Ingram,”’ ete. :
A close psychological study of various warring temperaments.
A lively pieture of modern London.

7

en pee ec RE ET
Bi ee a

TRE Re
Sere atses eS
Pe eee aree
eaePies t,

RECENT SUCCESSFUL 6G/-

 

NOVELS

STILL IN GREAT DEMAND

NOBODY’S ISLAND By Beatrice Grimshaw

‘A most captivating tale, full of action and colour.” —Fveld. i
‘In the South Seas the story glows and burns in the atmosphere which
Beatrice Grimshaw has made her own. One of the best romances Miss

Grimshaw has yet written.” —Country Life.

FATE AND THE WATCHER
By Margaret Peterson

‘It is a long time since we have read a more exciting Indian story.
Miss Peterson seems to bid fair to be the Rider Haggard of the native State,’
—Itiustrated London News,

THE HEART OF A WOMAN By Violet Tweedale

«The book has an obvious and stimulating significance, while it freshly
illustrates the author's sure power and her artistic skill.”—Glasgow Herald.

LARK’S GATE By Rachel Swete Macnamara

Author of ** The Prince of the Desert.”’

SCANDAL By Cosmo Hamilton

Author of ‘* The Blindness of Virtue.’’

HEART OF ICE By Fergus Hume

Author of ‘‘ The Mystery of the Hansom Cab.”

LADY ELEANOR, PRIVATE SIMMONDS
AND OTHERS By Lord Frederick Hamilton

THE LONG LANE’S TURNING
Author of ‘* Hearts Courageous.’’ By Hallie Erminie Rives

8

 

 

3 Ht

ee Ue

Were a Sata Tt tl ananieaalil

tee epee er MeR Ty te
rT Laces betes asks Sk ba bb aia eaGERTRUDE PAGE’S NOVELS

Each in crown 8vo, cloth silt, 6S. net.

The Sales of GERTRUDE PAGES Novels are now in the
second million.!

SOME THERE ARE—

‘© Comedy of the best, racily written and developed with sure phy ;
aE alone is not the standing dish: the book has sincerity and eee py
eh bs

FOLLOW AFTER

‘Another Rhodesian novel such as this author loves to write and her reade
still more to read. It is full of insight into human character.”— Evening Standard:

WHERE THE STRANGE ROADS GO DOWN

“Miss Page has never drawn a more splendid woman than brilliant, unconventiona
loyal Joe Lathom. Joe’s love story is like herself, fine and Ree Oven

THE GREAT SPLENDOUR

_ “Miss Page is an ideal author for a depressing day. She is like a good water eolour
artist who knows how to make the greyest landscape luminous. Her new novel is full of
life and youth.”—Morning Post. :

THE RHODESIAN |

‘¢She refreshes us with the wild beauty of veldt and sky, and teaches us the
fascination of open spaces and ancient ruins.” —Globe.

WINDING PATHS

“Most certainly the best book that Miss Page has yet written. From the first page
to the last of quite absorbing interest. The women are real and vivid in all they say
and do.”’—Standard. Uke

THE SILENT RANCHER

«“‘The Silent Rancher’ is one’ of the best novels we have read this season.” —Pall
Mall Garette.

LOVE IN THE WILDERNESS
‘“ A bright story with a glow of real life in it."—Daily Chronicle.

THE EDGE O’ BEYOND

“In this story of Rhodesian life, the author has shown impartially both the sunshine
and the shadows of that land of charms and mystery.”—Punch.

PADDY THE NEXT BEST THING

“ AN] novel readers will love Paddy, who was a wild girl, ‘the next best thing’ to
being a boy.”"—Morning Post.

TWO LOVERS AND A LIGHTHOUSE
In crown 8v0, cloth gilt and gilt top, 3s. 6d.

“A charming love story on a somewhat original background. It contains much
clever and tender writing with touches of humour to relieve the pathos.”—Scotsman.

ALSO
JILL’S RHODESIAN PHILOSOPHY
In crown 8v0, cloth gilt, with the Author's portrait, 2S. GA. n2!.

“A capital description of life on a farm in Rhodesia. There is a glow of real life in
the telling which fascinates the reader, and holds the attention from first to last.”—

The Queen. .
9 ~

Tr

eer Seat Reeth ou ceien sha aHurst & Blackett’s 1/9 st Novels

NEW VOLUMES AND NEW EDITIONS FOR 1978.

Each volume bound, and with a most attractive pictorial

wrapper.

The following is a list of the Authors
and Titles:

SHADOWS OF FLAMES By Amélie Rives (Princes )

Troubetzkoy
WON BY WAITING By Edna Lyall
IN THE GOLDEN DAYS By Edna Lyall

THE WOMAN WHO LIVED AGAIN By Lindsay Russell’
THE VINEYARDS OF ENGEDI By Alice 8 Claude Askew
A NEW NOVEL By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
The IDES OF MARCH By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds
: LAVENDER’S LOVE STORY By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
| THE MAN WITH THE MONEY By Effie Adelaide Rowlands

 

 

BEHOLD AND SEE! By Lilith Hope
WE TWO | By Edna Lyall —
DONOVAN By Edna Lyalf

By William Le Queux. ; |
THE LIFE-STORY OF THE EX-CROWN PRINCESS OF SAXONY |
Told by Herself and.Related by William Le Queux.
A Companion Book to ‘‘ Rasputin’’ (now in its 140th thousand.)

10

 

 

 

ois TOORGRT TCP Perret eto as lit
Bt Ba Seer cain i is te aaa Peter eaten ah ak
pe Fee a . . . =Hurst @ Blackett’s 1/9 s* Novels

PAN’S MOUNTAIN By Amélie Rives (Prigeeee
WORLD'S END By Amélie Rives (Princess soy!
THE HONEY POT By Countess Barcyaska
THE MAN FROM DOWNING STREET By Wm. Le Queux
THE DEVIL'S CARNIVAL By William Le Queux
ANNETTE OF THE ARGONNE By William Le Queux
SPIES OF THE KAISER By William Le Queux
SECRETS OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE By Wm. Le Queux
THE HOUSE OF THE WICKED By Wm. Le Queux
RED BOB OF THE ISLANDS By Beatrice Grimshaw
TO LOVE By Margaret Peterson
BUTTERFLY WINGS By Margaret Peterson

THE YOUNGEST MISS MOWBRAY By Mrs. B. M. Groker
THE SPLENDID FRIEND By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
THE TURNSTILE OF NIGHT By Mrs. C. N. Williamson
RASPUTIN, THE RASCAL MONK By Wm. Le Queux

(140th Thousand)

y, 1s. 9d. “et, & ve-issue of

pies have been yequiveds

By Cynthia Stockley
By Cynthia Stockley
By Dolf Wyllarde

Also in crown 800, paper pictorial cove

famous Novels, of which 300,000 6°
POPPY: The Story of : South African Girl
THE CLAW
MAFOOTAee
} ay
:

4

:

Y are
oe q
ae ey Reve

Cheaper Editions of GERTRUDE PAGE’S two
successful Novels Now Ready.

In crown 8vo, cloth, and with attvactive pictorial wrapper,

3s. net, each containing 400 pages.

Follow After

In this novel the two leading characters of the author’s
great novel, “Where the Strange Roads Go Down,”
reappear, and their story is brought to a conclusion. The
heroine “ Joe” has proved to be the most attractive of
all the author’s delightful characters. The 3s. edition
of “ Where the Strange Roads Go Down” has been an
immense success, and every purchaser of it will want this
new companion volume.

The Edition now ready of the Author’s

Where the Strange Roads
Go Down

Completes the 65th thousand printed of this book.

Cheap Popular Editions of the following Novels by
GERTRUDE PAGE are now issued.

Bound with attractive pictorial wrapper, 2s, net.
THE EDGE 0° BEYOND THE SILENT RANCHER
PADDY THE NEXT BEST THING THE RHODESIAN
LOVE IN THE WILDERNESS . THE GREAT SPLENDOUR

Over a million copies of these Novels hav
already been sold. *

12

 

Perper rTP tas

pe BR ee er Urs
Orr rei GLa LL a oa ea alSea sor

axis

/
rs
ne
4
i

byt
Sek

aintes Se

ws

 

PR rh ce eallsUX 000 595 a?2

BOOKS ARE LENT FOR TWO WEEKS
Fine of 10c for each Day after the Date

DUE

Seocs

  

   

SET Tee
ee cats

 

|

|

| DF
ATE-Dt Im An Iman

| UE ON |DISCHARGE CARE

}

THE MICHIE co

| Usually books are lent for two weeks, but

there are exceptions, and all loans expire on
the date stamped in the book. Ii not re-
turned then the borrower is fined ten cents
a volume for each day overdue. Books must
be presented at the desk for renewal.