shotacross the oilcloth, and tore up the stairs, but in another second heappeared again, flying down the steps and landing at the bottom in atumbling heap, whining, cringing, terrified. The doctor saw him slinkback into the room again and crawl round by the wall towards the cat.Was, then, even the staircase occupied? Did _They_ stand also in thehall? Was the whole house crowded from floor to ceiling?
The thought came to add to the keen distress he felt at the sight of thecollie's discomfiture. And, indeed, his own personal distress hadincreased in a marked degree during the past minutes, and continued toincrease steadily to the climax. He recognised that the drain on his ownvitality grew steadily, and that the attack was now directed againsthimself even more than against the defeated dog, and the too muchdeceived cat.
It all seemed so rapid and uncalculated after that--the events that tookplace in this little modern room at the top of Putney Hill betweenmidnight and sunrise--that Dr. Silence was hardly able to follow andremember it all. It came about with such uncanny swiftness and terror;the light was so uncertain; the movements of the black cat so difficultto follow on the dark carpet, and the doctor himself so weary and takenby surprise--that he found it almost impossible to observe accurately,or to recall afterwards precisely what it was he had seen or in whatorder the incidents had taken place. He never could understand whatdefect of vision on his part made it seem as though the cat hadduplicated itself at first, and then increased indefinitely, so thatthere were at least a dozen of them darting silently about the floor,leaping softly on to chairs and tables, passing like shadows from theopen door to the end of the room, all black as sin, with brilliant greeneyes flashing fire in all directions. It was like the reflections from ascore of mirrors placed round the walls at different angles. Nor couldhe make out at the time why the size of the room seemed to have altered,grown much larger, and why it extended away behind him where ordinarilythe wall should have been. The snarling of the enraged and terrifiedcollie sounded sometimes so far away; the ceiling seemed to have raiseditself so much higher than before, and much of the furniture had changedin appearance and shifted marvellously.
It was all so confused and confusing, as though the little room he knewhad become merged and transformed into the dimensions of quite anotherchamber, that came to him, with its host of cats and its strangedistances, in a sort of vision.
But these changes came about a little later, and at a time when hisattention was so concentrated upon the proceedings of Smoke and thecollie, that he only observed them, as it were, subconsciously. And theexcitement, the flickering candlelight, the distress he felt for thecollie, and the distorting atmosphere of fog were the poorest possibleallies to careful observation.
At first he was only aware that the dog was repeating his shortdangerous bark from time to time, snapping viciously at the empty air, afoot or so from the ground. Once, indeed, he sprang upwards andforwards, working furiously with teeth and paws, and with a noise likewolves fighting, but only to dash back the next minute against the wallbehind him. Then, after lying still for a bit, he rose to a crouchingposition as though to spring again, snarling horribly and making shorthalf-circles with lowered head. And Smoke all the while meowed piteouslyby the window as though trying to draw the attack upon himself.
Then it was that the rush of the whole dreadful business seemed to turnaside from the dog and direct itself upon his own person. The collie hadmade another spring and fallen back with a crash into the corner, wherehe made noise enough in his savage rage to waken the dead before he fellto whining and then finally lay still. And directly afterwards thedoctor's own distress became intolerably acute. He had made a halfmovement forward to come to the rescue when a veil that was denser thanmere fog seemed to drop down over the scene, draping room, walls,animals and fire in a mist of darkness and folding also about his ownmind. Other forms moved silently across the field of vision, forms thathe recognised from previous experiments, and welcomed not. Unholythoughts began to crowd into his brain, sinister suggestions of evilpresented themselves seductively. Ice seemed to settle about his heart,and his mind trembled. He began to lose memory--memory of his identity,of where he was, of what he ought to do. The very foundations of hisstrength were shaken. His will seemed paralysed.
And it was then that the room filled with this horde of cats, all darkas the night, all silent, all with lamping eyes of green fire. Thedimensions of the place altered and shifted. He was in a much largerspace. The whining of the dog sounded far away, and all about him thecats flew busily to and fro, silently playing their tearing, rushinggame of evil, weaving the pattern of their dark purpose upon the floor.He strove hard to collect himself and remember the words of power he hadmade use of before in similar dread positions where his dangerouspractice had sometimes led; but he could recall nothing consecutively; amist lay over his mind and memory; he felt dazed and his forcesscattered. The deeps within were too troubled for healing power to comeout of them.
It was glamour, of course, he realised afterwards, the strong glamourthrown upon his imagination by some powerful personality behind theveil; but at the time he was not sufficiently aware of this and, as withall true glamour, was unable to grasp where the true ended and the falsebegan. He was caught momentarily in the same vortex that had sought tolure the cat to destruction through its delight, and threatened utterlyto overwhelm the dog through its terror.
There came a sound in the chimney behind him like wind booming andtearing its way down. The windows rattled. The candle flickered and wentout. The glacial atmosphere closed round him with the cold of death, anda great rushing sound swept by overhead as though the ceiling had liftedto a great height. He heard the door shut. Far away it sounded. He feltlost, shelterless in the depths of his soul. Yet still he held out andresisted while the climax of the fight came nearer and nearer.... He hadstepped into the stream of forces awakened by Pender and he knew that hemust withstand them to the end or come to a conclusion that it was notgood for a man to come to. Something from the region of utter cold wasupon him.
And then quite suddenly, through the confused mists about him, thereslowly rose up the Personality that had been all the time directing thebattle. Some force entered his being that shook him as the tempestshakes a leaf, and close against his eyes--clean level with his face--hefound himself staring into the wreck of a vast dark Countenance, acountenance that was terrible even in its ruin.
For ruined it was, and terrible it was, and the mark of spiritual evilwas branded everywhere upon its broken features. Eyes, face and hairrose level with his own, and for a space of time he never could properlymeasure, or determine, these two, a man and a woman, looked straightinto each other's visages and down into each other's hearts.
And John Silence, the soul with the good, unselfish motive, held his ownagainst the dark discarnate woman whose motive was pure evil, and whosesoul was on the side of the Dark Powers.
It was the climax that touched the depth of power within him and beganto restore him slowly to his own. He was conscious, of course, ofeffort, and yet it seemed no superhuman one, for he had recognised thecharacter of his opponent's power, and he called upon the good withinhim to meet and overcome it. The inner forces stirred and trembled inresponse to his call. They did not at first come readily as was theirhabit, for under the spell of glamour they had already been diabolicallylulled into inactivity, but come they eventually did, rising out of theinner spiritual nature he had learned with so much time and pain toawaken to life. And power and confidence came with them. He began tobreathe deeply and regularly, and at the same time to absorb intohimself the forces opposed to him, and to _turn them to his ownaccount_. By ceasing to resist, and allowing the deadly stream to pourinto him unopposed, he used the very power supplied by his adversary andthus enormously increased his own.
For this spiritual alchemy he had learned. He understood that forceultimately is everywhere one and the same; it is the motive behind thatmakes it good or evil; and his motive was entirely unselfish. Heknew--provided he was not first rob
bed of self-control--how vicariouslyto absorb these evil radiations into himself and change them magicallyinto his own good purposes. And, since his motive was pure and his soulfearless, they could not work him harm.
Thus he stood in the main stream of evil unwittingly attracted byPender, deflecting its course upon himself; and after passing throughthe purifying filter of his own unselfishness these energies could onlyadd to his store of experience, of knowledge, and therefore of power.And, as his self-control returned to him, he gradually accomplished thispurpose, even though trembling while he did so.
Yet the struggle was severe, and in spite of the freezing chill of theair, the perspiration poured down his face. Then, by slow degrees, thedark and dreadful countenance faded, the glamour passed from his soul,the normal proportions returned to walls and ceiling, the forms meltedback into the fog, and the whirl of rushing shadow-cats disappearedwhence they came.
And with the return of the consciousness of
Three John Silence Stories Page 9