I went in after that. Miss Barrison was sitting before the oven, knees gathered in her clasped hands, languidly studying the fire. She looked up as I appeared, opened the oven-doors, sniffed the aroma, and resumed her attitude of contented indifference.
“Where is the professor?” I asked.
“He has retired. He’s been talking in his sleep at moments.”
“Better take it down; that’s what you’re here for,” I observed, closing and holding the outside door. “Ugh! there’s a chill in the air. The dew is pelting down from the pines like a steady fall of rain.”
“You will get fever if you roam about at night,” she said. “Mercy! your coat is soaking. Sit here by the fire.”
So I pulled up a bench and sat down beside her like the traditional spider.
“Miss Muffitt,” I said, “don’t let me frighten you away—”
“I was going anyhow—”
“Please don’t.”
“Why?” she demanded, reseating herself.
“Because I like to sit beside you,” I said, truthfully.
“Your avowal is startling and not to be substantiated by facts,” she remarked, resting her chin on one hand and gazing into the fire.
“You mean because I went for a stroll by moonlight? I did that because you always seem to make fun of me as soon as the professor joins us.”
“Make fun of you? You surely don’t expect me to make eyes at you!”
There was a silence; I toasted my shins, thoughtfully.
“How is your burned finger?” I asked.
She lifted it for my inspection, and I began a protracted examination.
“What would you prescribe?” she inquired, with an absent-minded glance at the professor’s closed door.
“I don’t know; perhaps a slight but firm pressure of the finger-tips—”
“You tried that this afternoon.”
“But the dog interrupted us—”
“Interrupted you. Besides—”
“What?”
“I don’t think you ought to,” she said.
Sitting there before the oven, side by side, hand innocently clasped in hand, we heard the drumming of the dew on the roof, the night-wind stirring the palms, the muffled snoring of the professor, the faint whisper and crackle of the fire.
A single candle burned brightly, piling our shadows together on the wall behind us; moonlight silvered the window-panes, over which crawled multitudes of soft-winged moths, attracted by the candle within.
“See their tiny eyes glow!” she whispered. “How their wings quiver! And all for a candle-flame! Alas! alas! fire is the undoing of us all.”
She leaned forward, resting as though buried in reverie. After a while she extended one foot a trifle and, with the point of her shoe, carefully unlatched the oven-door. As it swung outward a delicious fragrance filled the room.
“They’re done,” she said, withdrawing her hand from mine. “Help me to lift them out.”
Together we arranged the delicious pastry in rows on the bench to cool. I opened the door for a few minutes, then closed and bolted it again.
“Do you suppose those transparent creatures will smell the odor and come around the cabin?” she suggested, wiping her fingers on her handkerchief.
I walked to the window uneasily. Outside the pane the moths crawled, some brilliant in scarlet and tan-color set with black, some snow-white with black tracings on their wings, and bodies peacock-blue edged with orange. The scientist in me was aroused; I called her to the window, and she came and leaned against the sill, nose pressed to the glass.
“I don’t suppose you know that the antennæ of that silvery-winged moth are distinctly pectinate,” I said.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I took my degree as D.E. at Barnard College.”
“What!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “You’ve been through Barnard? You are a Doctor of Entomology?”
“It was my undoing,” she said. “The department was abolished the year I graduated. There was no similar vacancy, even in the Smithsonian.”
She shrugged her shoulders, eyes fixed on the moths. “I had to make my own living. I chose stenography as the quickest road to self-sustenance.”
She looked up, a flush on her cheeks.
“I suppose you took me for an inferior?” she said. “But do you suppose I’d flirt with you if I was?”
She pressed her face to the pane again, murmuring that exquisite poem of Andrew Lang:
“Spooning is innocuous and needn’t have a sequel, But recollect, if spoon you must, spoon only with your equal.”
Standing there, watching the moths, we became rather silent — I don’t know why.
The fire in the range had gone out; the candle-flame, flaring above a saucer of melted wax, sank lower and lower.
Suddenly, as though disturbed by something inside, the moths all left the window-pane, darting off in the darkness.
“That’s curious,” I said.
“What’s curious?” she asked, opening her eyes languidly. “Good gracious! Was that a bat that beat on the window?”
“I saw nothing,” I said, disturbed. “Listen!”
A soft sound against the glass, as though invisible fingers were feeling the pane — a gentle rubbing — then a tap-tap, all but inaudible.
“Is it a bird? Can you see?” she whispered.
The candle-flame behind us flashed and expired. Moonlight flooded the pane. The sounds continued, but there was nothing there.
We understood now what it was that so gently rubbed and patted the glass outside. With one accord we noiselessly gathered up the pies and carried them into my room.
Then she walked to the door of her room, turned, held out her hand, and whispering, “Good-night! A demain, monsieur!” slipped into her room and softly closed the door.
And all night long I lay in troubled slumber beside the pies, a rifle resting on the blankets beside me, a revolver under my pillow. And I dreamed of moths with brilliant eyes and vast silvery wings harnessed to a balloon in which Miss Barrison and I sat, arms around each other, eating slice after slice of apple-pie.
XVII
Dawn came — the dawn of a day that I am destined never to forget. Long, rosy streamers of light broke through the forest, shaking, quivering, like unstable beams from celestial search-lights. Mist floated upward from marsh and lake; and through it the spectral palms loomed, drooping fronds embroidered with dew.
For a while the ringing outburst of bird music dominated all; but it soon ceased with dropping notes from the crimson cardinals repeated in lengthening minor intervals; and then the spell of silence returned, broken only by the faint splash of mullet, mocking the sun with sinuous, silver flashes.
“Good-morning,” said a low voice from the door as I stood encouraging the camp-fire with splinter wood and dead palmetto fans.
Fresh and sweet from her toilet as a dew-drenched rose, Miss Barrison stood there sniffing the morning air daintily, thoroughly.
“Too much perfume,” she said— “too much like ylang-ylang in a department-store. Central Park smells sweeter on an April morning.”
“Are you criticising the wild jasmine?” I asked.
“I’m criticising an exotic smell. Am I not permitted to comment on the tropics?”
Fishing out a cedar log from the lumber-stack, I fell to chopping it vigorously. The axe-strokes made a cheerful racket through the woods.
“Did you hear anything last night after you retired?” I asked.
“Something was at my window — something that thumped softly and seemed to be feeling all over the glass. To tell you the truth, I was silly enough to remain dressed all night.”
“You don’t look it,” I said.
“Oh, when daylight came I had a chance,” she added, laughing.
“All the same,” said I, leaning on the axe and watching her, “you are about the coolest and pluckiest woman I ever knew.”
“We were all in the same fix,” she s
aid, modestly.
“No, we were not. Now I’ll tell you the truth — my hair stood up the greater part of the night. You are looking upon a poltroon, Miss Barrison.”
“Then there was something at your window, too?”
“Something? A dozen! They were monkeying with the sashes and panes all night long, and I imagined that I could hear them breathing — as though from effort of intense eagerness. Ouch! I came as near losing my nerve as I care to. I came within an ace of hurling those cursed pies through the window at them. I’d bolt to-day if I wasn’t afraid to play the coward.”
“Most people are brave for that reason,” she said.
The dog, who had slept under my bunk, and who had contributed to my entertainment by sighing and moaning all night, now appeared ready for business — business in his case being the operation of feeding. I presented him with a concentrated tablet, which he cautiously investigated and then rolled on.
“Nice testimonial for the people who concocted it,” I said, in disgust. “I wish I had an egg.”
“There are some concentrated egg tablets in the shanty,” said Miss Barrison; but the idea was not attractive.
“I refuse to fry a pill for breakfast,” I said, sullenly, and set the coffee-pot on the coals.
In spite of the dewy beauty of the morning, breakfast was not a cheerful function. Professor Farrago appeared, clad in sun-helmet and khaki. I had seldom seen him depressed; but he was now, and his very efforts to disguise it only emphasized his visible anxiety.
His preparations for the day, too, had an ominous aspect to me. He gave his orders and we obeyed, instinctively suppressing questions. First, he and I transported all personal luggage of the company to the big electric launch — Miss Barrison’s effects, his, and my own. His private papers, the stenographic reports, and all memoranda were tied up together and carried aboard.
Then, to my surprise, two weeks’ concentrated rations for two and mineral water sufficient for the same period were stowed away aboard the launch. Several times he asked me whether I knew how to run the boat, and I assured him that I did.
In a short time nothing was left ashore except the bare furnishings of the cabin, the female wearing-apparel, the steel cage and chemicals which I had brought, and the twelve apple-pies — the latter under lock and key in my room.
As the preparations came to an end, the professor’s gentle melancholy seemed to deepen. Once I ventured to ask him if he was indisposed, and he replied that he had never felt in better physical condition.
Presently he bade me fetch the pies; and I brought them, and, at a sign from him, placed them inside the steel cage, closing and locking the door.
“I believe,” he said, glancing from Miss Barrison to me, and from me to the dog— “I believe that we are ready to start.”
He went to the cabin and locked the door on the outside, pocketing the key.
Then he backed up to the steel cage, stooped and lifted his end as I lifted mine, and together we started off through the forest, bearing the cage between us as porters carry a heavy piece of luggage.
Miss Barrison came next, carrying the trousseau, the tank, hose, and chemicals; and the dog followed her — probably not from affection for us, but because he was afraid to be left alone.
We walked in silence, the professor and I keeping an instinctive lookout for snakes; but we encountered nothing of that sort. On every side, touching our shoulders, crowded the closely woven and impenetrable tangle of the jungle; and we threaded it along a narrow path which he, no doubt, had cut, for the machete marks were still fresh, and the blazes on hickory, live-oak, and palm were all wet with dripping sap, and swarming with eager, brilliant butterflies.
At times across our course flowed shallow, rapid streams of water, clear as crystal, and most alluring to the thirsty.
“There’s fever in every drop,” said the professor, as I mentioned my thirst; “take the bottled water if you mean to stay a little longer.”
“Stay where?” I asked.
“On earth,” he replied, tersely; and we marched on.
The beauty of the tropics is marred somewhat for me; under all the fresh splendor of color death lurks in brilliant tints. Where painted fruit hangs temptingly, where great, silky blossoms exhale alluring scent, where the elaps coils inlaid with scarlet, black, and saffron, where in the shadow of a palmetto frond a succession of velvety black diamonds mark the rattler’s swollen length, there death is; and his invisible consort, horror, creeps where the snake whose mouth is lined with white creeps — where the tarantula squats, hairy, motionless; where a bit of living enamel fringed with orange undulates along a mossy log.
Thinking of these things, and watchful lest, unawares, terror unfold from some blossoming and leafy covert, I scarcely noticed the beauty of the glade we had entered — a long oval, cross-barred with sunshine which fell on hedges of scrub-palmetto, chin high, interlaced with golden blossoms of the jasmine. And all around, like pillars supporting a high green canopy above a throne, towered the silvery stems of palms fretted with pale, rose-tinted lichens and hung with draperies of grape-vine.
“This is the place,” said Professor Farrago.
His quiet, passionless voice sounded strange to me; his words seemed strange, too, each one heavily weighted with hidden meaning.
We set the cage on the ground; he unlocked and opened the steel-barred door, and, kneeling, carefully arranged the pies along the centre of the cage.
“I have a curious presentiment,” he said, “that I shall not come out of this experiment unscathed.”
“Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, say that!” I broke out, my nerves on edge again.
“Why not?” he asked, surprised. “I am not afraid.”
“Not afraid to die?” I demanded, exasperated.
“Who spoke of dying?” he inquired, mildly. “What I said was that I do not expect to come out of this affair unscathed.”
I did not comprehend his meaning, but I understood the reproof conveyed.
He closed and locked the cage door again and came towards us, balancing the key across the palm of his hand.
Miss Barrison had seated herself on the leaves; I stood back as the professor sat down beside her; then, at a gesture from him, took the place he indicated on his left.
“Before we begin,” he said, calmly, “there are several things you ought to know and which I have not yet told you. The first concerns the feminine wearing apparel which Mr. Gilland brought me.”
He turned to Miss Barrison and asked her whether she had brought a complete outfit, and she opened the bundle on her knees and handed it to him.
“I cannot,” he said, “delicately explain in so many words what use I expect to make of this apparel. Nor do I yet know whether I shall have any use at all for it. That can only be a theoretical speculation until, within a few more hours, my theory is proven or disproven — and,” he said, suddenly turning on me, “my theory concerning these invisible creatures is the most extraordinary and audacious theory ever entertained by man since Columbus presumed that there must lie somewhere a hidden continent which nobody had ever seen.”
He passed his hand over his protruding forehead, lost for a moment in deepest reflection. Then, “Have you ever heard of the Sphyx?” he asked.
“It seems to me that Ponce de Leon wrote of something—” I began, hesitating.
“Yes, the famous lines in the third volume which have set so many wise men guessing. You recall them:
“‘And there, alas! within sound of the Fountain of Youth whose waters tint the skin till the whole body glows softly like the petal of a rose — there, alas! in the new world already blooming, The Eternal Enigma I beheld, in the flesh living; yet it faded even as I looked, although I swear it lived and breathed. This is the Sphyx.’”
A silence; then I said, “Those lines are meaningless to me.”
“Not to me,” said Miss Barrison, softly.
The professor looked at her. “Ah, child! Ever subtler, e
ver surer — the Eternal Enigma is no enigma to you.”
“What is the Sphyx?” I asked.
“Have you read De Soto? Or Goya?”
“Yes, both. I remember now that De Soto records the Syachas legend of the Sphyx — something about a goddess—”
“Not a goddess,” said Miss Barrison, her lips touched with a smile.
“Sometimes,” said the professor, gently. “And Goya said:
“‘It has come to my ears while in the lands of the Syachas that the Sphyx surely lives, as bolder and more curious men than I may, God willing, prove to the world hereafter.’”
“But what is the Sphyx?” I insisted.
“For centuries wise men and savants have asked each other that question. I have answered it for myself; I am now to prove it, I trust.”
His face darkened, and again and again he stroked his heavy brow.
“If anything occurs,” he said, taking my hand in his left and Miss Barrison’s hand in his right, “promise me to obey my wishes. Will you?”
“Yes,” we said, together.
“If I lose my life, or — or disappear, promise me on your honor to get to the electric launch as soon as possible and make all speed northward, placing my private papers, the reports of Miss Barrison, and your own reports in the hands of the authorities in Bronx Park. Don’t attempt to aid me; don’t delay to search for me. Do you promise?”
“Yes,” we breathed together.
He looked at us solemnly. “If you fail me, you betray me,” he said.
We swore obedience.
“Then let us begin,” he said, and he rose and went to the steel cage. Unlocking the door, he flung it wide and stepped inside, leaving the cage door open.
“The moment a single pie is disturbed,” he said to me, “I shall close the steel door from the inside, and you and Miss Barrison will then dump the rosium oxide and the strontium into the tank, clap on the lid, turn the nozzle of the hose on the cage, and spray it thoroughly. Whatever is invisible in the cage will become visible and of a faint rose color. And when the trapped creature becomes visible, hold yourselves ready to aid me as long as I am able to give you orders. After that either all will go well or all will go otherwise, and you must run for the launch.” He seated himself in the cage near the open door.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 213