“There are plenty of lost souls in town,” observed Westover; “no doubt you’ll have your choice of tenants for your carpet — or,” he added, staring at space, “if you like I’ll provide you.”
I did not understand his remark, but it left a vaguely sinister impression. Geraldine, standing between us, her white fingers linked behind her, looked up at me very gravely.
“Do you know,” she said, “that I am convinced that I wove that rug some centuries ago?”
“I have no doubt of it,” I replied, smiling.
“Do you doubt it, Jim?” she asked gayly.
He did not reply.
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “it was always believed that a young girl who dared to weave the Tree of Heaven into an Eighur carpet died when her task was ended — her entire physical and spiritual vitality entering into the sacred tree and infusing it with mystic splendor.”
“Oh, I died as you say,” observed Geraldine gravely.
“I don’t see that you infused much physical or spiritual splendor into that rug,” observed Westover.
“I must die again, you know, Jim, and bring its vanished beauty back,” she said gayly. “Shall I, Dick? — and leave you a priceless carpet as my bequest and monument?”
Westover turned on his heel, fidgeting with his collar. Recently his neck had grown fat behind the ears.
A few moments later dinner was announced.
We lingered late over dinner, I remember. Jim drank heavily — a habit which both Geraldine and I had long since left unnoticed, she shrinking from the sullen rebuff certain to follow even a playful protest, I understanding the utter hopelessness of interference. His mind, already shaken, would one day shatter, and the dreadful price be paid.
As he sat there sousing walnuts in port, in his altered features and swollen hands I seemed to divine something malicious and patient and powerful — that indescribable physical menace one feels in the inert brooding eye of the mentally and spiritually crippled.
When Geraldine rose he stood up unsteadily. After she had gone he lighted a cigar and turned his bloodshot eyes on me.
“Is that wine expensive?” he demanded, pointing to Geraldine’s half-empty glass.
“Rather,” I said.
He picked up the glass, examined it, sniffing at the contents.
“It’s poor claret,” he said. “Taste it. It’s pure poison, I tell you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said indifferently.
Again he sniffed it. “Faugh!” he sneered, and threw it into the fireplace behind him. Then he got on his feet, heavily, muttering to himself, and stumbled off through the drawing-room.
For a while I sat there amid the shaded candles, staring at space. But I could not read the future pictured there amid the empty chairs and the flowers, already drooping in each crystal vase.
When at length I roused myself and went upstairs, passing her apartment I heard her singing to herself, and I wondered that she could.
I paused on the gallery stairway to listen; and she could not have heard my footsteps on the thick deep carpeting, yet she came to the door and opened it, looking up at me where I stood.
“You are going to the marble room. May I come and help you?” she asked sweetly. And as I was silent, she said again: “Let me be happy, won’t you, Dick? Let me be where you are.”
“Have I ever avoided you, Geraldine?”
I descended the steps, she laid her hand lightly on my arm, and together we mounted the stairway toward the gallery.
“I was singing a Hillah tent song when you passed,” she said, “partly because I was lonely, and partly” — she hesitated, looking around at me—” partly because I’ve come to the conclusion, Dick, that I was once at Belshazzar’s feast in Cadimirra — for there’s a great deal of wickedness in me — you’d never believe it, would you?”
She smiled at me so innocently, so adorably, that I laughed outright.
“I’ve heard that the maids of Babilu-Ki had a bowing acquaintance with the devil,” I said. “Even an Eighur girl nodded pleasantly to Erlik now and then — according to the chronicles of the Tekrins.”
“Oh, they surely did,” she said. And, “Thank you, Dick,” she added, as we reached the gallery; “when I am an old woman you must help me up the steep places.”
“It is you who help me,” I said lightly.
She stood, resting her arm on the table while I gathered up the mass of papers containing our cuneiform combinations and the Kufic key.
“All that is useless,” she said suddenly. Her manner and smile had altered.
I looked up in surprise, and at the same instant she pushed the papers from beneath my hands.
“The memory of things forgotten centuries ago has returned to me,” she said feverishly. “I am a pagan again. It was Istar who first taught my hands to weave and my fingers to tie the Sehna knot. I wove that carpet; what I have woven there I can read. Why do you laugh? Will you believe me if I translate the mystery of each inscription as easily as I read the gold cartouche? Come; we shall never need those papers again.”
What new caprice was this? She was smiling, almost fixedly, and I thought that there was something in her overflushed face and in the starlike brilliancy of her eyes not quite normal. At the same moment the electric lights in the laboratory went out. Westover was evidently in there. I waited, expecting him to appear, but he did not.
Again I reached for the papers, but Geraldine scattered them with a quick sweep of her hand.
“Won’t you believe me? Won’t you let me try?” she repeated almost impatiently.
With a quick movement she bent forward past me and shut off the lights in the gallery where we stood. Another second, and the lights in the marble room broke out fiercely; and there, full in the dazzling glory, I saw the great carpet of Belshazzar hanging, and beside it the Eighur rug — a pallid shadow on the wall.
Geraldine, hands clasped to her scarlet mouth, dark eyes fixed, moved forward slowly, opalescent tints flashing on her smooth bare arms and shoulders, her head a delicate silhouette against the glare.
I followed, pausing at her side, and we stood silently before the miracle, the great folds gently stirring in some unfelt current; and I saw the upper branches of the Tree of Heaven sway, and a thousand leaves, all glistening, quiver and subside.
“One can almost hear the rustling of the leaves,” I whispered.
“I hear more than that,” she murmured. “I hear my soul bidding me good-by.”
She smiled dreamily, turning to the faded Eighur carpet, and stepping back one pace, dropped her left arm, clasping my hand in hers.
“It was I who wove that carpet — I, maid of the Issig-Kul — and it was you, beloved of Hassan, who inspired it.”
“What are you saying, Geraldine?” I began uneasily; “where did you ever hear my name linked with the name of Hassan?”
Her palm was burning hot, her eyes too bright. The fever of caprice possessed her, and her imagination was running riot.
There was a silence, through which a distant sound penetrated — the faint ring of glass somewhere in the laboratory. Westover was tying on his crystal mask.
She heard it, too, and she turned, looking me full in the eyes.
“Dick,” she said, “he has slain my body. My soul is bidding me good-by.”
“It is my own that he is dragging to destruction, not yours,” I muttered.
But she only clasped my hand tighter, the fixed smile stamped on her lips.
“Listen,” she whispered, raising her arm. “This is what is written in the rose cartouche on the Eighur carpet that I made:
‘Roses of Babylon: Ashes of roses in Abaddon.’
Love and its awful penalty, Dick — and the warning I wove, coffined in cryptogram! Listen again. The cartouche below was once topaz — for I wove it — I!
‘All Paradise the cost:
Warp and weft for souls so lost.’
— Mine, Dick, mine! — lost in loving as I loved,
centuries since. I have no soul; I have never had any since I lost it then. It is there, tenanting the phantom of an Eighur carpet. Do you not understand? There is my faded monument and refuge — that magic-woven sanctuary — that hiding place from hell!”
Her little feverish fingers tightened convulsively in mine; the color flamed in her cheeks. Suddenly she crushed our clasped hands to her heart, and I felt it leaping madly.
“Geraldine,” I stammered, “what is all this ghastly nonsense? Are you ill?”
“Listen! Listen!” she whispered; “the next cartouche was blue — the lost Persian blue! I know; why should I not know — I who wove it centuries ago? And thus it reads, O thou whom I loved to my destruction — thou whom I love!
‘Time and the Guest
Shall meet me twice — once East, once West.’
“Ah, prophetess was I by Istar’s favor — seeing I died for love. Do you not understand, Dick? Time and the Guest! — the Guest is Death — the Guest we all must entertain one day — and I twice — once in the East, once here in the West — here, now!”
“Geraldine, are you mad?” I whispered; “look at me! — turn and look at me, I say!”
But she shivered in my arms, whispering that she was ransoming her soul and mine. A distant sound broke from the laboratory, and we listened.
“Hush, beloved,” she said breathlessly; “the last cartouche is black! And this is written there:
‘Soul, lotus-sealed,
Receive — thy — Paradise—’”
Her voice died out; a terrible pallor struck her face; she swayed where she stood, the smile frozen on her bloodless lips.
As I caught her to me, her head fell straight back and her body sank a dead weight in my arms. Then a dreadful thing occurred; the faded ancient tapestry glowed out like a live ember, kindling from end to end, brighter, fiercer, flaming into living fire; and the phantom Tree of Heaven, flashing, superbly jeweled, burst into magnificent florescence.
Blinded, almost stupefied, I staggered back, but the straining cry died in my throat as a voice is strangled in dreadful dreams. Again I strove to shout. The rug, glowing like a living ember, slowly faded before my eyes. Suddenly the last spark went out in a shower of whitening ashes.
Again I strove to cry out: “Jim! Jim!” but my lips stiffened with horror as I listened. For he was somewhere there in the darkness, laughing.
“It was in her wine,” he chuckled—” and I saw her kiss the glass and look at you! — and you, there, staring at nothing! Stare at it now!” And again: “Do you think I have never watched her? — and you? Now she’s in hell, and we’ll race for her on even terms once more.”
Silence: a low, insane laugh, cut by a report and the crash of glass as he fell, shattering his masked face upon the floor.
After a long while I spoke, listening intently. Then I took up my burden.
And there was no sound save the soft stirring of her silken gown as I bore her through the darkness, my cold lips pressed to hers.
* * * * *
He has never returned to America, but now that the time has come for me to fulfill my part, I do so, setting down what I know and what occult information I have received in letters from him, of the strange fate which overtook, separately, each and every man present at that farewell dinner at the Lenox Club.
My own fate is stranger still — to record these facts and take my position as his historian and his disciple.
CHAPTER II
THE SIGN OF VENUS
In the card room the game, which had started from a chance suggestion, bid fair to develop into an all-night séance: the young foreign diplomat had shed his coat and lighted a fresh cigar; somebody threw a handkerchief over the face of the clock, and a sleepy club servant took reserve orders for two dozen siphons and other details.
“That lets me out,” said Hetherford, rising from his chair with a nod at the dealer. He tossed his cards on the table, settled side obligations with the man on his left, yawned, and put on his hat.
Somebody remonstrated: “It’s only two o’clock, Hetherford; you have no white man’s burden sitting up for you at home.”
But Hetherford shook his head, smiling.
So a servant removed his chair, another man cut in, the dealer dealt cards all around. Presently from somewhere in the smoke haze came a voice, “Hearts.” And a quiet voice retorted, “I double it.”
Hetherford lingered a moment, then turned on his heel, sauntered out across the hallway and down the stairs into the court, refusing with a sign the offered cab.
Breathing deeply, yawning once or twice, he looked up at the stars. The night air refreshed him; he stood a moment, thoughtfully contemplating his half-smoked cigar, then tossed it away and stepped out into the street.
The street was quiet and deserted; darkened brownstone mansions stared at him through somber windows as he passed; his footsteps echoed across the pavement like the sound of footsteps following.
His progress was leisurely; the dreary monotony of the house fronts soothed him. He whistled a few bars of a commonplace tune, crossed the deserted avenue under the electric lamps, and entered the dimly lighted street beyond.
Here all was silence; the doors of many houses were boarded up — sign that their tenants had migrated to the country. No shadowy cat fled along the iron railings at his approach; no night watchman prowled in deserted dooryards or peered at him from obscurity.
Strolling at ease, thoughts nowhere, he had traversed half the block, when an opening door and a glimmer of light across the sidewalk attracted his attention.
As he approached the house from whence the light came, a figure suddenly appeared on the stoop — a girl in a white ball gown — hastily descending the stone steps. Gaslight from the doorway tinted her bared arms and shoulders. She bent her graceful head and gazed earnestly at Hetherford.
“I beg your pardon,” she almost whispered; “might I ask you to help me?”
Hetherford stopped and wheeled short.
“I — I really beg your pardon,” she said, “but I am in such distress. Could I ask you to find me a cab?”
“A cab!” he repeated uncertainly; “why, yes — I will with pleasure—” He turned and looked up and down the deserted street, slowly lifting his hand to his short mustache. “If you are in a hurry,” he said, “I had better go to the nearest stables—”
‘ “But there is something more,” she said, in a tremulous voice; “could you get me a wrap — a cloak — anything to throw over my gown?”
He looked up at her, bewildered. “Why, I don’t believe I—” he began, then fell silent before her troubled gaze. “I’ll do anything I can for you,” he said abruptly. “I have a raincoat at the club — if your need is urgent—”
“It is urgent; but there is something else — something more urgent, more difficult for me to ask you. I must go to Willow Brook — I must go now, to-night! And I — I have no money.”
“Do you mean Willow Brook in Westchester?” he asked, astonished. “There is no train at this hour of the morning!”
“Then — then what am I to do?” she faltered. “I cannot stay another moment in that house.” After a silence he said: “Are you afraid of anybody in that house?”
“There is nobody in the house,” she said with a shudder; “my mother is in Westchester; all the household are there. I — I came back — a few moments ago — unexpectedly—” She stammered and winced under his keen scrutiny; then the pallor of utter despair came into her cheeks, and she hid her white face in her hands.
Hetherford watched her for a moment.
“I don’t exactly understand,” he said gently, “but I’ll do anything I can for you. I’ll go to the club and get my raincoat; I’ll go to the stables and get a cab; I haven’t any money with me, but it would take only a few minutes for me to drive to the club and get some.... Please don’t be distressed; I’ll do anything you desire.”
She dropped her arms with a hopeless gesture. “But you say ther
e is no train!”
“You could drive to the house of some of your friends—”
“No, no! Oh, my friends must never know of this!”
“I see,” he said gravely.
“No, you don’t see,” she said unsteadily. “The truth is that I am almost frightened to death.”
“Can you not tell me what has frightened you so?”
“If I tried to tell you, you would think me mad — you would indeed—”
“Try,” he said soothingly.
“Why — why, it startled me to find myself in this house,” she began. “You see, I didn’t expect to come here; I didn’t really want to come here,” she added piteously. “Oh, it is simply dreadful to come — like this!” She glanced fearfully over her shoulder at the lighted doorway above, then turned to Hetherford as though dazed.
“Tell me,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Yes — I’ll tell you. At first it was all dark’ — but I must have known I was in my own room, for I felt around on the dresser for the matches and lighted a candle. And when I saw that it was truly my own room, and when I caught sight of my own face in the mirror, it terrified me—” She pressed her fingers to her cheeks with a shudder. “Then I ran downstairs and lighted the gas in the hall and peered into the mirror; and I saw a face there — a face like my own—”
Pale, voiceless, she leaned on the bronze balustrade, fair head drooping, lids closed.
Presently, eyes still closed, she said: “You will not leave me alone here — will you—” Her voice died to a whisper.
“No — of course not,” he replied slowly.
There was an interval of silence; she passed her hand across her eyes and raised her head, looking up at the stars.
“You see,” she murmured, “I dare not be alone; I dare not lose touch with the living. I suppose you think me mad, but I am not; I am only stunned. Please stay with me.”
“Of course,” he said in. a soothing voice.
“Everything will come out all right—”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1140