Demon Lover Page 13

  “Er—yes,” said Alec, awkwardly, and silence fell between them, which Veronica did not trouble to break.

  It was suddenly broken by the man, however. “I say, look at your hand ! ” he exclaimed. “It's bleeding.”

  Veronica raised her hand in astonishment. A thin line of blood ran down the wrist and a heavy drop fell from her finger-tip upon the dead leaves at her feet, lying there, a scarlet splash in the watery sunlight that had at last penetrated the clouds. A similar crimson stain marked the grey stones that lay about the ruined wall. Veronica thrust back the stiff sleeve of the trench-coat and found that, drop by drop, blood was welling from the veins of the fore-arm ; the wound that Lucas had given her in that strange scene that had been enacted the night of his death, had, for some unknown reason, re-opened, and was bleeding afresh.

  “I say, that's quite a gash,” said Butler. “How did you manage to do it ?” and producing a large white handkerchief, he bound it up, not unskilfully. He was in no hurry to complete his task, however, and Veronica suspected that, with a very little encouragement, he would have held her hand, but she resolutely pulled down the rough sleeve and thrust the injured arm into the breast of her coat ; for a moment they stood, however, the man looking down and the girl looking up. They were sheltered from the wind by a hollow, and though it threshed among the tree-tops, the undergrowth was unstirred. But as they stood, a little wandering wind came and blew round them ; little vortices of air drew the dead leaves up into miniature whirlwinds, and this wandering draught was cold with a strange coldness, like the wind from a cavern. Veronica shivered and drew her coat closer, and Butler, moved by he knew not what impulse, glanced over his shoulder, and simultaneously they set off clown the path at a quickened pace.

  Butler accompanied Veronica as far as the strand of slack wire that flanked the rusting gates, and paused irresolute, waiting for an invitation to enter. It was not given, however ; Veronica had many things to think over, and wished to be alone, and reluctantly he raised his hat and turned away.

  The little cold wind still blew around Veronica as she went through the shrubbery, she could hear it rustle the boughs behind her as she passed, and saw the unkempt lilacs stir above her head and the leaves come down in a shower. At the window opening upon the terrace she paused, a little spiral of leaves danced in the unswept corners of the steps, and as she opened the unlatched pane, a stream of the fallen Virginia Creeper, scarlet as blood, swept across the floor and rose up in a giddy dance in the eddies before the open fire-place.

  Veronica dropped into a big leather-covered arm-chair and stared at the smouldering fire. The leaves, the draught withdrawn, lay in brilliant patches upon the faded carpet. All was quiet.

  Veronica had come to the dividing of the ways, and with a woman's intuition she knew it ; she might, by turning her mind towards Butler and the things he stood for, bring back her soul to the normal ; or she might, by dwelling upon the personality of Lucas and all the strange world to which he held the key, pass even as he had sought to pass, into the greater freedom of the soul. All her early training, the strongest thing in life, turned her towards the things that Butler symbolized, her beloved Surrey hills, the gardens, and the fire-sides of every day ; but Lucas had made her free of interstellar space and aeonial time, and had shown her the path of the soul from the dark ocean of the Unmanifest to the Cosmic Fire. She had seen, and she could not forget ; no soul can. Like the swallow that has been long in the air, Veronica was well content to fold her wings under the eaves of a human habitation, but all the same, she was a bird of the air, not of the barnyard, and sooner or later she would take wing again ; sooner or later, she knew in her heart, a call would come out of the Unseen, and she must hold herself in readiness to respond to it.

  So her moods alternated. A greeting from the gardener, the shouts of playing children down the lane, and she knew that Lucas was dead and buried and the mad dream over ; then the daylight would fade, the wind of evening blow round the house, dancing the leaves into spirals, the dying fire would throw a lessening circle of light about the hearth, and the corners fill with shadows ; then the unseen drew very close to Veronica, and the veil that shelters us mortals from the too-great blaze of life would grow very thin, and through the rifts she would catch brief, shifting glimpses of the speeding currents of space, the rolling, banking clouds of glory, rising like fume from a furnace, and great Forms moving among them ; and over all, like a flight of golden bees, the little, upward-pointing flames that are the innermost souls of men ; some, freed by sleep during the brief span between birth and death, and others in the greater freedom that lies between death and birth. Behind the shadow-show of our world she caught a glimpse of the great Presences that cast the shadows, and sooner or later, out of the swirlings and speedings of space would come one whom she knew, who would summon her.

  Then the old caretaker would bring in the morning paper, arrived by a belated country-post, and Veronica would shake off her dreams and return to realities.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SO VERONICA'S MOODS ALTERNATED AS THE SUN and shade alternated on those shortening autumn days, but still she lingered on in the mouldering old house. Meanwhile, Butler assiduously developed the friendship that had begun by the newly-made grave. He would drop in at odd times, the middle of the morning, after tea, after supper, but he would never stop to a meal even were one upon the table. To do so would have occasioned comment in the home circle, and he had no mind that they should know of his visits to the Grange or its solitary occupant. Veronica, unskilled in the ways of the world, wondered at his refusal, but could not interpret it. Butler was a champion of beauty in distress, but only up to a point ; beyond that point, his world bound him.

  But nevertheless, in spite of difficulties, he came so often by the secluded wood path that led through the churchyard, that even the mastiff which, chained to a barrel, guarded the back premises, got to know his footstep and ceased to give tongue. Time and again, sitting in the warm lamp-lit room with Veronica, he was on the point of asking her to be his wife, and time and again he hesitated. She would talk freely of her childhood, of the training college, but of her life with Lucas she would tell him no more than she had told the coroner. She had been Mr. Lucas's secretary in London when he had managed the affairs of the Society for the Study of Comparative Folklore ; she had accompanied him to Beckering to continue her duties when he left London ; he had been very good to her, and she would permit no aspersion on his memory. Like all the rest of the district, Butler knew that there was much that these obvious statements did not explain, but Veronica did not offer to enlighten him, and he lacked the courage to put a direct question.

  Unable to get work in the disorganization following on the war, living at home, dependent on his father even for pocket-money, and not yet come to his full strength after having been badly gassed, he was not in a position to embark upon a course that would meet with opposition from his parents, so Butler took no definite stand with regard to Veronica. The days drifted by pleasantly enough, he saw just as much of her as if they had been officially engaged, and he was spared all the unpleasantness that publicity would have occasioned ; no other male showed any signs of competing, so he was not driven to clinch his bargain from any fear of losing it. Veronica, on her part, still the prey of alternating moods, adopted an equally drifting policy towards Butler. Although he could well have qualified for the post of Prince Charming and dragon-slayer in the Surrey days, those days were gone for ever, and in the brief stormy interregnum Veronica had known a man in whom the fire of life burnt so fiercely that all other men seemed extinguished by his light as is a stove upon which the sun shines. All men now seemed to her either immature or senile, Lucas alone was a man in his strength. Butler was a child, a puppet; she liked his companionship and was glad that he liked her, but he woke no fire within her. Lucas, by the alchemy of his personality, had raised the flash-point of her emotions so high that few men were in existence who could ever fire her again.
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  So things would have continued to drift indefinitely had not Butler come in one day unannounced, to find Veronica nibbling the end of her pen in the effort to cope with some legal-looking documents. His offer of assistance was accepted, and he speedily discovered that he was disentangling the affairs of a considerable estate. This put an entirely different complexion on the matter. Butler did not wish to be mercenary, was not, in fact, of a mercenary nature, but merely weak, and with passions insufficiently strong to cause him to drive through all obstacles to the object of his desire. The discovery that Veronica had private means, and considerable means too, would remove the financial barrier that prevented their marriage. Of course he would not live on his wife, he would get a job and keep his end up, but they would not be dependent on the good-will of his family, a good-will which, he felt sure, would never be extended to Veronica, even if she were able to prove her innocence, after the notoriety which she had achieved in the county, and Veronica had never shown any inclination to clear her character of the aspersions that had been cast upon it. As a matter of fact, she was too innocent of life to realize that she stood in any need of whitewashing, her conscience was clear, and that was all she thought about.

  Butler drew his chair up to the table and helped Veronica to fill in dividend warrants. Though it was sufficiently dark to demand the lamp, his head was perhaps closer to hers than it need have been, and in another moment the fatal words would have passed his lips, when a sudden patter of dead leaves struck the glass as a gust of wind set all the windows rattling. They both looked up in astonishment, for the night had been quiet hitherto.

  “A storm getting up,” said Butler, and even as he spoke a fresh gust smote the window with renewed vigour ; the panes bulged, rocked, and then the crazy fastening gave way, both panes of the French window burst open, and a great rush of wind laden with a stream of dancing leaves drove into the room. Out went the lamp, but the flames of the logs leaped up as the feathery ashes of the hearth joined the leaves in the wild whirlwind dance of the gale. Butler seized the flanges of the window and forced them shut, then he struck a match and relit the lamp ; the renewed light showed scarlet leaves and grey ashes settling slowly down all over the floor. Veronica amid her strewn papers, was staring into space with unseeing eyes. Something of the wild night without seemed to have entered with the rushing wind, and though the uproar had subsided, a lingering spirit of darkness brooded over the room ; the lamp gave less light, the fire less heat, and the veil that hides the unseen hung in tatters that the lightest breath might displace. Veronica felt that, should the strange atmosphere that brooded over the room grow the least degree more tangible, something would become visible to the physical eyes of both of them, even the unimaginative Alec, just as a liquid in which the solution reaches saturation point suddenly crystallizes. The Unseen that had drawn near to her this time, however, was not the unseen of inter-stellar space, but rather of the waters under the earth ; it was dark, thick, oppressive, like the air of a well ; the lamp would not burn in such an atmosphere, little blue flames showed among the logs on the hearth ; but Butler, happily oblivious with a wholesome stolidity, gathered up the fallen papers, lit a pipe, and took his seat at the table again to finish the task in hand.

  Luckily it was nearly completed, for Veronica found it hard to keep her attention on the documents that demanded her signature ; Butler, too, was in a hurry, for supper time was approaching, and he had no wish to draw attention to his movements by being late for the family meal, so the task was speedily despatched, and he rose to his feet to depart. Veronica, however, was reluctant to let him go, but he resisted all her efforts to persuade him to stay and share her evening meal. She opened the French window and stepped out on to the terrace. To their surprise they found that the wind had died away as suddenly as it had arisen, and no noticeable air was moving in the sheltered garden. Commenting on this, they stood looking up at the unclouded stars for a few moments, and Butler had just turned to Veronica for a last farewell when the piercing howl of a dog's agony cut through the stillness of the valley. The sound came from the outbuildings where the old watch-dog abode, and instinctively the country-bred Butler answered the cry of an animal's distress, dashing round the corner of the terrace at top speed with Veronica close behind him.

  They discovered the old mastiff, whose function it was to guard the house, lying on his side on the flagstones outside the barrel that served him for a kennel ; a little foam hung from his dark muzzle and he was panting, otherwise he seemed unharmed. He lifted his head as he became aware of their presence, but dropped it back on the stones again, appearing completely exhausted.

  Butler knelt and examined him. “Poor old chap,” he said. “He must have had some sort of a fit.” And gathering the heavy dog up in his arms, he managed to bundle him back among the straw of his kennel, the creature, too weak to resist, accepting his ministrations sullenly.

  “I wonder what can have been the matter with him,” said Veronica. “Last night he was howling in the most unaccountable fashion. I have never heard a dog howl quite like that before ; a long drawn-out wail on one note. The gardener told me it was the death-howl, and said they were quite upset about it at the cottages down the road ; he said that dogs howl like that when they see the souls of the dead passing out, but no one had died during the night, unless some tramp or gipsy had died in the fields. The men are going out to see if they can find anything.”

  “Oh, bunkum, Veronica ! You don't mean to say you take that sort of tosh seriously ?” exclaimed Butler. “Mother's pug got at the ashbin once and ate the fluff that came out of the sweeper, and he howled just like that when he couldn't get his breath ; I raked the stuff out of his throat with a feather. Your beast had probably got something stuck in his wind-pipe, but whatever it is, he has coughed it up now, for he is breathing all right again.” And he led her round the corner of the house on to the terrace and saw her safely in at the window again before he set out on his walk to the village.

  His head was among the stars and his feet scarcely touched the earth as he walked ; Veronica was within his reach (it never entered his head that she might not accept him if he proposed), and he whistled Mendelssohn's Wedding March as he went through the darkness of the wood path. He stopped his musical efforts as he set foot in the churchyard, he had been well brought up, and it did not seem to him reverent to whistle in such a place. The newly-risen moon made lakes of light among the dark yews, and in one such silver pool lay the rough mound of clay that covered the man whose influence still overshadowed the girl of his choice. He paused beside that mound. What secret lay concealed there? He must tackle Veronica straight about that matter before he popped the question ; it didn't do to have secrets between man and wife, he wanted to know the ins and outs of the matter. Who was this chap, and what had he been up to? Jolly good job he had departed and left the coast clear for himself, Alec.

  “So long, old chap,” he said half aloud, nodding to the man that lay below. “I am afraid I have bagged your girl, but you had no further use for her, had you? You have departed to the place where they neither marry nor are given in marriage ; good luck to you, I hope you are happy with your harp and don't ever regret the binges you used to have. Wish me luck, old bean, even if I have done you in the eye.” And he went on again, whistling. Not even the graveyard could subdue his spirits when he thought of the prospect that lay before him. The night was calm, and this time no little whirlwind blew about the grave to chill body and heart and hasten his steps.

  Veronica, left alone at the Grange, ate her solitary supper and then sat over the fire, gazing into the flames. There were no blinds to the windows, and the heavy serge curtains would have come away in the hand at any attempt to draw them, so rotten were they with damp and age, so the night looked in unhindered, and whatever creatures happened to be wandering in the night. Veronica was not nervous, however ; the flights out of her body, to which Lucas's processes had accustomed her, had largely robbed the unseen of its terro
rs ; she knew what moved there, they were not unfamiliar, and she also knew the protection she could invoke at will, she felt as secure as the little child who breathes the old prayer :

  ‘Four angels round my bed;

  Two at the foot, and two at the head; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Guard the bed that I lie on’

  So she sat, gazing into the flames and reviewing her life. Her childhood on the Surrey hills where nothing ever happened ; the strain of her life at the training school ; her association with Lucas, when altogether too much happened ; and now her strange tie to this dismantled, sodden place, where he had died. Then her mind turned to Butler ; sensitized by the processes through which Lucas had put her, she had readily picked up his thoughts as he sat beside her at the table, and she knew quite well that he would soon ask her to marry him, and she debated her answer ; if it had not been for Lucas, she would have liked him very much, he would have just suited the unawakened doll-child she used to be ; he was big ; handsome in his blond way, and good natured ; fond of the things she was fond of, dogs, a garden, a little two-seater or a push-bike ; read the lighter novels, liked popular music with a catchy refrain ; was always ready for a bit of fun, and in all things was a thorough good pal : he had already adopted little proprietary ways towards her which she rather liked. But behind him loomed the dark personality of Lucas, and though Butler would have appealed to the girl she used to be before she went to the house in the Bloomsbury square, a side of her nature had been awakened to life that he could neither comprehend nor satisfy. To her it seemed quite natural that the dog should see the souls of the dead pass by as they set out upon their journey, and should be frightened ; she herself would have been frightened if she had not known what she did, but why should one fear one's friend, whether in his body or out of it? Death made no difference to his disposition, if he was one's friend in life he would be one's friend after death. She herself had been just as much a ghost as any dead man when she materialized on the floor of the Lodge, but her nature had undergone no change ; and the man who had seen her, Mr. Fordyce, had not been frightened ; he had merely been angry and considered her guilty of an impertinence, just as much as if she had slipped in with her physical presence where she was not wanted. Yet Alec, in the first place, regarded all such things as fake or superstition, vet, if he were to see any such manifestation for himself, would have been frightened out of his wits. What a freedom this knowledge gave one, even the little bit of it that had come her way ; life was made infinitely bigger, and death was robbed of its terrors ; in spite of all she had suffered, she would not wish the past undone. She had something that Butler had not got, and could never have, unless he also trod the path by which she had come, which was not likely ; one had to pay a price for this strange freedom of the soul, but it was worth paying. As old Dr. Latimer had said, she had only seen the dark side of occultism ; she had seen Lucas trying to use black magic, and she had seen the Fraternity smash him ; all the same, she knew by her own inner consciousness the light that lay behind. She had felt a Presence that was as much higher than a man as a man is higher than a dog ; she had known a Power that can light a fire in the soul never to go out. She wondered what her last incarnation had been ; she felt sure that Lucas had had some part in it. She wondered what her next life would be? She felt sure he would appear again, and she wanted things to be on the right lines next time, not all this strife and tragedy. To-night the things of the inner world were very near to her and very real, facts of her own experience, not tales out of a book.