Demon Lover Page 17

  Presently she heard the sound of wheels in the roadway, and saw the doctor returning with his now chastened horse. When, however, the sober beast again reached the last cottage, he swung round so suddenly that one wheel of the trap went down the ditch and very nearly tipped the doctor out. That worthy, believing himself to be unobserved, relieved his feelings with words, then, taking the now thoroughly demoralized horse by the head, proceeded to lead him past the scene of his panic. Dark streaks of sweat sprang out on the sleek bay coat despite the coldness of the day, as with ears laid back and eyes rolling wildly, the terrified animal reluctantly followed its master down the lane.

  It was obvious that the doctor wished to pause and examine whatever it was that had attracted Veronica's attention upon the ground, but the horse was almost unmanageable ; moreover the great drift of leaves, diligently swept up by the little cold wind, had obliterated all landmarks of stone and puddle by which he had calculated on identifying the spot, so that he himself searched where no mark was, and the pawing hoofs of his beast obliterated for ever the only physical evidence of the midnight expedition.

  Returning to the billiard room, where the goggling fish lent her their company, Veronica faced the issue. It was useless to regard the happenings as a bad dream ; however far they might range beyond normal experience, she had to accept them as actual. There in the cottage a child lay dead, and four others sick unto death. Such was the price that had to be paid that a dead man might live even such shadowy life as Lucas had achieved. The vitality which vivified him could only be obtained by the depletion of others. There was not enough to go round, and some had to go short when the uninvited guest dipped his spoon into the platter. Lucas, remorseless individualist that he was, stole from those who could offer least defence to his depredations—young children. Veronica remembered the little new-made graves that she had seen when she visited the churchyard, and wondered how many lives had been sacrificed in order that Lucas might keep his footing on the plane of manifestation.

  Of one thing she was quite determined, however, no more little children should be harmed if it were in her power to prevent it. There was a very great deal of the mother instinct in Veronica, and Lucas could not have found a surer way of making her turn at bay than by attacking children. Timid, ready to suffer all things rather than rebel where her own welfare was concerned, she rose up like a tigress when little helpless things demanded her protection. Lucas had outraged the eternal mother, preserver of life, and the force of all the conserving powers of Nature came in behind little simple Veronica, now roused for the first time.

  Small personal matters that affect the lives of individuals can be fought out upon a personal basis and need spread no further, but when men and women tamper with unseen forces, they are apt to become the channels of those forces in a way with which they have not reckoned. That which they have invoked for their use is liable to use them, and their individual struggles overflow into the cosmos. So Lucas, using elemental forces, had aroused the elements, and they, striving to adjust the balance that his self-seeking hand had thrown out, found a channel through a nature that was close kin to their own. Veronica, because she used her mind but little, was much influenced by the great forces that press the simpler forms of life into manifestation, forces with which the average civilized man has little concern, but which guide children, animals, and those animal children which we call savages. Likewise they take under their protection those child-souls which sometimes come to birth even in the most civilized of industrial cities, and then, provided these are allowed to live close to nature as it is necessary to their well-being that they should, the elemental forces playing upon the human intellect will produce those outbursts of lyric creativeness that lighten the darkness of our bat-eyed culture. But civilization seldom cares to risk such outbreaks, and education, ethics, and philanthropy do their utmost to minimise the risk.

  Veronica had not the intellect necessary for the translation of the forms of one plane of existence into their corresponding symbols upon another plane ; she was a medium in the true sense of the word, a transparency through which the light of a higher world could penetrate the opacity of our earth, and ere long that world discovered her, and then her days of peace were at an end.

  Veronica had not many ideas in her little head, but she had a harmonized nature that enabled such ideas as she had to be given effect. All her resources could be brought to bear at a single point ; there was no division of aims in Veronica. Upon one thing she was quite determined now, Lucas should attack no more children ; she would lend herself to no more materializations that could be turned to such ghastly purposes. As the day wore on she waited the coming of dusk, knowing full well that it would bring Lucas, and she prepared herself for the contest that she knew must ensue. What line he would take with her, she did not know, but upon one thing she was doggedly determined ; she would not leave the room, and she shrewdly suspected that if she wouldn't, Lucas couldn't, owing to the tenuous silver cord that united them when materialization took place. What Lucas would do to her by way of retaliation Veronica did not know, and strangely enough, had ceased to care. Things had gone too far for her to care : it was like some wierd dream in which one leaps off precipices and nothing ever happens.

  Darkness set in early that night, for the sunset had been veiled in clouds, and hardly had the last light gone before Veronica was aware of the shadowy cowled figure with the dark flashing eyes that seemed to build itself out of the shadows. Apparently Lucas had now got enough ectoplasm gathered together to enable him to manifest at will, provided the light was dim enough, but not enough for speech or any definite action. More of this strange subtle substance had to be obtained from somewhere if he were to continue in the land of living beings, and Veronica was determined that he should not have it at such ghastly cost. How he was to be prevented was another matter, but she was determined that he should not have her co-operation, and she believed that her refusal would cripple his power in the present stage of his upbuilding.

  She knew that they were embarked upon a trial of strength, and braced her whole being to meet it. The dark eyes among the grey drapery showed that their owner was well aware of this change of attitude on her part ; they looked surprised, reproachful, but the anger that Veronica had expected was absent.

  The sensation of the swift downward swoop with which she was now so familiar passed through Veronica's nerves, and once again she saw the mist-like substance flow from her that should turn Lucas into the semblance of a living man. Not much was needed for this accomplishment now, and in a condition very near her normal consciousness Veronica saw Lucas materialize before her.

  There he stood in the dim red glow of the coals, swathed and cowled in soft grey drapery, but the hands looked as if they could grip, and the face showed the colour of life under its dark skin. She had never thought of her friend as dead, and so his return, from that point of view, was no shock to her ; from the moment of her discovery of his body upon the sunlit bed on that far-away summer morning, she had known that he was only waiting his opportunity to come back to her, and that sooner or later that opportunity would come. She had watched for him, and finally her watching had been rewarded, and he had appeared. She had for him now just the same feelings that she had had for him in life, in fact in some ways she liked him better ; in the old days, in the house in the Bloomsbury square, she had been dependent upon his goodwill (a somewhat uncertain quantity), now he was dependent upon her for his very existence, part of her substance had gone to build up his form, and in some curious way her mother-instinct went forth to this being that was made of her own life. His very dependence upon her gave him his strongest hold over her. Veronica, in her new-found mother-spirit, might resist aggression, but, on the other hand, she would cherish fiercely anything that depended upon her, and Lucas in his half-materialized condition was as dependent upon her life as an unborn child.

  The process having gone as far as Lucas dared to carry it, the available life forces ha
ving been shared out between the partners in this strange enterprise, they faced each other, the man partly materialized, and the girl partly de-materialized. Again the grey world that shone with its own light was open to her ; again the soul that she had known as Justin Lucas took on the semblance of a man, and actuated by the same emotions that had stirred it in life, moved towards her, and a voice, low and toneless, but quite distinct, sounded in her ears.

  “Well, Veronica, are you pleased to see me ?”

  She made him no answer. Great as was her horror of him, and of the strange conditions of his reappearing, yet he still had a fascination for her. This he seemed to divine, for the shadowy lips curved into a smile.

  “Not altogether displeased? We are coming along, Veronica.”

  There was, a pause while they studied each other. Veronica noted the way he had concentrated such substance as was available for his use in the upper parts of his form ; head, shoulders and hands were well materialized, but the lower limbs tailed off in a long floating wisp of drapery. Like some strange merman of the shadows he rose up before her, his body from the hips downwards merging into the dark ocean of chaos whence he drew his being.

  Then the man spoke again. “Now, Veronica, the next thing is to finish the process we began last night. I have marked down a house on the other side of the village that I want to go to, and if you will put on some shoes that have not got high heels, we will make a start.”

  But Veronica did not stir, and the dark eyes among the shadowy drapery opened wide in amazement, for, practised hypnotist that he was, Lucas had never before had experience of a subject who went easily into trance and then proved unamenable to suggestion. He did not know that Veronica had ‘ gone off ’ with her mind concentrated upon the idea that she would not leave the room, and that this prior autosuggestion would nullify all subsequent commands. Within the limits of the four walls she was his to command at will, but outside the four walls neither he nor anyone else could make her go.

  Baffled by the turn affairs had taken, Lucas shifted his ground.

  “Aren't you going to help me ?” he said.

  Veronica, motionless in her chair as a statue, turned her face towards him as if the closed eyes had sight.

  “One of those children is dead,” she said ; “and the others are very ill.”

  “I am sorry the child is dead,” said Lucas. “I must have taken more from it than it could stand. The others will be all right in a day or two ; they will soon pick up again.”

  “There have been several children who have died from what you did to them,” said Veronica, drawing a bow at a venture.

  “Have there? Children die very easily ; such a small withdrawal of vitality seems to deplete them.”

  “There won't be any more,” answered Veronica.

  “No, I hope not,” said Lucas. “But come, now, we want to make a start. I think one more expedition will do the trick.”

  “There will not be another expedition,” said Veronica.

  “Oh yes, there will,” said Lucas, and the dark brows met in a frown under the grey hooded draperies as he concentrated the gaze of his eyes upon her. The hand, long-fingered and flat-palmed as in life, shot out towards her and passed with a slow stroking movement down across her face. Veronica's body did not stir, but down again into the dark blue abyss sank her soul as the hypnotic trance deepened under Lucas's manipulations.

  Again he essayed to command her upon this deeper level of trance, and again her mind, set to a keynote, resisted. Yet again he sent her swooping to a still lower level, and yet again she eluded him. Then, angered and baffled beyond caution, he thrust her out a third time, when, to his surprise, the rigidity left her figure, and she sank back among the cushions like a child asleep, a look of wonderful peace taking the place of the strained, anxious expression of her face. For Lucas had over-reached himself as those so often will who seek to tamper with natural laws, he had thrust Veronica out beyond any plane upon which he himself could function ; she had escaped from his control ; her soul had passed from the subjective condition of hypnotic trance and become objective upon a higher plane of consciousness ; subconsciousness had given place to superconsciousness, and Veronica had escaped.

  There are not many hypnotists who can put a subject in this state of trance, and there are not many individuals who are capable of so functioning, but such exist, of both kinds, and sometimes they meet, with astonishing results. Veronica's soul, hounded deeper and yet deeper into the subjective state, had suddenly broken through into those regions known to occultists as the Spheres of Safety. The soul had gone to its own place and was among its own kind.

  A smile parted Veronica's lips, and she seemed to be answering a greeting. Lucas, watching her, knew that she had passed to those regions for the right of entrance to which he had sold his soul ; something in her own nature had given her the key to the gate that was barred to him. He watched and waited, unable to follow her where she had gone. He remembered the time when an unknown Power had intervened on her behalf upon the road to Brighton, striking him down with the sudden impact of Its force, from some such plane as this It had come, and Lucas asked himself what manner of soul it was that functioned through the child-like personality of Veronica. Of ancient lineage and high initiation it must be in order to contact these levels ; Lucas wondered that he had never detected her status before. He had believed her to be a little, primitive, unevolved creature ; whereas, she was evolved beyond the transmitting power of her brain.

  The immortal soul overshadowed rather than incarnated in the body of Veronica Mainwaring, and the personality built up by the experiences of a single life had hitherto given but little indication of that which lay behind it. He guessed that she had no need to incarnate upon her own account ; earth had no lessons to teach a soul of this type, her place was elsewhere ; he might have guessed this from her desirelessness and lack of all resentment. Why, then, was she here at all? Some tie held her bound ; some link yet remained between her and this plane of existence. Lucas was well aware that in past lives they had trodden the same path, and worked together at the same occult work ; there is no stronger bond than this ; it will hold when the cords of love and hate are loosened. Lucas had lost track of her after that last fateful incarnation at Avignon, when she had definitely chosen the White, and he the Black Path, and had paid with his life for his choice. That age may have been dark in many respects, and its wisest men ignorant as we reckon learning to-day, but there were some things which they knew that their successors of a more enlightened period have forgotten, and certain aspects of psychology were among them. They had some acquaintance with the rarer powers of the mind and they knew their dangers. The white magic of the mystic was understood and reverenced, but they saw to it that he or she who manifested these abnormal powers was well disciplined by confessor and convent rule ; they did not permit such folk to be a law unto themselves, well-knowing the risks to which they were exposed ; and if any person showed signs of a like power which was not dedicated to holy use, that person was burnt to ashes, and his knowledge perished with him ; for, knowing the dangers of such power should it be unhallowed, the men of that age took no chances, and they were wise in their generation. No doubt many innocent persons perished, no doubt evidence was admitted at the trials that was not weighed in the balance of impartial justice, but there is equally no doubt in the minds of those who have studied the evidence that there was a widespread knowledge at that time of certain practices which the great occult fraternities, who are the guardians of these things, have always tried to keep secret, and that this knowledge got into evil and untrustworthy hands and was terribly abused. It is believed to-day by those uninformed that it was an ignorant and corrupt priesthood who instigated these prosecutions, but this was not so. The first alarm came from the men who held the keys of the secret gateway in that generation ; men who were far more highly trained in the arts they tried to stamp out than any of those who practised them. The Church has never sought to destroy the
powers of the inner life, she has only sought to regulate their use and to prevent their unguarded and unhallowed abuse, and in so doing she has safeguarded mankind from evils little suspected by modern men in a Christian country. Such men as Lucas were common in Europe in the Middle Ages ; the well-attested records of their doings exist in official archives for any who care to look for them, and they are only rare to-day because a priesthood despised as ignorant and obscurantist stood on guard between common men and the powers of darkness ; and well it would be in this day, which is seeing just such a recrudescence of interest in the unseen, if an initiate priesthood could again guard our civilization from dangers of which it little suspects the nature.

  Lucas waited impatiently while Veronica's soul wandered in the regions of light whither he could not penetrate. The shadows were his kingdom, and the dark waters of the abyss whence elemental substance can be drawn ; he was of the Unseen, but; she was of the Light that blinds by its brightness—and that light barred his way as effectually as a granite wall ; he could but await her return, not knowing what she would bring with her.

  What Veronica brought, she herself could not have told him, for the doors of that bright world closed behind her as she passed out and memory was sealed. She woke from her trance as naturally as a child from sleep to find the room glowing with a strange warmth. She was alone, but the aroma of Lucas's presence hung about the room just as the odour of tobacco smoke lingers, and was readily perceptible to her hyper-sensitized condition. Somewhere, in the stormy night outside he was tossed and buffeted by the winds of space, houseless, companionless, with no rest for the sole of his foot nor where to lay his head. He who had defied the laws of life was caught in their cross-currents, and the great smooth flow of evolution was twisted into a maelstrom as he sought to deflect its tides to his petty personal ends. He had invoked the wind with success, but the whirlwind had followed on its heels. It is one thing to call upon the cyclone to fill our sails and drive us upon our course regardless of what men's houses be blown down and the crops of their patient toil laid to the earth, but it is quite another thing to tack into the teeth of the anti-cyclone that inevitably follows ; if we invoke the laws of nature, we must abide by the laws of nature, and their prime maxim is that action and reaction are equal and opposite on the plane upon which they are invoked. Back they come with the swing of a pendulum, and though the initiate of the Lesser Mysteries can set going that pendulum, he cannot escape its return swing; it is only the initiate of the Greater Mysteries who knoweth the secret of the escapement.