Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Cherish, my lord, my darling Heart of Fire. Serpents twist and twine. So do rose vines. May their petals make your path of velvet and sweet scented. May everything that is round be a pomegranate for you two to share; may everything that sways be lilies bordering a path wide enough for two. In the name of the Most Merciful God, may the only cry you hear be the first sweet wail of your first-born. And when the tenth shall be born, may you and Heart of Fire bewail your fate because both of you desire more children!”

  She was laughing when she disappeared. Cleves thought she was still there, so radiant the sunshine, so sweet the scent in the room.

  But the golden shadow by the door was empty of her. If she had slipped through the doorway he had not noticed her departure. Yet she was no longer there. And, when he understood, he turned back into the empty room, quivering all over. Suddenly a terrible need of Tressa assailed him — an imperative necessity to speak to her — hear her voice.

  “Tressa!” he called, and rested his hand on the centre table, feeling weak and shaken to the knees. Then he looked down and saw the mulberry leaves lying scattered there, tender and green and still dewy with the dew of China.

  “Oh, my God!” he whispered, “such things are! It isn’t my mind that has gone wrong. There are such things!”

  The conviction swept him like a tide till his senses swam. As though peering through a mist of gold he saw his wife enter and come to him; — felt her arm about him, sustaining him where he swayed slightly with one hand on the table among the mulberry leaves.

  “Ah,” murmured Tressa, noticing the green leaves, “she oughtn’t to have done that. That was thoughtless of her, to show herself to you.”

  Cleves looked at her in a dazed way. “The body is nothing,” he muttered. “The rest only is real. That is the truth, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I seem to be beginning to believe it.... Sansa said things — I shall try to tell you — some day — dear.... I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

  “Are you?” she murmured.

  “And so glad to feel your touch.... I found a shroud on my threshold. And a knife.”

  “The Yezidees are becoming mountebanks.... Where is the knife?” she asked scornfully.

  “Sansa said it was poisoned. She took it. She — she said that a poisoned heart is more dangerous still.”

  Then Tressa threw up her head and called softly into space: “Sansa! Little Silk-Moth! What are these mischievous things you have told to my lord?”

  She stood silent, listening. And, in the answer which he could not hear, there seemed to be something that set his young wife’s cheeks aflame.

  “Sansa! Little devil!” she cried, exasperated. “May Erlik send his imps to pinch you if you have said to my lord these shameful things. It was impudent! It was mischievous! You cover me with shame and confusion, and I am humbled in the dust of my lord’s feet!”

  Cleves looked at her, but she could not sustain his gaze.

  “Did Sansa say to you what she said to me?” he demanded unsteadily.

  “Yes.... I ask your pardon.... And I had already told her you did not — did not — were not — in — love — with me.... I ask your pardon.”

  “Ask more.... Ask your heart whether it would care to hear that I am in love. And with whom. Ask your heart if it could ever care to listen to what my heart could say to it.”

  “Y-yes — I’ll ask — my heart,” she faltered.... “I think I had better finish dressing — —” She lifted her eyes, gave him a breathless smile as he caught her hand and kissed it.

  “It — it would be very wonderful,” she stammered, “ — if our necessity should be-become our choice.”

  But that speech seemed to scare her and she fled, leaving her husband standing tense and upright in the middle of the room.

  Their train on the New York Central Railroad left the Grand Central Terminal at one in the afternoon.

  Cleves had made his arrangements by wire. They travelled lightly, carrying, except for the clothing they wore, only camping equipment for two.

  It was raining in the Hudson valley; they rushed through the outlying towns and Po’keepsie in a summer downpour.

  At Hudson the rain slackened. A golden mist enveloped Albany, through which the beautiful tower and façades along the river loomed, masking the huge and clumsy Capitol and the spires beyond.

  At Schenectady, rifts overhead revealed glimpses of blue. At Amsterdam, where they descended from the train, the flag on the arsenal across the Mohawk flickered brilliantly in the sunny wind.

  By telegraphic arrangement, behind the station waited a touring car driven by a trooper of State Constabulary, who, with his comrade, saluted smartly as Cleves and Tressa came up.

  There was a brief, low-voiced conversation. Their camping outfit was stowed aboard, Tressa sprang into the tonneau followed by Cleves, and the car started swiftly up the inclined roadway, turned to the right across the railroad bridge, across the trolley tracks, and straight on up the steep hill paved with blocks of granite.

  On the level road which traversed the ridge at last they speeded up, whizzed past the great hedged farm where racing horses are bred, rushing through the afternoon sunshine through the old-time Scotch settlements which once were outposts of the old New York frontier.

  Nine miles out the macadam road ended. They veered to the left over a dirt road, through two hamlets; then turned to the right.

  The landscape became rougher. To their left lay the long, low Maxon hills; behind them the Mayfield range stretched northward into the open jaws of the Adirondacks.

  All around them were woods, now. Once a Gate House appeared ahead; and beyond it they crossed four bridges over a foaming, tumbling creek where Cleves caught glimpses of shadowy forms in amber-tinted pools — big yellow trout that sank unhurriedly out of sight among huge submerged boulders wet with spray.

  The State trooper beside the chauffeur turned to Cleves, his purple tie whipping in the wind.

  “Yonder is Glenwild, sir,” he said.

  It was a single house on the flank of a heavily forested hill. Deep below to the left the creek leaped two cataracts and went flashing out through a belt of cleared territory ablaze with late sunshine.

  The car swung into the farm-yard, past the barn on the right, and continued on up a very rough trail.

  “This is the road to the Ireland Vlaie,” said the trooper. “It is possible for cars for another mile only.”

  Splendid spruce, pine, oak, maple, and hemlock fringed the swampy, uneven trail which was no more than a wide, rough vista cut through the forest.

  And, as the trooper had said, a little more than a mile farther the trail became a tangle of bushes and swale; the car slowed down and stopped; and a man rose from where he was seated on a mossy log and came forward, his rifle balanced across the hollow of his left arm.

  The man was Alek Selden.

  It was long after dark and they were still travelling through pathless woods by the aid of their electric torches.

  There was little underbrush; the forest of spruce and hemlock was first growth.

  Cleves shined the trees but could discover no blazing, no trodden path.

  In explanation, Selden said briefly that he had hunted the territory for years.

  “But I don’t begin to know it,” he added. “There are vast and ugly regions of bog and swale where a sea of alders stretches to the horizon. There are desolate wastes of cat-briers and witch-hopple under leprous tangles of grey birches, where stealthy little brooks darkle deep under matted débris. Only wild things can travel such country.

  “Then there are strange, slow-flowing creeks in the perpetual shadows of tamarack woods, where many a man has gone in never to come out.”

  “Why?” asked Tressa.

  “Under the tender carpet of green cresses are shining black bogs set with tussock; and under the bog stretches quicksand, — and death.”

  “Do you know these places?” asked Cleves.
<
br />   “No.”

  Cleves stepped forward to Tressa’s side.

  “Keep flashing the ground,” he said harshly. “I don’t want you to step into some hell-hole. I’m sorry I brought you, anyway.”

  “But I had to come,” she said in a low voice.

  Like the two men, she wore a grey flannel shirt, knickers, and spiral puttees.

  They, however, carried rifles as well as packs; and the girl’s pack was lighter.

  They had halted by a swift, icy rivulet to eat, without building a fire. After that they crossed the Ireland Vlaie and the main creek, where remains of a shanty stood on the bluff above the right bank — the last sign of man.

  Beyond lay the uncharted land, skimped and shirked entirely in certain regions by map-makers; — an unknown wilderness on the edges of which Selden had often camped when deer shooting.

  It was along this edge he was leading them, now, to a lean-to which he had erected, and from which he had travelled in to Glenwild to use the superintendent’s telephone to New York.

  There seemed to be no animal life stirring in this forest; their torches illuminated no fiery orbs of dazed wild things surprised at gaze in the wilderness; no leaping furry form crossed their flashlights’ fan-shaped radiance.

  There were no nocturnal birds to be seen or heard, either: no bittern squawked from hidden sloughs; no herons howled; not an owl-note, not a whispering cry of a whippoorwill, not the sudden uncanny twitter of those little birds that become abruptly vocal after dark, interrupted the dense stillness of the forest.

  And it was not until his electric torch glimmered repeatedly upon reaches of dusk-hidden bog that Cleves understood how Selden took his bearings — for the night was thick and there were no stars.

  “Yes,” said Selden tersely, “I’m trying to skirt the bog until I shine a peeled stick.”

  An hour later the peeled alder-stem glittered in the beam of the torches. In ten minutes something white caught the electric rays.

  It was Selden’s spare undershirt drying on a bush behind the lean-to.

  “Can we have a fire?” asked Cleves, relieving his wife of her pack and striding into the open-faced camp.

  “Yes, I’ll fix it,” replied Selden. “Are you all right, Mrs. Cleves?”

  Tressa said: “Delightfully tired, thank you.” And smiled faintly at her husband as he let go his own pack, knelt, and spread a blanket for his wife.

  He remained there, kneeling, as she seated herself.

  “Are you quite fit?” he asked bluntly. Yet, through his brusqueness her ear caught a vague undertone of something else — anxiety perhaps — perhaps tenderness. And her heart stirred deliciously in her breast.

  He inflated a pillow for her; the firelight glimmered, brightened, spread glowing across her feet. She lay back with a slight sigh, relaxed.

  Then, suddenly, the thrill of her husband’s touch flooded her face with colour; but she lay motionless, one arm flung across her eyes, while he unrolled her puttees and unlaced her muddy shoes.

  A heavenly warmth from the fire dried her stockinged feet. Later, on the edge of sleep, she opened her eyes and found herself propped upright on her husband’s shoulder.

  Drowsily, obediently she swallowed spoonfuls of the hot broth which he administered.

  “Are you really quite comfortable, dear?” he whispered.

  “Wonderfully.... And so very happy.... Thank you — dear.”

  She lay back, suffering him to bathe her face and hands with warm water.

  When the fire was only a heap of dying coals, she turned over on her right side and extended her hand a little way into the darkness. Searching, half asleep, she touched her husband, and her hand relaxed in his nervous clasp. And she fell into the most perfect sleep which she had known in years.

  She dreamed that somebody whispered to her, “Darling, darling, wake up. It is morning, beloved.”

  Suddenly she opened her eyes; and saw her husband set a tray, freshly plaited out of Indian willow, beside her blanket.

  “Here’s your breakfast, pretty lady,” he said, smilingly. “And over there is an exceedingly frigid pool of water. You’re to have the camp to yourself for the next hour or two.”

  “You dear fellow,” she murmured, still confused by sleep, and reached out to touch his hand. He caught hers and kissed it, back and palm, and got up hastily as though scared.

  “Selden and I will stand sentry,” he muttered. “There is no hurry, you know.”

  She heard him and his comrade walking away over dried leaves; their steps receded; a dry stick cracked distantly; then silence stealthily invaded the place like a cautious living thing, creeping unseen through the golden twilight of the woods.

  Seated in her blanket, she drank the coffee; ate a little; then lay down again in the early sun, feeling the warmth of the heap of whitening coals at her feet, also.

  For an hour she dozed awake, drowsily opening her eyes now and then to look across the glade at the pool over which a single dragon-fly glittered on guard.

  Finally she rose resolutely, grasped a bit of soap, and went down to the edge of the pool.

  Tressa was in flannel shirt and knickers when her husband and Selden hailed the camp and presently appeared walking slowly toward the dead fire.

  Their grave faces checked her smile of greeting; her husband came up and laid one hand on her arm, looking at her out of thoughtful, preoccupied eyes.

  “What is the Tchordagh?” he said in a low voice.

  The girl’s quiet face went white.

  “The — the Tchordagh!” she stammered.

  “Yes, dear. What is it?”

  “I don’t — don’t know where you heard that term,” she whispered. “The Tchordagh is the — the power of Erlik. It is a term.... In it is comprehended all the evil, all the cunning, all the perverted spiritual intelligence of Evil, — its sinister might, — its menace. It is an Alouäd-Yezidee term, and it is written in brass in Eighur characters on the Eight Towers, and on the Rampart of Gog and Magog; — nowhere else in the world!”

  “It is written on a pine tree a few paces from this camp,” said Cleves absently.

  Selden said: “It has not been there more than an hour or two, Mrs. Cleves. A square of bark was cut out and on the white surface of the wood this word is written in English.”

  “Can you tell us what it signifies?” asked Cleves, quietly.

  Tressa’s studied effort at self-control was apparent to both men.

  She said: “When that word is written, then it is a death struggle between all the powers of Darkness and those who have read the written letters of that word.... For it is written in The Iron Book that no one but the Assassin of Khorassan — excepting the Eight Sheiks — shall read that written word and live to boast of having read it.”

  “Let us sit here and talk it over,” said Selden soberly.

  And when Tressa was seated on a fallen log, and Cleves settled down cross-legged at her feet, Selden spoke again, very soberly:

  “On the edges of these woods, to the northwest, lies a sea of briers, close growing, interwoven and matted, strong and murderous as barbed wire.

  “Miles out in this almost impenetrable region lies a patch of trees called Fool’s Acre.

  “At Wells I heard that the only man who had ever managed to reach Fool’s Acre was a trapper, and that he was still living.

  “I found him at Rainbow Lake — a very old man, who had a fairly clear recollection of Fool’s Acre and his exhausting journey there.

  “And he told me that man had been there before he had. For there was a roofless stone house there, and the remains of a walled garden. And a skull deep in the wild grasses.”

  Selden paused and looked down at the recently healed scars on his wrists and hands.

  “It was a rotten trip,” he said bluntly. “It took me three days to cut a tunnel through that accursed tangle of matted brier and grey birch.... Fool’s Acre is a grove of giant trees — first growth pine, oak, and ma
ple. Great outcrops of limestone ledges bound it on the east. A brook runs through the woods.

  “There is a house there, no longer roofless, and built of slabs of fossil-pitted limestone. The glass in the windows is so old that it is iridescent.

  “A seven-foot wall encloses the house, built also of slabs blasted out of the rock outcrop, and all pitted with fossil shells.

  “Inside is a garden — not the remains of one — a beautiful garden full of unfamiliar flowers. And in this garden I saw the Yezidee on his knees making living things out of lumps of dead earth!”

  “The Tchordagh!” whispered the girl.

  “What was the Yezidee doing?” demanded Cleves nervously.

  Involuntarily all three drew nearer each other there in the sunshine.

  “It was difficult for me to see,” said Selden in his quiet, serious voice. “It was nearly twilight: I lay flat on top of the wall under the curving branches of a huge syringa bush in full bloom. The Yezidees — —”

  “Were there two!” exclaimed Cleves.

  “Two. They were squatting on the old stone path bordering one of the flower-beds.” He turned to Tressa: “They both wore white cloths twisted around their heads, and long soft garments of white. Under these their bare, brown legs showed, but they wore things on their naked feet which were shaped like what we call Turkish slippers — only different.”

  “Black and green,” nodded Tressa with the vague horror growing in her face.

  “Yes. The soles of their shoes were bright green.”

  “Green is the colour sacred to Islam,” said Tressa. “The priests of Satan defile it by staining with green the soles of their footwear.”

  After an interval: “Go on,” said Cleves nervously.

  Selden drew closer, and they bent their heads to listen:

  “I don’t, even now, know what the Yezidees were actually doing. In the twilight it was hard to see clearly. But I’ll tell you what it looked like to me. One of these squatting creatures would scoop out a handful of soil from the flower-bed, and mould it for a few moments between his lean, sinewy fingers, and then he’d open his hands and — and something alive — something small like a rat or a toad, or God knows what, would escape from between his palms and run out into the grass — —”