CHAPTER VII

THE END OF THE NIGHT

I WAS a hundred yards down the main road, running still, blindly, when the thought of Pamela pulled me up short. I found myself uttering panting sobs. Instinctively I gripped the railings of a garden gate at which I stood with all the force of my muscles, and, bowed over it, struggled to collect my panic-scattered wits and regain control of myself. In three or four minutes I turned and began to walk back, with my head lowered as though I pushed against a wind; and then I forced myself into a shambling trot.

Presently I began to marvel at myself, that I had endured the fierceness of the latter part of the ritual, its awe-inspiring savagery, and the tumult, only to be put to flight by such a trivial thing as the smell of the goat. My nerves must have been strained to breaking-point. I grew furious with myself, and came down the Walden Road as hard as I could run.

I found my front door wide open, as I had left it in my blind haste, and went quickly into the house. As I ran up the stairs I began to chill again with that unreasonable terror. But I was still under my own control, and going into the top front room, I looked out into the moon lit road. Its peacefulness reassured me. A broad, parapetted gutter runs along the front of my house; and at the end of it the partition wall between 19 and 20 rises some four feet high. It hid from me the window of Pamela's bedroom; and I slipped out of my window and went along the gutter to it. The window of her bedroom was open.

"Pamela! Pamela!" I called loudly in a shaky voice.

There was a stirring; and in a moment she put her head out of the window and stared at me with blinking, astonished eyes.

"Are you all right? You're not frightened?" I cried anxiously.

"Oh, no," she said a little drowsily, then seemed to awake and said clearly, "What is it? What's the matter? Oh! You've been watching the rites in the garden! What a shame it is I'm shut up here!"

"Good heavens! You never want to see them!" I cried.

"Oh, but I do! They're exciting—thrilling. But I know that fright. It is a fright. No wonder you're so white. How long did you stand it? I've never got further than when the lamb bleats. And I've only got as far as that once. Did you get further than that?"

"Yes; I got further than that," I said; and I was indeed in an amazement that she, too, should have watched the rites.

"Did you? And what happens then?" she said eagerly.

"Lots of things," I said. "But what did you do when the fright struck you?"

"The first time I ran out of the house in my dressing-gown; and I got nearly to the end of the road before I knew what I was doing. And oh, it was hard to go back into the house! But after that, when the fright came, I bolted to my bedroom and locked the door and pulled the bed-clothes right up over my head. I did feel horrid."

"I shall know what to do another time," I said. "But how on earth could you being yourself to chance that fright a second time?" said I marveling at her courage.

"Oh, I might have learned wonderful things. But what are they doing now? They can't have finished," she said.

"I think they'd reached the climax when I ran."

"I should like to see," she said slowly. "Suppose I were to dress; I wonder if I could climb over that wall and come to your back window and look out."

"No, you don't," I said quickly. "Go to sleep again. Good-night." And I went hastily back, climbed into my window, and shut it loudly.

Pamela's fearlessness had stiffened me; I went into the room at the back; and looked down again on to the garden of No. 19.

The shadow of the sycamores lay across the lawn, but the cloud of smoke had thinned to a light mist, and I could see that it was empty. The odor of the goat still mingled, fainter, with the fragrance of the incense. It terrified me no longer; and it was more inexplicable than ever that it should have smitten me with so great a fear. I sat down in the chair and waited with eyes straining into the shadows. But I doubted that I should see anything more in the empty garden.

But was it empty? Either it was my strained fancy, or I heard stirrings and mutterings among the shrubs. I strained my ears to catch them more clearly. Once I was nearly sure that I heard a smothered laugh.

I must have been straining my ears and eyes for twenty minutes when I awoke to the fact that I was chilled to the marrow, that my clothes were wringing wet with sweat. I rose stiffly, went down to the bathroom, and turned on the taps. Then I went down to my dining-room, mixed myself a strong whisky and soda, and brought it up to the bathroom. I bathed, rubbed myself to a glow, put on flannels and my dressing-gown, drank off the whisky and soda, lighted my pipe, and came glowing back to my watch.

The garden seemed stiller; but I waited patiently. Half an hour later I heard clearly a rustling; then out of the shrubs came a figure and went to the great bowl and drank. I thought it was the rich man. He went back into the shrubs; and the garden looked empty again.

I knew now that the garden was not empty; and I grew surer that I really heard mutterings and stirrings. Suddenly my intentness flagged; and in the reaction from that nerve-shattering fright I turned very drowsy, nodding. Then I must have dozed off, for I fell off my chair. The shock of the fall awakened me for two or three minutes; then I began to nod again. I was thinking I might as well get to bed since I could not keep awake, when I heard, faint and far away, a cock crow.

At once there was a stir in the garden and a rustling. Woodfell came out on to the lawn from beyond the cupola, and plainly threw a handful of incense on the fire, for a cloud of smoke rose in the air. The other initiates came on to the lawn from among the bushes; and then their voices rose in a last adjuration.

Then they came along the garden to the house, talking to one another in voices that, to my ears, had a weary ring; and I saw that two or three of them came swaying and staggering. Assuredly the party wore a limp and bedraggled air.

Woodfell and Marks came last, a little behind the others; and I heard Woodfell say with a weary impatience: "I tell you I'm growing tired of this—always the same thing—no advance. I'm growing surer and surer that it's the lack of the feminine element that keeps us at a standstill."

"It may be—it may be," said Marks. "But I am against women in ritual. Only in the debased rituals has she played any part; the great rituals have done without her."

"I know," said Woodfell. "But all the same in the ritual of the Abyss—"

His voice was lost as he passed into the house; but he had given me the key-word.

I came downstairs to my bedroom, undressed quickly, and got to bed. I was just falling asleep when I heard the door of No. 19 open, and the voices of the initiates, or rather of one of them.

"A shplendid time—a shplendid time—nimpsh for Teddy!" he cried thickly, slurring his words.

"I should like to take the drunken brute and drop him in the river," said Marks in a tone of disgust. "But after all his motor car takes us home comfortably."

"We can put him with the chauffeur," said another.

I took it that they spoke of the rich man.

The next day I had plenty to think of, but owing to a press of work, I had no leisure to think till the evening. Then it seemed best to me to discuss the matter with Pamela; she would be able to throw light on it.

I did not meet her, as I had hoped, on my way from the railway station; and when I reached home she was not in the garden of No. 19. I went therefore to the Lawn Tennis Club; and very badly I played. Lack of sleep and the shock my nerves had suffered from my fright spoiled my eye and my game. I came home and dined quickly. I had not been in the garden ten minutes after it when I heard her come out of No. 19. I called to her softly and asked her to come out for a walk that we might talk at our ease; and ten minutes later she joined me at the top of the Walden road.

We went down to Kew Gardens on an electric tram; and on a bank by the side of the river we discussed the ritual of the Abyss. We agreed in our impression that it had moved in a crescendo; that, beginning from a formal, almost mechanical, repetition of adjurations and prayers, the religious ecstasy of the celebrants of the rites had gathered force slowly till it rose to a fierce and fervid fury. The violence of their feelings had increased with the violence of their adjurations. I had heard it, as she never had, rise to the final frantic outburst after the sacrifice of the lamb.

But she added to my understanding of it, for having seen it four times it had grown clearer to her. She declared that there were seven lords of the Abyss invoked by the seven celebrants in seven different tongues.

It struck me that the seven of them, working themselves up to this frenzy together, acting and reacting on one another, might attain a sevenfold compelling intensity of feeling.

Then she said, "And did the things really come—the things they were summoning?"

"I can't help thinking that they did, though I try not to. I thought I saw, when the smoke of the incense blew thin, many more than seven figures dancing on the lawn. But it might easily have been fancy; for the rites and the incense and the sacrifice had worked me up, too. My nerves were all tense; and my eyes and ears were strained. And if I fancied that the creatures of the Abyss had come to their summoning, you may be sure that the celebrants must have fancied it ten times as strongly. For they were in the thick of things, and striving with all their united wills to make them come."

I paused and added in a fresh doubt. "But of course there was the laugh."

"What laugh?" she said quickly.

"Well, I thought I heard a woman's laugh—distinctly. Yet it wasn't a human woman's laugh. There was something about it—I can't explain it."

"Then they did come! Oh, I do wish I'd been there!"

When the thing was baldly stated like that, with conviction, I revolted:—"I don't believe it!" I cried. "They didn't come! They couldn't come! It was fancy! It was the prayers and the incense and the moon. Why, at the full moon—some full moons one is mad."

She shook her head and said: "They came. You say they didn't come because you don't want to believe it. Why don't you want to believe it, Heine?"

"But don't you see? It changes our conception of the world."

"Not mine," she said.

I labored to convince her that they did not come, that they could not have come; but I labored in vain. My arguments, however, had quite convinced me when of a sudden I remembered the acrid odor of the goat.

When the time of the closing of the gardens came, it seemed early to go home; and we strolled along the moonlit tow-path towards Richmond. Our talk was fitful; and Pamela was now and again lost in a frowning thoughtfulness.

At last she said: "There will be another celebration of the rites at the August full moon. May I come and watch it with you? If there are two of us, we shan't be frightened. I'm sure I could climb over the partition wall between the two houses and get into your window. No one would see me. There's only that blank wall on the other side of the street; and no one could see me from below."

"Goodness, no, child!"

"But why not?" she said.

"There's no saying what we might fancy when that ritual had worked us up to the fancying point. You might get a horrible shock."

"No; I shouldn't. I'm sure of it—not with you there. We might learn something wonderful. And anyhow it will be thrilling."

"I won't chance it, I daren't," I said.

She smiled at me, and said softly, "We shall see."