Part 11

“Well! it was scarcely heaven’s name that was invoked there, if old tales are to be trusted. Traditionally, the Sabbat was a meeting attended by all witches in satisfactory diabolical standing, lightly attired in smears of various magical ointments; and their vehicle of transportation to this outing was, of course, the traditional broomstick. Good Friday,” I continued, seeing they all seemed willing enough to listen, “was the favorite date for these gatherings, which were likewise sometimes held on St. John’s Eve, on Walburga’s Eve, and on Hallowe’en Night. The diversions were numerous: there was feasting, music, and dancing, with the devil performing obligatos on the pipes or a cittern, and not infrequently preaching a burlesque sermon. He usually attended in the form of a monstrous goat; and when—when not amorously inclined, often thrashed the witches with their own broomsticks. The more practical pursuits of the evening included the opening of graves, to despoil dead bodies of finger- and toe-joints, and certain portions of the winding-sheet, with which to prepare a powder that had strange uses.... But the less said of that, the better. Here, also, the devil taught his disciples how to make and christen statues of wax, so that by roasting these effigies the persons whose names they bore would be wasted away by sickness.”

“I see,” says Kennaston, intently regarding his fingernails: “they must have been highly enjoyable social outings, all around.”

“They must have been worse than family reunions,” put in Mrs. Kennaston, and affected to shudder.

“Indeed, there are certain points of resemblance,” I conceded, “in the general atmosphere of jealous hostility and the ruthless digging-up of what were better left buried.”

Then Kennaston asked carelessly, “But how could such absurd superstitions ever get any hold on people, do you suppose?”

“That would require rather a lengthy explanation—Why, no,” I protested, in answer to his shrug; “the Sabbat is not inexplicable. Hahn-Kraftner’s book, or Herbert Perlin’s either, will give you a very fair notion of what the Sabbat really was—something not in the least grotesque, but infinitely more awe-inspiring than is hinted by any traditions in popular use. And Le Bret, whom bookdealers rightly list as ‘curious’—”

“Yes. I have read those books, it happens. My uncle had them, you know. But”—Kennaston was plainly not quite at ease—“but, after all, is it not more wholesome to dismiss such theories as fantastic nonsense, even if they are perfectly true?”

“Why, not of necessity,” said I. “As touches what we call the ‘occult,’ delusion after delusion has been dissipated, of course, and much jubilant pother made over the advance in knowledge. But the last of his delusions, which man has yet to relinquish, is that he invented them. This too must be surrendered with time; and already we are beginning to learn that many of these wild errors are the illegitimate children of grave truths. Science now looks with new respect on folk-lore—”

“Mr. Kennaston,” says Moira, laughing, “I warn you, if you start Dick on his hobbies, he will talk us all to death. So, come into the house, and I will mix you two men a drink.”

And we obeyed her, and—somehow—got to talking of the recent thunderstorms, and getting in our hay, and kindred topics.

* * * * *

Yes, it was much the usual sort of late-afternoon call customarily exchanged by country neighbors. I remember Moira’s yawning as she closed the cellarette, and her wondering how Mrs. Kennaston could keep on rouging and powdering at her age, and why Kennaston never had anything in particular to say for himself?

“Do you suppose it is because he has a swelled head over his little old book, or is he just naturally stupid?” she wanted to know.

_Book Sixth_

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“Alas! the sprite that haunts us Deceives our rash desire; It whispers of the glorious gods, And leaves us in the mire: We cannot learn the cipher Inscribed upon our cell; Stars taunt us with a mystery Which we lack lore to spell.”

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I

Sundry Disclosures of the Press

SUCH as has been described was now Felix Kennaston’s manner of living, which, as touches utilitarian ends, it might be wiser forthwith to dismiss as bred by the sickly fancies of an idle man bemused with unprofitable reading. By day his half of the sigil lay hidden in the library, under a pile of unused bookplates. But nightly this bit of metal was taken with him to bed, in order that, when held so as to reflect the candlelight—for this was always necessary—it might induce the desired dream of Ettarre; and that, so, Horvendile would be freed of Felix Kennaston for eight hours uninterruptedly.

In our social ordering Felix Kennaston stayed worthy of consideration in Lichfield, both as a celebrity of sorts and as the owner of four bank-accounts; and colloquially, as likewise has been recorded, he was by ordinary dismissed from our patronizing discussion as having long been “queer,” and in all probability “a dope-fiend.” In Lichfield, as elsewhere, a man’s difference from his fellows cannot comfortably be conceded except by assuming the difference to be to his discredit.

Meanwhile, the Felix Kennaston who owned two motors and had money in four banks, went with his wife about their round of decorous social duties; and the same Felix Kennaston, with leisured joy in the task, had completed _The Tinctured Veil_—which, as you now know, was woven from the dreamstuff Horvendile had fetched out of that fair country—very far from Lichfield—which is bounded by Avalon and Phæacia and Sea-coast Bohemia, and the contiguous forests of Arden and Broceliande, and on the west of course by the Hesperides.

Then, just before _The Tinctured Veil_ was published, an accident happened.

Fate, as always frugal of display, used simple tools. Kennaston, midway in dressing, found he had no more mouthwash. He went into his wife’s bathroom, in search of a fresh bottle. Kathleen was in Lichfield for the afternoon, at a card party; and thus it was brought about that Kennaston found, lying in the corner of her bathroom press, and hidden by a bottle of Harrowby’s No. 7 Dental Delight, the missing half of the sigil of Scoteia—the half which Ettarre had retained. There was no doubt about it. He held it in his hand.

“Now, that,” said Felix Kennaston, aloud, “is rather curious.”

He went into the library, and lifted the little pile of unused bookplates; and presently the two pieces of metal lay united upon his wife’s dressing-table, between the manicure-set and the pincushion, forming a circle not quite three inches in diameter, just such as he had seen once upon the brow of Mother Isis, and again in the Didascalion when Ptolemy of the Fat Paunch was master of Egypt.

“So, Kathleen somehow found the other half. She has had it from the first.... But naturally I never spoke of Felix Kennaston; it was forbidden, and besides, the sigil’s crowning grace was that it enabled me to forget his existence. And the girl’s name in the printed book is Alison. And Horvendile is such an unimportant character that Kathleen, reading the tale hastily—I thought she simply skimmed it!—did not remember that name either; and so, did not associate the dream names in any way with my book, nor with me.... She too, then, does not know—as yet.... And, for all that, Kathleen, the real Kathleen, is Ettarre—‘whatever flesh she may wear as a garment!’.... Or, rather, Ettarre is to Kathleen as Horvendile—but am I truly that high-hearted ageless being? Eh, I do not know, for we touch mystery everywhere. I only know it is the cream of the jest that day by day, while that lean, busy sharp-eyed stranger, whose hands and lips my own hands and lips meet daily, because this contact has become a part of the day’s routine—”

But he was standing before his wife’s dressing-table, and the mirror showed him a squat insignificant burgess in shirtsleeves, with grizzled untidied hair, and mild accommodating pale eyes, and an inadequate nose, with huge nostrils, and a spacious naked-looking upper-lip. That was Felix Kennaston, so far as all other people were concerned save Kathleen. He smiled; and in the act he noted that the visual result was to make Felix Kennaston appear particularly inane and sheepish. But he knew now that did not matter. Nor did it greatly matter—his thoughts ran—that it was never permitted any man, not even in his dreams, ever to touch the hands and lips of Ettarre.

So he left there the two pieces of metal, united at last upon his wife’s dressing-table, between the manicure-set and the pincushion, where on her return she might find them, and, finding, understand all that which he lacked words to tell.

II

Considerations Toward Sunset

THEN Kennaston went for a meditative walk in the abating glare of that day’s portentous sunset, wherein the tree-trunks westward showed like the black bars of a grate. It was in just such a twilight that Horvendile had left Storisende....

And presently he came to a field which had been mowed that week. The piled hay stood in rounded heaps, suggestive to Kennaston of shaggy giant heads bursting through the soil, as in the old myth of Cadmus and the dragon’s teeth; beyond were glittering cornfields, whose tremulous green was shot with brown and sickly yellow now, and which displayed a host of tassels like ruined plumes. Autumn was at hand. And as Kennaston approached, a lark—as though shot vehemently from the ground—rose singing. Straight into the air it rose, and was lost in the sun’s abating brilliance; but still you could hear its singing; and then, as suddenly, the bird dropped earthward.

Kennaston snapped his fingers. “Aha, my old acquaintance!” he said, “but now I envy you no longer!” Then he walked onward, thinking....

* * * * *

“What did I think of?” he said, long afterward—“oh, of nothing with any real clarity. You see—I touched mystery everywhere....

“But I thought of Kathleen’s first kiss, and of the first time I came to her alone after we were married, and of our baby that was born dead.... I was happier than I had ever been in any dream.... I saw that the ties of our ordinary life here in the flesh have their own mystic strength and sanctity. I comprehended why in our highest sacrament we pre-figure with holy awe, not things of the mind and spirit, but flesh and blood.... A man and his wife, barring stark severance, grow with time to be one person, you see; and it is not so much the sort of person as the indivisibility that matters with them....

“And I thought of how in evoking that poor shadow of Ettarre which figures in my book, I had consciously written of my dear wife as I remembered her when we were young together. My vocabulary and my ink went to the making of the book’s Ettarre: but with them went Kathleen’s youth and purity and tenderness and serenity and loving-kindness toward all created things save the women I had flirted with—so that she contributed more than I....

“And I saw that the good-smelling earth about my pudgy pasty body, and my familiar home—as I turned back my pudgy pasty face toward Alcluid, bathed now in the sun’s gold—were lovely kindly places. Outside were kings and wars and thunderous zealots, and groaning, rattling thunderous printing-presses, too, that were turning off a book called _The Tinctured Veil_, whereinto had been distilled and bottled up the very best that was in Felix Kennaston; but here was just ‘a citadel of peace in the heart of the trouble.’ And—well, I was satisfied. People do not think much when they are satisfied.”

But he did not walk long; for it was growing chilly, as steadily dusk deepened, in this twilight so like that in which Horvendile had left Storisende forever.

III

One Way of Elusion

KATHLEEN was seated at the dressing-table, arranging her hair, when Kennaston came again into her rooms. He went forward, and without speaking, laid one hand upon each shoulder.

Now for an instant their eyes met in the mirror; and the woman’s face he saw there, or seemed to see there, yearned toward him, and was unutterably loving, and compassionate, and yet was resolute in its denial. For it denied him, no matter with what wistful tenderness, or with what wonder at his folly. Just for a moment he seemed to see that; and then he doubted, for Kathleen’s lips lifted complaisantly to his, and Kathleen’s matter-of-fact face was just as he was used to seeing it.

And thus, with no word uttered, Felix Kennaston understood that his wife must disclaim any knowledge of the sigil of Scoteia, should he be bold enough to speak of it. He knew he would never dare to speak of it in that constricted hide-bound kindly life which he and Kathleen shared in the flesh. To speak of it would mean to become forthwith what people glibly called insane. So Horvendile and Ettarre were parted for all time. And Kathleen willed this, no matter with what wistful tenderness, and because of motives which he would never know—for how could one tell what was going on inside that small round head his hand was caressing? Still, he could guess at her reasons; and he comprehended now that Ettarre had spoken a very terrible truth—“_All men I must evade at the last, and innumerable are the ways of my elusion._”

“Well, dear,” he said aloud; “and was it a pleasant party?”

“Oh, so-so,” Kathleen conceded; “but it was rather a mixed crowd. Hadn’t you better hurry and change your clothes, Felix? It is almost dinner-time, and, you know, we have seats for the theater to-night.”

Quite as if he, too, were thinking of trifles, Felix Kennaston took up the two bits of metal. “I have often wondered what this design meant,” he said, idly—not looking at her, and hopeful that this much allusion at least was permitted to what they dared not speak of openly.

“Perhaps Mr. Harrowby could tell you.” Kathleen also spoke as with indifference—not looking at him, but into the mirror, and giving deft final touches to her hair.

“Eh—?” Kennaston smiled. “Oh, yes, Dick Harrowby, I grant you, has dabbled a bit in occult matters, but hardly deep enough, I fancy, to explain—this.”

“At all events,” Kathleen considered, “it is a quarter to seven already, and we have seats for the theater to-night.”

He cleared his throat. “Shall I keep this, or you?”

“Why, for heaven’s sake—! The thing is of no value now, Felix. Give it to me.” She dropped the two pieces of metal into the wastebasket by the dressing-table, and rose impatiently. “Of course if you don’t _mean_ to change for dinner—”

He shrugged and gave it up.

* * * * *

So they dined alone together, sharing a taciturn meal, and duly witnessed the drolleries of _The Gutta-Percha Girl_. Kennaston’s sleep afterward was sound and dreamless.

IV

Past Storisende Fares the Road of Use and Wont

HE read _The Tinctured Veil_ in print, with curious wistful wonder. “How did I come to write it?” was his thought.

Thereafter Felix Kennaston, as the world knows, wrote no more books, save to collect his later verses into a volume. “I am afraid to write against the author of _The Tinctured Veil_,” he was wont flippantly to declare. And a few of us suspected even then that he spoke the absolute truth.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Kennaston continued their round of decorous social duties: their dinner-parties were chronicled in the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_; and Kennaston delivered, by request, two scholarly addresses before the Lichfield Woman’s Club, was duly brought forward to shake hands with all celebrities who visited the city, and served acceptably in the vestry of his church.

Was Felix Kennaston content?—that is a question he alone could have answered.

“But why shouldn’t I have been?” he said, a little later, in reply to the pointblank query. “I had a handsome home, two motors, money in four banks, and a good-looking wife who loved and coddled me. The third prince gets no more at the end of any fairy tale. Still, the old woman spoke the truth, of course—one pays as one goes out.... Oh, yes, one pays!—that is an inevitable rule; but what you have to pay is not exorbitant, all things considered.... So, be off with your crude pessimisms, Harrowby!”

* * * * *

And indeed, when one comes to think, he was in no worse case than any other husband of his standing. “Who wins his love must lose her,” as no less tunefully than wisely sings one of our poets—a married bard, you may be sure—and all experience tends to prove his warbling perfectly veracious. Romancers, from Time’s nonage, have invented and have manipulated a host of staple severances for their puppet lovers—sedulously juggling, ever since Menander’s heyday, with compromising letters and unscrupulous rivals and shipwrecks and wills and testy parents and what not—and have contrived to show love overriding these barriers plausibly enough. But he must truly be a boldfaced rhapsodist who dared at outset marry his puppets, to each other, and tell you how their love remained unchanged.

I am thus digressing, in obsolete Thackerayan fashion, to twaddle about love-matches alone. People marry through a variety of other reasons, and with varying results: but to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy. There needs no side-glancing here at such crass bankruptcies of affection as end in homicide or divorce proceedings, or even just in daily squabbling: these dramas are of the body. They may be taken as the sardonic comedies, or at their most outrageous as the blustering cheap melodramas, of existence; and so lie beyond the tragic field. For your true right tragedy is enacted on the stage of a man’s soul, with the man’s reason as lone auditor.

And being happily married—but how shall I word it? Let us step into the very darkest corner. Now, my dear Mr. Grundy, your wife is a credit to her sex, an ornament to her circle, and the mainstay of your home; and you, sir, are proverbially the most complacent and uxorious of spouses. But you are not, after all, married to the girl you met at the chancel-rail, so long and long ago, with unforgotten tremblings of the knees. Your wife, that estimable matron, is quite another person. And you live in the same house, and you very often see her with hair uncombed, or even with a disheveled temper; you are familiar with her hours of bathing, her visits to the dentist, and a host of other physical phenomena we need not go into; she does not appreciate your jokes; she peeps into your personal correspondence; she keeps the top bureau-drawer in a jumble of veils and gloves and powder-rags and hair-pins and heaven knows what; her gowns continually require to be buttoned up the back in an insane incalculable fashion; she irrationally orders herring for breakfast, though you never touch it:—and in fine, your catalogue of disillusionments is endless.

Hand upon heart, my dear Mr. Grundy, is this the person to whom you despatched those letters you wrote before you were married? Your wife has those epistles safely put away somewhere, you may depend on it: and for what earthly consideration would you read them aloud to her? Some day, when one or the other of you is dead, those letters will ring true again and rouse a noble sorrow; and the survivor will be all the better for reading them. But now they only prove you were once free of uplands which you do not visit nowadays: and that common knowledge is a secret every wife must share half-guiltily with her husband—even in your happiest matrimonial ventures—as certainly as it is the one topic they may not ever discuss with profit.

For you are married, you and she: and you live, contentedly enough, in a four-square world, where there is the rent and your social obligations and the children’s underclothing to be considered, long and long before indulgence in rattle-pate mountain-climbing. And people glibly think of you as Mr. and Mrs. Grundy now, almost as a unit: but do you really know very much about that woman whose gentle breathing—for we will not crudely call it snoring—you can always hear at will o’ nights? Suppose, by a wild flight of fancy, that she is no more honest with you than you are with her?

* * * * *

So to Kennaston his wife remained a not unfriendly mystery. They had been as demi-gods for a little while; and the dream had faded, to leave it matters not what memories; and they were only Mr. and Mrs. Felix Kennaston. Concerning all of us, my fellow failures in the great and hopeless adventure of matrimony, this apologue is narrated.

Yet, as I look into my own wife’s face—no more the loveliest, but still the dearest of all earthly faces, I protest—and as I wonder how much she really knows about me or the universe at large, and have not the least notion—why, I elect to believe that, in the ultimate, Kennaston was not dissatisfied. For all of us the dream-haze merges into the glare of common day; the _dea certé_, whom that fled roseate light transfigured, stands confessed a simple loving woman, a creature of like flesh and limitations as our own: but who are we to mate with goddesses? It is enough that much in us which is not merely human has for once found exercise—has had its high-pitched outing, however fleet—and that, because of many abiding memories, we know, assuredly, the way of flesh is not a futile scurrying through dining-rooms and offices and shops and parlors, and thronged streets and restaurants, “and so to bed.”

V

Which Mr. Flaherty Does Not Quite Explain

WITH the preceding preachment I wish I might end the story. For what follows—which is my own little part in the story of Felix Kennaston—is that discomfortable sort of anticlimax wherein the key to a mystery, by unlocking unsuspected doors, discloses only another equally perplexing riddle.

Kathleen Kennaston died in her sleep some eleven months after her husband discovered the missing half of the sigil....

“I have a sort of headache,” she said, toward nine o’clock in the evening. “I believe I will go to bed, Felix.” So she kissed him goodnight, in just that emotionless preoccupied fashion that years of living together had made familiar; and so she left him in the music-room, to smoke and read magazines. He never saw her living any more.

Kathleen stopped in the hall, to wind the clock. “Don’t forget to lock the front door when you come up, Felix.” She was out of sight, but he could hear her, as well as the turning of the clock key. “I forgot to tell you I saw Adèle Van Orden to-day, at Greenberg’s. They are going down to the Beach Thursday. She told me they haven’t had a cook for three days now, and she and old Mrs. Haggage have had to do all the work. She looked it, too—I never saw any one let themselves go all to pieces the way she has—”

“How—? Oh, yes,” he mumbled, intent upon his reading; “it is pretty bad. Don’t many of them keep their looks as you do, dear—”

And that was all. He never heard his wife’s voice any more. Kennaston read contentedly for a couple of hours, and went to bed. It was in the morning the maid found Mrs. Kennaston dead and cold. She had died in her sleep, quite peacefully, after taking two headache powders, while her husband was contentedly pursuing the thread of a magazine story through the advertising columns....