He passed within the frowning arch and beat upon the knocker. The clangour rang through the dark interior: the night stood hushed, save for the inquiry of the howlets in the pines, the plunge of the Manor Burn, the drip of crisply falling perished leaves, and, far away upon the coast, the roaring of the sea. Pervaded by the spirit of the scene and hour, misgivings came to Mellish, in whose heart the night seemed all at once inimical, fantastic, peopled with incorporeal presences. He heard their mutter, heard them move with cunning footsteps; of a sudden, near at hand broke forth the dolorous utterance of a soul beseeching and forlorn. The dreary note, prolonged and dying slowly, seemed to roll in waves far out on shoreless seas of space, and Mellish, agitated, beat again upon the ponderous brass.
He heard the halting shuffle of feet within; the door was opened; Wanlock stood with a candle in the entrance. One glance only he gave to Mellish, and slammed the door in his face!
Abruptly from the crowding night round Mellish burst a peal of mad and mocking laughter!
For a moment fear, resentment, and disbelief warred in his brain for his possession: fear, being stranger there, was routed by an effort of the will; disbelief surrendered to his reason; he was left alone on the battlefield with anger. It swept with purple banners through the rally of his senses: drunk with passion, he tore from his breast the gem that had misled him to that hateful door, and flung it in by the open window, then leaped upon his horse and galloped furiously for home.
Wanlock, with the candle in his hand, stood for a moment listening in the passage, glad with venom. He heard the thud of hoofs die off in the distance of the avenue, then, with a shock that left him trembling, the ululation of his old familiar—that dreadful bittern call! It was to-night more sad than he had ever heard it, more imbued with hopeless longing, yet in some way through its desolation went a yapping note of menace and alarm.
He hurried to his chamber with a sense of something older than mankind: he set the candle on the table; turned with eagerness to lift the Book—the comforter, the shield,—and there between the open pages, on the final verses of the seventh Psalm, lay the accursed brooch!
It seemed to him like a thing that had come from the void outside the rim of human life where evils muster with black wings and the torments of men are fashioned. He whimpered as he made to seize it, then, as if it stung him, felt a numbness in the arm. Through his brain for a moment went the feeling of something gush: he staggered on the floor: a mist swept through his eyes. His vision cleared, and he saw the jewel at his feet. He bent to lift it with some curious failure in his members, groped with an impercipient hand, and found his fingers would not close upon it!
“My God!” he mumbled, “what is this come on me?” A mocking chuckle sounded through the room, and the final doubts of Wanlock vanished—another blow was come, and he was in the grip of the Adversary!
With his other hand he caught the gem, and rising slowly, cast a glance of wild expectancy about the room. No assurance came from the discovery that to the eye at least he was alone, yet a subtler sense than vision told him he had company, and he looked above him into the umber rafters, then turning to the window, saw enormous hands claw on the sill. They seemed to drag a weight from the nether world behind them: he watched them fascinated, even to the sinews’ tension, till there raised and rested on the backs of them a face more horrible than he had ever dreamt of—blurred, maculate, amorphous! From the sallow visage peered inquiring eyes profound with cunning, and the soul of Wanlock grewed.
“We wrestle,” he mumbled, “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness”: he seized upon the Book, and held it up before him like a buckler, all his being drenched in the spirit of defiance, and he cried the Holy Name.