Chapter 7: The Bridal

Over the United States stretched an unseen network of secret intrigue woven tirelessly night and day by the busy enemies of civilisation--Reds, parlour-socialists, enemy-aliens, terrorists, Bolsheviki, pseudo-intellectuals, I. W. W.’s, social faddists, and amateur meddlers of every nuance--all the various varieties of the vicious, witless, and mentally unhinged--brought together through the “cohesive power of plunder” and the degeneration of cranial tissue.

All over the United States the various departmental divisions of the Secret Service were busily following up these threads of intrigue leading everywhere through the obscurity of this vast and secret maze.

To meet the constantly increasing danger of physical violence and to uncover secret plots threatening sabotage and revolution, there were capable agents in every branch of the Secret Service, both Federal and State.

But in the first months of 1919 something more terrifying than physical violence suddenly threatened civilised America, --a wild, grotesque, incredible threat of a war on human minds!

And, little by little, the United States Government became convinced that this ghastly menace was no dream of a disordered imagination, but that it was real: that among the enemies of civilisation there actually existed a few powerful but perverted minds capable of wielding psychic forces as terrific weapons: that by the sinister use of psychic knowledge controlling these mighty forces the very minds of mankind could be stealthily approached, seized, controlled and turned upon civilisation to aid in the world’s destruction.

In terrible alarm the Government turned to England for advice. But Sir William Crookes was dead.

However, in England, Sir Conan Doyle immediately took up the matter, and in America Professor Hyslop was called into consultation.

And then, when the Government was beginning to realise what this awful menace meant, and that there were actually in the United States possibly half a dozen people who already had begun to carry on a diabolical warfare by means of psychic power, for the purpose of enslaving and controlling the very minds of men, --then, in the terrible moment of discovery, a young girl landed in America after fourteen years’ absence in Asia.

And this was the amazing girl that Victor Cleves had just married, at Recklow’s suggestion, and in the line of professional duty, --and moral duty, perhaps.

It had been a brief, matter-of-fact ceremony. John Recklow, of the Secret Service, was there; also Benton and Selden of the same service.

The bride’s lips were unresponsive; cold as the touch of the groom’s unsteady hand.

She looked down at her new ring in a blank sort of way, gave her hand listlessly to Recklow and to the others in turn, whispered a timidly comprehensive “Thank you,” and walked away beside Cleves as though dazed.

There was a taxicab waiting. Tressa entered. Recklow came out and spoke to Cleves in a low voice.

“Don’t worry,” replied Cleves dryly. “That’s why I married her.”

“Where are you going now?” inquired Recklow.

“Back to my apartment.”

“Why don’t you take her away for a month?”

Cleves flushed with annoyance: “This is no occasion for a wedding trip. You understand that, Recklow.”

“I understand. But we ought to give her a breathing space. She’s had nothing but trouble. She’s worn out.”

Cleves hesitated: “I can guard her better in the apartment. Isn’t it safer to go back there, where your people are always watching the street and house day and night?”

“In a way it might be safer, perhaps. But that girl is nearly exhausted. And her value to us is unlimited. She may be the vital factor in this fight with anarchy. Her weapon is her mind. And it’s got to have a chance to rest.”

Cleves, with one hand on the cab door, looked around impatiently.

“Do you, also, conclude that the psychic factor is actually part of this damned problem of Bolshevism?”

Recklow’s cool eyes measured him: “Do you?”

“My God, Recklow, I don’t know--after what my own eyes have seen.”

“I don’t know either,” said the other calmly, “but I am taking no chances. I don’t attempt to explain certain things that have occurred. But if it be true that a misuse of psychic ability by foreigners--Asiatics--among the anarchists is responsible for some of the devilish things being done in the United States, then your wife’s unparalleled knowledge of the occult East is absolutely vital to us. And so I say, better take her away somewhere and give her mind a chance to recover from the incessant strain of these tragic years.”

The two men stood silent for a moment, then Recklow went to the window of the taxicab.

“I have been suggesting a trip into the country, Mrs. Cleves,” he said pleasantly, “--into the real country, somewhere, --a month’s quiet in the woods, perhaps. Wouldn’t it appeal to you?”

Cleves turned to catch her low-voiced answer.

“I should like it very much,” she said in that odd, hushed way of speaking, which seemed to have altered her own voice and manner since the ceremony a little while before.

Driving back to his apartment beside her, he strove to realise that this girl was his wife.

One of her gloves lay across her lap, and on it rested a slender hand. And on one finger was his ring.

But Victor Cleves could not bring himself to believe that this brand-new ring really signified anything to him, --that it had altered his own life in any way. But always his incredulous eyes returned to that slim finger resting there, unstirring, banded with a narrow circlet of virgin gold.

In the apartment they did not seem to know exactly what to do or say--what attitude to assume--what effort to make.

Tressa went into her own room, removed her hat and furs, and came slowly back into the living-room, where Cleves still stood gazing absently out of the window.

A fine rain was falling.

They seated themselves. There seemed nothing better to do.

He said, politely: “In regard to going away for a rest, you wouldn’t care for the North Woods, I fancy, unless you like winter sports. Do you?”

“I like sunlight and green leaves,” she said in that odd, still voice.

“Then, if it would please you to go South for a few weeks’ rest--”

“Would it inconvenience you?”

Her manner touched him.

“My dear Miss Norne,” he began, and checked himself, flushing painfully. The girl blushed, too; then, when he began to laugh, her lovely, bashful smile glimmered for the first time.

“I really can’t bring myself to realise that you and I are married,” he explained, still embarrassed, though smiling.

Her smile became an endeavour. “I can’t believe it either, Mr. Cleves,” she said. “I feel rather stunned.”

“Hadn’t you better call me Victor--under the circumstances?” he suggested, striving to speak lightly.

“Yes ... It will not be very easy to say it--not for some time, I think.”

“Tressa?”

“Yes.”

“Yes--what?”

“Yes--Victor.”

“That’s the idea,” he insisted with forced gaiety.

“The thing to do is to face this rather funny situation and take it amiably and with good humour. You’ll have your freedom some day, you know.”

“Yes--I--know.”

“And we’re already on very good terms. We find each other interesting, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

“It even seems to me,” he ventured, “it certainly seems to me, at times, as though we are approaching a common basis of--of mutual--er--esteem.”

“Yes. I--I do esteem you, Mr. Cleves.”

“In point of fact,” he concluded, surprised, “we are friends--in a way. Wouldn’t you call it--friendship?”

“I think so, I think I’d call it that,” she admitted.

“I think so, too. And that is lucky for us. That makes this crazy situation more comfortable--less--well, perhaps less ponderous.”

The girl assented with a vague smile, but her eyes remained lowered.

“You see,” he went on, “when two people are as oddly situated as we are, they’re likely to be afraid of being in each other’s way. But they ought to get on without being unhappy as long as they are quite confident of each other’s friendly consideration. Don’t you think so, Tressa?”

Her lowered eyes rested steadily on her ring-finger. “Yes,” she said. “And I am not--unhappy, or--afraid.”

She lifted her blue gaze to his; and, somehow, he thought of her barbaric name, Keuke, --and its Yezidee significance, “heavenly--azure.”

“Are we really going away together?” she asked timidly.

“Certainly, if you wish.”

“If you, also, wish it, Mr. Cleves.”

He found himself saying with emphasis that he always wished to do what she desired. And he added, more gently:

“You are tired, Tressa--tired and lonely and unhappy.”

“Tired, but not the--others.”

“Not unhappy?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you lonely?”

“Not with you.”

The answer came so naturally, so calmly, that the slight sensation of pleasure it gave him arrived only as an agreeable afterglow.

“We’ll go South,” he said... “I’m so glad that you don’t feel lonely with me.”

“Will it be warmer where we are going, Mr. Cleves?”

“Yes--you poor child! You need warmth and sunshine, don’t you? Was it warm in Yian, where you lived so many years?”

“It was always June in Yian,” she said under her breath.

She seemed to have fallen into a revery; he watched the sensitive face. Almost imperceptibly it changed; became altered, younger, strangely lovely.

Presently she looked up--and it seemed to him that it was not Tressa Norne at all he saw, but little Keuke--Heavenly Azure--of the Yezidee temple, as she dropped one slim knee over the other and crossed her hands above it.

“It was very beautiful in Yian,” she said, “--Yian of the thousand bridges and scented gardens so full of lilies. Even after they took me to the temple, and I thought the world was ending, God’s skies still remained soft overhead, and His weather fair and golden ... And when, in the month of the Snake, the Eight Sheiks-el-Djebel came to the temple to spread their shrouds on the rose-marble steps, then, after they had departed, chanting the Prayers for the Dead, each to his Tower of Silence, we temple girls were free for a week ... And once I went with Tchagane--a girl--and with Yulun--another girl--and we took our keutch, which is our luggage, and we went to the yaïlak, or summer pavilion on the Lake of the Ghost. Oh, wonderful, --a silvery world of pale-gilt suns and of moons so frail that the cloud-fleece at high-noon has more substance!”

Her voice died out; she sat gazing down at her spread fingers, on one of which gleamed her wedding-ring.

After a little, she went on dreamily:

“On that week, each three months, we were free ... If a young man should please us...”

“Free?” he repeated.

“To love,” she explained coolly.

“Oh.” He nodded, but his face became rather grim.

“There came to me at the yaïlak,” she went on carelessly, “one Khassar Noïane--Noïane means Prince--all in a surcoat of gold tissue with green vines embroidered, and wearing a green cap trimmed with dormouse, and green boots inlaid with stiff gold...

“He was so young ... a boy. I laughed. I said: ‘Is this a Yaçaoul? An Urdu-envoy of Prince Erlik?’--mocking him as young and thoughtless girls mock--not in unfriendly manner--though I would not endure the touch of any man at all.

“And when I laughed at him, this Eighur boy flew into such a rage! Kai! I was amazed.

“‘Sou-sou! Squirrel!’ he cried angrily at me. ‘Learn the Yacaz, little chatterer! Little mocker of men, it is ten blows with a stick you require, not kisses!’

“At that I whistled my two dogs, Bars and Alaga, for I did not think what he said was funny.

“I said to him: ‘You had better go home, Khassar Noïane, for if no man has ever pleased me where I am at liberty to please myself, here on the Lake of the Ghost, then be very certain that no boy can please Keuke-Mongol here or anywhere!’

“And at that--kai! What did he say--that monkey?” She looked at her husband, her splendid eyes ablaze with wrathful laughter, and made a gesture full of angry grace:

“‘Squirrel!’ he cries--’little malignant sorceress of Yian! May everything high about you become a sandstorm, and everything long a serpent, and everything broad a toad, and everything--’

“But I had had enough, Victor,” she added excitedly, “and I made a wild bee bite him on the lip! WHAT do you think of such a courtship?” she cried, laughing. But Cleves’s face was a study in emotions.

And then, suddenly, the laughing mask seemed to slip from the bewitching features of Keuke Mongol; and there was Tressa Norne--Tressa Cleves--disconcerted, paling a little as the memory of her impulsive confidence in this man beside her began to dawn on her more clearly.

“I--I’m sorry--” she faltered... “You’ll think me silly--think evil of me, perhaps--”

She looked into his troubled eyes, then suddenly she took her face into both hands and covered it, sitting very still.

“We’ll go South together,” he said in an uncertain voice... “I hope you will try to think of me as a friend ... I’m just troubled because I am so anxious to understand you. That is all ... I’m--I’m troubled, too, because I am anxious that you should think well of me. Will you try, always?”

She nodded.

“I want to be your friend, always,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. Cleves.”

It was a strange spot he chose for Tressa--strange but lovely in its own unreal and rather spectral fashion--where a pearl-tinted mist veiled the St. Johns, and made exquisite ghosts of the palmettos, and softened the sun to a silver-gilt wafer pasted on a nacre sky.