Then, after lying still for a bit, he rose to a crouching
position as though to spring again, snarling horribly and making short
half-circles with lowered head. And Smoke all the while meowed
piteously by the window as though trying to draw the attack upon
himself. Then it was that the rush of the whole dreadful business seemed to turn
aside from the dog and direct itself upon his own person. The collie
had made another spring and fallen back with a crash into the corner,
where he made noise enough in his savage rage to waken the dead before
he fell to whining and then finally lay still. And directly afterwards
the doctor’s own distress became intolerably acute. He had made a half
movement forward to come to the rescue when a veil that was denser than
mere fog seemed to drop down over the scene, draping room, walls,
animals and fire in a mist of darkness and folding also about his own
mind. Other forms moved silently across the field of vision, forms that
he recognised from previous experiments, and welcomed not. Unholy
thoughts began to crowd into his brain, sinister suggestions of evil
presented themselves seductively. Ice seemed to settle about his heart,
and his mind trembled. He began to lose memory—memory of his identity,
of where he was, of what he ought to do. The very foundations of his
strength were shaken. His will seemed paralysed. And it was then that the room filled with this horde of cats, all dark
as the night, all silent, all with lamping eyes of green fire. The
dimensions of the place altered and shifted. He was in a much larger
space. The whining of the dog sounded far away, and all about him the
cats flew busily to and fro, silently playing their tearing, rushing
game of evil, weaving the pattern of their dark purpose upon the floor. He strove hard to collect himself and remember the words of power he
had made use of before in similar dread positions where his dangerous
practice had sometimes led; but he could recall nothing consecutively;
a mist lay over his mind and memory; he felt dazed and his forces
scattered. The deeps within were too troubled for healing power to come
out of them. It was glamour, of course, he realised afterwards, the strong glamour
thrown upon his imagination by some powerful personality behind the
veil; but at the time he was not sufficiently aware of this and, as
with all true glamour, was unable to grasp where the true ended and the
false began. He was caught momentarily in the same vortex that had
sought to lure the cat to destruction through its delight, and
threatened utterly to overwhelm the dog through its terror. There came a sound in the chimney behind him like wind booming and
tearing its way down. The windows rattled. The candle flickered and
went out. The glacial atmosphere closed round him with the cold of
death, and a great rushing sound swept by overhead as though the
ceiling had lifted to a great height. He heard the door shut. Far away
it sounded. He felt lost, shelterless in the depths of his soul. Yet
still he held out and resisted while the climax of the fight came
nearer and nearer.... He had stepped into the stream of forces awakened
by Pender and he knew that he must withstand them to the end or come to
a conclusion that it was not good for a man to come to. Something from
the region of utter cold was upon him. And then quite suddenly, through the confused mists about him, there
slowly rose up the Personality that had been all the time directing the
battle. Some force entered his being that shook him as the tempest
shakes a leaf, and close against his eyes—clean level with his face—he
found himself staring into the wreck of a vast dark Countenance, a
countenance that was terrible even in its ruin. For ruined it was, and terrible it was, and the mark of spiritual evil
was branded everywhere upon its broken features. Eyes, face and hair
rose level with his own, and for a space of time he never could
properly measure, or determine, these two, a man and a woman, looked
straight into each other’s visages and down into each other’s hearts. And John Silence, the soul with the good, unselfish motive, held his
own against the dark discarnate woman whose motive was pure evil, and
whose soul was on the side of the Dark Powers. It was the climax that touched the depth of power within him and began
to restore him slowly to his own. He was conscious, of course, of
effort, and yet it seemed no superhuman one, for he had recognised the
character of his opponent’s power, and he called upon the good within
him to meet and overcome it. The inner forces stirred and trembled in
response to his call. They did not at first come readily as was their
habit, for under the spell of glamour they had already been
diabolically lulled into inactivity, but come they eventually did,
rising out of the inner spiritual nature he had learned with so much
time and pain to awaken to life. And power and confidence came with
them. He began to breathe deeply and regularly, and at the same time to
absorb into himself the forces opposed to him, and to _turn them to his
own account_. By ceasing to resist, and allowing the deadly stream to
pour into him unopposed, he used the very power supplied by his
adversary and thus enormously increased his own. For this spiritual alchemy he had learned. He understood that force
ultimately is everywhere one and the same; it is the motive behind that
makes it good or evil; and his motive was entirely unselfish. He
knew—provided he was not first robbed of self-control—how vicariously
to absorb these evil radiations into himself and change them magically
into his own good purposes. And, since his motive was pure and his soul
fearless, they could not work him harm. Thus he stood in the main stream of evil unwittingly attracted by
Pender, deflecting its course upon himself; and after passing through
the purifying filter of his own unselfishness these energies could only
add to his store of experience, of knowledge, and therefore of power. And, as his self-control returned to him, he gradually accomplished
this purpose, even though trembling while he did so. Yet the struggle was severe, and in spite of the freezing chill of the
air, the perspiration poured down his face. Then, by slow degrees, the
dark and dreadful countenance faded, the glamour passed from his soul,
the normal proportions returned to walls and ceiling, the forms melted
back into the fog, and the whirl of rushing shadow-cats disappeared
whence they came. And with the return of the consciousness of his own identity John
Silence was restored to the full control of his own will-power. In a
deep, modulated voice he began to utter certain rhythmical sounds that
slowly rolled through the air like a rising sea, filling the room with
powerful vibratory activities that whelmed all irregularities of lesser
vibrations in its own swelling tone. He made certain sigils, gestures
and movements at the same time.