My first start of terror was soon over, and as the figure descended the final flight I was ready to greet the householder whose privacy I had invaded. In the semi-darkness I could see him reach in his pocket for a match. There came a flare as he lighted a small kerosene lamp which stood on a rickety console table near the foot of the stairs. In the feeble glow was revealed the stooping figure of a very tall, emaciated old man; disordered as to dress and unshaved as to face, yet for all that with the bearing and expression of a gentleman.
I did not wait for him to speak, but at once began to explain my presence.
"You"ll pardon my coming in like this, but when my knocking didn"t raise anybody I concluded that no one lived here. What I wanted originally was to know the right road to Cape Girardeau--the shortest road, that is. I wanted to get there before dark, but now, of course--"
As I paused, the man spoke; in exactly the cultivated tone I had expected, and with a mellow accent as unmistakably Southern as the house he inhabited.
"Rather, you must pardon me for not answering your knock more promptly. I live in a very retired way, and am not usually expecting visitors. At first I thought you were a mere curiosity-seeker. Then when you knocked again I started to answer, but I am not well and have to move very slowly. Spinal neuritis--very troublesome case.
"But as for your getting to town before dark--it"s plain you can"t do that. The road you are on--for I suppose you came from the gate--isn"t the best or shortest way. What you must do is to take your first left after you leave the gate--that is, the first real road to your left. There are three or four cart paths you can ignore, but you can"t mistake the real road because of the extra large willow tree on the right just opposite it. Then when you"ve turned, keep on past two roads and turn to the right along the third. After that--"
"Please wait a moment! How can I follow all these clues in pitch darkness, without ever having been near here before, and with only an indifferent pair of headlights to tell me what is and what isn"t a road? Besides, I think it"s going to storm pretty soon, and my car is an open one. It looks as if I were in a bad fix if I want to get to Cape Girardeau tonight. The fact is, I don"t think I"d better try to make it. I don"t like to impose burdens, or anything like that--but in view of the circ.u.mstances, do you suppose you could put me up for the night? I won"t be any trouble--no meals or anything. Just let me have a corner to sleep in till daylight, and I"m all right. I can leave the car in the road where it is--a bit of wet weather won"t hurt it if worst comes to worst."
As I made my sudden request I could see the old man"s face lose its former expression of quiet resignation and take on an odd, surprised look.
"Sleep--here?"
He seemed so astonished at my request that I repeated it.
"Yes, why not? I a.s.sure you I won"t be any trouble. What else can I do? I"m a stranger hereabouts, these roads are a labyrinth in the dark, and I"ll wager it"ll be raining torrents outside of an hour--"
This time it my host"s turn to interrupt, and as he did so I could feel a peculiar quality in his deep, musical voice.
"A stranger--of course you must be, else you wouldn"t think of sleeping here, wouldn"t think of coming here at all. People don"t come here nowadays."
He paused, and my desire to stay was increased a thousandfold by the sense of mystery his laconic words seemed to evoke. There was surely something alluringly queer about this place, and the pervasive musty smell seemed to cloak a thousand secrets. Again I noticed the extreme decrepitude of everything about me; manifest even in the feeble rays of the single small lamp. I felt woefully chilly, and saw with regret that no heating was provided, and yet so great was my curiosity that I still wished most ardently to stay and learn something of the recluse and his dismal abode.
"Let that be as it may," I replied. "I can"t help about other people. But I surely would like to have a spot to stop till daylight. Still--if people don"t relish this place, mayn"t it be because it"s getting so run-down? Of course I suppose it would a take a fortune to keep such an estate up, but if the burden"s too great why don"t you look for smaller quarters? Why try to stick it out here in this way--with all the hardships and discomforts?"
The man did not seem offended, but answered me very gravely.
"Surely you may stay if you really wish to--you can come to no harm that I know of. But others claim there are certain peculiarly undesirable influences here. As for me--I stay here because I have to. There is something I feel it a duty to guard--something that holds me. I wish I had the money and health and ambition to take decent care of the house and grounds."
With my curiosity still more heightened, I prepared to take my host at his word; and followed him slowly upstairs when he motioned me to do so. It was very dark now, and a faint pattering outside told me that the threatened rain had come. I would have been glad of any shelter, but this was doubly welcome because of the hints of mystery about the place and its master. For an incurable lover of the grotesque, no more fitting haven could have been provided.
There was a second-floor corner room in less unkempt shape than the rest of the house, and into this my host led me, setting down his small lamp and lighting a somewhat larger one. From the cleanliness and contents of the room, and from the books ranged along the walls, I could see that I had not guessed amiss in thinking the man a gentleman of taste and of breeding. He was a hermit and eccentric, no doubt, but he still had standards and intellectual interests. As he waved me to a seat I began a conversation on general topics, and was pleased to find him not at all taciturn. If anything, he seemed glad of someone to talk to, and did not even attempt to swerve the discussion from personal topics.
He was, I learned, one Antoine de Russy, of an ancient, powerful, and cultivated line of Louisiana planters. More than a century ago his grandfather, a younger son, had migrated to southern Missouri and founded a new estate in the lavish ancestral manner; building this pillared mansion and surrounding it with all the accessories of a great plantation. There had been, at one time, as many as 200 negroes in the cabins which stood on the flat ground in the rear--ground that the river had now invaded--and to hear them singing and laughing and playing the banjo at night was to know the fullest charm of a civilization and social order now sadly extinct. In front of the house, where the great guardian oaks and willows stood, there had been a lawn like a broad green carpet, always watered and trimmed and with flagstoned, flower-bordered walks curving through it. "Riverside"--for such the place was called--had been a lovely and idyllic homestead in its day; and my host could recall it when many traces of its best period remained.
It was raining hard now, with dense sheets of water beating against the insecure roof, walls, and windows, and sending in drops through a thousand c.h.i.n.ks and crevices. Moisture trickled down to the floor from unsuspected places, and the mounting wind rattled the rotting, loose-hinged shutters outside. But I minded none of this, for I saw that a story was coming. Incited to reminiscence, my host made a move to shew me to sleeping-quarters; but kept on recalling the older, better days. Soon, I saw, I would receive an inkling of why he lived alone in that ancient place, and why his neighbours thought it full of undesirable influences. His voice was very musical as he spoke on, and his tale soon took a turn which left me no chance to grow drowsy.
"Yes--Riverside was built in 1816, and my father was born in 1828. He"d be over a century old now if he were alive, but he died young--so young I can just barely remember him. In "64 that was--he was killed in the war, Seventh Louisiana Infantry C.S.A., for he went back to the old home to enlist. My grandfather was too old to fight, yet he lived on to be ninety-five, and helped my mother bring me up. A good bringing-up, too--I"ll give them credit. We always had strong traditions--high notions of honor--and my grandfather saw to it that I grew up the way de Russys have grown up, generation after generation, ever since the Crusades. We weren"t quite wiped out financially, but managed to get on very comfortable after the war. I went to a good school in Louisiana, and later to Princeton. Later on I was able to get the plantation on a fairly profitable basis--though you see what it"s come to now.
"My mother died when I was twenty, and my grandfather two years later. It was rather lonely after that; and in "85 I married a distant cousin in New Orleans. Things might have been different if she"d lived, but she died when my son Denis was born. Then I had only Denis. I didn"t try marriage again, but gave all my time to the boy. He was like me--like all the de Russys--darkish and tall and thin, and with the devil of a temper. I gave him the same training my grandfather had give me, but he didn"t need much training when it came to points of honor. It was in him, I reckon. Never saw such high spirit--all I could do to keep him from running away to the Spanish War when he was eleven! Romantic young devil, too--full of high notions--you"d call "em Victorian, now--no trouble at all to make him let the n.i.g.g.e.r wenches alone. I sent him to the same school I"d gone to, and to Princeton, too. He was Cla.s.s of 1909.
"In the end he decided to be a doctor, and went a year to the Harvard Medical School. Then he hit on the idea of keeping to the old French tradition of the family, and argued me into sending him across to the Sorbonne. I did--and proudly enough, though I knew how lonely I"d be with him so far off. Would to G.o.d I hadn"t! I thought he was the safest kind of boy to be in Paris. He had a room in the Rue St. Jacques--that"s near the University in the "Latin Quarter"--but according to his letters and his friends he didn"t cut up with the gayer dogs at all. The people he knew were mostly young fellows from home--serious students and artists who thought more of their work than of striking att.i.tudes and painting the town red.
"But of course there were lots of fellows who were on a sort of dividing line between serious studies and the devil. The aesthetes--the decadents, you know. Experiments in life and sensation--the Baudelaire kind of a chap. Naturally Denis ran up against a good many of these, and saw a good deal of their life. They had all sorts of crazy circles and cults--imitation devil-worship, fake Black Ma.s.ses, and the like. Doubt if it did them much harm on the whole--probably most of "em forgot all about it in a year or two. One of the deepest in this queer stuff was a fellow Denis had known at school--for that matter, whose father I"d known myself. Frank Marsh, of New Orleans. Disciple of Lafcadio Hearn and Gauguin and Van Gogh--regular epitome of the yellow "nineties. Poor devil--he had the makings of a great artist, at that.
"Marsh was the oldest friend Denis had in Paris, so as a matter of course they saw a good deal of each other--to talk over old times at St. Clair academy, and all that. The boy wrote me a good deal about him, and I didn"t see any especial harm when he spoke of the group of mystics Marsh ran with. It seems there was some cult of prehistoric Egyptian and Carthaginian magic having a rage among the Bohemian element on the left bank--some nonsensical thing that pretended to reach back to forgotten sources of hidden truth in lost African civilisations--the great Zimbabwe, the dead Atlantean cities in the Haggar region of the Sahara--and they had a lot of gibberish concerned with snakes and human hair. At least, I called it gibberish, then. Denis used to quote Marsh as saying odd things about the veiled facts behind the legend of Medusa"s snaky locks--and behind the later Ptolemaic myth of Berenice, who offered up her hair to save her husband-brother, and had it set in the sky as the constellation Coma Berenices.
"I don"t think this business made much impression on Denis until the night of the queer ritual at Marsh"s rooms when he met the priestess. Most of the devotees of the cult were young fellows, but the head of it was a young woman who called herself "Tanit-Isis"--letting it be known that her real name--her name in this latest incarnation, as she put it--was Marceline Bedard. She claimed to be the left-handed daughter of Marquis de Chameaux, and seemed to have been both a petty artist and an artist"s model before adopting this more lucrative magical game. Someone said she had lived for a time in the West Indies--Martinique, I think--but she was very reticent about herself. Part of her pose was a great show of austerity and holiness, but I don"t think the more experienced students took that very seriously.
"Denis, though, was far from experienced, and wrote me fully ten pages of slush about the G.o.ddess he had discovered. If I"d only realised his simplicity I might have done something, but I never thought a puppy infatuation like could mean much. I felt absurdly sure that Denis" touchy personal honour and family pride would always keep him out of the most serious complications.
"As time went, though, his letters began to make me nervous. He mentioned this Marceline more and more, and his friends less and less, and began talking about the "cruel and silly way" they declined to introduce her to their mothers and sisters. He seems to have asked her no questions about herself, and I don"t doubt but that she filled him full of romantic legendry concerning her origin and divine revelations and the way people slighted her. At length I could see that Denis was altogether cutting his own crowd and spending the bulk of his time with his alluring priestess. At her especial request he never told the old crowd of their continual meetings; so n.o.body over there tried to break the affair up.
"I suppose she thought he was fabulously rich; for he had the air of a patrician, and people of a certain cla.s.s think all aristocratic Americans are wealthy. In any case, she probably thought this a rare chance to contract a genuine right-handed alliance with a really eligible young man. By the time my nervousness burst into open advice, it was too late. The boy had lawfully married her, and wrote that he was dropping his studies and bringing the woman home to Riverside. He said she had made a great sacrifice and resigned her leadership of the magical cult, and that henceforward she would be merely a private gentlewoman--the future mistress of Riverside, and mother of de Russys to come.
"Well, sir, I took it the best way I could. I knew that sophisticated Continentals have different standards from our old American ones--and anyway, I really knew nothing against the woman. A charlatan, perhaps, but why necessarily any worse? I suppose I tried to keep as naive as possible about such things in those days, for the boy"s sake. Clearly, there was nothing for a man of sense to do but let Denis alone so long as his new wife conformed to de Russy ways. Let her have a chance to prove herself--perhaps she wouldn"t hurt the family as much as some might fear. So I didn"t raise any objections or ask any penitence. The thing was done, and I stood ready to welcome the boy back, whatever he brought with him.
"They got here three weeks after the telegram telling of marriage. Marceline was beautiful--there was no denying that--and I could see how the boy might very well get foolish about her. She did have an air of breeding, and I think to this day she must have had some strains of good blood in her. She was apparently not much over twenty; of medium size, fairly slim, and as graceful as a tigress in posture and motion. Her complexion was a deep olive--like old ivory--and her eyes were large and very dark. She had small, cla.s.sically regular features--though not quite clean-cut enough to suit my taste--and the most singular braid of jet black hair that I ever saw.
"I didn"t wonder that she had dragged the subject of hair into her magical cult, for with that heavy profusion of it the idea must have occurred to her naturally. Coiled up, it made her look like some Oriental princess in a drawing of Aubrey Beardsley"s. Hanging down her back, it came well below her knees and shone in the light as if it had possessed some separate, unholy vitality of its own. I would almost have thought of Medusa or Berenice myself--without having such things suggested to me--upon seeing and studying that hair.
"Sometimes I thought it moved slightly of itself, and tended to arrange itself in distinct ropes or strands, but this may have been sheer illusion. She braided it incessantly, and seemed to use some sort of preparation on it. I got the notion once--a curious, whimsical notion--that it was a living being which she had to feed in some strange way. All nonsense--but it added to my feeling of constraint about her and her hair.
"For I can"t deny that I failed to like her wholly, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn"t tell what the trouble was, but it was there. Something about her repelled me very subtly, and I could not help weaving morbid and macabre a.s.sociations about everything connected with her. Her complexion called up thoughts of Babylon, Atlantis, Lemuria, and the terrible forgotten dominations of an elder world; her eyes struck me sometimes as the eyes of some unholy forest creature or animal G.o.ddess too immeasurably ancient to be fully human; and her hair--that dense, exotic, overnourished growth of oily inkiness--made one shiver as a great black python might have done. There was no doubt but that she realised my involuntary att.i.tude--though I tried to hide it, and she tried to hide the fact that she noticed it.
"Yet the boy"s infatuation lasted. He positively fawned on her, and overdid all the little gallantries of daily life to a sickening degree. She appeared to return the feeling, though I could see it took a conscious effort to make her duplicate his enthusiasms and extravagances. For one thing, I think she was piqued to learn we weren"t as wealthy as she had expected.
"It was a bad business all told. I could see that sad undercurrents were arising. Denis was half-hypnotised with puppy-love, and began to grow away from me as he felt my shrinking from his wife. This kind of thing went on for months, and I saw that I was losing my only son--the boy who had formed the centre of all my thoughts and acts for the past quarter century. I"ll own that I felt bitter about it--what father wouldn"t? And yet I could do nothing.
"Marceline seemed to be a good wife enough in those early months, and our friends received her without any quibbling or questioning. I was always nervous, though, about what some of the young fellows in Paris might write home to their relatives after the news of the marriage spread around. Despite the woman"s love of secrecy, it couldn"t remain hidden forever--indeed, Denis had written a few of his closest friends, in strict confidence, as soon as he was settled with her at Riverside.
"I got to staying alone in my room more and more, with my failing health as an excuse. It was about that time that my present spinal neuritis began to develop--which made the excuse a pretty good one. Denis didn"t seem to notice the trouble, or take any interest in me and my habits and affairs; and it hurt me to see how callous he was getting. I began to get sleepless, and often racked my brain in the night to try to find out what made my new daughter-in-law so repulsive and even dimly horrible to me. It surely wasn"t her old mystical nonsense, for she had left all the past behind her and never mentioned it once. She didn"t even do any painting, although I understood that she had once dabbled in art.
"Oddly, the only ones who seemed to share my uneasiness were the servants. The darkies around the house seemed very sullen in their att.i.tude toward her, and in a few weeks all save the few who were strongly attached to our family had left. These few--old Scipio and his wife Sarah, the cook Delilah, and Mary, Scipio"s daughter--were as civil as possible; but plainly revealed that their new mistress commanded their duty rather than their affection. They stayed in their own remote part of the house as much as possible. McCabe, our white chauffeur, was insolently admiring rather than hostile; and another exception was a very old Zulu woman, said to have been a sort of leader in her small cabin as a kind of family pensioner. Old Sophonisba always shewed reverence whenever Marceline came near her, and one time I saw her kiss the ground where her mistress had walked. Blacks are superst.i.tious animals, and I wondered whether Marceline had been talking any of her mystical nonsense to our hands in order to overcome their evident dislike.
"Well, that"s how we went on for nearly half a year. Then, in the summer of 1916, things began to happen. Toward the middle of June Denis got a note from his old friend Frank Marsh, telling of a sort of nervous breakdown which made him want to take a rest in the country. It was postmarked New Orleans--for Marsh had gone home from Paris when he felt the collapse coming on--and seemed a very plain though polite bid for an invitation from us. Marsh, of course, knew that Marceline was here; and asked very courteously after her. Denis was sorry to hear of his trouble and told him at once to come along for an indefinite visit.
"Marsh came--and I was shocked to notice how he had changed since I had seen him in his earlier days. He was a smallish, lightish fellow, with blue eyes and an undecided chin; and now I could see the effects of drink and I don"t know what else in his puffy eyelids, enlarged nose-pores, and heavy lines around the mouth. I reckon he had taken his dose of decadence pretty seriously, and set out to be as much of a Rimbaud, Baudelaire, or Lautreamont as he could. And yet he was delightful to talk to--for like all decadents he was exquisitely sensitive to the color and atmosphere and names of things; admirably, thoroughly alive, and with whole records of conscious experience in obscure, shadowy fields of living and feeling which most of us pa.s.s over without knowing they exist. Poor young devil--if only his father had lived longer and taken him in hand! There was great stuff in the boy!
"I was glad of the visit, for I felt it would help to set up a normal atmosphere in the house again. And that"s what it really seemed to do at first; for as I said, Marsh was a delight to have around. He was as sincere and profound an artist as I ever saw in my life, and I certainly believe that nothing on earth mattered to him except the perception and expression of beauty. When he saw an exquisite thing, or was creating one, his eyes would dilate until the light irises were nearly out of sight--leaving two mystical black pits in that weak, delicate, chalk-like face; black pits opening on strange worlds which none of us could guess about.
"When he reached here, though, he didn"t have many chances to shew this tendency; for he had, as he told Denis, gone quite stale. It seems he had been very successful as an artist of a bizarre kind--like Fuseli or Goya or Sime or Clark Ashton Smith--but had suddenly become played out. The world of ordinary things around him had ceased to hold anything he could recognize as beauty--beauty, that is, of enough force and poignancy to arouse his creative faculty. He had often been this way before--all decadents are--but this time he could not invent any new, strange, or outre sensation or experience which would supply the needed illusion of fresh beauty or stimulatingly adventurous expectancy. He was like a Durtal or a des Esseintes at the most jaded point of his curious...o...b..t.
"Marceline was away when Marsh arrived. She hadn"t been enthusiastic about his coming, and had refused to decline an invitation from some of our friends in St. Louis which came about that time for her and Denis. Denis, of course, stayed to receive his guest; but Marceline had gone on alone. It was the first time they had ever been separated, and I hoped the interval would help to dispel the daze that was making such a fool of the boy. Marceline shewed no hurry to get back, but seemed to me to prolong her absence as much as she could. Denis stood it better than one would have expected from such a doting husband, and seemed more like his old self as he talked over other days with Marsh and tried to cheer the listless aesthete up.
"It was Marsh who seemed most impatient to see the woman; perhaps because he thought her strange beauty, or some phase of the mysticism which had gone into her one-time magical cult, might help to reawaken his interest in things and give him another start toward artistic creation. That there was no baser reason, I was absolutely certain from what I knew of Marsh"s character. With all his weaknesses, he was a gentleman--and it had indeed relieved me when I first learned that he wanted to come here because his willingness to accept Denis" hospitality proved that there was no reason why he shouldn"t.
"When, at last, Marceline did return, I could see that Marsh was tremendously affected. He did not attempt to make her talk of the bizarre thing which she had so definitely abandoned, but was unable to hide a powerful admiration which kept his eyes--now dilated in that curious way for the first time during his visit--riveted to her every moment she was in the room. She, however, seemed uneasy rather than pleased by his steady scrutiny--that is, she seemed so at first, though this feeling of hers wore away in a few days, and left the two on a basis of the most cordial and voluble congeniality. I could see Marsh studying her constantly when he thought no one was watching; and I wondered how long it would be that only the artist, and not the primitive man, would be aroused by her mysterious graces.
"Denis naturally felt some irritation at this turn of affairs; though he realised that his guest was a man of honour and that, as kindred mystics and aesthetes, Marceline and Marsh would naturally have things and interests to discuss in which a more or less conventional person could have no part. He didn"t hold anything against anybody, but merely regretted that his own imagination was too limited and traditional to let him talk with Marceline as Marsh talked. At this stage of things I began to see more of the boy. With his wife otherwise busy, he had time to remember that he had a father--and a father who was ready to help him in any sort of perplexity or difficulty.
"We often sat together on the veranda watching Marsh and Marceline as they rode up or down the drive on horseback, or played tennis on the court that used to stretch south of the house. They talked mostly in French, which Marsh, though he hadn"t more than a quarter-portion of French blood, handled more glibly than either Denis or I could speak it. Marceline"s English, always academically correct, was rapidly improving in accent; but it was plain that she relished dropping back into her mother-tongue. As we looked at the congenial couple they made, I could see the boy"s cheek and throat muscles tighten--though he wasn"t a whit less ideal a host to Marsh, or a whit less considerate husband to Marceline.
"All this was generally in the afternoon; for Marceline rose very late, had breakfast in bed, and took an immense amount of time preparing to come downstairs. I never knew of anyone so wrapped up in cosmetics, beauty exercises, hair-oils, unguents, and everything of that kind. It was in these morning hours that Denis and Marsh did their real visiting, and exchanged the close confidences which kept their friendship up despite the strain that jealousy imposed.
"Well, it was in one of those morning talks on the veranda that Marsh made the proposition which brought on the end. I was laid up with some of my neuritis, but had managed to get downstairs and stretch out on the front parlour sofa near the long window. Denis and Marsh were just outside; so I couldn"t help hearing all they said. They had been talking about art, and the curious, capricious elements needed to jolt an artist into producing the real article, when Marsh suddenly swerved from abstractions to the personal application he must have had in mind from the start.
""I suppose," he was saying, "that n.o.body can tell just what it is in some scenes or objects that makes them aesthetic stimuli for certain individuals. Basically, of course, it must have some reference to each man"s background of stored-up mental a.s.sociations, for no two people have the same scale of sensitiveness and responses. We decadents are artists for whom all ordinary things have ceased to have any emotional or imaginative significance, but no one of us responds in the same way to exactly the same extraordinary. Now take me, for instance.""
"He paused and resumed.
""I know, Denny, that I can say these things to you because you such a preternaturally unspoiled mind--clean, fine, direct, objective, and all that. You won"t misunderstand as an oversubtilised, effete man of the world might.""
"He paused once more.
""The fact is, I think I know what"s needed to set my imagination working again. I"ve had a dim idea of it ever since we were in Paris, but I"m sure now. It"s Marceline, old chap--that face and that hair, and the train of shadowy images they bring up. Not merely visible beauty--though G.o.d knows there"s enough of that--but something peculiar and individualised, that can"t exactly be explained. Do you know, in the last few days I"ve felt the existence of such a stimulus so keenly that I honestly think I could outdo myself--break into the real masterpiece cla.s.s if I could get ahold of paint and canvas at just the time when her face and hair set my fancy stirring and weaving. There"s something weird and other-worldly about it--something joined up with the dim ancient thing Marceline represents. I don"t know how much she"s told you about that side of her, but I can a.s.sure you there"s plenty of it. She has some marvellous links with the outside."
"Some change in Denis" expression must have halted the speaker here, for there was a considerable spell of silence before the words went on. I was utterly taken aback, for I"d expected no such overt development like this; and I wondered what my son could be thinking. My heart began to pound violently, and I strained my ears in the frankest of intentional eavesdropping. Then Marsh resumed.
""Of course you"re jealous--I know how a speech like mine must sound--but I can swear to you that you needn"t be."
"Denis did not answer, and Marsh went on.
"" To tell the truth, I could never be in love with Marceline--I couldn"t even be a cordial friend of hers in the warmest sense. Why, d.a.m.n it all, I felt like a hypocrite talking with her these days as I"ve been doing.
""The case simply is, that one of her phase of her half hyponotises me in a certain way--a very strange, fantastic, and dimly terrible way--just as another phase half hypnotises you in a much more normal way. I see something in her--or to be psychologically exact, something through her or beyond her--that you didn"t see at all. Something that brings up a vast pageantry of shapes from forgotten abysses, and makes me want to paint incredible things whose outlines vanish the instant I try to envisage them clearly. Don"t mistake, Denny, your wife is a magnificent being, a splendid focus of cosmic forces who has a right to be called divine if anything on earth has!"
"I felt a clearing of the situation at this point, for the abstract strangeness of Marsh"s statement, plus the flattery he was now heaping on Marceline, could not fail to disarm and mollify one as fondly proud of his consort as Denis always was. Marsh evidently caught the change himself, for there was more confidence in his tone as he continued.
""I must paint her, Denny--must paint that hair--and you won"t regret. There"s something more than mortal about that hair--something more than beautiful--"
"He paused, and I wondered what Denis could be thinking. I wondered, indeed, what I was really thinking myself. Was Marsh"s interest actually that of the artist alone, or was he merely infatuated as Denis had been? I had thought, in their schooldays, that he had envied my boy; and I dimly felt that it might be the same now. On the other hand, something in that talk of artistic stimulus had rung amazingly true; so that the more I pondered, the more I was inclined to take the stuff at face value. Denis seemed to do so, too, for although I could not catch his low-spoken reply, I could tell by the effect it produced that it must have been affirmative.
"There was a sound of someone slapping another on the back, and then a grateful speech from Marsh that I was long to remember.
""That"s great, Denny, and just as I told you, you"ll never regret it. In a sense, I"m half doing it for you. You"ll be a different man when you see it. I"ll put you back where you used to be--give you a waking-up and a sort of salvation--but you can"t see what I mean as yet. Just remember old friendship, and don"t get the idea that I"m not the same old bird!"
"I rose perplexedly as I saw the two stroll off across the lawn, arm in arm, and smoking in unison. What could Marsh have meant by his strange and almost ominous rea.s.surance? The more my fears were quieted in one direction, the more they were aroused in another. Look at it any way I could, it seemed to be a rather bad business.
"But matters got started just the same. Denis fixed up an attic room with skylights, and Marsh sent for all sorts of painting equipment. Everyone was rather excited about the new venture, and I was at least glad that something was on foot to break the brooding tension. Soon the sittings began, and we all took them quite seriously--for we could see that Marsh regarded them as important artistic events. Denny and I used to go quietly about the house as though something sacred were occurring, and we knew that it was sacred as far as Marsh was concerned.
"With Marceline, though, it was a different matter, as I began to see at once. Whatever Marsh"s reactions to the sittings may have been, hers were painfully obvious. Every possible way she betrayed a frank and commonplace infatuation for the artist, and would repulse Denis" marks of affection whenever she dared. Oddly, I noticed this more vividly than Denis himself, and tried to devise some plan for keeping the boy"s mind easy until the matter could be straightened out. There was no use in having him excited about it if it could be helped.
"In the end I decided that Denis had better be away while the disagreeable situation existed. I could represent his interests well enough at this end, and sooner or later Marsh would finish the picture and go. My view of Marsh"s honour was such that I did not look for any worse developments. When the matter had blown over, and Marceline had forgotten about her new infatuation, it would be time enough to have Denis on hand again.
"So I wrote a long letter to my marketing and financial agent in New York, and cooked up a plan to have the boy summoned there for an indefinite time. I had the agent write him that our affairs absolutely required one of us to go East, and of course my illness made it clear that I could not be the one. It was arranged that when Denis got to New York he would find enough plausible matters to keep him busy as long as I thought he ought to be away.
"The plan worked perfectly, and Denis started for New York without the least suspicion; Marceline and Marsh going with him in the car to Cape Girardeau, where he caught the afternoon train to St. Louis. They returned after dark, and as McCabe drove the car back to the stables I could hear them talking on the veranda--in those same chairs near the long parlour window where Marsh and Denis had sat when I overheard them talk about the portrait. This time I resolved to do some intentional eavesdropping, so quietly went down to the front parlour and stretched out on the sofa near the window.
"At first I could not hear anything but very shortly there came the sound of a chair being shifted, followed by a short, sharp breath and a sort of inarticulately hurt exclamation from Marceline. Then I heard Marsh speaking in a strained, almost formal voice.
""I"d enjoy working tonight if you aren"t too tired."
"Marceline"s reply was in the same hurt tone which had marked her exclamation. She used English as he had done.
""Oh, Frank, is that really all you care about? Forever working! Can"t we just sit out here in this glorious moonlight?"
"He answered impatiently, his voice shewing a certain contempt beneath the dominant quality of artistic enthusiasm.
""Moonlight! Good G.o.d, what cheap sentimentality! For a supposedly sophisticated person you surely do hang on to some of the crudest claptrap that ever escaped from the dime novels! With art at your elbow, you have to think of the moon--cheap as a spotlight at the varieties! Or perhaps it makes you think of the Roodmas dance around the stone pillars at Auteiul. h.e.l.l, how you used to make those goggle-eyed yaps stare! But not--I suppose you"ve dropped all that now. No more Atlantean magic or hair-snake rites for Madame de Russy! I"m the only one to remember the ld things--the things that came down through the temples of Tanit and echoed on the ramparts of Zimbabwe. But I won"t be cheated of that remembrance--all that is weaving itself into the thing on my canvas--the thing that is going to capture wonder and crystallise the secrets of 75,000 years."
"Marceline interrupted in a voice full of mixed emotions.
""It"s you who are cheaply sentimental now! You know well that the old things had better be let alone. All of you had better watch out if ever I chant the old rites or try to call up what lies hidden in Yuggoth, Zimbabwe, and R"lyeh. I thought you had more sense!
""You lack logic. You want me to be interested in this precious painting of yours, yet you never let me see what you"re doing. Always that black cloth over it! It"s of me--I shouldn"t think it would matter if I saw it."
"Marsh was interrupting this time, his voice curiously hard and strained.
""No. Not now. You"ll see it in due course of time. You say it"s of you--yes, it"s that, but it"s more. If you knew, you mightn"t be so impatient. Poor Denis! My G.o.d, it"s a shame!"
"My throat was suddenly dry as the words rose to an almost febrile pitch. What could Marsh mean? Suddenly I saw that he had stopped and was entering the house alone. I heard the front door slam, and listened as his footsteps ascended the stairs. Outside on the veranda I could still hear Marceline"s heavy, angry breathing. I crept away sick at heart, feeling that there were grave things to ferret out before I could safely let Denis come back.
"After that evening the tension around the place was even worse than before. Marceline had always lived on flattery and fawning and the shock of those few blunt words from Marsh was too much for her temperament. There was no living in the house with her anymore, for with poor Denis gone she took out her abusiveness on everybody. When she could find no one indoors to quarrel with she would go out to Sophonisba"s cabin and spend hours talking with the queer old Zulu woman. Aunt Sophy was the only person who would fawn abjectly enough to suit her, and when I tried once to overhear their conversation I found Marceline whispering about "elder secrets" and "unknown Kadath" while the negress rocked to and fro in her chair, making inarticulate sounds of reverence and admiration every now and then.
"But nothing could break her dog-like infatuation for Marsh. She would talk bitterly and sullenly to him, yet was getting more and more obedient to his wishes. It was very convenient for him, since he now became able to make her pose for the picture whenever he felt like painting. He tried to shew grat.i.tude for this willingness, but I thought I could detect a kind of contempt or even loathing beneath his careful politeness. For my part, I frankly hated Marceline! There was no use in calling my att.i.tude anything as mild as dislike these days. Certainly, I was glad Denis was away. His letters, not nearly so frequent as I wished, shewed signs of strain and worry.
"As the middle of August went by I gathered from Marsh"s remarks that the portrait was nearly done. His mood seemed increasingly sardonic, though Marceline"s temper improved a bit as the prospect of seeing the thing tickled her vanity. I can still recall the day when Marsh said he"d have everything finished within a week. Marceline brightened up perceptibly, though not without a venomous look at me. It seemed as if her coiled hair visibly tightened around her head.
""I"m to be the first to see it!" she snapped. Then, smiling at Marsh, she said, "And if I don"t like it I shall slash it to pieces!"
"Marsh"s face took on the most curious look I have ever seen it wear as he answered her.
""I can"t vouch for your taste, Marceline, but I swear it will be magnificent! Not that I want to take much credit--art creates itself--and this thing had to be done. Just wait!""
"During the next few days I felt a queer sense of foreboding, as if the completion of the picture meant a kind of catastrophe instead of a relief. Denis, too, had not written me, and my agent in New York said he was planning some trip to the country. I wondered what the outcome of the whole thing would be. What a queer mixture of elements--Marsh and Marceline, Denis and I! How would all these ultimately react on one another? When my fears grew too great I tried to lay them all to my infirmity, but that explanation never quite satisfied me."
"Well, the thing exploded on Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of August. I had risen at my usual time and had breakfast, but was not good for much because of the pain in my spine. It had been troubling me badly of late, and forcing me to take opiates when it got too unbearable; n.o.body else was downstairs except the servants, though I could hear Marceline moving about in her room. Marsh slept in the attic next his studio, and had begun to keep such late hours that he was seldom up till noon. About ten o"clock the pain got the better of me, so that I took a double dose of my opiate and lay down on the parlour sofa. The last I heard was Marceline"s pacing overhead. Poor creature--if I had known! She must have been walking before the long mirror admiring herself. That was like her. Vain from start to finish--revelling in her own beauty, just as she revelled in all the little luxuries Denis was able to give her.
"I didn"t wake up till near sunset, and knew instantly how long I had slept from the golden light and long shadows outside the long window. n.o.body was about, and a sort of unnatural stillness seemed to be hovering over everything. From afar, though, I thought I could sense a faint howling, wild and intermittent, whose quality had a slight but baffling familiarity about it. I"m not much for psychic premonitions, but I was frightfully uneasy from the start. There had been dreams--even worse than the ones I had been dreaming in the weeks before--and this time they seemed hideously linked to some black and festering reality. The whole place had a poisonous air. Afterward I reflected that certain sounds must have filtered through into my unconscious brain during those hours of drugged sleep. My pain, though, was very much eased; and I rose and walked without difficulty.
"Soon enough I began to see that something was wrong. Marsh and Marceline might have been riding, but someone ought to have been getting dinner in the kitchen. Instead, there was only silence, except for that faint, distant howl or wail; and n.o.body answered when I pulled the old-fashioned bell-cord to summon Scipio. Then, chancing to look up, I saw the spreading stain on the ceiling--the bright red stain, that must have come through the floor of Marceline"s room.
"In an instant I forgot my crippled back and hurried upstairs to find out the worst. Everything under the sun raced through my mind as I struggled with the dampness-warped door of that silent chamber, and most hideous of all was a terrible sense of malign fulfilment and fatal expectedness. I had, it struck me, known all along that nameless horrors were gathering; that something profoundly and cosmically evil had gained a foot-hold under my roof from which only blood and tragedy could result.
"The door gave at last, and I stumbled into the large room beyond--all dim from the branches of the great trees outside the windows. For a moment I could do nothing but flinch at the faint evil odour that immediately struck my nostrils. Then, turning on the electric light and glancing around, I glimpsed a nameless blasphemy on the yellow and blue rug.
"It lay face down in a great pool of dark, thickened blood, and had the gory print of a shod human foot in the middle of its naked back. Blood was spattered everywhere--on the walls, furniture, and floor. My knees gave way as I took in the sight, so that I had to stumble to a chair and slump down. The thing had obviously been a human being, though its ident.i.ty was not easy to establish at first; since it was without clothes, and had most of its hair hacked and torn from the scalp in a very crude way. It was of a deep ivory colour, and I knew that it must have been Marceline. The shoe-print on the back made the thing seem all the more h.e.l.lish. I could not even picture the strange, loathsome tragedy which must have taken place while I slept in the room below. When I raised my hand to wipe my dripping forehead I saw that my fingers were sticky with blood. I shuddered, then realised that it must have come from the k.n.o.b of the door which the unknown murderer had forced shut behind him as he left. He had taken his weapon with him, it seemed, for no instrument of death was visible here.
"As I studied the floor I saw that a line of sticky footprints like the one on the body led away from the horror to the door. There was another blood-trail, too, and of a less easily explainable kind; a broadish, continuous line, as if marking the path of some huge snake. At first I concluded it must be due to something the murderer had dragged after him. Then, noting the way some of the footprints seemed to be superimposed on it, I was forced to believe that it could have been there when the murderer left. But what crawling ent.i.ty could have been in that room with the victim and her a.s.sa.s.sin, leaving before the killer when the deed was done? As I asked myself this question I thought I heard fresh bursts of that faint, distant wailing.
"Finally, rousing myself from a lethargy of horror, I got on my feet again and began following the footprints. Who the murderer was, I could not even faintly guess, nor could I try to explain the absence of the servants. I vaguely felt that I ought to go up to Marsh"s attic quarters, but before I had fully formulated the idea I saw that the b.l.o.o.d.y trail was indeed taking me there. Was he himself the murderer? Had he gone mad under the strain of the morbid situation and suddenly run amok?
"In the attic corridor the trail became faint, the prints almost ceasing as they merged with the dark carpet. I could still, however, discern the strange single path of the ent.i.ty who had gone first; and this led straight to the closed door of Marsh"s studio, disappearing beneath it at a point about half way from side to side. Evidently it had crossed the threshold at a time when the door was wide open.