The Project Gutenberg eBook of The black drama
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Title: The black drama
Author: Manly Wade Wellman
Release date: July 28, 2024 [eBook #74147]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1938
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK DRAMA ***
The Black Drama
By GANS T. FIELD
_A strange weird story about the eery
personality known as Varduk, who claimed
descent from Lord Byron, and the hideous
doom that stalked in his wake._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales June, July, August 1938.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,
Have been to me as rain unto the sands
Since that all-nameless hour.
--Lord Byron: _Manfred_.
_Foreword_
Unlike most actors, I do not consider my memoirs worth the attention of
the public. Even if I did so consider them, I have no desire to carry
my innermost dear secrets to market. Often and often I have flung aside
the autobiography of some famous man or woman, crying aloud: "Surely
this is the very nonpareil of bad taste!"
Yet my descendants--and, after certain despairful years, again I have
hope of descendants--will want to know something about me. I write
this record of utterly strange happenings while it is yet new and
clear in my mind, and I shall seal it and leave it among my important
possessions, to be found and dealt with at such time as I may die. It
is not my wish that the paper be published or otherwise brought to the
notice of any outside my immediate family and circle of close friends.
Indeed, if I thought that such a thing would happen I might write less
frankly.
Please believe me, you who will read; I know that part of the narrative
will strain any credulity, yet I am ready with the now-threadbare
retort of Lord Byron, of whose works more below: "Truth is stranger
than fiction." I have, too, three witnesses who have agreed to vouch
for the truth of what I have set down. Their only criticism is that I
have spoken too kindly of them. If anything, I have not spoken kindly
enough.
Like Peter Quince in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, I have rid my prolog
like a rough colt. Perhaps, like Duke Theseus, you my readers will be
assured thereby of my sincerity.
Signed,
GILBERT CONNATT,
New York City
August 1, 1938
We, the undersigned, having read the appended statement of Gilbert
Connatt, do hereby declare it to be true in substance.
Signed,
SIGRID HOLGAR
KEITH HILARY PURSUIVANT
JACOB A. SWITZ
_1. Drafted_
The counterman in the little hamburger stand below Times Square gazed
at me searchingly.
"Haven't I seen you somewhere?" he asked, and when I shook my head he
made a gesture as of inspiration. "I got it, buddy. There was a guy in
a movie like you--tall, thin--black mustache and eyes----"
"I'm not in pictures," I told him, quite truthfully as concerned the
moment. "Make me a double hamburger."
"And coffee?"
"Yes." Then I remembered that I had but fifteen cents, and that double
hamburgers cost a dime. I might want a second sandwich. "Make it a
single instead."
"No, a double," piped somebody at my elbow, and a short, plump figure
climbed upon the next stool. "Two doubles, for me and my friend here,
and I'm paying. Gilbert Connatt, at half-past the eleventh hour I run
onto you by the luck of the Switzes. I am glad to see you like an old
father to see his wandering boy."
I had known that voice of old in Hollywood. Turning, I surveyed the
fat, blob-nosed face, the crossed eyes behind shell-rimmed glasses, the
thick, curly hair, the ingratiating smile. "Hello, Jake," I greeted him
without enthusiasm.
Jake Switz waved at the counterman. "Two coffees with those
hamburgers." His strange oblique gaze shifted back to me. "Gib, to
me you are more welcome than wine at a wedding. In an uptown hotel
who do you think is wondering about you with tears in her eyes as big
as electric light bulbs?" He shrugged and extended his palms, as if
pleased at being able to answer his own question. "Sigrid Holgar!"
I made no reply, but drew a frayed shirt-cuff back into the worn sleeve
of my jacket. Jake Switz continued: "I've been wondering where to get
hold of you, Gib. How would you like again to play leading man for
Sigrid, huh?"
It is hard to look full into cross-eyes, but I managed it. "Go back to
her," I bade him, "and tell her I'm not taking charity from somebody
who threw me down."
Jake caught my arm and shook it earnestly. "But that ain't true, Gib.
It's only that she's been so successful she makes you look like a
loser. Gib, you know as well as you know your own name that it was you
that threw her down--so hard she ran like a silver dollar."
"I won't argue," I said, "and I won't have charity."
I meant that. It hurt to think of Sigrid and myself as we had been
five years ago--she an inspired but unsure newcomer from Europe, I the
biggest star on the biggest lot in the motion-picture industry. We made
a film together, another, became filmdom's favorite lovers on and off
screen. Then the quarrel; Jake was wrong, it was Sigrid's fault. Or was
it? Anyway, she was at the head of the class now, and I had been kicked
away from the foot.
The counterman set our sandwiches before us. I took a hungry bite and
listened to Jake's pleadings.
"It would be you doing her and me a favor, Gib. Listen this one
time--please, to give Jake Switz a break." His voice quavered
earnestly. "You know that Sigrid is going to do a stage play."
"I've read about it in _Variety_," I nodded. "Horror stuff, isn't it?
Like _Dracula_, I suppose, with women fainting and nurses dragging them
out of the theater."
"Nurses!" repeated Jake Switz scornfully. "Huh, doctors we'll need. At
our show Jack Dempsey himself would faint dead away on the floor, it's
so horrible!" He subsided and began to beg once more. "But you know how
Sigrid is. Quiet and restrained--a genius. She wouldn't warm up, no
matter what leading man we suggested. Varduk, the producer, mentioned
you. 'Get Gilbert Connatt,' he said to me. 'She made a success with him
once, maybe she will again.' And right away Sigrid said yes."
I went on eating, then swallowed a mouthful of scalding coffee. Jake
did the same, but without relish. Finally he exploded into a last
desperate argument.
"Gib, for my life I can't see how you can afford to pass it up. Here
you are, living on hamburgers----"
I whirled upon him so fiercely that the rest of the speech died on his
open lips. Rising, I tossed my fifteen cents on the counter and started
for the door. But Jake yelled in protest, caught my shoulder and fairly
wrestled me back.
"No, no," he was wailing. "Varduk would cut my heart out and feed it
to the sparrows if I found you and lost you again. Gib, I didn't mean
bad manners. I don't know nothing about manners, Gib, but have I ever
treated you wrong?"
I had to smile. "No, Jake. You're a creature of instincts, and the
instincts are rather better than the reasonings of most people. I think
you're intrinsically loyal." I thought of the years he had slaved for
Sigrid, as press agent, business representative, confidential adviser,
contract maker and breaker, and faithful hound generally. "I'm sorry
myself, Jake, to lose my temper. Let's forget it."
* * * * *
He insisted on buying me another double hamburger, and while I ate it
with unblunted appetite he talked more about the play Sigrid was to
present.
"Horror stuff is due for a comeback, Gib, and this will be the start.
A lovely, Gib. High class. Only Sigrid could do it. Old-fashioned, I
grant you, but not a grain of corny stuff in it. It was written by that
English guy, Lord Barnum--no, Byron. That's it, Lord Byron."
"I thought," said I, "that there was some question about the real
authorship."
"So the papers say, but they holler 'phony' at their own grandmothers.
Varduk is pretty sure. He knows a thing or two, that Varduk. You know
what he is going to do? He is getting a big expert to read the play
and make a report." Jake, who was more press agent than any other one
thing, licked his good-humored lips. "What a bust in the papers that
will be!"
Varduk.... I had heard that name, that single name whereby a new,
brilliant and mysteriously picturesque giant of the theatrical world
was known. Nobody knew where he had come from. Yet, hadn't Belasco been
a riddle? And Ziegfeld? Of course, they had never courted the shadows
like Varduk, had never refused to see interviewers or admirers. I
meditated that I probably would not like Varduk.
"Send me a pass when your show opens," I requested.
"But you'll be in it, Gib. Passes of your own you'll be putting out.
Ha! Listen this once while I try to do you good in spite of yourself,
my friend. You can't walk out after eating up the hamburgers I bought."
He had me there. I could not muster the price of that second sandwich,
and somehow the shrewd little fellow had surmised as much. He chuckled
in triumph as I shrugged in token of surrender.
"I knew you would, Gib. Now, here." He wrote on a card. "This is
Varduk's hotel and room number. Be there at eight o'clock tonight, to
read the play and talk terms. And here."
His second proffer was a wad of money.
"Get some clothes, Gib. With a new suit and tie you'll look like a
million dollars come home to roost. No, no. Take the dough and don't
worry. Ain't we friends? If you never pay me back, it will be plenty
soon enough."
He beamed my thanks away. Leaving the hamburger stand, we went in
opposite directions.
_2. Byron's Lost Play_
I did not follow Jake's suggestion exactly. Instead of buying new
garments throughout, I went to the pawnshop where I had of late raised
money on the remnants of a once splendid wardrobe. Here I redeemed a
blue suit that would become me best, and a pair of hand-made Oxfords.
Across the street I bought a fresh shirt and necktie. These I donned in
my coffin-sized room on the top floor of a cheap hotel. After washing,
shaving and powdering, I did not look so bad; I might even have been
recognized as the Gilbert Connatt who made history in the lavish film
version of _Lavengro_, that classic of gipsydom in which a newcomer
named Sigrid Holgar had also risen to fame....
I like to be prompt, and it was eight o'clock on the stroke when I
tapped at the door of Varduk's suite. There was a movement inside, and
then a cheerful voice: "Who's there?"
"Gilbert Connatt," I replied.
The lock scraped and the door opened. I looked into the handsome, ruddy
face of a heavy, towering man who was perhaps a year younger than I
and in much better physical condition. His was the wide, good-humored
mouth, the short, straight nose of the Norman Scot. His blond hair was
beginning to grow thin and his blue eyes seemed anxious.
"Come in, Mr. Connatt," he invited me, holding out his broad hand.
"My name's Davidson--Elmo Davidson." And, as I entered, "This is Mr.
Varduk." He might have been calling my attention to a prince royal.
I had come into a parlor, somberly decorated and softly lighted.
Opposite me, in a shadowed portion, gazed a pallid face. It seemed to
hang, like a mask, upon the dark tapestry that draped the wall. I was
aware first of a certain light-giving quality within or upon that
face, as though it were bathed in phosphorescent oil. It would have
been visible, plain even, in a room utterly dark. For the rest there
were huge, deep eyes of a color hard to make sure of, a nose somewhat
thick but finely shaped, a mouth that might have been soft once but now
drew tight as if against pain, and a strong chin with a dimple.
"How do you do, Mr. Connatt," said a soft, low voice, and the mask
inclined politely. A moment later elbows came forward upon a desk, and
I saw the rest of the man Varduk start out of his protective shadows.
His dark, double-breasted jacket and the black scarf at his throat
had blended into the gloom of the tapestry. So had his chestnut-brown
curls. As I came toward him, Varduk rose--he was of middle height, but
looked taller by reason of his slimness--and offered me a slender white
hand that gripped like a smith's tongs.
"I am glad that you are joining us," he announced cordially, in the
tone of a host welcoming a guest to dinner. "Miss Holgar needs old
friends about her, for her new stage adventure is an important item
in her splendid career. And this," he dropped his hand to a sheaf of
papers on the desk, "is a most important play."
Another knock sounded at the door, and Elmo Davidson admitted a young
woman, short and steady-eyed. She was Martha Vining, the character
actress, who was also being considered for a rôle in the play.
"Only Miss Holgar to come," Davidson said to me, with a smile that
seemed to ask for friendship. "We've only a small cast, you know; five."
"I am expecting one more after Miss Holgar," amended Varduk, and
Davidson made haste to add: "That's right, an expert antiquary--Judge
Keith Pursuivant. He's going to look at our manuscript and say
definitely if it is genuine."
Not until then did Varduk invite me to sit down, waving me to a
comfortable chair at one end of his desk. I groped in my pockets for a
cigarette, but he pressed upon me a very long and very good cigar.
"I admire tobacco in its naked beauty," he observed with the wraith
of a smile, and himself struck a match for me. Again I admired the
whiteness of his hand, its pointed fingers and strong sensitivity of
outline. Such hands generally betoken nervousness, but Varduk was
serene. Even the fall of his fringed lids over those plumbless eyes
seemed a deliberate motion, not an unthought wink.
Yet again a knock at the door, a brief colloquy and an ushering in by
Elmo Davidson. This time it was Sigrid.
I got to my feet, as unsteady as a half-grown boy at his first school
dance. Desperately I prayed not to look so moved as I felt. As for
Sigrid, she paused and met my gaze frankly, with perhaps a shade's
lightening of her gently tanned cheeks. She was a trifle thinner than
when I had last seen her five years ago, and wore, as usual, a belted
brown coat like an army officer's. Her hair, the blondest unbleached
hair I have ever known, fell to her shoulders and curled at its ends
like a full-bottomed wig in the portrait of some old cavalier. There
was a green flash in it, as in a field of ripened grain. Framed in its
two glistening cascades, her face was as I had known it, tapering from
brow to chin over valiant cheekbones and set with eyes as large as
Varduk's and bluer than Davidson's. She wore no make-up save a touch
of rouge upon her short mouth--cleft above and full below, like a red
heart. Even with low-heeled shoes, she was only two inches shorter than
I.
"Am I late?" she asked Varduk, in that deep, shy voice of hers.
"Not a bit," he assured her. Then he saw my awkward expectation and
added, with monumental tact for which I blessed him fervently, "I think
you know Mr. Gilbert Connatt."
Again she turned to me. "Of course," she replied. "Of course I know
him. How do you do, Gib?"
* * * * *
I took the hand she extended and, greatly daring, bent to kiss it.
Her fingers fluttered against mine, but did not draw away. I drew her
forward and seated her in my chair, then found a backless settee beside
her. She smiled at me once, sidewise, and took from my package the
cigarette I had forsaken for Varduk's cigar.
A hearty clap on my shoulder and a cry of greeting told me for the
first time that little Jake Switz had entered with her.
Varduk's brief but penetrating glance subdued the exuberant Jake. We
turned toward the desk and waited.
"Ladies and gentlemen," began Varduk, seriously but not heavily,
"a new-found piece of Lord Byron's work is bound to be a literary
sensation. We hope also to make a theatrical sensation, for our
new-found piece is a play.
"A study of Lord Byron evokes varied impressions and appeals. Carlyle
thought him a mere dandy, lacking Mr. Brummel's finesse and good
humor, while Goethe insisted that he stood second only to Shakespeare
among England's poets. His mistress, the Countess Guiccioli, held
him literally to be an angel; on the other hand, both Lamartine and
Southey called him Satan's incarnation. Even on minor matters--his
skill at boxing and swimming, his depth of scholarship, his sincerity
in early amours and final espousal of the Greek rebels--the great
authorities differ. The only point of agreement is that he had color
and individuality."
He paused and picked up some of the papers from his desk.
"We have here his lost play, _Ruthven_. Students know that Doctor
John Polidori wrote a lurid novel of horror called _The Vampire_, and
that he got his idea, or inspiration, or both, from Byron. Polidori's
tale in turn inspired the plays of Nodier and Dumas in French, and of
Planché and Boucicault in English. Gilbert and Sullivan joked with
the story in _Ruddigore_, and Bram Stoker read it carefully before
attempting _Dracula_. This manuscript," again he lifted it, "is Byron's
original. It is, as I have said, a drama."
His expressive eyes, bending upon the page in the dimness, seemed to
shed a light of their own. "I think that neither Mr. Connatt nor Miss
Vining has seen the play. Will you permit me to read?" He took our
consent for granted, and began: "Scene, Malvina's garden. Time, late
afternoon--Aubrey, sitting at Malvina's feet, tells his adventures."
Since _Ruthven_ is yet unpublished, I take the liberty of outlining
it as I then heard it for the first time. Varduk's voice was
expressive, and his sense of drama good. We listened, intrigued and
then fascinated, to the opening dialog in which young Aubrey tells
his sweetheart of his recent adventures in wildest Greece. The blank
verse struck me, at least, as being impressive and not too stiff,
though better judges than I have called Byron unsure in that medium.
Varduk changed voice and character for each rôle, with a skill almost
ventriloquial, to create for us the illusion of an actual drama. I
found quite moving Aubrey's story of how bandits were beaten off
single-handed by his chance acquaintance, Lord Ruthven. At the point
where Aubrey expresses the belief that Ruthven could not have survived
the battle:
"I fled, but he remained; how could one man,
Even one so godly gallant, face so many?
He followed not. I knew that he was slain----"
At that point, I say, the first surprize comes with the servant's
announcement that Ruthven himself has followed his traveling companion
from Greece and waits, whole and sound, for permission to present
himself.
No stage directions or other visualization; but immediate dialog
defines the title rôle as courtly and sinister, fascinating and
forbidding. Left alone with the maid-servant, Bridget, he makes
unashamed and highly successful advances. When he lifts the cap from
her head and lets her hair fall down, it reminds one that Byron himself
had thus ordered it among the maids on his own estate. Byron had made
love to them, too; perhaps some of Ruthven's speeches in this passage,
at least, came wholemeal from those youthful conquests.
Yet the seduction is not a gay one, and smacks of bird and snake. When
Ruthven says to Bridget,
"You move and live but at my will; dost hear?"
and she answers dully:
"I hear and do submit,"
awareness rises of a darkling and menacing power. Again, as Aubrey
mentions the fight with the bandits, Ruthven dismisses the subject with
the careless,
"I faced them, and who seeks my face seeks death,"
one feels that he fears and spares an enemy no more than a fly. And,
suddenly, he turned his attentions to Malvina:
"Yes, I am evil, and my wickedness
Draws to your glister and your purity.
Now shall you light no darkness but mine own,
An orient pearl swathed in a midnight pall----"
Oscar, husband of the betrayed Bridget, rushes in at this point to
denounce Ruthven and draw away his bemused mistress. At a touch from
the visitor's finger, Oscar falls dead. Aubrey, arming himself with a
club of whitethorn--a sovereign weapon against demons--strikes Ruthven
down. Dying, the enchanter persuades Aubrey and Malvina to drag him
into the open and so leave him. As the moon rises upon his body, he
moves and stands up:
"Luna, my mother, fountain of my life,
Once more thy rays restore me with their kiss.
Grave, I reject thy shelter! Death, stand back!...
"Curtain," said Varduk suddenly, and smiled around at us.
"So ends our first act," he continued in his natural voice. "No
date--nor yet are we obliged to date it. For purposes of our dramatic
production, however, I intend to lay it early in the past century, in
the time of Lord Byron himself. Act Two," and he picked up another
section of the manuscript, "begins a century later. We shall set it in
modern times. No blank verse now--Byron cleverly identifies his two
epochs by offering his later dialog in natural prose. That was the
newest of new tricks in his day."
Again he read to us. The setting was the same garden, with Mary Aubrey
and her cousin Swithin, descendants of the Aubrey and Malvina of the
first act, alternating between light words of love and attentions to
the aged crone Bridget. This survivor of a century and more croaks out
the fearsome tale of Ruthven's visit and what followed. Her grandson
Oscar, Mary's brother, announces a caller.
The newcomer explains that he has inherited the estate of Ruthven,
ancient foe of the Aubreys, and that he wishes to make peace. But
Bridget, left alone with him, recognizes in him her old tempter,
surviving ageless and pitiless. Oscar, too, hears the secret, and is
told that this is his grandfather. Bit by bit, the significance of
a dead man restless after a century grows in the play and upon the
servants. They swear slavishly to help him. He seeks a double and
sinister goal. Swithin, image of his great-grandfather Aubrey, must
die for that ancestor's former triumph over Ruthven. Mary, the later
incarnation of Malvina, excites Ruthven's passion as did her ancestress.
Then the climax. Malvina, trapped by Ruthven, defies him, then offers
herself as payment for Swithin's life. Swithin, refusing the sacrifice,
thrusts Ruthven through with a sword, but to no avail. Oscar overpowers
him, and the demoniac lord pronounces the beginning of a terrible
curse; but Mary steps forward as if to accept her lover's punishment.
Ruthven revokes his words, blesses her. As the Almighty's name issues
from his lips, he falls dead and decaying.
"End of the play," said Varduk. "I daresay you have surmised what rôles
I plan for you. Miss Holgar and Mr. Connatt are my choices for Malvina
and Aubrey in the first act, and Mary and Swithin in the second. Miss
Vining will create the rôle of Bridget, and Davidson will undertake the
two Oscars."
"And Ruthven?" I prompted, feeling unaccountably presumptuous in
speaking uninvited.
Varduk smiled and lowered his fringed lids. "The part is not too
difficult," he murmured. "Ruthven is off stage more than on, an
influence rather than a flesh-and-blood character. I shall honor myself
with this title rôle."
Switz, sitting near me, produced a watch. We had been listening to the
play for full two hours and a half.
Again a knock sounded at the door. Davidson started to rise, but
Varduk's slender hand waved him down.
"That will be Judge Pursuivant. I shall admit him myself. Keep your
seats all."
He got up and crossed the floor, walking stiffly as though he wore
tight boots. I observed with interest that in profile his nose seemed
finer and sharper, and that his ears had no lobes.
"Come in, Judge Pursuivant," he said cordially at the door. "Come in,
sir."
_3. Enter Judge Pursuivant_
Keith Hilary Pursuivant, the occultist and antiquary, was as arresting
as Varduk himself, though never were two men more different in
appearance and manner. Our first impression was of a huge tweed-clad
body, a pink face with a heavy tawny mustache, twinkling pale eyes
and a shock of golden-brown hair. Under one arm he half crushed a
wide black hat, while the other hand trailed a heavy stick of mottled
Malacca, banded with silver. There was about him the same atmosphere
of mature sturdiness as invests Edward Arnold and Victor McLaglen, and
withal a friendly gayety. Without being elegant or dashing, he caught
and held the regard. Men like someone like that, and so, I believe, do
women who respect something beyond sleek hair and brash repartee.
Varduk introduced him all around. The judge bowed to Sigrid, smiled at
Miss Vining, and shook hands with the rest of us. Then he took a seat
at the desk beside Varduk.
"Pardon my trembling over a chance to see something that may have
been written by Lord Byron to lie perdu for generations," he said
pleasantly. "He and his works have long been enthusiasms of mine. I
have just published a modest note on certain aspects of his----"
"Yes, I know," nodded Varduk, who was the only man I ever knew who
could interrupt without seeming rude. "_A Defense of the Wickedest
Poet_--understanding and sympathetic, and well worth the praise and
popularity it is earning. May I also congratulate you on your two
volumes of demonology, _Vampyricon_ and _The Unknown that Terrifies_?"
"Thank you," responded Pursuivant, with a bow of his shaggy head. "And
now, the manuscript of the play----"
"Is here." Varduk pushed it across the desk toward the expert.
Pursuivant bent for a close study. After a moment he drew a floor lamp
close to cast a bright light, and donned a pair of pince-nez.
"The words 'by Lord Byron', set down here under the title, are either
genuine or a very good forgery," he said at once. "I call your
attention, Mr. Varduk, to the open capital B, the unlooped down-stroke
of the Y, and the careless scrambling of the O and N." He fumbled
in an inside pocket and produced a handful of folded slips. "These
are enlarged photostats of several notes by Lord Byron. With your
permission, Mr. Varduk, I shall use them for comparison."
He did so, holding the cards to the manuscript, moving them here and
there as if to match words. Then he held a sheet of the play close to
the light. "Again I must say," he announced at last, "that this is
either the true handwriting of Byron or else a very remarkable forgery.
Yet----"
Varduk had opened a drawer of the desk and once more he interrupted.
"Here is a magnifying glass, Judge Pursuivant. Small, but quite
powerful." He handed it over. "Perhaps, with its help, you can decide
with more accuracy."
"Thank you." Pursuivant bent for a closer and more painstaking
scrutiny. For minutes he turned over page after page, squinting through
the glass Varduk had lent him. Finally he looked up again.
"No forgery here. Every stroke of the pen is a clean one. A forger
draws pictures, so to speak, of the handwriting he copies, and with a
lens like this one can plainly see the jagged, deliberate sketchwork."
He handed back the magnifying glass and doffed his spectacles, then let
his thoughtful eyes travel from one of us to the others. "I'll stake my
legal and scholastic reputation that Byron himself wrote these pages."
"Your stakes are entirely safe, sir," Varduk assured him with a smile.
"Now that you have agreed--and I trust that you will allow us to inform
the newspapers of your opinion--that _Ruthven_ is Byron's work, I am
prepared to tell how the play came into my possession. I was bequeathed
it--by the author himself."
We all looked up at that, highly interested. Varduk smiled upon us as
if pleased with the sensation he had created.
"The germ of _Ruthven_ came into being one night at the home of the
poet Shelley, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The company was being
kept indoors by rain and wind, and had occupied itself with reading
German ghost stories, and then tried their own skill at Gothic tales.
One of those impromptu stories we know--Mary Godwin's masterpiece,
_Frankenstein_. Lord Byron told the strange adventures of Ruthven, and
Polidori appropriated them--that we also know; but later that night,
alone in his room, Byron wrote the play we have here."
"In one sitting?" asked Martha Vining.
"In one sitting," replied Varduk. "He was a swift and brilliant
worker. In his sixteen years of active creative writing, he produced
nearly eighty thousand lines of published verse--John Drinkwater
reckons an average of fourteen lines, or the equivalent of a complete
sonnet, for every day. This prodigious volume of poetry he completed
between times of making love, fighting scandal, traveling, quarreling,
philosophizing, organizing the Greek revolution. An impressive record
of work, both in size and in its proportion of excellence."
Sigrid leaned forward. "But you said that Lord Byron himself bequeathed
the play to you."
Again Varduk's tight, brief smile. "It sounds fantastic, but it
happened. Byron gave the manuscript to Claire Clairmont, his mistress
and the mother of two of his children. He wanted it kept a secret--he
had been called fiend incarnate too often. So he charged her that she
and the children after her keep the play in trust, to be given the
world a hundred years from the date of his death."
* * * * *
Pursuivant cleared his throat. "I was under the impression that Byron
had only one child by Claire Clairmont, Mr. Varduk. Allegra, who died
so tragically at the age of six."
"He had two," was Varduk's decisive reply. "A son survived, and had
issue."
"Wasn't Claire's son by Shelley?" asked Pursuivant.
Varduk shook his curly head. "No, by Lord Byron." He paused and drew
a gentle breath, as if to give emphasis to what he was going to add.
Then: "I am descended from that son, ladies and gentlemen. I am the
great-grandson of Lord Byron."
He sank back into his shadows once more and let his luminous face seem
again like a disembodied mask against the dark tapestry. He let us be
dazzled by his announcement for some seconds. Then he spoke again.
"However, to return to our play. Summer is at hand, and the opening
will take place at the Lake Jozgid Theater, in July, later to come
to town with the autumn. All agreed? Ready to discuss contracts?"
He looked around the circle, picking up our affirmative nods with
his intensely understanding eyes. "Very good. Call again tomorrow.
Mr. Davidson, my assistant, will have the documents and all further
information."
Jake Switz was first to leave, hurrying to telephone announcements to
all the morning newspapers. Sigrid, rising, smiled at me with real
warmth.
"So nice to see you again, Gib. Do not bother to leave with me--my
suite is here in this hotel."
She bade Varduk good-night, nodded to the others and left quickly.
I watched her departure with what must have been very apparent and
foolish ruefulness on my face. It was the voice of Judge Pursuivant
that recalled me to my surroundings.
"I've seen and admired your motion pictures, Mr. Connatt," he said
graciously. "Shall we go out together? Perhaps I can persuade you to
join me in another of my enthusiasms--late food and drink."
We made our adieux and departed. In the bar of the hotel we found a
quiet table, where my companion scanned the liquor list narrowly and
ordered samples of three Scotch whiskies. The waiter brought them. The
judge sniffed each experimentally, and finally made his choice.
"Two of those, and soda--no ice," he directed. "Something to eat, Mr.
Connatt? No? Waiter, bring me some of the cold tongue with potato
salad." Smiling, he turned back to me. "Good living is my greatest
pursuit."
"Greater than scholarship?"
He nodded readily. "However, I don't mean that tonight's visit with Mr.
Varduk was not something to rouse any man's interest. It was full of
good meat for any antiquary's appetite. By the way, were you surprized
when he said that he was descended from Lord Byron?"
"Now that you mention it, I wasn't," I replied. "He's the most Byronic
individual I have ever met."
"Right. Of course, the physical resemblances might be accidental, the
manner a pose. But in any case, he's highly picturesque, and from what
little I can learn about him, he's eminently capable as well. You feel
lucky in being with him in this venture?"
I felt like confiding in this friendly, tawny man. "Judge Pursuivant,"
I said honestly, "any job is a godsend to me just now."
"Then let me congratulate you, and warn you."
"Warn me?"
"Here's your whisky," he said suddenly, and was silent while he himself
mixed the spirit with the soda. Handing me a glass, he lifted the other
in a silent toasting gesture. We drank, and then I repeated, "Warn me,
you were saying, sir?"
"Yes." He tightened his wide, intelligent mouth under the feline
mustache. "It's this play, _Ruthven_."
"What about it?"
His plate of tongue and salad was set before him at this juncture. He
lifted a morsel on his fork and tasted it.
"This is very good, Mr. Connatt. You should have tried some. Where were
we? Oh, yes, about _Ruthven_. I was quite unreserved in my opinion,
wasn't I?"
"So it seemed when you offered to stake your reputation on the
manuscript being genuine."
"So I did," he agreed, cutting a slice of tongue into mouthfuls. "And
I meant just that. What I saw of the play was Byronic in content,
albeit creepy enough to touch even an occultist with a shiver. The
handwriting, too, was undoubtedly Byron's. Yet I felt like staking my
reputation on something else."
He paused and we each had a sip of whisky. His recourse to the liquor
seemed to give him words for what he wished to say.
"It's a paradox, Mr. Connatt, and I am by no means so fond of paradoxes
as was my friend, the late Gilbert Chesterton; but, while Byron most
certainly wrote _Ruthven_, he wrote it on paper that was watermarked
less than ten years ago."
_4. Into the Country_
The judge would not enlarge upon his perplexing statement, but he
would and did play the most genial host I had ever known since the
extravagant days of Hollywood. We had a number of drinks, and he
complimented me on my steadiness of hand and head. When we parted I
slept well in my little room that already seemed more cheerful.
Before noon the following day I returned to Varduk's hotel. Only
Davidson was there, and he was far more crisp and to the point than
he had been when his chief was present. I accepted the salary figure
already set down on my contract form, signed my name, received a copy
of the play and left.
After my frugal lunch--I was still living on the money Jake Switz
had lent me--I walked to the library and searched out a copy of
_Contemporary Americans_. Varduk's name I did not find, and wondered
at that until the thought occurred that he, a descendant of Byron, was
undoubtedly a British subject. Before giving up the volume I turned to
the P's. This time my search bore fruit:
PURSUIVANT, Keith Hilary; b. 1891, Richmond, Va., only son
of Hilary Pursuivant (b. 1840, Pursuivant Landing, Ky.; Col.
and Maj.-Gen., Va. Volunteer Infantry, 1861-65; attorney and
journalist; d. 1898) and Anne Elizabeth (Keith) Pursuivant (b.
1864, Edinburgh; d. 1891).
Educ. Richmond pub. sch., Lawrenceville and Yale. A. B., male,
1908. Phi Beta Kappa, Skulls and Bones, football, forensics. LL.
B., Columbia, 1911. Ph. D., Oxford, 1922. Admitted to Virginia bar,
1912. Elected 1914, Judge district court, Richmond. Resigned, 1917,
to enter army. Major, Intelligence Div., U. S. A., 1917-19, D. S.
C., Cong. Medal of Honor, _Legion d'Honneur_ (Fr.). Ret. legal
practice, 1919.
Author: _The Unknown That Terrifies_, _Cannibalism in America_,
_Vampyricon_, _An Indictment of Logic_, etc.
Clubs: Lambs, Inkhorn, Gastronomics, Saber.
Hobbies: Food, antiquaries, demonology, fencing.
Protestant. Independent, Unmarried.
Address: Low Haven, RFD No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.
Thus the clean-picked skeleton of a life history; yet it was no hard
task to restore some of its tissues, even coax it to life. Son of a
Southern aristocrat who was a soldier while young and a lawyer and
writer when mature, orphaned of his Scotch mother in the first year of
his existence--had she died in giving him life?--Keith Pursuivant was
born, it seemed, to distinction. To graduate from Yale in 1908 he must
have been one of the youngest men in his class, if not the youngest;
yet, at seventeen, he was an honor student, an athlete, member of
an exclusive senior society and an orator. After that, law school,
practise and election to the bench of his native community at the
unheard-of age of twenty-three.
Then the World War, that sunderer of career-chains and remolder of men.
The elder Pursuivant had been a colonel at twenty-one, a major-general
before twenty-five; Keith, his son, deserting his brilliant legal
career, was a major at twenty-six, but in the corps of brain-soldiers
that matched wits with an empire. That he came off well in the contest
was witnessed by his decorations, earnest of valor and resource.
"Ret. legal practise, 1919." So he did not remain in his early
profession, even though it promised so well. What then? Turn back for
the answer. "Ph. D., Oxford, 1922." His new love was scholarship.
He became an author and philosopher. His interests included the
trencher--I had seen him eat and drink with hearty pleasure--the study
hall, the steel blade.
What else? "Protestant"--religion was his, but not narrowly so, or
he would have been specific about a single sect. "Independent"--his
political adventures had not bound him to any party. "Unmarried"--he
had lived too busily for love? Or had he known it, and lost? I, too,
was unmarried, and I was well past thirty. "Address: Low Haven"--a
country home, apparently pretentious enough to bear a name like a
manor house. Probably comfortable, withdrawn, full of sturdy furniture
and good books, with a well-stocked pantry and cellar.
I felt that I had learned something about the man, and I was desirous
of learning more.
* * * * *
On the evening mail I received an envelope addressed in Jake Switz's
jagged handwriting. Inside were half a dozen five-dollar bills and a
railway ticket, on the back of which was scribbled in pencil: "Take
the 9 a. m. train at Grand Central. I'll meet you at the Dillard Falls
Junction with a car. J. Switz."
I blessed the friendly heart of Sigrid's little serf, and went home to
pack. The room clerk seemed surprized and relieved when I checked out
in the morning, paying him in full. I reached the station early and
got on the train, securing a good seat in the smoking-car. Many were
boarding the car, but none looked at me, not even the big fellow who
seated himself into position at my side. Six years before I had been
mobbed as I stepped off the Twentieth Century Limited in this very
station--a hundred women had rent away my coat and shirt in rags for
souvenirs----
"Would you let me have a match, Mr. Connatt?" asked a voice I had heard
before. My companion's pale blue eyes were turned upon me, and he was
tucking a trusty-looking pipe beneath his blond mustache.
"Judge Pursuivant!" I cried, with a pleasure I did not try to disguise.
"You here--it's like one of those Grand Hotel plays."
"Not so much coincidence as that," he smiled, taking the match I had
found. "You see, I am still intrigued by the paradox we discussed the
other night; I mean, the riddle of how and when _Ruthven_ was set down.
It so happens that an old friend of mine has a cabin near the Lake
Jozgid Theater, and I need a vacation." He drew a cloud of comforting
smoke. "Judiciously I accepted his invitation to stay there. You and I
shall be neighbors."
"Good ones, I hope," was my warm rejoinder, as I lighted a cigarette
from the match he still held.
By the time our train clanked out of the subterranean caverns of Grand
Central Station, we were deep in pleasant talk. At my earnest plea, the
judge discussed Lord Byron.
"A point in favor of the genuineness of the document," he began, "is
that Byron was exactly the sort of man who would conceive and write a
play like _Ruthven_."
"With the semi-vampire plot?" I asked. "I always thought that England
of his time had just about forgotten about vampires."
"Yes, but Byron fetched them back into the national mind. Remember,
he traveled in Greece as a young man, and the belief was strong in
that part of the world. In a footnote to _The Giaour_--you'll find his
footnotes in any standard edition of his works--he discusses vampires."
"Varduk spoke of those who fancied Byron to be the devil," I remembered.
"They may have had more than fancy to father the thought. Not that
I do not admire Byron, for his talents and his achievements; but
something of a diabolic curse hangs over him. Why," and Pursuivant
warmed instantly to the discussion, "his very family history reads
like a Gothic novel. His father was 'Mad Jack' Byron, the most sinful
man of his generation; his grandfather was Admiral 'Foul-weather Jack'
Byron, about whose ill luck at sea is more than a suggestion of divine
displeasure. The title descended to Byron from his great-uncle, the
'Wicked Lord,' who was a murderer, a libertine, a believer in evil
spirits, and perhaps a practising diabolist. The family seat, Newstead
Abbey, had been the retreat of medieval monks, and when those monks
were driven from it they may have cursed their dispossessors. In any
case, it had ghosts and a 'Devil's Wood.'"
"Byron was just the man for that heritage," I observed.
"He certainly was. As a child he carried pistols in his pockets and
longed to kill someone. As a youth he chained a bear and a wolf at
his door, drank wine from a human skull, and mocked religion by
wearing a monk's habit to orgies. His unearthly beauty, his mocking
tongue, fitted in with his wickedness and his limp to make him seem an
incarnation of the hoofed Satan. As for his sins----" The judge broke
off in contemplation of them.
"Nobody knows them all," I reminded.
"Perhaps he repented," mused my companion. "At least he seems to have
forgotten his light loves and dark pleasures, turned to good works and
the effort to liberate the Greeks from their Turkish oppressors. If he
began life like an imp, he finished like a hero. I hope that he was
sincere in that change, and not too late."
I expressed the desire to study Byron's life and writings, and
Pursuivant opened his suitcase on the spot to lend me Drinkwater's and
Maurois' biographies, a copy of the collected poems, and his own work,
_A Defense of the Wickedest Poet_.
We ate lunch together in the dining-car, Pursuivant pondering his choice
from the menu as once he must have pondered his decision in a case at
court. When he made his selection, he devoured it with the same gusto I
had observed before. "Food may be a necessity," quoth he between bites,
"but the enjoyment of it is a blessing."
"You have other enjoyments," I reminded him. "Study, fencing----"
That brought on a discussion of the sword as weapon and symbol. My
own swordsmanship is no better or worse than that of most actors, and
Pursuivant was frank in condemning most stage fencers.
"I dislike to see a clumsy lout posturing through the duel scenes
of _Cyrano de Bergerac_ or _Hamlet_," he growled. "No offense, Mr.
Connatt. I confess that you, in your motion-picture interpretation
of the rôle of Don Cæsar de Bazan, achieved some very convincing
cut-and-thrust. From what I saw, you have an understanding of the
sport. Perhaps you and I can have a bout or so between your rehearsals."
I said that I would be honored, and then we had to collect our luggage
and change trains. An hour or more passed on the new road before we
reached our junction.
* * * * *
Jake Switz was there as he had promised to be, at the wheel of a sturdy
repainted car. He greeted us with a triumphant story of his astuteness
in helping Elmo Davidson to bargain for the vehicle, broke off to
invite Pursuivant to ride with us to his cabin, and then launched into
a hymn of praise for Sigrid's early rehearsals of her rôle.
"Nobody in America seems to think she ever made anything but movies,"
he pointed out. "At home in Sweden, though, she did deep stuff--Ibsen
and them guys--and her only a kid then. You wait, Gib, she'll knock
from the theater public their eyes out with her class."
The road from the junction was deep-set between hills, and darkly
hedged with high trees. "This makes the theater hard to get at," Jake
pointed out as he drove. "People will have to make a regular pilgrimage
to see Holgar play in _Ruthven_, and they'll like it twice as well
because of all the trouble they took."
Pursuivant left us at the head of a little path, with a small
structure of logs showing through the trees beyond. We waved good-bye
to him, and Jake trod on his starter once more. As we rolled away, he
glanced sidewise at me. His crossed eyes behind their thick lenses had
grown suddenly serious.
"Only one night Sigrid and I been here, Gib," he said, somewhat darkly,
"and I don't like it."
"Don't tell me you're haunted," I rallied him, laughing. "That's good
press-agentry for a horror play, but I'm one of the actors. I won't be
buying tickets."
He did not laugh in return.
"I won't say haunted, Gib. That means ordinary ghosts, and whatever is
here at the theater is worse than ghosts. Listen what happened."
_5. Jake's Story_
Sigrid, with Jake in attendance as usual, had left New York on the
morning after Varduk's reading of _Ruthven_. They had driven in the
car Jake had helped Davidson to buy, and thus they avoided the usual
throngs of Sigrid's souvenir-demanding public, which would have
complicated their departure by train. At Dillard Falls Junction, Varduk
himself awaited them, having come up on a night train. Jake took time
to mail me a ticket and money, then they drove the long, shadowy way to
the theater.
Lake Jozgid, as most rural New Yorkers know, is set rather low among
wooded hills and bluffs. The unevenness of the country and the poverty
of the soil have discouraged cultivation, so that farms and villages
are few. As the party drove, Varduk suggested an advantage in this
remoteness, which suggestion Jake later passed on to Judge Pursuivant
and me; where a less brilliant or more accessible star might be ignored
in such far quarters, Sigrid would find Lake Jozgid to her advantage.
The world would beat a path to her box office, and treasure a glimpse
of her the more because that glimpse had been difficult of attainment.
The theater building itself had been a great two-story lodge, made of
heavy logs and hand-hewn planks. Some sporting-club, now defunct, had
owned it, then abandoned it when fish grew scarce in the lake. Varduk
had leased it cheaply, knocked out all partitions on the ground floor,
and set up a stage, a lobby and pew-like benches. The upper rooms would
serve as lodgings for himself and his associate Davidson, while small
out-buildings had been fitted up to accommodate the rest of us.
Around this group of structures clung a thick mass of timber. Sigrid,
who had spent her girlhood among Sweden's forests, pointed out that
it was mostly virgin and inquired why a lumber company had never cut
logs here. Varduk replied that the property had been private for many
years, then changed the subject by the welcome suggestion that they
have dinner. They had brought a supply of provisions, and Jake, who is
something of a cook in addition to his many other professions, prepared
a meal. Both Sigrid and Jake ate heartily, but Varduk seemed only to
take occasional morsels for politeness' sake.
In the evening, a full moon began to rise across the lake. Sitting
together in Varduk's upstairs parlor, the three saw the great soaring
disk of pale light, and Sigrid cried out joyfully that she wanted to go
out and see better.
"Take a lantern if you go out at night," counseled Varduk over his
cigar.
"A lantern?" Sigrid repeated. "But that would spoil the effect of the
moonlight."
Her new director blew a smooth ring of smoke and stared into its
center, as though a message lay there. Then he turned his brilliant
eyes to her. "If you are wise, you will do as I say," he made answer.
Men like Varduk are masterful and used to being obeyed. Sometimes
they lose sight of the fact that women like Sigrid are not used to
being given arbitrary commands without explanation. She fell silent
and a little frigid for half an hour--often I had seen her just as
Jake was describing her. Then she rose and excused herself, saying
that she was tired from the morning's long drive and would go to bed
early. Varduk rose and courteously bowed her to the stairs. Since her
sleeping-quarters, a cleverly rebuilt wood-shed, were hardly a dozen
steps from the rear of the lodge building itself, neither man thought
it necessary to accompany her.
Left alone, Varduk and Jake carried on an idle conversation, mostly
about publicity plans. Jake, who in the show business had done
successfully almost everything but acting, found in his companion a
rather penetrating and accurate commentator on this particular aspect
of production. Indeed, Varduk debated him into a new attitude--one of
restraint and dignity instead of novel and insistent extravagance.
"You're right," Jake announced at length. "I'm going to get the
releases that go out in tomorrow's mail. I'll cut out every
'stupendous' and 'colossal' I wrote into them. Good night, Mr. Varduk."
He, too, trotted downstairs and left the main building for his own
sleeping-room, which was the loft of an old boathouse. As he turned
toward the water, he saw a figure walking slowly and dreamily along its
edge--Sigrid, her hands tucked into the pockets of the light belted
coat she had donned against possible night chills, her head flung back
as though she sought all of the moonlight upon her rapt face.
Although she had wandered out to the brink of the sandy beach and so
stood in the open brightness, clumps of bushes and young trees grew
out almost to the lake. One tufty belt of scrub willow extended from
the denser timber to a point within a dozen feet of Sigrid. It made
a screen of gloom between Jake's viewpoint and the moon's spray of
silver. Yet, he could see, light was apparently soaking through its
close-set leaves, a streak of soft radiance that was so filtered as to
look murky, greenish, like the glow from rotting salmon.
* * * * *
Even as Jake noticed this flecky glimmer, it seemed to open up like a
fan or a parasol. Instead of a streak, it was a blot. This extended
further, lazily but noticeably. Jake scowled. And this moved lakeward,
without leaving any of itself at the starting-point.
With its greatening came somewhat of a brightening, which revealed
that the phenomenon had some sort of shape--or perhaps the shape was
defining itself as it moved. The blot's edges grew unevenly, receding
in places to swell in others. Jake saw that these swellings sprouted
into pseudopodal extensions (to quote him, they "jellied out"), that
stirred as though groping or reaching. And at the top was a squat
roundness, like an undeveloped cranium. The lower rays of light
became limbs, striking at the ground as though to walk. The thing
counterfeited life, motion--and attention. It was moving toward the
water, and toward Sigrid.
Jake did not know what it was, and he says that he was suddenly and
extremely frightened. Yet he does not seem to have acted like one who
is stricken with fear. What he did, and did at once, was to bawl out a
warning to Sigrid, then charge at the mystery.
It had stolen into the moonlight, and Jake encountered it there. As he
charged, he tried to make out the details; but what little it had had
of details in the darkness now went misty, as its glow was conquered
in the brighter flood of moonglow. Yet it was there, and moving toward
Sigrid. She had turned from looking across the water, and now shrank
back with a tremulous cry, stumbling and recovering herself ankle-deep
in the shallows.
Jake, meanwhile, had flung himself between her and what was coming out
of the thicket. He did not wait or even set himself for conflict, but
changed direction to face and spring upon the threatening presence.
Though past his first youth, he fancied himself as in fairly tough
condition, and more than once he had won such impromptu fist-fights as
spring up among the too-temperamental folk of the theater. He attacked
as he would against a human adversary, sinking his head between his
shoulders and flinging his fists in quick succession.
He got home solidly, against something tangible but sickeningly loose
beneath its smooth skin or rind. It was like buffeting a sack half full
of meal. Though the substance sank in beneath his knuckles, there was
no reeling or retreat. A squashy return slap almost enveloped his face,
and his spectacles came away as though by suction. At the same time
he felt a cable-like embrace, such as he had imagined a python might
exert. He smelled putrescence, was close to being sick, and heard, just
behind him, the louder screaming of Sigrid.
The fresh knowledge of her danger and terror made him strong again. One
arm was free, and he battered gamely with his fist. He found his mark,
twice and maybe three times. Then his sickness became faintness when he
realized that his knuckles had become slimy wet.
A new force dragged at him behind. Another enemy ... then a terrible
voice of command, the voice of Varduk:
"Let go at once!"
The grasp and the filthy bulk fell away from Jake. He felt his knees
waver like shreds of paper. His eyes, blurred without their thick
spectacles, could barely discern, not one, but several lumpy forms
drawing back. And near him stood Varduk, his facial phosphorescence
out-gleaming the rotten light of the creatures, his form drawn up
sternly in a posture of command.
"Get out!" cried Varduk again. "By what power do you come for your
victim now?"
[Illustration: "Get out!" cried Varduk again. "By what power do you
come for your victim now?"]
The uncouth shapes shrank out of sight. Jake could not be sure whether
they found shelter behind bushes and trees or not; perhaps they
actually faded into invisibility. Sigrid had come close, stepping
gingerly in her wet shoes, and stooped to retrieve Jake's fallen
glasses.
"We owe you our lives," she said to Varduk. "What were those----"
"Never mind," he cut her off. "They will threaten you no more tonight.
Go to your beds, and be more careful in the future."
* * * * *
This was the story that Jake told me as we drove the final miles to the
Lake Jozgid Theater.
He admitted that it had all been a desperate and indistinct scramble
to him, and that explanation he had offered next morning when Varduk
laughed and accused him of dreaming.
"But maybe it wasn't a dream," Jake said as he finished. "Even if it
was, I don't want any more dreams like it."
_6. The Theater in the Forest_
Jake's narrative did not give me cheerful expectations of the Lake
Jozgid Theater. It was just as well, for my first glimpse of the
place convinced me that it was the exact setting for a play of morbid
unreality.
The road beyond Pursuivant's cabin was narrow but not too bad. Jake,
driving nimbly over its sanded surface, told me that we might thank
the public works program for its good condition. In one or two places,
as I think I have said already, the way was cut deeply between knolls
or bluffs, and here it was gloomy and almost sunless. Too, the woods
thickened to right and left, with taller and taller ranks of trees
at the roadside. Springtime's leafage made the trees seem vigorous,
but not exactly cheerful; I fancied that they were endowed with
intelligence and the power of motion, and that they awaited only our
passing before they moved out to block the open way behind us.
From this sand-surfaced road there branched eventually a second, and
even narrower and darker, that dipped down a thickly timbered slope. We
took a rather difficult curve at the bottom and came out almost upon
the shore of the lake, with the old lodge and its out-buildings in
plain view.
These structures were in the best of repair, but appeared intensely
dark and weathered, as though the afternoon sky shed a brownish light
upon them. The lodge that was now the theater stood clear in the center
of the sizable cleared space, although lush-looking clumps and belts
of evergreen scrub grew almost against the sheds and the boathouse.
I was enough of an observer to be aware that the deep roofs were of
stout ax-cut shingles, and that the heavy timbers of the walls were
undoubtedly seasoned for an age. The windows were large but deep-set
in their sturdy frames. Those who call windows the eyes of a house
would have thought that these eyes were large enough, but well able to
conceal the secrets and feelings within.
As we emerged from the car, I felt rather than saw an onlooker. Varduk
stood in the wide front door of the lodge building. Neither Jake nor I
could agree later whether he had opened the door himself and appeared,
whether he had stepped into view with the door already open, or whether
he had been standing there all the time. His slender, elegant figure
was dressed in dark jacket and trousers, with a black silk scarf draped
Ascot fashion at his throat, just as he had worn at his hotel in New
York. When he saw that we were aware of him, he lifted a white hand
in greeting and descended two steps to meet us coming toward him. I
offered him my hand, and he gave it a quick, sharp pressure, as though
he were investigating the texture of my flesh and bone.
"I am glad to see you here so soon, Mr. Connatt," he said cordially.
"Now we need wait only for Miss Vining, who should arrive before dark.
Miss Holgar came yesterday, and Davidson this morning."
"There will be only the six of us, then?" I asked.
He nodded his chestnut curls. "A caretaker will come here each day, to
prepare lunch and dinner and to clean. He lives several miles up the
road, and will spend his nights at home. But we of the play itself will
be in residence, and we alone--a condition fully in character, I feel,
with the attitude of mystery and reserve we have assumed toward our
interesting production. For breakfasts, Davidson will be able to look
after us."
"Huh!" grunted Jake. "That Davidson can act, manage, stage-hand,
cook--he does everything."
"Almost everything," said Varduk dryly, and his eyes turned long and
expressionlessly upon my friend, who immediately subsided. In the
daylight I saw that Varduk's eyes were hazel; on the night I had met
him at his hotel they had seemed thunder-dark.
"You, too, are considered useful at many things around the theater,
Switz," Varduk continued. "I took that into consideration when Miss
Holgar, though she left her maid behind, insisted on including you in
the company. I daresay, we can depend on you to help Davidson with the
staging and so on."
"Oh, yes, sure," Jake made reply. "Certainly. Miss Holgar, she wants me
to do that."
"Very good." Varduk turned on the heel of his well-polished boot.
"Suppose," he added over his shoulder, "that you take Mr. Connatt up
to the loft of the boathouse. Mr. Connatt, do you mind putting up with
Switz?"
"Not in the least," I assured him readily, and took up two of my bags.
Jake had already lifted the third and heaviest.
We nodded to Varduk and skirted the side of the lodge, walked down
to the water, then entered the boathouse. It was a simple affair of
well-chinked logs. Two leaky-looking canoes still occupied the lower
part of it, but we picked our way past them and ascended a sturdy
staircase to a loft under the peaked roof. This had been finished
with wall-board and boasted a window at each end. Two cots, a rug,
a wash-stand, a table and several chairs made it an acceptable
sleeping-apartment.
"This theater is half-way to the never-never land," I commented as I
began to unpack.
"I should live so--I never saw the like of it," Jake said earnestly.
"How are people going to find their way here? Yesterday I began to talk
about signs by the side of the road. Right off at once, Varduk said no.
I begged like a poor relation left out of his uncle's will. Finally he
said yes--but the signs must be small and dignified, and put up only a
day before the show begins."
I wanted to ask a question about his adventure of the previous night,
but Jake shook his head in refusal to discuss it. "Not here," he said.
"Gib, who knows who may be listening?" He dropped his voice. "Or even
_what_ might be listening?"
I lapsed into silence and got out old canvas sneakers, flannel slacks
and a Norfolk jacket, and changed into them. Dressed in this easy
manner, I left the boathouse and stood beside the lake. At once a voice
hailed me. Sigrid was walking along the water's edge, smiling in
apparent delight.
* * * * *
We came face to face; I bent to kiss her hand. As once before, it
fluttered under my lips, but when I straightened again I saw nothing of
distaste or unsteadiness in her expression.
"Gib, how nice that you're here!" she cried. "Do you like the place?"
"I haven't seen very much of it yet," I told her. "I want to see the
inside of the theater."
She took her hand away from me and thrust it into the pocket of the
old white sweater she wore. "I think that I love it here," she said,
with an air of gay confession. "Not all of the hermit stories about
me are lies. I could grow truly fat--God save the mark!--on quiet and
serenity."
"Varduk pleases you, too?" I suggested.
"He has more understanding than any other theatrical executive in my
experience," she responded emphatically. "He fills me with the wish to
work. I'm like a starry-eyed beginner again. What would you say if I
told you that I was sweeping my own room and making my own bed?"
"I would say that you were the most charming housemaid in the world."
Her laughter was full of delight. "You sound as if you mean it, Gib. It
is nice to know you as a friend again."
It seemed to me that she emphasized the word "friend" a trifle, as
though to warn me that our relationship would nevermore become closer
than that. Changing the subject, I asked her if she had swum in the
lake; she had, and found it cold. How about seeing the theater?
Together we walked toward the lodge and entered at a side door.
The auditorium was as Jake had described it to me, and I saw that
Varduk liked a dark tone. He had stained the paneling, the benches, and
the beams a dark brown. Brown, too, was the heavy curtain that hid the
stage.
"We'll be there tonight," said Sigrid, nodding stageward. "Varduk
has called the first rehearsal for immediately after dinner. We eat
together, of course, in a big room upstairs."
"May I sit next to you when we eat?" I asked, and she laughed yet
again. She was being as cheerful as I had ever known her to be.
"You sound like the student-hero in a light opera, Gib. I don't know
about the seating-arrangement. Last night I was at the head of the
table, and Varduk at the foot. Jake and Mr. Davidson were at either
side of me."
"I shall certainly arrive before one or the other of them," I vowed
solemnly.
Varduk had drifted in as we talked, and he chuckled at my announcement.
"A gallant note, Mr. Connatt, and one that I hope you can capture as
pleasantly for the romantic passages of our _Ruthven_. By the bye, our
first rehearsal will take place this evening."
"So Miss Holgar has told me," I nodded. "I have studied the play
rather prayerfully since Davidson gave me a copy. I hope I'm not a
disappointment in it."
"I am sure that you will not be," he said kindly. "I did not choose
disappointing people for my cast."
Davidson entered from the front, to say that Martha Vining had arrived.
Varduk moved away, stiff in his walk as I had observed before. Sigrid
and I went through the side door and back into the open.
That evening I kept my promise to find a place by Sigrid at the table.
Davidson, entering just behind me, looked a trifle chagrined but sat at
my other side, with Martha Vining opposite. The dinner was good, with
roast mutton, salad and apple tart. I thought of Judge Pursuivant's
healthy appetite as I ate.
After the coffee, Varduk nodded to the old man who served as caretaker,
cook and waiter, as in dismissal. Then the producer's hazel eyes turned
to Sigrid, who took her cue and rose. We did likewise.
"Shall we go down to the stage?" Varduk said to us. "It's time for our
first effort with _Ruthven_."
_7. Rehearsal_
We went down a back stairway that brought us to the empty stage. A
light was already burning, and I remember well that my first impression
was of the stage's narrowness and considerable depth. Its back was
of plaster over the outer timbers, but at either side partitions of
paneling had been erected to enclose the cell-like dressing-rooms. One
of the doors bore a star of white paint, evidently for Sigrid. Against
the back wall leaned several open frames of wood, with rolls of canvas
lying ready to be tacked on and painted into scenery.
Varduk had led the way down the stairs, and at the foot he paused to
call upward to Davidson, who remained at the rear of the procession.
"Fetch some chairs," he ordered, and the tall subordinate paused to
gather them. He carried down six at once, his long strong arms threaded
through their open backs. Varduk showed him with silent gestures where
to arrange them, and himself led Sigrid to the midmost of them, upstage
center.
"Sit down, all," he said to the rest of us. "Curtain, Davidson." He
waited while the heavy pall rolled ponderously upward against the top
of the arch. "Have you got your scripts, ladies and gentlemen?"
We all had, but his hands were empty. I started to offer him my
copy, but he waved it away with thanks. "I know the thing by heart,"
he informed me, though with no air of boasting. Remaining still upon
his feet, he looked around our seated array, capturing every eye and
attention.
"The first part of _Ruthven_ is, as we know already, in iambic
pentameter--the 'heroic verse' that was customary and even expected
in dramas of Byron's day. However, he employs here his usual trick of
breaking the earlier lines up into short, situation-building speeches.
No long and involved declamations, as in so many creaky tragedies of
his fellows. He wrote the same sort of opening scenes for his plays the
world has already seen performed--_Werner_, _The Two Foscari_, _Marino
Faliero_ and _The Deformed Transformed_."
Martha Vining cleared her throat. "Doesn't _Manfred_ begin with a long,
measured soliloquy by the central character?"
"It does," nodded Varduk. "I am gratified, Miss Vining, to observe that
you have been studying something of Byron's work." He paused, and she
bridled in satisfaction. "However," he continued, somewhat maliciously,
"you would be well advised to study farther, and learn that Byron
stated definitely that _Manfred_ was not written for the theater. But,
returning to _Ruthven_, with which work we are primarily concerned, the
short, lively exchanges at the beginning are Aubrey's and Malvina's."
He quoted from memory. "'Scene, Malvina's garden. Time, late
afternoon--Aubrey, sitting at Malvina's feet, tells his adventures.'
Very good, Mr. Connatt, take your place at Miss Holgar's feet."
I did so, and she smiled in comradely fashion while waiting for the
others to drag their chairs away. Glancing at our scripts, we began:
"I'm no Othello, darling."
"Yet I am
Your Desdemona. Tell me of your travels."
"Of Anthropophagi?"
"'And men whose heads do grow beneath----'"
"I saw no such,
Not in all wildest Greece and Macedon."
"Saw you no spirits?"
"None, Malvina--none."
"Not even the vampire, he who quaffs the blood
Of life, that he may live in death?"
"Not I.
How do you know that tale?"
"I've read
In old romances----"
"Capital, capital," interrupted Varduk pleasantly. "I know that
the play is written in a specific meter, yet you need not speak as
though it were. If anything, make the lines less rhythmic and more
matter-of-fact. Remember, you are young lovers, half bantering as you
woo. Let your audience relax with you. Let it feel the verse form
without actually hearing."
We continued, to the line where Aubrey tells of his travel-acquaintance
Ruthven. Here the speech became definite verse:
"He is a friend who charms, but does not cheer,
One who commands, but comforts not, the world.
I do not doubt but women find him handsome,
Yet hearts must be uneasy at his glance."
Malvina asks:
"His glance? Is it so piercing when it strikes?"
And Aubrey:
"It does not pierce--indeed, it rather weighs,
Like lead, upon the face where it is fixed."
Followed the story, which I have outlined elsewhere, of the encounter
with bandits and Ruthven's apparent sacrifice of himself to cover
Aubrey's retreat. Then Martha Vining, as the maid Bridget, spoke to
announce Ruthven's coming, and upon the heels of her speech Varduk
moved stiffly toward us.
"Aubrey!" he cried, in a rich, ringing tone such as fills theaters, and
not at all like his ordinary gentle voice. I made my due response:
"Have you lived, Ruthven? But the horde
Of outlaw warriors compassed you and struck----"
In the rôle of Ruthven, Varduk's interruption was as natural and
decisive as when, in ordinary conversation, he neatly cut another's
speech in two with a remark of his own. I have already quoted this
reply of Ruthven's:
"I faced them, and who seeks my face seeks death."
He was speaking the line, of course, without script, and his eyes
held mine. Despite myself, I almost staggered under the weight
of his glance. It was like that which Aubrey actually credits to
Ruthven--lead-heavy instead of piercing, difficult to support.
The rehearsal went on, with Ruthven's seduction of Bridget and his
court to the nervous but fascinated Malvina. In the end, as I have
synopsized earlier, came his secret and miraculous revival from
seeming death. Varduk delivered the final rather terrifying speech
magnificently, and then abruptly doffed his Ruthven manner to smile
congratulations all around.
"It's more than a month to our opening date in July," he said, "and yet
I would be willing to present this play as a finished play, no later
than this day week. Miss Holgar, may I voice my special appreciation?
Mr. Connatt, your confessed fear of your own inadequacy is proven
groundless. Bravo, Miss Vining--and you, Davidson." His final tag of
praise to his subordinate seemed almost grudging. "Now for the second
act of the thing. No verse this time, my friends. Finish the rehearsal
as well as you have begun."
"Wait," I said. "How about properties? I simulated the club-stroke in
the first act, but this time I need a sword. For the sake of feeling
the action better----"
"Yes, of course," granted Varduk. "There's one in the corner
dressing-room." He pointed. "Go fetch it, Davidson."
Davidson complied. The sword was a cross-hilt affair, old but keen and
bright.
"This isn't a prop at all," I half objected. "It's the real thing.
Won't it be dangerous?"
"Oh, I think we can risk it," Varduk replied carelessly. "Let's get on
with the rehearsal. A hundred years later, in the same garden. Swithin
and Mary, descendants of Aubrey and Malvina, on-stage."
* * * * *
We continued. The opening, again with Sigrid and myself a-wooing,
was lively and even brilliant. Martha Vining, in her rôle of the
centenarian Bridget, skilfully cracked her voice and infused a
witch-like quality into her telling of the Aubrey-Ruthven tale. Again
the entrance of Ruthven, his suavity and apparent friendliness, his
manner changing as he is revealed as the resurrected fiend of another
age; finally the clash with me, as Swithin.
I spoke my line--"My ancestor killed you once, Ruthven. I can do the
same today." Then I poked at him with the sword.
Varduk smiled and interjected, "Rather a languid thrust, that, Mr.
Connatt. Do you think it will seem serious from the viewpoint of our
audience?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I was afraid I might hurt you."
"Fear nothing, Mr. Connatt. Take the speech and the swordplay again."
I did so, but he laughed almost in scorn. "You still put no life into
the thrust." He spread his hands, as if to offer himself as a target.
"Once more. Don't be an old woman."
Losing a bit of my temper, I made a genuine lunge. My right foot glided
forward and my weight shifted to follow my point. But in mid-motion I
knew myself for a danger-dealing fool, tried to recover, failed, and
slipped.
I almost fell at full length--would have fallen had Varduk not been
standing in my way. My sword-point, completely out of control, drove
at the center of his breast--I felt it tear through cloth, through
flesh----
A moment later his slender hands had caught my floundering body and
pushed it back upon its feet. My sword, wedged in something, snatched
its hilt from my hand. Sick and horrified, I saw it protruding from the
midst of Varduk's body. Behind me I heard the choked squeal of Martha
Vining, and an oath from Jake Switz. I swayed, my vision seemed to swim
in smoky liquid, and I suppose I was well on the way to an unmasculine
swoon. But a light chuckle, in Varduk's familiar manner, saved me from
collapsing.
"That is exactly the way to do it, Mr. Connatt," he said in a tone of
well-bred applause.
He drew the steel free--I think that he had to wrench rather hard--and
then stepped forward to extend the hilt.
"There's blood on it," I mumbled sickly.
"Oh, that?" he glanced down at the blade. "Just a deceit for the sake
of realism. You arranged the false-blood device splendidly, Davidson."
He pushed the hilt into my slack grasp. "Look, the imitation gore is
already evaporating."
So it was, like dew on a hot stone. Already the blade shone bright and
clean.
"Very good," said Varduk. "Climax now. Miss Holgar, I think it is your
line."
She, too, had been horrified by the seeming catastrophe, but she came
gamely up to the bit where Mary pleads for Swithin's life, offering
herself as the price. Half a dozen exchanges between Ruthven and Mary,
thus:
"You give yourself up, then?"
"I do."
"You renounce your former manners, hopes and wishes?"
"I do."
"You will swear so, upon the book yonder?" (Here Ruthven points to a
Bible, open on the garden-seat.)
"I do." (Mary touches the Bible.)
"You submit to the powers I represent?"
"I know only the power to which I pray. 'Our Father, which wert in
heaven----'"
Sigrid, as I say, had done well up to now, but here she broke off. "It
isn't correct there," she pointed out. "The prayer should read, 'art in
heaven.' Perhaps the script was copied wrongly."
"No," said Martha Vining. "It's 'wert in heaven' on mine."
"And on mine," I added.
Varduk had frowned a moment, as if perplexed, but he spoke decisively.
"As a matter of fact, it's in the original. Byron undoubtedly meant it
to be so, to show Mary's agitation."
Sigrid had been reading ahead. "Farther down in the same prayer, it
says almost the same thing--'Thy will be done on earth as it was in
heaven.' It should be, 'is in heaven.'"
I had found the same deviation in my own copy. "Byron hardly meant
Mary's agitation to extend so far," I argued.
"Since when, Mr. Connatt," inquired Varduk silkily, "did you become
an authority on what Byron meant, here or elsewhere in his writings?
You're being, not only a critic, but a clairvoyant."
I felt my cheeks glowing, and I met his heavy, mocking gaze as levelly
as I could. "I don't like sacrilegious mistakes," I said, "and I don't
like being snubbed, sir."
Davidson stepped to Varduk's side. "You can't talk to him like that,
Connatt," he warned me.
Davidson was a good four inches taller than I, and more muscular, but
at the moment I welcomed the idea of fighting him. I moved a step
forward.
"Mr. Davidson," I said to him, "I don't welcome dictation from you, not
on anything I choose to do or say."
Sigrid cried out in protest, and Varduk lifted up a hand. He smiled,
too, in a dazzling manner.
"I think," he said in sudden good humor, "that we are all tired and
shaken. Perhaps it's due to the unintentional realism of that incident
with the sword--I saw several faces grow pale. Suppose we say that the
rehearsals won't include so dangerous-looking an attack hereafter;
we'll save the trick for the public performance itself. And we'll stop
work now; in any case, it's supposed to be unlucky to speak the last
line of a play in rehearsal. Shall we all go and get some rest?"
He turned to Sigrid and offered his arm. She took it, and they walked
side by side out of the stage door and away. Martha Vining followed at
their heels, while Davidson lingered to turn out the lights. Jake and
I left together for our own boathouse loft. The moon was up, and I
jumped when leaves shimmered in its light--I remembered Jake's story
about the amorphous lurkers in the thickets.
But nothing challenged us, and we went silently to bed, though I, at
least, lay wakeful for hours.
_8. Pursuivant Again_
When finally I slept, it was to dream in strange, unrelated flashes.
The clearest impression of all was that Sigrid and Judge Pursuivant
came to lead me deep into the dark woods beyond the lodge. They seemed
to know their way through pathless thickets, and finally beckoned me to
follow into a deep, shadowed cleft between banks of earth. We descended
for miles, I judged in my dream, until we came to a bare, hard floor
at the bottom. Here was a wide, round hatchway of metal, like a very
large sewer lid. Bidding me watch, Sigrid and the judge bent and tugged
the lid up and away. Gazing down the exposed shaft, it was as if I saw
the heavens beneath my feet--the fathomlessness of the night sky, like
velvet all sprinkled with crumbs of star-fire. I did not know whether
to be joyful or to fear; then I had awakened, and it was bright morning.
The air was warmer than it had been the day before, and I donned
bathing-trunks and went downstairs, treading softly to let Jake snore
blissfully on. Almost at the door of the boathouse I came face to face
with Davidson, who smiled disarmingly and held out his hand. He urged
me to forget the brief hostility that had come over us at rehearsal; he
was quite unforced and cheerful about it, yet I surmised that Varduk
had bade him make peace with me. However, I agreed that we had both
been tired and upset, and we shook hands cordially.
Then I turned toward the water, and saw Sigrid lazily crawling out into
the deep stretches with long, smooth strokes. I called her name, ran
in waist-deep, and swam as swiftly as I could, soon catching up. She
smiled in welcome and turned on her side to say good-morning. In her
brief bathing-suit she did not look so gaunt and fragile. Her body was
no more than healthily slim, and quite firm and strong-looking.
As we swam easily, I was impelled to speak of my dream, and she smiled
again.
"I think that was rather beautiful, I mean about the heavens below your
feet," she said. "Symbolism might have something to say about it. In a
way the vision was prophetic--Judge Pursuivant has sent word that he
will call on us."
"Perhaps the rest was prophetic, too," I ventured boldly. "You and I
together, Sigrid--and heaven at our feet----"
"I've been in long enough," she announced suddenly, "and breakfast must
be ready. Come on, Gib, race me back to shore."
She was off like a trout, and I churned after her. We finished neck and
neck, separated and went away to dress. At breakfast, which Davidson
prepared simply but well of porridge, toast and eggs, I did not get to
sit next to Sigrid; Davidson and Jake had found places at her left and
right hands. I paid what attentions I could devise to Martha Vining,
but if Sigrid was piqued by my courtliness in another direction, she
gave no sign.
* * * * *
The meal over, I returned to my room, secured my copy of _Ruthven_ and
carried it outdoors to study. I chose a sun-drenched spot near the
lodge, set my back to a tree, and leafed through the play, underlining
difficult passages here and there. I remembered Varduk's announcement
that we would never speak the play's last line in rehearsal, lest
bad luck fall. He was superstitious, for all his apparent wisdom and
culture; yet, according to the books Judge Pursuivant had lent me,
so was Lord Byron, from whom Varduk claimed descent. What was the
ill-omened last line, by the way?
I turned to the last page of the script.
The final line, as typewritten by Davidson, contained only a few words.
My eyes found it:
"RUTHVEN (placing his hand on Mary's head):"
And no more than that. There was place for a speech after the stage
direction, apparently the monster's involuntary cry for blessing upon
the brave girl, but Davidson had not set down such a speech.
Amazed and in some unaccountable way uneasy, I walked around the corner
of the lodge to where Martha Vining, seated on the door-step, also
studied her lines. Before I had finished my first question, she nodded
violently.
"It's the same way on my script," she informed me. "You mean, the last
speech missing. I noticed last night, and mentioned it before breakfast
to Miss Holgar. She has no last line, either."
A soft chuckle drifted down upon us. Varduk had come to the open door.
"Davidson must have made a careless omission," he said. "Of course,
there is only one typescript of the play, with carbon copies. Well, if
the last line is missing, isn't it a definite sign that we should not
speak it in rehearsal?"
He rested his heavy gaze upon me, then upon Martha Vining, smiled to
conclude the discussion, and drew back into the hallway and beyond our
sight.
Perhaps I may be excused for not feeling completely at rest on the
subject.
Judge Pursuivant arrived for lunch, dressed comfortably in flannels and
a tweed jacket, and his performance at table was in healthy contrast to
Varduk, who, as usual, ate hardly anything. In the early afternoon I
induced the judge to come for a stroll up the slope and along the main
road. As soon as we were well away from the lodge, I told him of Jake's
adventure, the outcome of the sword-accident at rehearsal, and the air
of mystery that deepened around the omitted final speech of the play.
"Perhaps I'm being nervous and illusion-ridden," I began to apologize
in conclusion, but he shook his great head.
"You're being nothing of the sort, Connatt. Apparently my semi-psychic
intuition was good as gold. I did perfectly right in following this
drama and its company out here into the wilderness."
"You came deliberately?" I asked, and he nodded.
"My friend's cabin in the neighborhood was a stroke of good luck, and
I more than half courted the invitation to occupy it. I'll be frank,
Connatt, and say that from the outset I have felt a definite and occult
challenge from Varduk and his activities."
He chopped at a weed with his big malacca stick, pondered a moment,
then continued.
"Your Mr. Varduk is a mysterious fellow. I need not enlarge on that,
though I might remind you of the excellent reason for his strange
character and behavior."
"Byron's blood?"
"Exactly. And Byron's curse."
I stopped in mid-stride and turned to face the judge. He smiled
somewhat apologetically.
"I know, Connatt," he said, "that modern men and women think such
things impossible. They think it equally impossible that anyone of
good education and normal mind should take occultism seriously. But I
disprove the latter impossibility, at least--I hold degrees from three
world-famous universities, and my behavior, at least, shows that I am
neither morbid nor shallow."
"Certainly not," I assented, thinking of his hearty appetite, his
record of achievement in many fields, his manifest kindness and
sincerity.
"Then consent to hear my evidence out." He resumed his walk, and I fell
into step with him. "It's only circumstantial evidence, I fear, and as
such must not be entirely conclusive. Yet here it is:
"Byron was the ideal target for a curse, not only personally but
racially. His forebears occupied themselves with revolution, dueling,
sacrilege and lesser sins--they were the sort who attract and merit
disaster. As for his immediate parents, it would be difficult to
choose a more depraved father than Captain 'Mad Jack' Byron, or a more
unnatural mother than Catherine Gordon of Gight. Brimstone was bred
into the child's very soul by those two. Follow his career, and what is
there? Pride, violence, orgy, disgrace. Over his married life hangs a
shocking cloud, an unmentionable accusation--rightly or not we cannot
say. As for his associates, they withered at his touch. His children,
lawful and natural, died untimely and unhappy. His friends found ruin
or death. Even Doctor Polidori, plagiarist of the _Ruthven_ story,
committed suicide. Byron himself, when barely past his first youth,
perished alone and far from home and friends. Today his bright fame is
blurred and tarnished by a wealth of legend that can be called nothing
less than diabolic."
"Yet he wasn't all unlucky," I sought to remind my companion. "His
beauty and brilliance, his success as a poet----"
"All part of the curse. When could he be thankful for a face that drew
the love of Lady Caroline Lamb and precipitated one of London's most
fearful scandals? As for his poetry, did it not mark him for envy,
spite and, eventually, a concerted attack? I daresay Byron would have
been happier as a plain-faced mechanic or grocer."
I felt inclined to agree, and said as much. "If a curse exists," I
added, "would it affect Varduk as a descendant of Byron?"
"I think that it would, and that his recent actions prove at once the
existence of a curse and the truth of his claim to descent. A shadow
lies on that man, Connatt."
"The rest of the similarity holds," I responded. "The charm and the
genius. I have wondered why Miss Holgar agrees to this play. It is
archaic, in some degree melodramatic, and her part is by no means
dominant. Yet she seems delighted with the rôle and the production in
general."
"I have considered the same apparent lapse of her judgment," said
Pursuivant, "and came to the conclusion that you are about to
suggest--that Varduk has gained some sort of influence over Miss
Holgar."
"Perhaps, then, you feel that such an influence would be dangerous to
her and to others?"
"Exactly."
"What to do, then?"
"Do nothing, gentlemen," said someone directly behind us.
We both whirled in sudden surprize. It was Elmo Davidson.
_9. Davidson Gives a Warning_
I scowled at Davidson in surprized protest at his intrusion. Judge
Pursuivant did not scowl, but I saw him lift his walking-stick with his
left hand, place his right upon the curved handle, and gave it a little
twist and jerk, as though preparing to draw a cork from a bottle.
Davidson grinned placatingly.
"Please, gentlemen! I didn't mean to eavesdrop, or to do anything else
sneaking. It was only that I went for a walk, too, saw the pair of
you ahead, and hurried to catch up. I couldn't help but hear the final
words you were saying, and I couldn't help but warn you."
We relaxed, but Judge Pursuivant repeated "Warn?" in a tone deeply
frigid.
"May I amplify? First of all, Varduk certainly does not intend to
harm either of you. Second, he isn't the sort of man to be crossed in
anything."
"I suppose not," I rejoined, trying to be casual. "You must be pretty
sure, Davidson, of his capabilities and character."
He nodded. "We've been together since college."
Pursuivant leaned on his stick and produced his well-seasoned briar
pipe. "It's comforting to hear you say that. I mean, that Mr. Varduk
was once a college boy. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn't
thousands of years old."
Davidson shook his head slowly. "See here, why don't we sit down on the
bank and talk? Maybe I'll tell you a story."
"Very good," agreed Pursuivant, and sat down. I did likewise, and we
both gazed expectantly at Davidson. He remained standing, with hands in
pockets, until Pursuivant had kindled his pipe and I my cigarette. Then:
"I'm not trying to frighten you, and I won't give away any real secrets
about my employer. It's just that you may understand better after you
learn how I met him.
"It was more than ten years ago. Varduk came to Revere College as
a freshman when I was a junior. He was much the same then as he is
now--slender, quiet, self-contained, enigmatic. I got to know him
better than anyone in school, and I can't say truly that I know him,
not even now.
"Revere, in case you never heard of the place, is a small school with a
big reputation for grounding its students hock-deep in the classics."
Pursuivant nodded and emitted a cloud of smoke. "I knew your Professor
Dahlberg of Revere," he interjected. "He's one of the great minds of
the age on Greek literature and history."
Davidson continued: "The buildings at Revere are old and, you might
say, swaddled in the ivy planted by a hundred graduating classes. The
traditions are consistently mellow, and none of the faculty members
come in for much respect until they are past seventy. Yet the students
are very much like any others, when class is over. In my day, at least,
we gave more of a hoot for one touch-down than for seven thousand odes
of Horace."
He smiled a little, as though in mild relish of memories he had evoked
within himself.
"The football team wasn't very good, but it wasn't very bad, either.
It meant something to be on the first team, and I turned out to be a
fairish tackle. At the start of my junior year, the year I'm talking
about, a man by the name of Schaefer was captain--a good fullback
though not brilliant, and the recognized leader of the campus.
"Varduk didn't go in for athletics, or for anything else except a good
stiff course of study, mostly in the humanities. He took a room at the
end of the hall on the third floor of the men's dormitory, and kept
to himself. You know how a college dorm loves that, you men. Six days
after the term started, the Yellow Dogs had him on their list."
"Who were the Yellow Dogs?" I asked.
"Oh, there's a bunch like it in every school. Spiritual descendants
of the Mohocks that flourished in Queen Anne's reign; rough and rowdy
undergraduates, out for Halloween pranks every night. And any student,
particularly any frosh, that stood on his dignity----" He paused and
let our imagination finish the potentialities of such a situation.
"So, one noon after lunch at the training-table, Schaefer winked at me
and a couple of other choice spirits. We went to our rooms and got out
our favorite paddles, carved from barrel-staves and lettered over with
fraternity emblems and wise-cracks. Then we tramped up to the third
floor and knocked loudly at Varduk's door.
"He didn't answer. We tried the knob. The lock was on, so Schaefer dug
his big shoulder into the panel and smashed his way in."
* * * * *
Davidson stopped and drew a long breath, as if with it he could win a
better ability to describe the things he was telling.
"Varduk lifted those big, deep eyes of his as we appeared among the
ruins of his door. No fear, not even surprize. Just a long look,
traveling from one of us to another. When he brought his gaze to me,
I felt as if somebody was pointing two guns at me, two guns loaded to
their muzzles."
I, listening, felt like saying I knew how he had felt, but I did not
interrupt.
"He was sitting comfortably in an armchair," went on Davidson, rocking
on his feet as though nervous with the memory, "and in his slender
hands he held a big dark book. His forefinger marked a place between
the leaves.
"'Get up, frosh,' Schaefer said, 'and salute your superiors.'
"Varduk did not move or speak. He looked, and Schaefer bellowed louder,
against a sudden and considerable uneasiness.
"'What are you reading there?' he demanded of Varduk in his toughest
voice.
"'A very interesting work,' Varduk replied gently. 'It teaches how to
rule people.'
"'Uh-huh?' Schaefer sneered at him. 'Let's have a look at it.'
"'I doubt if you would like it,' Varduk said, but Schaefer made a grab.
The book came open in his hands. He bent, as if to study it.
"Then he took a blind, lumbering step backward. He smacked into the
rest of us all bunched behind him, and without us I think he might have
fallen down. I couldn't see his face, but the back of his big bull-neck
had turned as white as plaster. He made two efforts to speak before he
managed it. Then all he could splutter out was 'Wh-what----'"
Davidson achieved rather well the manner of a strong, simple man gone
suddenly shaky with fright.
"'I told you that you probably wouldn't like it,' Varduk said, like an
adult reminding a child. Then he got up out of his armchair and took
the book from Schaefer's hands. He began to talk again. 'Schaefer,
I want to see you here in this room after you finish your football
practise this afternoon.'
"Schaefer didn't make any answer. All of us edged backward and got out
of there."
Davidson paused, so long that Pursuivant asked, "Is that all?"
"No, it isn't. In a way, it's just the beginning. Schaefer made an
awful fool of himself five or six times on the field that day. He
dropped every one of his passes from center when we ran signals, and
five or six times he muffed the ball at drop-kick practise. The coach
told him in front of everybody that he acted like a high school yokel.
When we finished and took our showers, he hung back until I came
out, so as to walk to the dormitory with me. He tagged along like a
frightened kid brother, and when we got to the front door he started
upstairs like an old man. He wanted to turn toward his own room on the
second floor; but Varduk's voice spoke his name, and we both looked up,
startled. On the stairs to the third flight stood Varduk, holding that
black book open against his chest.
"He spoke to Schaefer. 'I told you that I wanted to see you.'
"Schaefer tried to swear at him. After all, here was a frail, pale
little frosh, who didn't seem to have an ounce of muscle on his bones,
giving orders to a big football husky who weighed more than two hundred
pounds. But the swear words sort of strangled in his throat. Varduk
laughed. Neither of you have ever heard a sound so soft or merciless.
"'Perhaps you'd like me to come to your room after you,' Varduk
suggested.
"Schaefer turned and came slowly to the stairs and up them. When he
got level with Varduk, I didn't feel much like watching the rest. As I
moved away toward my room, I saw Varduk slip his slender arm through
Schaefer's big, thick one and fall into step with him, just as if they
were going to have the nicest schoolboy chat you can imagine."
Davidson shuddered violently, and so, despite the warm June air, did I.
Pursuivant seemed a shade less pink.
"Here, I've talked too much," Davidson said, with an air of
embarrassment. "Probably it's because I've wanted to tell this
story--over a space of years. No point in holding back the end, but I'd
greatly appreciate your promise--both your promises--that you'll not
pass the tale on."
* * * * *
We both gave our words, and urged him to continue. He did so.
"I had barely got to my own digs when there was a frightful row
outside, shouts and scamperings and screamings; yes, screamings, of
young men scared out of their wits. I jumped up and hurried downstairs
and out. There lay Schaefer on the pavement in front of the dormitory.
He was dead, with the brightest red blood all over him. About twenty
witnesses, more or less, had seen him as he jumped out of Varduk's
window.
"The faculty and the police came, and Varduk spent hours with them,
being questioned. But he told them something satisfactory, for he was
let go and never charged with any responsibility.
"Late that night, as I sat alone at my desk trying to drive from my
mind's eye the bright, bright red of Schaefer's blood, a gentle knock
sounded at my door. I got up and opened. There stood Varduk, and he
held in his hands that black volume. I saw the dark red edging on its
pages, the color of blood three hours old.
"'I wondered,' he said in his soft voice, 'if you'd like to see the
thing in my book that made your friend Schaefer so anxious to leave my
room.'
"I assured him that I did not. He smiled and came in, all uninvited.
"Then he spoke, briefly but very clearly, about certain things he hoped
to do, and about how he needed a helper. He said that I might be that
helper. I made no reply, but he knew that I would not refuse.
"He ordered me to kneel, and I did. Then he showed me how to put my
hands together and set them between his palms. The oath I took was the
medieval oath of vassalage. And I have kept my oath from that day to
this."
Davidson abruptly strode back along the way to the lodge. He stopped at
half a dozen paces' distance.
"Maybe I'd better get along," he suggested. "You two may want to think
and talk about what I have said, and my advice not to get in Varduk's
way."
With that he resumed his departure, and went out of sight without once
looking back again.
_10. That Evening_
Judge Pursuivant and I remained sitting on the roadside bank until
Davidson had completely vanished around a tree-clustered bend of the
way. Then my companion lifted a heavy walking-boot and tapped the
dottle from his pipe against the thick sole.
"How did that cheerful little story impress you?" he inquired.
I shook my head dubiously. My mustache prickled on my upper lip, like
the mane of a nervous dog. "If it was true," I said slowly, "how did
Davidson dare tell it?"
"Probably because he was ordered to."
I must have stared foolishly. "You think that----"
Pursuivant nodded. "My knowledge of underworld argot is rather limited,
but I believe that the correct phrase is 'lay off'. We're being told to
do that, and in a highly interesting manner. As to whether or not the
story is true, I'm greatly inclined to believe that it is."
I drew another cigarette from my package, and my hand trembled despite
itself. "Then the man is dangerous--Varduk, I mean. What is he trying
to do to Sigrid?"
"That is what perplexes me. Once, according to your little friend Jake
Switz, he defended her from some mysterious but dangerous beings. His
behavior argues that he isn't the only power to consider."
The judge held a match for my cigarette. His hand was steady, and its
steadiness comforted me.
"Now then," I said, "to prevent--whatever is being done."
"That's what we'd better talk about." Pursuivant took his stick and
rose to his feet. "Let's get on with our walk, and make sure this time
that nobody overhears us."
We began to saunter, while he continued, slowly and soberly:
"You feel that it is Miss Holgar who is threatened. That's no more
than guess-work on your part, supplemented by the natural anxiety of
a devoted admirer--if you'll pardon my mentioning that--but you are
probably right. Varduk seems to have exerted all his ingenuity and
charm to induce her to take a part in this play, and at this place. The
rest of you he had gathered more carelessly. It is reasonably safe to
say that whatever happens will happen to Miss Holgar."
"But what will happen?" I urged, feeling very depressed.
"That we do not know as yet," I began to speak again, but he lifted
a hand. "Please let me finish. Perhaps you think that we should do
what we can to call off the play, get Miss Holgar out of here. But I
reply, having given the matter deep thought, that such a thing is not
desirable."
"Not desirable?" I echoed, my voice rising in startled surprize. "You
mean, she must stay here? In heaven's name, why?"
"Because evil is bound to occur. To spirit her away will be only a
retreat. The situation must be allowed to develop--then we can achieve
victory. Why, Connatt," he went on warmly, "can you not see that the
whole atmosphere is charged with active and super-normal perils? Don't
you know that such a chance, for meeting and defeating the power of
wickedness, seldom arises? What can you think of when you want to run
away?"
"I'm not thinking of myself, sir," I told him. "It's Sigrid. Miss
Holgar."
"Handsomely put. All right, then; when you go back to the lodge, tell
her what we've said and suggest that she leave."
I shook my head, more hopelessly than before. "You know that she
wouldn't take me seriously."
"Just so. Nobody will take seriously the things we are beginning to
understand, you and I. We have to fight alone--but we'll win." He began
to speak more brightly. "When is the play supposed to have its first
performance?"
"Sometime after the middle of July. I've heard Varduk say as much
several times, though he did not give the exact date."
Pursuivant grew actually cheerful. "That means that we have three weeks
or so. Something will happen around that time--presumably on opening
night. If time was not an element, he would not have defended her on
her first night here."
I felt somewhat reassured, and we returned from our stroll in fairly
good spirits.
Varduk again spoke cordially to Pursuivant, and invited him to stay to
dinner. "I must ask that you leave shortly afterward," he concluded the
invitation. "Our rehearsals have something of secrecy about them. You
won't be offended if----"
"Of course not," Pursuivant assured him readily, but later the judge
found a moment to speak with me. "Keep your eyes open," he said
earnestly. "He feels that I, in some degree familiar with occult
matters, might suspect or even discover something wrong about the play.
We'll talk later about the things you see."
* * * * *
The evening meal was the more pleasant for Judge Pursuivant's
high-humored presence. He was gallant to the ladies, deferential to
Varduk, and witty to all of us. Even the pale, haunted face of our
producer relaxed in a smile once or twice, and when the meal was over
and Pursuivant was ready to go, Varduk accompanied him to the door,
speaking graciously the while.
"You will pardon me if I see you safely to the road. It is no more than
evening, yet I have a feeling----"
"And I have the same feeling," said Pursuivant, not at all heavily. "I
appreciate your offer of protection."
Varduk evidently suspected a note of mockery. He paused. "There are
things, Judge Pursuivant," he said, "against which ordinary protection
would not suffice. You have borne arms, I believe, yet you know that
they will not always avail."
[Illustration: "There are things against which ordinary protection
would not suffice."]
They had come to the head of the front stairs, leading down to the
lobby of the theater. The others at table were chattering over a second
cup of coffee, but I was straining my ears to hear what the judge and
Varduk were saying.
"Arms? Yes, I've borne them," Pursuivant admitted. "Oddly enough, I'm
armed now. Should you care to see?"
He lifted his malacca walking-stick in both hands, grasping its shank
and the handle. A twist and a jerk, and it came apart, revealing a
few inches of metal. Pursuivant drew forth, as from a sheath, a thin,
gleaming blade.
"Sword-cane!" exclaimed Varduk admiringly. He bent for a closer look.
"And a singularly interesting one," elaborated Pursuivant. "Quite old,
as you can see for yourself."
"Ah, so it is," agreed Varduk. "I fancy you had it put into the cane?"
"I did. Look at the inscription."
Varduk peered. "Yes, I can make it out, though it seems worn." He
pursed his lips, then read aloud, very slowly: "_Sic pereant omnes
inimici tui, Domine._ It sounds like Scripture."
"That's what it is, Mr. Varduk," Pursuivant was saying blandly. "The
King James Version has it: 'So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord.'
It's from Deborah's song--fifth chapter of _Judges_."
Varduk was plainly intrigued. "A war-like text, I must say. What knight
of the church chose it for his battle cry?"
"Many have chosen it," responded the judge. "Shall we go on?"
They walked down the stairs side by side, and so out of my sight and
hearing.
* * * * *
When Varduk returned he called us at once to rehearsal. He was as alert
as he had been the night before, but much harder to please. Indeed,
he criticized speeches and bits of stage business that had won his
high praise at the earlier rehearsal, and several times he called for
repetitions and new interpretations. He also announced that at the
third rehearsal, due the next day, he would take away our scripts.
"You are all accomplished actors," he amplified. "You need nothing to
refresh good memories."
"I'd like to keep my book," begged Martha Vining, but Varduk smiled and
shook his head.
"You'll be better without," he said definitely.
When we approached the climactic scene, with Swithin's attempt to
kill Ruthven and Mary's attempted sacrifice, Varduk did not insist on
stage business; in fact, he asked us flatly to speak our lines without
so much as moving from our places. If this was to calm us after the
frightening events of the night before, it did not succeed. Everyone
there remembered the accidental sword-thrust, and Varduk's seeming
invulnerability; it was as though their thoughts were doleful spoken
words.
Rehearsal over--again without the final line by Ruthven--Varduk bade us
a courteous good-night and, as before, walked out first with Sigrid and
Martha Vining. I followed with Jake, but at the threshold I touched
his arm.
"Come with me," I muttered, and turned toward the front of the lodge.
Varduk and the two women had gone out of sight around the rear of the
building. Nobody challenged us as we walked silently in the direction
of the road, but I had a sensation as of horrors all around me,
inadequately bound back with strands that might snap at any moment.
"What's it about, Gib?" asked Jake once, but at that moment I saw what
I had somehow expected and feared to see.
A silent figure lay at the foot of the upward-sloping driveway to the
road. We both ran forward, coming up on either side of that figure.
The moon showed through broken clouds. By its light we recognized Judge
Pursuivant, limp and apparently lifeless. Beside him lay the empty
shank of his walking-stick. His right fist still clenched around the
handle, and the slender blade set therein was driven deeply into the
loam.
I did not know what to do, but Jake did. He knelt, scooped the judge's
head up and set it against his knee, then slapped the flaccid cheeks
with his open palm. Pursuivant's eyelids and mustache fluttered.
Jake snorted approvingly and lifted his own crossed eyes to mine. "I
guess he's all right, Gib. Just passed out is all. Maybe better you go
to Varduk and ask for some brand----"
He broke off suddenly. He was staring at something behind me.
I turned, my heart quivering inside my chest.
Shapes--monstrous, pallid, unclean shapes--were closing in upon us.
_11. Battle and Retreat_
I doubt if any writer, however accomplished, has ever done full justice
to the emotion of terror.
To mention the icy chill at the back-bone, the sudden sinewless
trembling of the knees, the withering dryness of throat and tongue, is
to be commonplace; and terror is not commonplace. Perhaps to remember
terror is to know again the helplessness and faintness it brings.
Therefore it must suffice to say that, as I turned and saw the closing
in of those pale-glowing blots of menace, I wanted to scream, and could
not; to run, and could not; to take my gaze away, and could not.
If I do not describe the oncoming creatures--if creatures indeed they
were--it is because they defied clear vision then and defy clear
recollection now. Something quasi-human must have hung about them,
something suggestive of man's outline and manner, as in a rough image
molded by children of snow; but they were not solid like snow. They
shifted and swirled, like wreaths of thick mist, without dispersing
in air. They gave a dim, rotten light of their own, and they moved
absolutely without sound.
"It's them," gulped Jake Switz beside me. He, too, was frightened, but
not as frightened as I. He could speak, and move, too--he had dropped
Pursuivant's head and was rising to his feet. I could hear him suck in
a lungful of air, as though to brace himself for action.
His remembered presence, perhaps the mere fact of his companionship
before the unreasoned awfulness of the glow-shadowy pack that advanced
to hem us in, gave me back my own power of thought and motion. It gave
me, too, the impulse to arm myself. I stooped to earth, groped swiftly,
found and drew forth from its bed the sword-cane of Judge Pursuivant.
The non-shapes--that paradoxical idea is the best I can give of
them--drifted around me, free and weightless in the night air like
luminous sea-things in still, dark water. I made a thrust at the
biggest and nearest of them.
I missed. Or did I? The target was, on a sudden, there no longer.
Perhaps I had pierced it, and it had burst like a flimsy bladder. Thus
I argued within my desperate inner mind, even as I faced about and
made a stab at another. In the same instant it had gone, too--but the
throng did not seem diminished. I made a sweeping slash with my point
from side to side, and the things shrank back before it, as though they
dared not pass the line I drew.
"Give 'em the works, Gib!" Jake was gritting out. "They can be hurt,
all right!"
I laughed, like an impudent child. I felt inadequate and disappointed,
as when in dreams a terrible adversary wilts before a blow I am ashamed
of.
"Come on," I challenged the undefinable enemy, in a feeble attempt at
swagger. "Let me have a real poke at----"
"Hold hard," said a new voice. Judge Pursuivant, apparently wakened by
this commotion all around him, was struggling erect. "Here, Connatt,
give me my sword." He fairly wrung it from my hand, and drove back the
misty horde with great fanwise sweeps. "Drop back, now. Not toward the
lodge--up the driveway to the road."
We made the retreat somehow, and were not followed. My clothing was
drenched with sweat, as though I had swum in some filthy pool. Jake,
whom I remember as helping me up the slope when I might have fallen,
talked incessantly without finishing a single sentence. The nearest he
came to rationality was, "What did ... what if ... can they----"
Pursuivant, however, seemed well recovered. He kicked together some
bits of kindling at the roadside. Then he asked me for a match--perhaps
to make me rally my sagging senses as I explored my pockets--and a
moment later he had kindled a comforting fire.
"Now," he said, "we're probably safe from any more attention of that
bunch. And our fire can't be seen from the lodge. Sit down and talk it
over."
Jake was mopping a face as white as tallow. His spectacles mirrored the
firelight in nervous shimmers.
"I guess I didn't dream the other night, after all," he jabbered. "Wait
till I tell Mister Varduk about this."
"Please tell him nothing," counseled Judge Pursuivant at once.
"Eh?" I mumbled, astonished. "When the non-shapes----"
"Varduk probably knows all about these things--more than we shall ever
know," replied the judge. "I rather think he cut short his walk across
the front yards so that they would attack me. At any rate, they seemed
to ooze out of the timber the moment he and I separated."
He told us, briefly, of how the non-shapes (he liked and adopted my
paradox) were upon him before he knew. Like Jake two nights before, he
felt an overwhelming disgust and faintness when they touched him, began
to faint. His last voluntary act was to draw the blade in his cane and
drive it into the ground, as an anchor against being dragged away.
"They would never touch that point," he said confidently. "You found
that out, Connatt."
"And I'm still amazed, more about that fact than anything else. How
would such things fear, even the finest steel?"
"It isn't steel." Squatting close to the fire, Pursuivant again cleared
the bright, sharp bodkin. "Look at it, gentlemen--silver."
It was two feet long, or more, round instead of flat, rather like a
large needle. Though the metal was bright and worn with much polishing,
the inscription over which Pursuivant and Varduk had pored was plainly
decipherable by the firelight. _Sic pereant omnes inimici tui,
Domine_.... I murmured it aloud, as though it were a protective charm.
"As you may know," elaborated Judge Pursuivant, "silver is a specific
against all evil creatures."
"That's so," interjected Jake. "I heard my grandfather tell a yarn
about the old country, how somebody killed a witch with a silver
bullet."
"And this is an extraordinary object, even among silver swords,"
Pursuivant went on. "A priest gave it to me, with his blessing, when
I did a certain thing to help him and his parish against an enemy not
recognized by the common law of today. He assured me that the blade was
fashioned by Saint Dunstan himself."
"A saint make a silver weapon!" I ejaculated incredulously.
* * * * *
Pursuivant smiled, exactly as though we had not lately feared and
fought for our lives and souls. His manner was that of a kindly teacher
with a dull but willing pupil.
"Saint Dunstan is not as legendary or as feeble as his name sounds. As
a matter of fact, he flourished heartily in the Tenth Century--not long
before the very real Norman Conquest. He was the stout son of a Saxon
noble, studied magic and metal-working, and was a political power in
England as well as a spiritual one."
"Didn't he tweak Satan's nose?" I inquired.
"So the old poem tells, and so the famous painting illustrates," agreed
Pursuivant, his smile growing broader. "Dunstan was, in short, exactly
the kind of holy man who would make a sword to serve against demons. Do
you blame me for being confident in his work?"
"Look here, Judge," said Jake, "what were those things that jumped us
up?"
"That takes answering." Pursuivant had fished a handkerchief from a
side pocket and was carefully wiping the silver skewer. "In the first
place, they are extra-terrestrial--supernatural--and in the second,
they are noisomely evil. We need no more evidence on those points. As
for the rest, I have a theory of a sort, based on wide studies."
"What is it, sir?" I seconded Jake. Once again the solid assurance of
the judge was comforting me tremendously.
He pursed his lips. "I've given the subject plenty of thought ever
since you, Connatt, told me the experience of your friend here. There
are several accounts and considerations of similar phenomena. Among
ancient occultists was talk of elementary spirits--things super-normal
and sometimes invisible, of sub-human intelligence and personality and
not to be confused with spirits of the dead. A more modern word is
'elemental', used by several cults. The things are supposed to exert
influences of various kinds, upon various localities and people.
"Again, we have the poltergeist, a phenomenon that is coming in
for lively investigation by various psychical scholars of today. I
can refer you to the definitions of Carrington, Podmore and Lewis
Spence--their books are in nearly every large library--but you'll find
that the definitions and possible explanations vary. The most familiar
manifestation of this strange but undeniable power is in the seeming
mischief that it performs in various houses--the knocking over of
furniture, the smashing of mirrors, the setting of mysterious fires----"
"I know about that thing," said Jake excitedly. "There was a house over
in Brooklyn that had mysterious fires and stuff."
"And I've read Charles Fort's books--_Wild Talents_ and the rest," I
supplemented. "He tells about such happenings. But see here, isn't the
thing generally traced to some child who was playing tricks?"
Pursuivant, still furbishing his silver blade, shook his head. "Mr.
Hereward Carrington, the head of the American Psychical Institute,
has made a list of more than three hundred notable cases. Only twenty
or so were proven fraudulent, and another twenty doubtful. That
leaves approximately seven-eighths unexplained--unless you consider
super-normal agency an explanation. It is true that children are often
in the vicinity of the phenomena, and some investigators explain this
by saying that the poltergeist is attracted or set in motion by some
spiritual current from the growing personality of the child."
"Where's the child around here?" demanded Jake. "He must be a mighty
bad boy. Better someone should take a stick to him."
"There is no child," answered the judge. "The summoning power is
neither immature nor unconscious, but old, wicked and deliberate. Have
you ever heard of witches' familiars?"
"I have," I said. "Black cats and toads, with demon spirits."
"Yes. Also grotesque or amorphous shapes--similar, perhaps, to what
we encountered tonight--or disembodied voices and hands. Now we are
getting down to our own case. The non-shapes--thanks again, Connatt,
for the expression--are here as part of a great evil. Perhaps they
came of themselves, spiritual vultures or jackals, waiting to share in
the prey. Or they may be recognized servants of a vast and dreadful
activity for wrong. In any case they are here, definite and dangerous."
Again I felt my nerve deserting me. "Judge Pursuivant," I pleaded, "we
must get Miss Holgar out of here."
"No. You and I talked that out this afternoon. The problem cannot be
solved except at its climax."
He rose to his feet. The fire was dying.
"I suggest that you go to your quarters. Apparently you're safe
indoors, and just now the moon's out from behind the clouds. Keep your
eyes open, and stay in the clear. The things won't venture into the
moonlight unless they feel sure of you. Anyway, I think they're waiting
for something else."
"How about you?" I asked.
"Oh, I'll do splendidly." He held up the sword of Saint Dunstan. "I'll
carry this naked in my hand as I go."
We said good-night all around, rather casually, like late sitters
leaving their club. Pursuivant turned and walked along the road. Jake
and I descended gingerly to the yard of the lodge, hurried across it,
and gained our boathouse safely.
_12. Return Engagement_
One of the most extraordinary features of the entire happening was that
it had so little immediate consequence.
Judge Pursuivant reached his cabin safely, and came to visit us again
and again, but never remained after dark. If Varduk knew of the attack
by the non-shapes, and if he felt surprize or chagrin that Pursuivant
had escaped, he did not betray it. By silent and common consent, Jake
and I forbore to discuss the matter between ourselves, even when we
knew that we were alone.
Meanwhile, the moon waned and waxed again while we rehearsed our play
and between rehearsals swam, tramped and bathed in the sun. Not one of
us but seemed to profit by the exercise and fresh air. Sigrid's step
grew freer, her face browner and her green-gold hair paler by contrast.
I acquired some weight, but in the proper places, and felt as strong
and healthy as I had been when first I went from the Broadway stage to
Hollywood, eight years before. Even Jake Switz, whose natural habitat
lay among theatrical offices and stage doors, became something of a
hill-climber, canoeist and fisherman. Only Varduk did not tan, though
he spent much time out of doors, strolling with Davidson or by himself.
Despite his apparent fragility and his stiffness of gait, he was a
tireless walker.
One thing Jake and I did for our protection; that was to buy, on one of
our infrequent trips to the junction, an electric flashlight apiece as
well as one for Sigrid. These we carried, lighted, when walking about
at night, and not once in the month that followed our first encounter
with the non-shapes did we have any misadventure.
The middle of July brought the full moon again, and with it the
approach of our opening night.
The theatrical sections of the papers--Varduk had them delivered
daily--gave us whole square yards of publicity. Jake had fabricated
most of this, on his typewriter in our boathouse loft, though his
most glamorous inventions included nothing of the grisly wonders we
had actually experienced. Several publishers added to the general
interest in the matter by sending to Varduk attractive offers for the
manuscript of _Ruthven_, and receiving blunt refusals. One feature
writer, something of a scholar of early Nineteenth Century English
literature, cast a doubt upon the authenticity of the piece. In reply
to this, Judge Pursuivant sent an elaboration of his earlier statement
that _Ruthven_ was undoubtedly genuine. The newspaper kindly gave this
rejoinder considerable notice, illustrating it with photographs of the
judge, Varduk and Sigrid.
On July 20, two days before opening, Jake went out to nail signs along
the main road to guide motor parties to our theater. He was cheerfully
busy most of the morning, and Sigrid deigned to let me walk with her.
We did not seek the road, but turned our steps along the brink of the
water. An ancient but discernible trail, made perhaps by deer, ran
there.
"Happy, Sigrid?" I asked her.
"I couldn't be otherwise," she cried at once. "Our play is to startle
the world--first here, then on Broadway----"
"Sigrid," I said, "what is there about this play that has such a charm
for you? I know that it's a notable literary discovery, and that it's
pretty powerful stuff in spots, but in the final analysis it's only
melodrama with a clever supernatural twist. You're not the melodramatic
type."
"Indeed?" she flung back. "Am I a type, then?"
I saw that I had been impolitic and made haste to offer apology, but
she waved it aside.
"What you said might well be asked by many people. The pictures have
put me into a certain narrow field, with poor Jake Switz wearing out
the thesaurus to find synonyms for 'glamorous'. Yet, as a beginner in
Sweden, I did _Hedda Gabler_ and _The Wild Duck_--yes, and Bernard
Shaw, too; I was the slum girl in _Pygmalion_. After that, a German
picture, _Cyrano de Bergerac_, with me as Roxane. It was luck, perhaps,
and a momentary wish by producers for a new young foreign face, that
got me into American movies. But, have I done so poorly?"
"Sigrid, nobody ever did so nobly."
"And at the first, did I do always the same thing? What was my first
chance? The French war bride in that farce comedy. Then what? Something
by Somerset Maugham, where I wore a black wig and played a savage girl
of the tropics. Then what? A starring rôle, or rather a co-starring
rôle--opposite you." She gave me a smile, as though the memory were
pleasant.
"Opposite me," I repeated, and a thrill crept through me. "_Lavengro_,
the costume piece. Our costumes, incidentally, were rather like what we
will wear in the first part of _Ruthven_."
"I was thinking the same thing. And speaking of melodrama, what about
_Lavengro_? You, with romantic curly side-burns, stripped to the waist
and fighting like mad with Noah Beery. Firelight gleaming on your wet
skin, and me mopping your face with a sponge and telling you to use
your right hand instead of your left----"
"By heaven, there have been lots of worse shows!" I cried, and we both
laughed. My spirits had risen as we had strolled away from the lodge
grounds, and I had quite forgotten my half-formed resolve to speak a
warning.
We came to a stretch of sand, with a great half-rotted pink trunk lying
across it. Here we sat, side by side, smoking and scrawling in the fine
sand with twigs.
"There's another reason why I have been happy during this month of
rehearsal," said Sigrid shyly.
"Yes?" I prompted her, and my heart began suddenly to beat swiftly.
"It's been so nice to be near you and with you."
I felt at once strong and shivery, rather like the adolescent hero of
an old-fashioned novel. What I said, somewhat ruefully, was, "If you
think so, why have you been so hard to see? This is the first time we
have walked or been alone together."
* * * * *
She smiled, and in her own individual way that made her cheeks crease
and her eyes turn aslant. "We saw a lot of each other once, Gib. I
finished up by being sorry. I don't want to be sorry again. That's why
I've gone slowly."
"See here, Sigrid," I blurted suddenly. "I'm not going to beat around
the bush, or try to lead up diplomatically or dramatically, but--oh,
hang it!" Savagely I broke a twig in my hands. "I loved you once,
and in spite of the fact that we quarreled and separated, I've never
stopped. I love you right this instant----"
She caught me in strong, fierce arms, and kissed me so soundly that
our teeth rang together between lips crushed open. Thus for a second
of white-hot surprize; then she let go with equal suddenness. Her face
had gone pale under its tan--no acting there--and her eyes were full of
panicky wonder.
"I didn't do that," she protested slowly. She, too, was plainly
stunned. "I didn't. But--well, I did, didn't I?"
"You certainly did. I don't know why, and if you say so I won't ask;
but you did, and it'll be hard to retire from the position again."
After that, we had a lot more to say to each other. I admitted, very
humbly, that I had been responsible for our estrangement five years
before, and that the reason was the very unmanly one that I, losing
popularity, was jealous of her rise. For her part, she confessed that
not once had she forgotten me, nor given up the hope of reconciliation.
"I'm not worth it," I assured her. "I'm a sorry failure, and we both
know it."
"Whenever I see you," she replied irrelevantly, "bells begin to ring in
my ears--loud alarm bells, as if fires had broken out all around me."
"We're triple idiots to think of love," I went on. "You're the top, and
I'm the muck under the bottom."
"You'll be the sensation of your life when _Ruthven_ comes to
Broadway," rejoined Sigrid confidently. "And the movie magnets will
fight duels over the chance to ask for your name on a contract."
"To hell with the show business! Let's run away tonight and live on a
farm," I suggested.
In her genuine delight at the thought she clutched my shoulders,
digging in her long, muscular fingers. "Let's!" she almost whooped,
like a little girl promised a treat. "We'll have a garden and keep
pigs--no, there's a show."
"And the show," I summed up, "must go on."
On that doleful commonplace we rose from the tree-trunk and walked
back. Climbing to the road, we sought out Jake, who with a hammer and a
mouthful of nails was fastening his last sign to a tree. We swore him
to secrecy with terrible oaths, then told him that we intended to marry
as soon as we returned to New York. He half swallowed a nail, choked
dangerously, and had to be thumped on the back by both of us.
"I should live so--I knew this would happen," he managed to gurgle at
last. "Among all the men you know, Sigrid Holgar, you got to pick this
_schlemiel_!"
We both threatened to pummel him, and he apologized profusely, mourning
the while that his vow kept him from announcing our decision in all the
New York papers.
"With that romance breaking now, we would have every able-bodied man,
woman and child east of the Mississippi trying to get into our show,"
he said earnestly. "With a club we'd have to beat them away from the
ticket window. Standing-room would sell for a dollar an inch."
"It's a success as it is," I comforted him. "_Ruthven_, I mean. The
house is a sell-out, Davidson says."
That night at dinner, Sigrid sat, not at the head of the table, but on
one side next to me. Once or twice we squeezed hands and Jake, noticing
this, was shocked and burned his mouth with hot coffee. Varduk, too,
gazed at us as though he knew our secret, and finally was impelled to
quote something from Byron--a satiric couplet on love and its shortness
of life. But we were too happy to take offense or even to recognize
that the quotation was leveled at us.
_13. The Black Book_
Our final rehearsal, on the night of the twenty-first of July, was
fairly accurate as regards the speeches and attention to cues, but it
lacked fire and assurance. Varduk, however, was not disappointed.
"It has often been said, and often proven as well, that a bad last
rehearsal means a splendid first performance," he reminded us. "To bed
all of you, and try to get at least nine hours of sleep." Then he
seemed to remember something. "Miss Holgar."
"Yes?" said Sigrid.
"Come here, with me." He led her to the exact center of the stage. "At
this spot, you know, you are to stand when the final incident of the
play, and our dialog together, unfolds."
"I know," she agreed.
"Yet--are you sure? Had we not better be sure?" Varduk turned toward
the auditorium, as though to gage their position from the point of view
of the audience. "Perhaps I am being too exact, yet----"
He snapped his fingers in the direction of Davidson, who seemed to have
expected some sort of request signal. The big assistant reached into
the pocket of his jacket and brought out a piece of white chalk.
"Thank you, Davidson." Varduk accepted the proffered fragment. "Stand a
little closer center, Miss Holgar. Yes, like that." Kneeling, he drew
with a quick sweep of his arm a small white circle around her feet.
"That," he informed her, standing up again, "is the spot where I want
you to stand, at the moment when you and I have our final conflict of
words, the swearing on the Bible, and my involuntary blessing upon your
head."
Sigrid took a step backward, out of the circle. I, standing behind her,
could see that she had drawn herself up in outraged protest. Varduk
saw, too, and half smiled as if to disarm her. "Forgive me if I seem
foolish," he pleaded gently.
"I must say," she pronounced in a slow, measured manner, as though she
had difficulty in controlling her voice, "that I do not feel that this
little diagram will help me in the least."
Varduk let his smile grow warmer, softer. "Oh, probably it will not,
Miss Holgar; but I am sure it will help me. Won't you do as I ask?"
She could not refuse, and by the time she had returned across the stage
to me she had relaxed into cheerfulness again. I escorted her to the
door of her cabin, and her good-night smile warmed me all the way to my
own quarters.
* * * * *
Judge Pursuivant appeared at noon the next day, and Varduk, hailing him
cordially, invited him to lunch.
"I wonder," ventured Varduk as we all sat down together, "if you, Judge
Pursuivant, would not speak a few words in our favor before the curtain
tonight."
"I?" The judge stared, then laughed. "But I'm not part of the
management."
"The management--which means myself--will be busy getting into costume
for the first act. You are a scholar, a man whose recent book on Byron
has attracted notice. It is fitting that you do what you can to help
our opening."
"Oh," said Pursuivant, "if you put it like that--but what shall I tell
the audience?"
"Make it as short as you like, but impressive. You might announce that
all present are subpenaed as witnesses to a classic moment."
Pursuivant smiled. "That's rather good, Mr. Varduk, and quite true as
well. Very good, count on me."
But after lunch he drew me almost forcibly away from the others,
talking affably about the merits of various wines until we were well
out of earshot. Then his tone changed abruptly.
"I think we know now that the thing--whatever it is--will happen at the
play, and we also know why."
"Why, then?" I asked at once.
"I am to tell the audience that they are 'subpenaed as witnesses.'
In other words, their attention is directed, they must be part of a
certain ceremony. I, too, am needed. Varduk is making me the clerk, so
to speak, of his court--or his cult. That shows that he will preside."
"It begins to mean something," I admitted. "Yet I am still at a loss."
Pursuivant's own pale lips were full of perplexity. "I wish that we
could know more before the actual beginning. Yet I, who once prepared
and judged legal cases, may be able to sum up in part:
"Something is to happen to Miss Holgar. The entire fabric of theatrical
activity--this play, the successful effort to interest her in it, the
remote theater, her particular rôle, everything--is to perform upon her
a certain effect. That effect, we may be sure, is devastating. We may
believe that a part, at least, of the success depends on the last line
of the play, a mystery as yet to all of us."
"Except to Varduk," I reminded.
"Except to Varduk."
But a new thought struck me, and for a moment I found it comforting.
"Wait. The ceremony, as you call it, can't be all evil," I said. "After
all, he asks her to swear on a Bible."
"So he does," Pursuivant nodded. "What kind of a Bible?"
I tried to remember. "To tell the truth, I don't know. We haven't used
props of any kind in rehearsals--not even the sword, after that first
time."
"No? Look here, that's apt to be significant. We'll have to look at the
properties."
We explored the auditorium and the stage with a fine show of casual
interest. Davidson and Switz were putting final touches on the
scenery--a dark blue backdrop for evening sky, a wall painted to
resemble vine-hung granite, benches and an arbor--but no properties lay
on the table backstage.
"You know this is a Friday, Gib?" demanded Jake, looking up from where
he was mending the cable of a floodlight. "Bad luck, opening our play
on a Friday."
"Not a bit," laughed Pursuivant. "What's begun on a Friday never comes
to an end. Therefore----"
"Oi!" crowed Jake. "That means we'll have a record-breaking run, huh?"
He jumped up and shook my hand violently. "You'll be working in this
show till you step on your beard."
We wandered out again, and Sigrid joined us. She was in high spirits.
"I feel," she said excitedly, "just as I felt on the eve of my first
professional appearance. As though the world would end tonight!"
"God forbid," I said at once, and "God forbid," echoed Judge
Pursuivant. Sigrid laughed merrily at our sudden expressions of concern.
"Oh, it won't end that way," she made haste to add, in the tone one
reserves for children who need comfort. "I mean, the world will begin
tonight, with success and happiness."
She put out a hand, and I squeezed it tenderly. After a moment she
departed to inspect her costume.
"I haven't a maid or a dresser," she called over her shoulder.
"Everything has to be in perfect order, and I myself must see to it."
We watched her as she hurried away, both of us sober.
"I think I know why you fret so about her safety," Pursuivant said to
me. "You felt, too, that the thing she said might be a bad omen."
"Then may her second word be a good omen," I returned.
"Amen to that," he said heartily.
Dinnertime came, and Pursuivant and I made a quick meal of it.
We excused ourselves before the others--Sigrid looked up in mild
astonishment that I should want to leave her side--and went quickly
downstairs to the stage.
* * * * *
On the property table lay the cudgel I was to use in the first act,
the sword I was to strike with in the second, the feather duster to be
wielded by Martha Vining as Bridget, a tray with a wine service to be
borne by Davidson as Oscar. There was also a great book, bound in red
cloth, with red edging.
"That is the Bible," said Pursuivant at once. "I must have a look at
it."
"I still can't see," I muttered, half to myself, "how this sword--a
good piece of steel and as sharp as a razor--failed to kill Varduk when
I----"
"Never mind that sword," interrupted Judge Pursuivant. "Look at this
book, this 'Bible' which they've refused to produce up to now. I'm not
surprized to find out that--well, have a look for yourself."
On the ancient black cloth I saw rather spidery capitals, filled with
red coloring matter: _Grand Albert_.
"I wouldn't look inside if I were you," warned the judge. "This is
in all probability the book that Varduk owned when Davidson met him
at Revere College. Remember what happened to one normal young man,
ungrounded in occultism, who peeped into it."
"What can it be?" I asked.
"A notorious gospel for witches," Pursuivant informed me. "I've heard
of it--Descrepe, the French occultist, edited it in 1885. Most editions
are modified and harmless, but this, at first glance, appears to be the
complete and infamous Eighteenth Century version." He opened it.
The first phase of his description had stuck in my mind. "A gospel for
witches; and that is the book on which Sigrid must swear an oath of
renunciation at the end of the play!"
Pursuivant was scowling at the flyleaf. He groped for his pince-nez,
put them on. "Look here, Connatt," he said.
I crowded close to his elbow, and together we read what had been
written long ago, in ink now faded to a dirty brown:
Geo Gordon (Biron) his book
At 1 hr. befor midnt, on 22 July, 1788 givn him. He was brot to
coeven by Todlin he the saide Geo. G. to be bond to us for 150
yers. and serve for our glory he to gain his title & hav all he
desirs. at end of 150 yrs. to give acctg. & not be releasd save by
delivring anothr as worthie our coeven.
(Signed)
For coeven For Geo. Gordon (Biron)
Terragon Todlin
"And look at this, too," commanded Judge Pursuivant. He laid his great
forefinger at the bottom of the page. There, written in fresh blue ink,
and in a hand somehow familiar:
This 22nd of July, 1938, I tender this book and quit this service
unto Sigrid Holgar.
George Gordon, Lord Byron.
_14. Zero Hour_
Pursuivant closed the book with a loud snap, laid it down on the table,
and caught me by the arm.
"Come away from here," he said in a tense voice. "Outside, where nobody
will hear." He almost dragged me out through the stage door. "Come
along--down by the water--it's fairly open, we'll be alone."
When we reached the edge of the lake we faced each other. The sun was
almost set. Back of us, in front of the lodge, we could hear the noise
of early arrivals for the theater--perhaps the men who would have
charge of automobile parking, the ushers, the cashier.
"How much of what you read was intelligible to you?" asked Pursuivant.
"I had a sense that it was rotten," I said. "Beyond that, I'm
completely at sea."
"I'm not." His teeth came strongly together behind the words. "There,
on the flyleaf of a book sacred to witches and utterly abhorrent to
honest folk, was written an instrument pledging the body and soul of a
baby to a 'coeven'--that is, a congregation of evil sorcerers--for one
hundred and fifty years. George Gordon, the Lord Byron that was to be,
had just completed his sixth month of life."
"How could a baby be pledged like that?" I asked.
"By some sponsor--the one signing the name 'Todlin.' That was
undoubtedly a coven name, such as we know all witches took. Terragon
was another such cognomen. All we can say of 'Todlin' is that the
signature is apparently a woman's. Perhaps that of the child's
eccentric nurse, Mistress Gray----"
"This is beastly," I interposed, my voice beginning to tremble. "Can't
we do something besides talk?"
Pursuivant clapped me strongly on the back. "Steady," he said. "Let's
talk it out while that writing is fresh in our minds. We know, then,
that the infant was pledged to an unnaturally long life of evil.
Promises made were kept--he became the heir to the estates and title of
his grand-uncle, 'Wicked Byron,' after his cousins died strangely. And
surely he had devil-given talents and attractions."
"Wait," I cut in suddenly. "I've been thinking about that final line
or so of writing, signed with Byron's name. Surely I've seen the hand
before."
"You have. The same hand wrote _Ruthven_, and you've seen the
manuscript." Pursuivant drew a long breath. "Now we know how _Ruthven_
could be written on paper only ten years old. Byron lives and signs his
name today."
I felt almost sick, and heartily helpless inside. "But Byron died in
Greece," I said, as though reciting a lesson. "His body was brought to
England and buried at Hucknall Torkard, close to his ancestral home."
"Exactly. It all fits in." Pursuivant's manifest apprehension was
becoming modified by something of grim triumph. "Must he not have
repented, tried to expiate his curse and his sins by an unselfish
sacrifice for Grecian liberty? You and I have been over this ground
before; we know how he suffered and labored, almost like a saint. Death
would seem welcome--his bondage would end in thirty-six years instead
of a hundred and fifty. What about his wish to be burned?"
"Burning would destroy his body," I said. "No chance for it to come
alive again."
"But the body was not burned, and it has come alive again. Connatt, do
you know who the living-dead Byron is?"
"Of course I do. And I also know that he intends to pass something into
the hands of Sigrid."
"He does. She is the new prospect for bondage, the 'other as worthie.'
She is not a free agent in the matter, but neither was Byron at the age
of six months."
The sun's lower rim had touched the lake. Pursuivant's pink face was
growing dusky, and he leaned on the walking-stick that housed a silver
blade.
"Byron's hundred and fifty years will end at eleven o'clock tonight,"
he said, gazing shrewdly around for possible eavesdroppers. "Now, let
me draw some parallels."
"Varduk--we know who Varduk truly is--will, in the character of
Ruthven, ask Miss Holgar, who plays Mary, a number of questions.
Those questions, and her answers as set down for her to repeat, make
up a pattern. Think of them, not as lines in a play, but an actual
interchange between an adept of evil and a neophyte."
"It's true," I agreed. "He asks her if she will 'give herself up,'
'renounce former manners,' and to swear so upon--the book we saw. She
does so."
"Then the prayer, which perplexes you by its form. The 'wert in heaven'
bit becomes obvious now, eh? How about the angel that fell from grace
and attempted to build up his own power to oppose?"
"Satan!" I almost shouted. "A prayer to the force of evil!"
"Not so loud, Connatt. And then, while Miss Holgar stands inside a
circle--that, also, is part of the witch ceremony--he touches her head,
and speaks words we do not know. But we can guess."
He struck his stick hard against the sandy earth.
"What then?" I urged him on.
"It's in an old Scottish trial of witches," said Pursuivant. "Modern
works--J. W. Wickwar's book, and I think Margaret Alice Murray's--quote
it. The master of the coven touched the head of the neophyte and said
that all beneath his hand now belonged to the powers of darkness."
"No! No!" I cried, in a voice that wanted to break.
"No hysterics, please!" snapped Pursuivant. "Connatt, let me give you
one stark thought--it will cool you, strengthen you for what you must
help me achieve. Think what will follow if we let Miss Holgar take
this oath, accept this initiation, however unwittingly. At once she
will assume the curse that Varduk--Byron--lays down. Life after death,
perhaps; the faculty of wreaking devastation at a word or touch; gifts
beyond human will or comprehension, all of them a burden to her; and
who can know the end?"
"There shall not be a beginning," I vowed huskily. "I will kill
Varduk----"
"Softly, softly. You know that weapons--ordinary weapons--do not even
scratch him."
* * * * *
The twilight was deepening into dusk, Pursuivant turned back toward the
lodge, where windows had begun to glow warmly, and muffled motor-noises
bespoke the parking of automobiles. There were other flecks of light,
too. For myself, I felt beaten and weary, as though I had fought to the
verge of losing against a stronger, wiser enemy.
"Look around you, Connatt. At the clumps of bush, the thickets. What do
they hide?"
I knew what he meant. I felt, though I saw only dimly, the presence of
an evil host in ambuscade all around us.
"They're waiting to claim her, Connatt. There's only one thing to do."
"Then let's do it, at once."
"Not yet. The moment must be _his_ moment, one hour before midnight.
Escape, as I once said, will not be enough. We must conquer."
I waited for him to instruct me.
"As you know, Connatt, I will make a speech before the curtain. After
that, I'll come backstage and stay in your dressing-room. What you must
do is get the sword that you use in the second act. Bring it there and
keep it there."
"I've told you and told you that the sword meant nothing against him."
"Bring it anyway," he insisted.
I heard Sigrid's clear voice, calling me to the stage door. Pursuivant
and I shook hands quickly and warmly, like team-mates just before a
hard game, and we went together to the lodge.
Entering, I made my way at once to the property table. The sword still
lay there, and I put out my hand for it.
"What do you want?" asked Elmo Davidson behind me.
"I thought I'd take the sword into my dressing-room."
"It's a prop, Connatt. Leave it right where it is."
I turned and looked at him. "I'd rather have it with me," I said
doggedly.
"You're being foolish," he told me sharply, and there is hardly any
doubt but that I sounded so to him. "What if I told Varduk about this?"
"Go and tell him, if you like. Tell him also that I won't go on tonight
if you're going to order me around." I said this as if I meant it, and
he relaxed his commanding pose.
"Oh, go ahead. And for heaven's sake calm your nerves."
I took the weapon and bore it away. In my room I found my costume for
the first act already laid out on two chairs--either Davidson or Jake
had done that for me. Quickly I rubbed color into my cheeks, lined my
brows and eyelids, affixed fluffy side-whiskers to my jaws. The mirror
showed me a set, pale face, and I put on rather more make-up than I
generally use. My hands trembled as I donned gleaming slippers of
patent leather, fawn-colored trousers that strapped under the insteps,
a frilled shirt and flowing necktie, a flowered waistcoat and a
bottle-green frock coat with velvet facings and silver buttons. My hair
was long enough to be combed into a wavy sweep back from my brow.
"Places, everybody," the voice of Davidson was calling outside.
I emerged. Jake Switz was at my door, and he grinned his good wishes.
I went quickly on-stage, where Sigrid already waited. She looked
ravishing in her simple yet striking gown of soft, light blue, with
billows of skirt, little puffs of sleeves, a tight, low bodice. Her
gleaming hair was caught back into a Grecian-looking coiffure, with a
ribbon and a white flower at the side. The normal tan of her skin lay
hidden beneath the pallor of her make-up.
At sight of me she smiled and put out a hand. I kissed it lightly,
taking care that the red paint on my lips did not smear. She took her
seat on the bench against the artificial bushes, and I, as gracefully
as possible, dropped at her feet.
Applause sounded beyond the curtain, then died away. The voice of Judge
Pursuivant became audible:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been asked by the management to speak
briefly. You are seeing, for the first time before any audience, the
lost play of Lord Byron, _Ruthven_. My presence here is not as a
figure of the theater, but as a modest scholar of some persistence,
whose privilege it has been to examine the manuscript and perceive its
genuineness.
"Consider yourselves all subpenaed as witnesses to a classic moment."
His voice rang as he pronounced the phrase required by Varduk. "I
wonder if this night will not make spectacular history for the genius
who did not die in Greece a century and more ago. I say, he did not
die--for when does genius die? We are here to assist at, and to share
in, a performance that will bring him his proper desserts.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I feel, and perhaps you feel as well, the
presence of the great poet with us in this remote hall. I wish you joy
of what you shall observe. And now, have I your leave to withdraw and
let the play begin?"
Another burst of applause, in the midst of which sounded three raps.
Then up went the curtain, and all fell silent. I, as Aubrey, spoke the
first line of the play:
"I'm no Othello, darling...."
_15. "Whither? I Dread to Think--"_
Sigrid and I struck on the instant the proper note of affectionate
gayety, and I could feel in the air that peculiar audience-rhythm by
which an actor knows that his effort to capture a mood is successful.
For the moment it was the best of all possible worlds, to be exchanging
thus the happy and brilliant lines with the woman I adored, while an
intelligent and sympathetic houseful of spectators shared our happy
mood.
But, if I had forgotten Varduk, he was the more imposing when he
entered. His luminous pallor needed no heightening to seize the
attention; his face was set off, like some gleaming white gem, by the
dark coat, stock, cape, books, pantaloons. He spoke his entrance line
as a king might speak in accepting the crown and homage of a nation.
On the other side of the footlights the audience grew tense with
heightened interest.
He overpowered us both, as I might have known he would, with his
personality and his address. We might have been awkward amateurs,
wilting into nothingness when a master took the stage. I was eclipsed
completely, exactly as Aubrey should be at the entrance of Ruthven, and
I greatly doubt if a single pair of eyes followed me at my first exit;
for at the center of the stage, Varduk had begun to make love to Sigrid.
I returned to my dressing-room. Pursuivant sat astride a chair, his
sturdy forearms crossed upon its back.
"How does it go?" he asked.
"Like a producer's dream," I replied, seizing a powder puff with which
to freshen my make-up. "Except for the things we know about, I would
pray for no better show."
"I gave you a message in my speech before the curtain. Did you hear
what I said? I meant, honestly, to praise Byron and at the same time
to defy him. You and I, with God's help, will give _Ruthven_ an ending
he does not expect."
It was nearly time for me to make a new entrance, and I left the
dressing-room, mystified but comforted by Pursuivant's manner. The
play went on, gathering speed and impressiveness. We were all acting
inspiredly, maugre the bizarre nature of the rehearsals and other
preparations, the dark atmosphere that had surrounded the piece from
its first introduction to us.
The end of the act approached, and with it my exit. Sigrid and I
dragged the limp Varduk to the center of the stage and retired, leaving
him alone to perform the sinister resurrection scene with which the
first act closes. I loitered in the wings to watch, but Jake Switz
tugged at my sleeve.
"Come," he whispered. "I want to show you something."
We went to the stage door. Jake opened it an inch.
The space behind the lodge was full of uncertain, half-formed lights
that moved and lived. For a moment we peered. Then the soft, larval
radiances flowed toward us. Jake slammed the door.
"They're waiting," he said.
From the direction of the stage came Varduk's final line:
"Grave, I reject thy shelter! Death, stand back!"
Then Davidson dragged down the curtain, while the house shook with
applause. I turned again. Varduk, backstage, was speaking softly
but clearly, urging us to hurry with our costume changes. Into my
dressing-room I hastened, my feet numb and my eyes blurred.
"I'll help you dress," came Pursuivant's calm voice. "Did Jake show you
what waits outside?"
I nodded and licked my parched, painted lips.
"Don't fear. Their eagerness is premature."
He pulled off my coat and shirt. Grown calm again before his assurance,
I got into my clothes for Act Two--a modern dinner suit. With alcohol I
removed the clinging side-whiskers, repaired my make-up and brushed my
hair into modern fashion once more. Within seconds, it seemed, Davidson
was calling us to our places.
The curtain rose on Sigrid and me, as Mary and Swithin, hearing the
ancestral tale of horror from Old Bridget. As before, the audience
listened raptly, and as before it rose to the dramatic entrance of
Varduk. He wore his first-act costume, and his manner was even more
compelling. Again I felt myself thrust into the background of the
drama; as for Sigrid, great actress though she is, she prospered only
at his sufferance.
Off stage, on again, off once more--the play was Varduk's, and Sigrid's
personality was being eclipsed. Yet she betrayed no anger or dislike
of the situation. It was as though Varduk mastered her, even while his
character of Ruthven overpowered her character of Mary. I felt utterly
helpless.
* * * * *
In the wings I saw the climax approach. Varduk, flanked by Davidson as
the obedient Oscar, was declaring Ruthven's intention to gain revenge
and love.
"Get your sword," muttered Jake, who had taken Davidson's place at the
curtain ropes. "You're on again in a moment."
I ran to my dressing-room. Pursuivant opened the door, thrust something
into my hand.
"It's the silver sword," he told me quickly. "The one from my cane.
Trust in it, Connatt. Almost eleven o'clock--go, and God stiffen your
arm."
It seemed a mile from the door to the wings. I reached it just in time
for my entrance cue--Sigrid's cry of "Swithin will not allow this."
"Let him try to prevent it," grumbled Davidson, fierce and grizzled as
the devil-converted Oscar.
"I'm here for that purpose," I said clearly, and strode into view. The
sword from Pursuivant's cane I carried low, hoping that Varduk would
not notice at once. He stood with folded arms, a mocking smile just
touching his white face.
"So brave?" he chuckled. "So foolish?"
"My ancestor killed you once, Ruthven," I said, with more meaning than
I had ever employed before. "I can do so again."
I leaped forward, past Sigrid and at him.
The smile vanished. His mouth fell open.
"Wait! That sword----"
He hurled himself, as though to snatch it from my hand. But I lifted
the point and lunged, extending myself almost to the boards of the
stage. As once before, I felt the flesh tear before my blade. The
slender spike of metal went in, in, until the hilt thudded against his
breast-bone.
No sound from audience or actors, no motion. We made a tableau, myself
stretched out at lunge, Varduk transfixed, the other two gazing in
sudden aghast wonder.
For one long breath's space my victim stood like a figure of black
stone, with only his white face betraying anything of life and feeling.
His deep eyes, gone dark as a winter night, dug themselves into mine.
I felt once again the intolerable weight of his stare--yet it was not
threatening, not angry even. The surprize ebbed from it, and the eyes
and the sad mouth softened into a smile. Was he forgiving me? Thanking
me?...
* * * * *
Sigrid found her voice again, and screamed tremulously. I released the
cane-hilt and stepped backward, automatically. Varduk fell limply upon
his face. The silver blade, standing out between his shoulders, gleamed
red with blood. Next moment the red had turned dull black, as though
the gore was a millennium old. Varduk's body sagged. It shrank within
its rich, gloomy garments. It crumbled.
The curtain had fallen. I had not heard its rumble of descent, nor had
Sigrid, nor the stupefied Davidson. From beyond the folds came only
choking silence. Then Pursuivant's ready voice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, a sad accident has ended the play
unexpectedly--tragically. Through the fault of nobody, one of the
players has been fatally----"
I heard no more. Holding Sigrid in my arms I told her, briefly and
brokenly, the true story of _Ruthven_ and its author. She, weeping,
gazed fearfully at the motionless black heap.
"The poor soul!" she sobbed. "The poor, poor soul!"
Jake, leaving his post by the curtain-ropes, had walked on and was
leading away the stunned, stumbling Davidson.
I still held Sigrid close. To my lips, as if at the bidding of another
mind and memory, came the final lines of _Manfred_:
"He's gone--his soul hath ta'en its earthless flight--Whither? I dread
to think--but he is gone."
THE END
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