_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?