Medusa's Coil
By Z. B. BISHOP
_A powerful and compelling tale of brooding
horror that deepens and broadens to the final
catastrophe--an unusual and engrossing novelette
by the author of "The Curse of Yig."_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales January 1939.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The drive toward Cape Girardeau had been through unfamiliar country;
and as the late afternoon light grew golden and half dream-like
I realized that I must have directions if I expected to reach the
town before night. I did not care to be wandering about these bleak
southern Missouri lowlands after dark, for roads were poor and the
November cold rather formidable in an open roadster. Black clouds, too,
were massing on the horizon; so I looked about among the long gray and
blue shadows that streaked the flat, brownish fields, hoping to glimpse
some house where I might get the needed information.
It was a lonely and deserted country, but at last I spied a roof
among a clump of trees near the small river on my right; perhaps a
full half-mile from the road, and probably reachable by some path or
drive upon which I would presently come. In the absence of any nearer
dwelling, I resolved to try my luck there; and was glad when the bushes
by the roadside revealed the ruin of a carved stone gateway, covered
with dry, dead vines and choked with undergrowth which explained why
I had not been able to trace the path across the fields in my first
distant view. I saw that I could not drive the car in; so I parked it
very carefully near the gate--where a thick evergreen would shield it
in case of rain--and got out for the long walk to the house.
Traversing that brush-grown path in the gathering twilight I was
conscious of a distinct sense of foreboding, probably induced by the
air of sinister decay hovering about the gate and the former driveway.
From the carvings on the old stone pillars I inferred that this place
was once an estate of manorial dignity; and I could clearly see that
the driveway had originally boasted guardian lines of linden trees,
some of which had died, while others had lost their special identity
among the wild scrub growths of the region.
As I plowed onward, cockleburrs and stickers clung to my clothes, and
I began to wonder whether the place could be inhabited after all. Was
I tramping on a vain errand? For a moment I was tempted to go back and
try some farm farther along the road, when a view of the house ahead
aroused my curiosity and stimulated my venturesome spirit.
There was something provocatively fascinating in the tree-girt,
decrepit pile before me, for it spoke of the graces and spaciousness
of a bygone era and a far more southerly environment. It was a typical
wooden plantation house of the classic, early Nineteenth Century
pattern, with two and a half stories and a great Ionic portico whose
pillars reached up as far as the attic and supported a triangular
pediment. Its state of decay was extreme and obvious: one of the vast
columns having rotted and fallen to the ground, while the upper piazza
or balcony had sagged dangerously low. Other buildings, I judged, had
formerly stood near it.
As I mounted the broad stone steps to the low porch and the carved and
four-lighted doorway I felt distinctly nervous, and started to light
a cigarette--desisting when I saw how dry and inflammable everything
about me was. Though now convinced that the house was deserted, I
nevertheless hesitated to violate its dignity without knocking; so I
tugged at the rusty iron knocker until I could get it to move, and
finally set up a cautious rapping which seemed to make the whole
place shake and rattle. There was no response; yet once more I plied
the cumbrous, creaking device, as much to dispel the sense of unholy
silence and solitude as to arouse any possible occupant of the ruin.
Somewhere near the river I heard the mournful note of a dove, and it
seemed as if the coursing water itself were faintly audible. Half in
a dream, I seized and rattled the ancient latch, and finally gave the
great six-paneled door a frank trying. It was unlocked, as I could see
in a moment; and though it stuck and grated on its hinges I began to
push it open, stepping through it into a vast shadowy hall as I did so.
But the moment I took this step I regretted it. It was not that a
legion of specters confronted me in that dim and dusty hall with the
ghostly Empire furniture, but that I knew at once that the place was
not deserted after all. There was a creaking on the great curved
staircase, and the sound of faltering footsteps slowly descending. Then
I saw a tall, bent figure silhouetted for an instant against the great
Palladian window on the landing.
* * * * *
My first terror was soon over, and as the figure descended the final
flight I was ready to greet the house-holder whose privacy I had
invaded. In the semi-darkness I could see him reach into his pocket
for a match. There came a flare as he lighted a small kerosene lamp
which stood on a rickety console table near the foot of the stairs. The
feeble glow revealed the stooping figure of a very tall, emaciated old
man, disordered in dress and unshaven as to face, yet for all that with
the bearing and expression of a gentleman.
I did not wait for him to speak, but at once began to explain my
presence.
"You'll pardon my coming in like this, but when my knocking didn't
raise anybody I concluded that no one lived here. I wanted to know the
shortest road to Cape Girardeau. I wanted to get there before dark, but
now, of course----"
As I paused, the man spoke, in exactly the cultivated tone I had
expected, and with a mellow accent as unmistakably Southern as the
house he inhabited.
"Rather, you must pardon me for not answering your knock more promptly.
I live in a very retired way, and am not usually expecting visitors.
At first I thought you were a mere curiosity-seeker. When you knocked
again I started to answer, but I am not well and have to move very
slowly, owing to spinal neuritis--very troublesome case.
"As for your getting to town before dark--you can't do that. The road
you are on isn't the best or shortest way. What you must do is to take
the first real road to your left after you leave the gate. There are
three or four cart-paths you can ignore, but you can't mistake the real
road because of the large willow tree on the right just opposite it.
"When once you've turned, keep on past two roads and turn to the right
along the third. After that----"
Perplexed by these elaborate directions, confusing indeed to a total
stranger, I could not help interrupting.
"Please, how can I follow all these clues in pitch-darkness, without
ever having been near here before, and with only an indifferent pair of
headlights to tell me what is and what isn't a road? Besides, I think
it's going to storm pretty soon, and my car is an open one. It looks
as if I were in a bad fix if I want to get to Cape Girardeau tonight.
The fact is, I don't think I'd better try. I don't like to impose, but
in view of the circumstances, do you suppose you could put me up for
the night? I won't be any trouble. Just let me have a corner to sleep
in till daylight, and I'm all right. I can leave the car in the road
where it is; wet weather won't hurt it."
As I made my sudden request I could see the old man's face lose its
former expression of quiet resignation and take on an odd, surprised
look.
"Sleep _here_?"
He seemed so astonished at my request that I repeated it.
"Yes, why not? I assure you I won't be any trouble. What else can I do?
I'm a stranger hereabouts, these roads are a labyrinth in the dark, and
I'll wager it'll be raining torrents inside of an hour----"
This time it was my host's turn to interrupt, and as he did so I could
feel a peculiar quality in his deep, musical voice.
"A stranger--of course you must be, else you wouldn't think of sleeping
here; wouldn't think of coming here at all. People don't come here
nowadays."
He paused, and my desire to stay was increased a thousandfold by the
sense of mystery his laconic words seemed to evoke. There was something
queer about this place, and the pervasive musty smell seemed to cloak a
thousand secrets. Again I noticed the extreme decrepitude of everything
about me; manifest even in the feeble rays of the single small lamp.
I felt woefully chilly, and saw with regret that no heating seemed to
be provided; yet so great was my curiosity that I still wished most
ardently to stay and learn something of the recluse and his dismal
abode.
"You may stay if you really wish to; you can come to no harm that
I know of. Others claim there are certain peculiarly undesirable
influences here. As for me, I stay because I have to."
With my curiosity still more heightened, I prepared to take my host
at his word, and followed him slowly upstairs when he motioned me to
do so. It was very dark now, and faint pattering outside told me that
the threatened rain had come. I would have been glad of any shelter,
but this was doubly welcome because of the hints of mystery about the
place and its master. For an incurable lover of the grotesque, no more
fitting haven could have been provided.
* * * * *
There was a second-floor corner room in less unkempt shape than the
rest of the house, and into this my host led me, setting down his
small lamp and lighting a somewhat larger one. From the cleanliness
and contents of the room, and from the books ranged along the walls, I
could see that I had not guessed amiss in thinking the man a gentleman
of taste and breeding. He was a hermit and eccentric, no doubt, but
still had standards and intellectual interests. As he waved me to a
seat I began a conversation on general topics, and was pleased to find
him not at all taciturn. If anything, he seemed glad of someone to talk
to, and did not attempt to swerve the discourse from personal topics.
He was, I learned, one Antoine de Russy, of an ancient, powerful
and cultivated line of Louisiana planters. More than a century ago
his grandfather, a younger son, had migrated to southern Missouri
and founded a new estate in the lavish ancestral manner; building
this pillared mansion and surrounding it with all the accessories
of a great plantation. There had been, at one time, as many as two
hundred negroes in the cabins which stood on the flat ground in the
rear--ground that the river had now invaded--and to hear them singing
and laughing and playing the banjo at night was to know the fullest
charm of a civilization and social order now sadly extinct. In front of
the house, where the great guardian oaks and willows stood, there had
been a lawn like a broad green carpet, always watered and trimmed and
with flag-stoned, flower-bordered walks curving through it. Riverside
(for such the place was called) had been a lovely and idyllic homestead
in its day; and my host could recall it when many traces of its best
period still lingered.
It was raining hard now, with dense sheets of water beating against
the insecure roof, walls, and windows, and sending in drops through
a thousand chinks and crevices. Moisture trickled down to the floor
from unsuspected places, and the mounting wind rattled the rotting,
loose-hinged shutters outside. But I minded none of this, nor even
thought of my roadster outside beneath the trees, for I saw that a
story was coming. Incited to reminiscence, my host made a move to show
me to sleeping-quarters, but kept on recalling older, better days.
Soon, I saw, I might learn why he lived alone in that ancient place,
and why his neighbors thought it full of undesirable influences. His
voice was very musical as he spoke on, and his tale soon took a turn
which left me no chance to grow drowsy.
"Yes, Riverside was built in 1816, and my father was born here in 1828.
He died young, so young I can just barely remember him. In '64, he was
killed in the war--Seventh Louisiana Infantry, C.S.A.--for he went
back to the old home to enlist. My grandfather was too old to fight,
yet he lived on to be ninety-five, and helped my mother bring me up:
good bringing-up, too, I'll give them credit. We always had strong
traditions, high notions of honor, and my grandfather saw to it that I
grew up the way de Russys have grown up, generation after generation,
ever since the Crusades. We weren't quite wiped out financially, and
managed to get on very comfortably after the war. I went to a good
school in Louisiana, and later to Princeton. Later on I was able to get
the plantation on a fairly profitable basis, though you see what it's
come to now.
"My mother died when I was twenty, and my grandfather two years later.
It was rather lonely after that; and in '85 I married a distant cousin
in New Orleans. Things might have been different if she'd lived, but
she died when my son Denis was born. Then I had only Denis. I didn't
try marriage again, but gave all my time to the boy. He was like me,
like all the de Russys, darkish and tall and thin, and with the devil
of a temper. I gave him the same training my grandfather had given
me, but he didn't need much training when it came to points of honor.
It was in him. Never saw such high spirit--all I could do to keep him
from running away to the Spanish War when he was eleven! Romantic young
devil, too full of high notions--you'd call 'em Victorian, now--no
trouble at all to make him let the nigger wenches alone. I sent him to
the same school I'd gone to, and to Princeton, too. He was Class of
1909.
"In the end he decided to be a doctor, and went a year to the Harvard
Medical School. Then he hit on the idea of keeping to the old French
tradition of the family, and argued me into sending him to the
Sorbonne. I did--and proudly enough, though I knew how lonely I'd
be with him so far off. Would to God I hadn't! I thought he was the
safest kind of a boy to be in Paris. He had a room in the Rue St.
Jacques--that's near the University in the Latin Quarter--but according
to his letters and his friends he didn't cut up with the gayer dogs at
all. The people he knew were mostly young fellows from home--serious
students and artists who thought more of their work than of striking
attitudes and painting the town red.
"But of course there were lots of fellows who were on a sort of
dividing line between serious study and the devil: the esthetes, the
decadents, experimenters in life and sensation; the Baudelaire kind
of a chap. Naturally, Denis ran up against a good many of these, and
saw a good deal of their life. They had all sorts of crazy circles and
cults--imitation devil-worship, false Black Masses, and the like. Doubt
if it did them much harm on the whole--probably most of 'em forgot all
about it in a year or two. One of the deepest in this queer stuff was
a fellow Denis had known at school--for that matter, whose father I'd
known myself. Frank Marsh, of New Orleans. Disciple of Lafcadio Hearn
and Gauguin and Van Gogh--regular epitome of the yellow nineties. Poor
devil--he had the makings of a great artist, at that.
* * * * *
"Marsh was the oldest friend Denis had in Paris; so as a matter of
course they saw a good deal of each other, to talk over old times at
St. Clair Academy, and all that. The boy wrote me a good deal about
him, and I didn't see any especial harm when he spoke of the group of
mystics Marsh ran with. It seems there was some cult of prehistoric
Egyptian and Carthaginian magic having a rage among the Bohemian
element on the left bank; some nonsensical thing that pretended to
reach back to forgotten sources of hidden truth in lost African
civilizations--the great Zimbabwe, and dead Atlantean cities in the
Hoggar region of the Sahara--and that had a lot of gibberish connected
with snakes and human hair. At least, I called it gibberish then. Denis
used to quote Marsh as saying odd things about the veiled facts behind
the legend of Medusa's snaky locks--and behind the later Ptolemaic myth
of Berenice, who offered up her hair to save her husband-brother, and
had it set in the sky as the constellation Coma Berenices.
"I don't think this business made much impression on Denis until the
night of the queer ritual at Marsh's rooms when he met the priestess.
Most of the devotees of this cult were young fellows, but the head
of it was a young woman who called herself _Tanit-Isis_, letting it
be know that her real name--her name in this latest incarnation, as
she put it--was Marceline Bedard. She claimed to be the left-handed
daughter of Marquis de Chameaux, and seemed to have been both a petty
artist and an artist's model before adopting this more lucrative
magical profession. Someone said she had lived for a time in the West
Indies--Martinique, I think--but she was very reticent about herself.
Part of her pose was a great show of austerity and holiness, but I
don't think the more experienced students took that very seriously.
"Denis, though, was far from experienced, and wrote me fully ten pages
of slush about the goddess he had discovered. If I'd only realized his
simplicity I might have done something, but I never thought a puppy
infatuation like that could mean much. I felt absurdly sure that Denis'
touchy personal honor and family pride would always keep him out of the
most serious complications.
"As time went on, though, his letters began to make me nervous. He
mentioned this Marceline more and more, and his friends less and less;
and began talking about the 'cruel and silly way' they declined to
introduce her to their mothers and sisters. He seems to have asked her
no questions about herself, and I don't doubt but that she filled him
full of romantic legendry concerning her origin and divine revelations
and the way people slighted her. At length I could see that Denis was
altogether cutting his own crowd and spending the bulk of his time with
this alluring priestess. At her especial request he never told the old
crowd of their continual meetings; so nobody over there tried to break
the affair up.
"I suppose she thought he was fabulously rich; for he had the air of
a patrician, and people of a certain class think all aristocratic
Americans are wealthy. In any case, she probably thought this a rare
chance to contract a genuine right-handed alliance with a really
eligible young man. By the time my nervousness burst into open advice,
it was too late. The boy had lawfully married her, and wrote that
he was dropping his studies and bringing the woman to Riverside. He
said she had made a great sacrifice and resigned her leadership of
the magical cult, and that henceforth she would be merely a private
gentlewoman--the future mistress of Riverside, and mother of de Russys
to come.
"Well, sir, I took it the best way I could. I knew that sophisticated
Continentals have different standards from our old American ones, and
anyway, I really knew nothing against the woman. A charlatan, perhaps,
but why necessarily any worse? I suppose I tried to keep as naïve as
possible about such things in those days, for the boy's sake. Clearly,
there was nothing for a man of sense to do but to let Denis alone so
long as his new wife conformed to de Russy ways. Let her have a chance
to prove herself--perhaps she wouldn't hurt the family as much as some
might fear. So I didn't raise any objections or ask any penitence. The
thing was done, and I stood ready to welcome the boy back, whatever he
brought with him.
* * * * *
"They got here three weeks after the telegram telling of the marriage.
Marceline was beautiful, and I could see how the boy might very well
get foolish about her. She did have an air of breeding, and I think
to this day she must have had some strain of good blood in her. She
was apparently not much over twenty; of medium size, fairly slim, and
as graceful as a tigress in posture and motions. Her complexion was
a deep olive, and her eyes were large and very dark. She had small,
classically regular features, though not quite clean-cut enough to suit
my taste, and the most singular head of jet-black hair that I ever saw.
"I didn't wonder that she had dragged the subject of hair into her
magical cult, for with that heavy profusion of it the idea must have
occurred to her naturally. Coiled up, it made her look like some
Oriental princess in a drawing of Aubrey Beardsley's. Hanging down her
back, it came well below her knees and shone in the light as if it
possessed some separate, unholy vitality of its own. I would almost
have thought of Medusa or Berenice myself without having such things
suggested to me, upon seeing and studying that hair.
"Sometimes I thought it moved slightly of itself, and tended to arrange
itself in distinct ropes or strands, but this may have been sheer
illusion. She brushed it incessantly, and seemed to use some sort of
preparation on it. I got the notion once, a curious, whimsical notion,
that it was a living thing which she had to feed in some strange way.
All nonsense--but it added to my feeling of constraint about her and
her hair.
"For I can't deny that I failed to like her wholly, no matter how hard
I tried. Something about her repelled me subtly, and I could not help
weaving morbid and macabre associations about everything connected
with her. Her complexion called up thoughts of Babylon, Atlantis,
Lemuria, and the terrible forgotten dominations of an elder world; her
eyes struck me sometimes as the eyes of some unholy forest creature
or animal-goddess too immeasurably ancient to be fully human; and her
hair--that dense, exotic, overnourished growth of oily jet--made one
shiver as a great black python might have done. There was no doubt but
that she realized my involuntary attitude, though I tried to hide it,
and she tried to hide the fact that she noticed it.
"Yet the boy's infatuation lasted. He positively fawned on her, and
overdid all the little gallantries of daily life to a sickening
degree. She appeared to return the feeling, though I could see it
took a conscious effort to make her duplicate his enthusiasms and
extravagances. For one thing, I think she was piqued to learn that we
weren't as wealthy as she had expected.
"It was a bad business all told. I could see that sad undercurrents
were arising. Denis was half hypnotized with puppy-love, and began to
grow away from me as he felt my shrinking from his wife. This kind of
thing went on for months, and I saw that I was losing my only son, the
boy who had formed the center of all my thoughts and acts for the past
quarter of a century.
"Marceline seemed to be a good wife enough in those early months, and
our friends received her without any quibbling or questioning. I was
always nervous, though, about what some of the young fellows in Paris
might write home to their relatives after the news of the marriage
spread around. Despite the woman's love of secrecy, it couldn't remain
hidden forever; indeed Denis had written a few of his closest friends,
in strict confidence, as soon as he was settled with her at Riverside.
"I got to staying more and more alone in my room with my failing health
as an excuse. It was about that time that my present spinal neuritis
began to develop. Denis didn't seem to notice the trouble, or take any
interest in me and my habits and affairs; and it hurt me to see how
callous he was getting. I began to get sleepless, and often racked my
brain in the night to try to find out what really was the matter--what
it really was that made my new daughter-in-law so repulsive and even
dimly horrible to me.
"Oddly, the only ones who seemed to share my uneasiness were the
servants. The darkies around the house seemed very sullen in their
attitude toward her, and in a few weeks all save the few who were
strongly attached to our family had left. These few--old Scipio and
his wife Sarah, the cook Delilah, and Mary, Scipio's daughter, were
as civil as possible, but plainly revealed that their new mistress
commanded their duty rather than their affection. They stayed in their
own remote part of the house as much as possible. McCabe, our white
chauffeur, was insolently admiring rather than hostile; and another
exception was a very old Zulu woman, said to have come from Africa over
a hundred years before, who had been a sort of leader in her small
cabin as a kind of family pensioner. Old Sophonisba always showed
reverence whenever Marceline came near her, and one time I saw her kiss
the ground where her mistress had walked. Blacks are superstitious
animals, and I wondered whether Marceline had been talking any of her
mystical nonsense to our hands in order to overcome their evident
dislike.
"Well, that's how we went on for nearly half a year. Then, in the
summer of 1916, things began to happen. Toward the middle of June
Denis got a note from his old friend Frank Marsh, telling of a sort of
nervous breakdown which made him want to take a rest in the country. It
was post-marked New Orleans, for Marsh had gone home from Paris when he
felt the collapse coming on, and seemed a very plain though polite bid
for an invitation from us. Marsh, of course, knew that Marceline was
here, and asked very courteously after her. Denis was sorry to hear of
his trouble and told him at once to come along for an indefinite visit.
* * * * *
"Marsh came, and I was shocked to notice how he had changed since I
had seen him in his earlier days. He was a smallish, lightish fellow,
with blue eyes and an undecided chin; and now I could see the effects
of drink and I don't know what else in his puffy eye-lids, enlarged
nose-pores, and heavy lines around the mouth. I reckon he had taken
his pose of decadence pretty seriously, and set out to be as much
of a Rimbaud, Baudelaire, or Lautremont as he could. And yet he was
delightful to talk to, for like all decadents he was exquisitely
sensitive to the color and atmosphere and names of things; admirably,
thoroughly alive, and with whole records of conscious experience in
obscure, shadowy fields of living and feeling which most of us pass
over without knowing they exist.
"I was glad of the visit, for I felt it would help to set up a normal
atmosphere in the house again. And that's what it really seemed to
do at first; for, as I said, Marsh was a delight to have around. He
was as sincere and profound an artist as I ever saw in my life, and
I certainly believe that nothing on earth mattered to him except the
perception and expression of beauty. When he saw an exquisite thing,
or was creating one, his eyes would dilate until the light irises went
nearly out of sight, leaving two mystical black pits in that weak,
delicate, chalk-like face; black pits opening on strange worlds which
none of us could guess about.
"When he reached here, though, he didn't have any chances to show this
tendency; for he had (as he told Denis) gone quite stale. It seems he
had been very successful as an artist of a bizarre kind--like Fuseli or
Goya or Sime or Clark Ashton Smith--but had suddenly become played out.
The world of ordinary things around him had ceased to hold anything he
could recognize as beauty of enough force and poignancy to arouse his
creative faculty. He had often been this way before, but this time he
could not invent any new, strange, or outré sensation or experience
which would supply the needed illusion of fresh beauty or stimulating
adventurous expectancy. He was like a Durtal or a des Esseintes at the
most jaded point of his curious orbit.
"Marceline was away when Marsh arrived. She hadn't been enthusiastic
about his coming, and had refused to decline an invitation from some of
our friends in St. Louis which came about that time for her and Denis.
Denis, of course, stayed to receive his guest, but Marceline had gone
on alone. It was the first time they had ever been separated, and I
hoped the interval would help dispel the sort of daze that was making
such a fool of the boy. Marceline showed no hurry to get back, but
seemed to me to prolong her absence as much as she could. Denis stood
it better than one would have expected from such a doting husband, and
seemed more like his old self as he talked over other days with Marsh
and tried to cheer the listless esthete up.
"It was Marsh who seemed most impatient to see the woman; perhaps
because he thought her strange beauty, or some phase of the mysticism
which had gone into her one-time magical cult, might help to reawaken
his interest in things and give him another start toward artistic
creation. That there was no baser reason, I was absolutely certain
from what I knew of Marsh's character. With all his weaknesses, he
was a gentleman, and it had indeed relieved me when I first learned
that he wanted to come here because his willingness to accept Denis'
hospitality proved that there was no reason why he shouldn't.
"When, at last, Marceline did return, I could see that Marsh was
tremendously affected. He did not attempt to make her talk of the
bizarre thing which she had so definitely abandoned, but was unable
to hide a powerful admiration which kept his eyes--now dilated in
that curious way for the first time during his visit--riveted to her
every moment she was in the room. She, however, seemed uneasy rather
than pleased by his steady scrutiny; that is, she seemed so at first,
though this feeling of hers wore away in a few days, and left the two
on a basis of the most cordial and voluble congeniality. I could see
Marsh studying her constantly when he thought no one was watching,
and I wondered how long it would be that only the artist, and not the
primitive man, would be aroused by her mysterious graces.
"Denis naturally felt some irritation at this turn of affairs; though
he realized that his guest was a man of honor and that, as kindred
mystics and esthetes, Marceline and Marsh would naturally have things
and interests to discuss in which a more or less conventional person
could have no part. He didn't hold anything against anybody, but merely
regretted that his own imagination was too limited and traditional to
let him talk with Marceline as Marsh talked. At this stage of things
I began to see more of the boy. With his wife otherwise busy, he had
time to remember that he had a father, who was ready to help him in any
difficulty.
"We often sat together on the veranda watching Marsh and Marceline as
they rode up or down the drive on horseback, or played tennis on the
court that used to stretch south of the house. They talked mostly in
French, which Marsh, though he hadn't more than a quarter-portion of
French blood, handled more glibly than either Denis or I could speak
it. Marceline's English, always academically correct, was rapidly
improving in accent; but it was plain that she relished dropping back
into her mother-tongue. As we looked at the congenial couple they made,
I could see the boy's cheek and throat muscles tighten; though he
wasn't a whit less ideal a host to Marsh, or a whit less considerate a
husband to Marceline.
"All this was generally in the afternoon; for Marceline rose very late,
had breakfast in bed, and took an immense amount of time preparing to
come downstairs. It was in these morning hours that Denis and Marsh did
their real visiting, and exchanged the close confidences which kept
their friendship up despite the strain that jealousy imposed.
* * * * *
"Well, it was in one of those morning talks on the veranda that Marsh
made the proposition which brought on the end. I was laid up, but
had managed to get downstairs and stretch out on the front parlor
sofa near the long window. Denis and Marsh were just outside; so I
couldn't help hearing all they said. They had been talking about art,
and the curious, capricious environmental elements needed to jolt an
artist into producing work of merit, when Marsh suddenly swerved from
abstractions to the personal application he must have had in mind from
the start.
"'I suppose,' he was saying, 'that nobody can tell just what it is in
some scenes or objects that makes them esthetic stimuli for certain
individuals. Basically, of course, it must have some reference to each
man's background of stored-up mental associations; for no two people
have the same scale of sensitiveness and responses. For some of us
all ordinary things have ceased to have any emotional or imaginative
significance, but no one responds in the same way to exactly the same
extraordinary thing. Now take me, for instance....
"'I know, Denny, that I can say these things to you because you have
such a preternaturally unspoiled mind--clean, objective, and all that.
You won't misunderstand. The fact is, I think I know what's needed to
set my imagination working again. I've had a dim idea of it ever since
we were in Paris, but I'm sure now. It's Marceline, old chap; that face
and that hair, and the train of shadowy images they bring up. Not
merely visible beauty--though God knows there's enough of that--but
something peculiar and individualized, that can't exactly be explained.
Do you know, in the last few days I've felt the existence of such a
stimulus so keenly that I honestly think I could outdo myself, if I
could get hold of paint and canvas at just the time when her face and
hair set my fancy stirring and weaving.
"'There is something weird and other-worldly about it, something joined
up with the dim ancient thing Marceline represents. I don't know how
much she's told you about that side of her, but I can assure you
there's plenty to it. She has some marvelous links with the outside.'
"Some change in Denis' expression must have halted the speaker here,
for there was a considerable spell of silence before the words went on.
I was utterly taken aback, for I'd expected no such overt development
as this, and I wondered what my son could be thinking. My heart
began to pound violently, and I strained my ears in the frankest of
intentional eavesdropping. Then Marsh resumed.
"'Of course you're jealous--I know how a speech like mine must
sound--but I can swear to you that you needn't be.'
"Denis did not answer, and Marsh went on.
"'To tell the truth, I could never be in love with Marceline--I
couldn't even be a cordial friend of hers in the warmest sense. Why,
damn it all, I feel like a hypocrite talking with her these days as
I've been doing.
"'The case simply is, that one phase of her half hypnotizes me in a
certain way--a very strange, fantastic, and dimly terrible way--just
as another phase half hypnotizes you in a much more normal way. I see
something in her--or to be psychologically exact, something through
her or beyond her--that you don't see at all; something that brings up
a vast pageantry of shapes from forgotten abysses, and makes me want
to paint incredible things whose outlines vanish the instant I try to
envisage them clearly. Don't mistake, Denny: your wife is a magnificent
being, a splendid focus of cosmic forces who has a right to be called
divine if anything on earth has!'
"I felt a clearing of the situation at this point, for the abstract
strangeness of Marsh's expressed sentiment, plus the flattery he was
now heaping on Marceline, could not fail to disarm and mollify one as
fondly proud of his consort as Denis always was. Marsh evidently caught
the change himself, for there was more confidence in his tone as he
continued.
"'I must paint her, Denny, must paint that hair, and you won't regret
it. There's something more than mortal about that hair, something more
than beautiful----'
"He paused, and I wondered what Denis could be thinking. Was Marsh's
interest actually that of the artist alone, or was he merely infatuated
as Denis had been? I had thought, in their school days, that he had
envied my boy, and I dimly felt that it might be the same now. On
the other hand, something in that talk of artistic stimulus had rung
amazingly true; so that the more I pondered, the more I was inclined to
take the stuff at face value. Denis seemed to do so, too, for although
I could not catch his low-spoken reply, I could tell by the effect it
produced that it must have been affirmative.
"There was a sound of someone slapping another on the back, and then a
grateful speech from Marsh that I was long to remember.
"'That's great, Denny; and just as I told you, you'll never regret
it. In a sense, I'm half doing it for you. You'll be a different man
when you see it. It'll put you back where you used to be--give you a
waking-up and a sort of salvation--but you can't see what I mean as
yet. Just remember old friendship, and don't get the idea that I'm not
the same old bird!'
* * * * *
"I rose perplexedly as I saw the two stroll off across the lawn, arm
in arm. What could Marsh have meant by his strange and almost ominous
reassurance? The more my fears were quieted in one direction, the more
they were aroused in another. Look at it in any way I could, it seemed
to be rather a bad business.
"But matters got started just the same. Denis fixed up an attic room
with skylights, and Marsh sent for all sorts of painting equipment.
Everyone was rather excited about the new venture, and I was at least
glad that something was on foot to break the brooding tension.
"Soon the sittings began, and we all took them quite seriously, for we
could see that Marsh regarded them as important artistic events. Denny
and I used to go quietly about the house as though something sacred
were occurring.
"With Marceline, though, it was a different matter, as I began to see
at once. Whatever Marsh's reactions to the sittings may have been, hers
were painfully obvious. Every possible way she betrayed a frank and
commonplace infatuation for the artist, and would repulse Denis' marks
of affection whenever she dared. Oddly, I noticed this more vividly
than Denis himself, and tried to devise some plan for keeping the
boy's mind easy until the matter could be straightened out. There was
no use in having him excited about it if it could be helped.
"In the end I decided that Denis had better be away while the
disagreeable situation existed. I could represent his interests well
enough at this end, and sooner or later Marsh would finish the picture
and go. My view of Marsh's honor was such that I did not look for any
worse developments. When the matter had blown over, and Marceline had
forgotten about her new infatuation, it would be time enough to have
Denis on hand again.
"So I wrote a long letter to my marketing and financial agent in New
York, and cooked up a plan to have the boy summoned there for an
indefinite time. I had the agent write him that our affairs absolutely
required one of us to go East, and of course my illness made it clear
that I could not be the one. It was arranged that when Denis got to New
York he would find enough plausible matters to keep him busy as long as
I thought he ought to be away.
"The plan worked perfectly, and Denis started for New York without
the least suspicion. Marceline and Marsh went with him in the car to
Cape Girardeau, where he caught the afternoon train to St. Louis. They
returned about dark, and as McCabe drove the car back to the stables I
could hear them talking on the veranda. This time I resolved to do some
intentional eavesdropping, so quietly went down to the front parlor and
stretched out on the sofa near the window.
"At first I could hear nothing, but very shortly there came a sound as
of a chair being shifted, followed by a short, sharp breath and a sort
of inarticulately hurt exclamation from Marceline. Then I heard Marsh
speaking in a strained, almost formal voice.
"'I'd enjoy working tonight--if you're not too tired.'
"Marceline's reply was in the same hurt tone which had marked her
exclamation. She used English, as he had done.
"'Oh, Frank, is that really all you care about? Forever working! Can't
we just sit out in this glorious moonlight?'
"He answered impatiently, his voice showing a certain contempt beneath
the dominant quality of artistic enthusiasm.
"'Moonlight! Good God, what cheap sentimentality! For a supposedly
sophisticated person you surely do hang on to some of the crudest
claptrap that ever escaped from the dime novels. With art at your
elbow, you have to think of the moon! Or perhaps it makes you think of
the Roodmus dance around the stone pillars at Auteuil; hell! how you
used to make those goggle-eyed yaps stare! But no, I suppose you've
dropped all that now. No more Atlantean magic or hair-snake rites for
Madame de Russy! I'm the only one to remember the old things, the
things that came down through the temples of Tanit and called on the
ramparts of Zimbabwe. But I won't be cheated of that remembrance--all
that is weaving itself into the thing on my canvas--the thing that is
going to capture wonder and crystallize the secrets of seventy-five
thousand years.'
"Marceline interrupted in a voice full of mixed emotions.
"'It's you who are cheaply sentimental now! You know well that the old
things had better be let alone. All of you had better look out if ever
I chant the old rites or try to call up what lies hidden in Yuggoth,
Zimbabwe, and Rl'yeh. I thought you had more sense!
"'You lack logic. You want me to be interested in this precious
painting of yours, yet you never let me see what you're doing. Always
that black cloth over it! It's of me--I shouldn't think it would matter
if I saw it.'
"Marsh was interrupting this time, his voice curiously hard and
strained.
"'No. Not now. You'll see it in due time. You say it's of you--yes,
it's that, but it's more. If you knew, you mightn't be so impatient.
Poor Denis! My God, it's a shame!'
"My throat went suddenly dry as the words rose to an almost febrile
pitch. What could Marsh mean? Suddenly I saw that he had stopped and
was entering the house alone. I heard the front door slam, and listened
as his footsteps ascended the stairs. Outside on the veranda I could
still hear Marceline's heavy, angry breathing. I crept away sick at
heart, feeling that there were grave things to ferret out before I
could safely let Denis come back.
* * * * *
"After that evening the tension around the place was even worse than
before. Marceline had always lived on flattery and fawning, and
the shock of those few blunt words from Marsh was too much for her
temperament.
"There was no living in the house with her any more, for with poor
Denis gone she took out her abusiveness on everybody. When she could
find no one indoors to quarrel with she would go out to Sophonisba's
cabin and spend hours talking with the queer old Zulu woman. Aunt Sophy
was the only person who would fawn abjectly enough to suit her, and
when I tried once to overhear their conversation I found Marceline
whispering about _elder secrets_ and _unknown_ Kadath while the
Negress rocked to and fro in her chair, making inarticulate sounds of
reverence and admiration every now and then.
"But nothing could break her dog-like infatuation for Marsh. She
would talk bitterly and sullenly to him, yet was getting more and
more obedient to his wishes. It was very convenient for him, since
he now became able to make her pose for the picture whenever he felt
like painting. He tried to show gratitude for this willingness, but I
thought I could detect a kind of contempt or even loathing beneath his
careful politeness. For my part, I frankly hated Marceline! There was
no use in calling my attitude anything as mild as mere dislike these
days. Certainly, I was glad Denis was away. His letters, not nearly so
frequent as I wished, showed signs of strain and worry.
"As the middle of August went by I gathered from Marsh's remarks that
the portrait was nearly done. His mood seemed increasingly sardonic,
though Marceline's temper improved a bit, as the prospect of seeing the
thing tickled her vanity. I can still recall the day when Marsh said
he'd have everything finished within a week. Marceline brightened up
perceptibly, though not without a venomous look at me. It seemed as if
her coiled hair visibly tightened about her head.
"'I'm to be the first to see it!' she snapped. Then, smiling at Marsh,
she added, 'And if I don't like it I shall slash it to pieces!'
"Marsh's face took on the most curious look I had ever seen it wear as
he answered her.
"'I can't vouch for your taste, Marceline, but I swear it will
be magnificent! Not that I want to take much credit--art creates
itself--and this thing had to be done. Just wait!'
"During the next few days I felt a queer sense of foreboding, as if
the completion of the picture meant a kind of catastrophe instead of a
relief. Denis, too, had not written me, and my agent in New York said
he was planning some trip to the country. I wondered what the outcome
of the whole thing would be. What a queer mixture of elements--Marsh
and Marceline, Denis and I! How would all these ultimately react on one
another? When my fears grew too great I tried to lay them all to my
infirmity, but that explanation never quite satisfied me.
* * * * *
"Well, the thing exploded on Tuesday, the 26th of August. I had risen
at my usual time and had breakfast, but was not good for much because
of the pain in my spine. It had been troubling me badly of late, and
forcing me to take opiates when it got too unbearable; nobody else was
downstairs except the servants, though I could hear Marceline moving
about in her room. Marsh slept in the attic next his studio, and had
begun to keep such late hours that he was seldom up till noon. About
ten o'clock the pain got the better of me, so that I took a double dose
of my opiate and lay down on the parlor sofa. The last I heard was
Marceline's pacing overhead. Poor creature--if I had known! She must
have been walking before the long mirror admiring herself. That was
like her--vain from start to finish, reveling in her own beauty, just
as she reveled in all the little luxuries Denis was able to give her.
"I didn't wake up till near sunset, and knew instantly how long I had
slept from the golden light and long shadows outside the window. Nobody
was about, and a sort of unnatural stillness seemed to be hovering over
everything. From afar, though, I thought I could sense a faint howling,
wild and intermittent, whose quality had a slight but baffling
familiarity about it. I'm not much for psychic premonitions, but I was
frightfully uneasy from the start. There had been dreams, even worse
than the ones I had been dreaming in the weeks before; and this time
they seemed hideously linked to some black and festering reality. The
whole place had a poisonous air. Afterward I reflected that certain
sounds must have filtered through to my unconscious brain during those
hours of drugged sleep. My pain, though, was very much eased, and I
rose and walked without difficulty.
"Soon enough I began to see that something was wrong. Marsh and
Marceline might have been riding, but someone ought to have been
getting dinner in the kitchen. Instead there was only silence, except
for that faint distant howl or wail, and nobody answered when I pulled
the old-fashioned bell-cord to summon Scipio. Then, chancing to look
up, I saw the spreading stain on the ceiling--the bright red stain,
that must have come through the floor of Marceline's room.
"In an instant I forgot my crippled back and hurried upstairs to find
out the worst. Everything under the sun raced through my mind as I
struggled with the dampness-warped door of that silent chamber, and
most hideous of all was a terrible sense of malign fulfilment and
fatal expectedness. I had, it struck me, known all along that nameless
horrors were gathering; that something profoundly evil had gained a
foothold under my roof from which only blood and tragedy could result.
"The door gave at last, and I stumbled into the large room beyond--all
dim from the branches of the great trees outside the windows. For a
moment I could do nothing but flinch at the faint evil odor that
immediately struck my nostrils. Then, turning on the electric light and
glancing around, I glimpsed a nameless blasphemy on the yellow and blue
rug.