Albert passed through the mighty wall and disappeared in the unearthly
light. Rupert followed mechanically. He felt the crushing of the mortar
beneath his feet, the roughness of the jagged wall where he rested his
hand to steady himself.
The keep rose absolutely isolated among the ruins, yet on passing
through the wall Rupert found himself in a long, uneven corridor, the
floor of which was warped and sagging, while the walls were covered on
one side with big faded portraits of an inferior quality, like those in
the corridor that connects the Pitti and Uffizzi in Florence. Before him
moved the figure of Count Albert,--a black silhouette in the
ever-increasing light. And always the music grew stronger and stranger,
a mad, evil, seductive dance that bewitched even while it disgusted.
In a final blaze of vivid, intolerable light, in a burst of hellish
music that might have come from Bedlam, Rupert stepped from the corridor
into a vast and curious room where at first he saw nothing,
distinguished nothing but a mad, seething whirl of sweeping figures,
white, in a white room, under white light, Count Albert standing before
him, the only dark object to be seen. As his eyes grew accustomed to the
fearful brightness, he knew that he was looking on a dance such as the
damned might see in hell, but such as no living man had ever seen
before.
Around the long, narrow hall, under the fearful light that came from
nowhere, but was omnipresent, swept a rushing stream of unspeakable
horrors, dancing insanely, laughing, gibbering hideously; the dead of
forty years. White, polished skeletons, bare of flesh and vesture,
skeletons clothed in the dreadful rags of dried and rattling sinews, the
tags of tattering grave-clothes flaunting behind them. These were the
dead of many years ago. Then the dead of more recent times, with yellow
bones showing only here and there, the long and insecure hair of their
hideous heads writhing in the beating air. Then green and gray horrors,
bloated and shapeless, stained with earth or dripping with spattering
water; and here and there white, beautiful things, like chiselled ivory,
the dead of yesterday, locked it may be, in the mummy arms of rattling
skeletons.
Round and round the cursed room, a swaying, swirling maelstrom of death,
while the air grew thick with miasma, the floor foul with shreds of
shrouds, and yellow parchment, clattering bones, and wisps of tangled
hair.
And in the very midst of this ring of death, a sight not for words nor
for thought, a sight to blast forever the mind of the man who looked
upon it: a leaping, writhing dance of Count Albert's victims, the score
of beautiful women and reckless men who danced to their awful death
while the castle burned around them, charred and shapeless now, a living
charnel-house of nameless horror.
Count Albert, who had stood silent and gloomy, watching the dance of the
damned, turned to Rupert, and for the first time spoke.
"We are ready for you now; dance!"
A prancing horror, dead some dozen years, perhaps, flaunted from the
rushing river of the dead, and leered at Rupert with eyeless skull.
"Dance!"
Rupert stood frozen, motionless.
"Dance!"
His hard lips moved. "Not if the devil came from hell to make me."
Count Albert swept his vast two-handed sword into the f[oe]tid air while
the tide of corruption paused in its swirling, and swept down on Rupert
with gibbering grins.
The room, and the howling dead, and the black portent before him circled
dizzily around, as with a last effort of departing consciousness he
drew his pistol and fired full in the face of Count Albert.
* * * * *
Perfect silence, perfect darkness; not a breath, not a sound: the dead
stillness of a long-sealed tomb. Rupert lay on his back, stunned,
helpless, his pistol clenched in his frozen hand, a smell of powder in
the black air. Where was he? Dead? In hell? He reached his hand out
cautiously; it fell on dusty boards. Outside, far away, a clock struck
three. Had he dreamed? Of course; but how ghastly a dream! With
chattering teeth he called softly,--
"Otto!"
There was no reply, and none when he called again and again. He
staggered weakly to his feet, groping for matches and candles. A panic
of abject terror came on him; the matches were gone! He turned towards
the fireplace: a single coal glowed in the white ashes. He swept a mass
of papers and dusty books from the table, and with trembling hands
cowered over the embers, until he succeeded in lighting the dry tinder.
Then he piled the old books on the blaze, and looked fearfully around.
No: It was gone,--thank God for that; the hook was empty.
But why did Otto sleep so soundly; why did he not awake?
He stepped unsteadily across the room in the flaring light of the
burning books, and knelt by the mattress.
* * * * *
So they found him in the morning, when no one came to the inn from
Kropfsberg Keep, and the quaking Peter Rosskopf arranged a relief
party;--found him kneeling beside the mattress where Otto lay, shot in
the throat and quite dead.
THE WHITE VILLA.
The White Villa.
When we left Naples on the 8.10 train for Paestum, Tom and I, we fully
intended returning by the 2.46. Not because two hours time seemed enough
wherein to exhaust the interests of those deathless ruins of a dead
civilization, but simply for the reason that, as our _Indicatore_
informed us, there was but one other train, and that at 6.11, which
would land us in Naples too late for the dinner at the Turners and the
San Carlo afterwards. Not that I cared in the least for the dinner or
the theatre; but then, I was not so obviously in Miss Turner's good
graces as Tom Rendel was, which made a difference.
However, we had promised, so that was an end of it.
This was in the spring of '88, and at that time the railroad, which was
being pushed onward to Reggio, whereby travellers to Sicily might be
spared the agonies of a night on the fickle Mediterranean, reached no
farther than Agropoli, some twenty miles beyond Paestum; but although the
trains were as yet few and slow, we accepted the half-finished road with
gratitude, for it penetrated the very centre of Campanian brigandage,
and made it possible for us to see the matchless temples in safety,
while a few years before it was necessary for intending visitors to
obtain a military escort from the Government; and military escorts are
not for young architects.
So we set off contentedly, that white May morning, determined to make
the best of our few hours, little thinking that before we saw Naples
again we were to witness things that perhaps no American had ever seen
before.
For a moment, when we left the train at "Pesto," and started to walk up
the flowery lane leading to the temples, we were almost inclined to
curse this same railroad. We had thought, in our innocence, that we
should be alone, that no one else would think of enduring the long four
hours' ride from Naples just to spend two hours in the ruins of these
temples; but the event proved our unwisdom. We were _not_ alone. It was
a compact little party of conventional sight-seers that accompanied us.
The inevitable English family with the three daughters, prominent of
teeth, flowing of hair, aggressive of scarlet Murrays and Baedekers; the
two blond and untidy Germans; a French couple from the pages of _La Vie
Parisienne_; and our "old man of the sea," the white-bearded
Presbyterian minister from Pennsylvania who had made our life miserable
in Rome at the time of the Pope's Jubilee. Fortunately for us, this
terrible old man had fastened himself upon a party of American
school-teachers travelling _en Cook_, and for the time we were safe; but
our vision of two hours of dreamy solitude faded lamentably away.
Yet how beautiful it was! this golden meadow walled with far, violet
mountains, breathless under a May sun; and in the midst, rising from
tangles of asphodel and acanthus, vast in the vacant plain, three
temples, one silver gray, one golden gray, and one flushed with
intangible rose. And all around nothing but velvet meadows stretching
from the dim mountains behind, away to the sea, that showed only as a
thin line of silver just over the edge of the still grass.
The tide of tourists swept noisily through the Basilica and the temple
of Poseidon across the meadow to the distant temple of Ceres, and Tom
and I were left alone to drink in all the fine wine of dreams that was
possible in the time left us. We gave but little space to examining the
temples the tourists had left, but in a few moments found ourselves
lying in the grass to the east of Poseidon, looking dimly out towards
the sea, heard now, but not seen,--a vague and pulsating murmur that
blended with the humming of bees all about us.
A small shepherd boy, with a woolly dog, made shy advances of
friendship, and in a little time we had set him to gathering flowers for
us: asphodels and bee-orchids, anemones, and the little thin green iris
so fairylike and frail. The murmur of the tourist crowd had merged
itself in the moan of the sea, and it was very still; suddenly I heard
the words I had been waiting for,--the suggestion I had refrained from
making myself, for I knew Thomas.
"I say, old man, shall we let the 2.46 go to thunder?"
I chuckled to myself. "But the Turners?"
"They be blowed, we can tell them we missed the train."
"That is just exactly what we shall do," I said, pulling out my watch,
"unless we start for the station right now."
But Tom drew an acanthus leaf across his face and showed no signs of
moving; so I filled my pipe again, and we missed the train.
As the sun dropped lower towards the sea, changing its silver line to
gold, we pulled ourselves together, and for an hour or more sketched
vigorously; but the mood was not on us. It was "too jolly fine to waste
time working," as Tom said; so we started off to explore the single
street of the squalid town of Pesto that was lost within the walls of
dead Poseidonia. It was not a pretty village,--if you can call a
rut-riven lane and a dozen houses a village,--nor were the inhabitants
thereof reassuring in appearance. There was no sign of a
church,--nothing but dirty huts, and in the midst, one of two stories,
rejoicing in the name of _Albergo del Sole_, the first story of which
was a black and cavernous smithy, where certain swarthy knaves, looking
like banditti out of a job, sat smoking sulkily.
"We might stay here all night," said Tom, grinning askance at this
choice company; but his suggestion was not received with enthusiasm.
Down where the lane from the station joined the main road stood the only
sign of modern civilization,--a great square structure, half villa, half
fortress, with round turrets on its four corners, and a ten-foot wall
surrounding it. There were no windows in its first story, so far as we
could see, and it had evidently been at one time the fortified villa of
some Campanian noble. Now, however, whether because brigandage had been
stamped out, or because the villa was empty and deserted, it was no
longer formidable; the gates of the great wall hung sagging on their
hinges, brambles growing all over them, and many of the windows in the
upper story were broken and black. It was a strange place, weird and
mysterious, and we looked at it curiously. "There is a story about that
place," said Tom, with conviction.
It was growing late: the sun was near the edge of the sea as we walked
down the ivy-grown walls of the vanished city for the last time, and as
we turned back, a red flush poured from the west, and painted the Doric
temples in pallid rose against the evanescent purple of the Apennines.
Already a thin mist was rising from the meadows, and the temples hung
pink in the misty grayness.
It was a sorrow to leave the beautiful things, but we could run no risk
of missing this last train, so we walked slowly back towards the
temples.
"What is that Johnny waving his arm at us for?" asked Tom, suddenly.
"How should I know? We are not on his land, and the walls don't matter."
We pulled out our watches simultaneously.
"What time are you?" I said.
"Six minutes before six."
"And I am seven minutes. It can't take us all that time to walk to the
station."
"Are you sure the train goes at 6.11?"
"Dead sure," I answered; and showed him the _Indicatore_.
By this time a woman and two children were shrieking at us hysterically;
but what they said I had no idea, their Italian being of a strange and
awful nature.
"Look here," I said, "let's run; perhaps our watches are both slow."
"Or--perhaps the time-table is changed."
Then we ran, and the populace cheered and shouted with enthusiasm; our
dignified run became a panic-stricken rout, for as we turned into the
lane, smoke was rising from beyond the bank that hid the railroad; a
bell rang; we were so near that we could hear the interrogative
_Pronte?_ the impatient _Partenza!_ and the definitive _Andiamo!_ But
the train was five hundred yards away, steaming towards Naples, when we
plunged into the station as the clock struck six, and yelled for the
station-master.
He came, and we indulged in crimination and recrimination.
When we could regard the situation calmly, it became apparent that the
time-table _had_ been changed two days before, the 6.11 now leaving at
5.58. A _facchino_ came in, and we four sat down and regarded the
situation judicially.
"Was there any other train?"
"No."
"Could we stay at the Albergo del Sole?"
A forefinger drawn across the throat by the Capo Stazione with a
significant "cluck" closed that question.
"Then we must stay with you here at the station."
"But, Signori, I am not married. I live here only with the _facchini_. I
have only one room to sleep in. It is impossible!"
"But we must sleep somewhere, likewise eat. What can we do?" and we
shifted the responsibility deftly on the shoulders of the poor old man,
who was growing excited again.
He trotted nervously up and down the station for a minute, then he
called the _facchino_. "Giuseppe, go up to the villa and ask if two
_forestieri_ who have missed the last train can stay there all night!"
Protests were useless. The _facchino_ was gone, and we waited anxiously
for his return. It seemed as though he would never come. Darkness had
fallen, and the moon was rising over the mountains. At last he appeared.
"The Signori may stay all night, and welcome; but they cannot come to
dinner, for there is nothing in the house to eat!"
This was not reassuring, and again the old station-master lost himself
in meditation. The results were admirable, for in a little time the
table in the waiting-room had been transformed into a dining-table, and
Tom and I were ravenously devouring a big omelette, and bread and
cheese, and drinking a most shocking sour wine as though it were Chateau
Yquem. A _facchino_ served us, with clumsy good-will; and when we had
induced our nervous old host to sit down with us and partake of his own
hospitality, we succeeded in forming a passably jolly dinner-party,
forgetting over our sour wine and cigarettes the coming hours from ten
until sunrise, which lay before us in a dubious mist.
It was with crowding apprehensions which we strove in vain to joke away
that we set out at last to retrace our steps to the mysterious villa,
the _facchino_ Giuseppe leading the way. By this time the moon was well
overhead, and just behind us as we tramped up the dewy lane, white in
the moonlight between the ink-black hedgerows on either side. How still
it was! Not a breath of air, not a sound of life; only the awful silence
that had lain almost unbroken for two thousand years over this vast
graveyard of a dead world.
As we passed between the shattered gates and wound our way in the
moonlight through the maze of gnarled fruit-trees, decaying farm
implements and piles of lumber, towards the small door that formed the
only opening in the first story of this deserted fortress, the cold
silence was shattered by the harsh baying of dogs somewhere in the
distance to the right, beyond the barns that formed one side of the
court. From the villa came neither light nor sound. Giuseppe knocked at
the weather-worn door, and the sound echoed cavernously within; but
there was no other reply. He knocked again and again, and at length we
heard the rasping jar of sliding bolts, and the door opened a little,
showing an old, old man, bent with age and gaunt with malaria. Over his
head he held a big Roman lamp, with three wicks, that cast strange
shadows on his face,--a face that was harmless in its senility, but
intolerably sad. He made no reply to our timid salutations, but motioned
tremblingly to us to enter; and with a last "good-night" to Giuseppe we
obeyed, and stood half-way up the stone stairs that led directly from
the door, while the old man tediously shot every bolt and adjusted the
heavy bar.
Then we followed him in the semi-darkness up the steps into what had
been the great hall of the villa. A fire was burning in a great
fireplace so beautiful in design that Tom and I looked at each other
with interest. By its fitful light we could see that we were in a huge
circular room covered by a flat, saucer-shaped dome,--a room that must
once have been superb and splendid, but that now was a lamentable wreck.
The frescoes on the dome were stained and mildewed, and here and there
the plaster was gone altogether; the carved doorways that led out on all
sides had lost half the gold with which they had once been covered, and
the floor was of brick, sunken into treacherous valleys. Rough chests,
piles of old newspapers, fragments of harnesses, farm implements, a heap
of rusty carbines and cutlasses, nameless litter of every possible kind,
made the room into a wilderness which under the firelight seemed even
more picturesque than it really was. And on this inexpressible confusion
of lumber the pale shapes of the seventeenth-century nymphs, startling
in their weather-stained nudity, looked down with vacant smiles.
For a few moments we warmed ourselves before the fire; and then, in the
same dejected silence, the old man led the way to one of the many doors,
handed us a brass lamp, and with a stiff bow turned his back on us.
Once in our room alone, Tom and I looked at each other with faces that
expressed the most complex emotions.
"Well, of all the rum goes," said Tom, "this is the rummiest go I ever
experienced!"
"Right, my boy; as you very justly remark, we are in for it. Help me
shut this door, and then we will reconnoitre, take account of stock, and
size up our chances."
But the door showed no sign of closing; it grated on the brick floor and
stuck in the warped casing, and it took our united efforts to jam the
two inches of oak into its place, and turn the enormous old key in its
rusty lock.
"Better now, much better now," said Tom; "now let us see where we are."
The room was easily twenty-five feet square, and high in proportion;
evidently it had been a state apartment, for the walls were covered with
carved panelling that had once been white and gold, with mirrors in the
panels, the wood now stained every imaginable color, the mirrors
cracked and broken, and dull with mildew. A big fire had just been
lighted in the fireplace, the shutters were closed, and although the
only furniture consisted of two massive bedsteads, and a chair with one
leg shorter than the others, the room seemed almost comfortable.
I opened one of the shutters, that closed the great windows that ran
from the floor almost to the ceiling, and nearly fell through the
cracked glass into the floorless balcony. "Tom, come here, quick," I
cried; and for a few minutes neither of us thought about our dubious
surroundings, for we were looking at Paestum by moonlight.
A flat, white mist, like water, lay over the entire meadow; from the
midst rose against the blue-black sky the three ghostly temples, black
and silver in the vivid moonlight, floating, it seemed, in the fog; and
behind them, seen in broken glints between the pallid shafts, stretched
the line of the silver sea.
Perfect silence,--the silence of implacable death.
We watched the white tide of mist rise around the temples, until we were
chilled through, and so presently went to bed. There was but one door
in the room, and that was securely locked; the great windows were twenty
feet from the ground, so we felt reasonably safe from all possible
attack.
In a few minutes Tom was asleep and breathing audibly; but my
constitution is more nervous than his, and I lay awake for some little
time, thinking of our curious adventure and of its possible outcome.
Finally, I fell asleep,--for how long I do not know: but I woke with the
feeling that some one had tried the handle of the door. The fire had
fallen into a heap of coals which cast a red glow in the room, whereby I
could see dimly the outline of Tom's bed, the broken-legged chair in
front of the fireplace, and the door in its deep casing by the chimney,
directly in front of my bed. I sat up, nervous from my sudden awakening
under these strange circumstances, and stared at the door. The latch
rattled, and the door swung smoothly open. I began to shiver coldly.
That door was locked; Tom and I had all we could do to jam it together
and lock it. But we _did_ lock it; and now it was opening silently. In a
minute more it as silently closed.
Then I heard a footstep,--I swear I heard a footstep _in the room_, and
with it the _frou-frou_ of trailing skirts; my breath stopped and my
teeth grated against each other as I heard the soft footfalls and the
feminine rustle pass along the room towards the fireplace. My eyes saw
nothing; yet there was enough light in the room for me to distinguish
the pattern on the carved panels of the door. The steps stopped by the
fire, and I saw the broken-legged chair lean to the left, with a little
jar as its short leg touched the floor.
I sat still, frozen, motionless, staring at the vacancy that was filled
with such terror for me; and as I looked, the seat of the chair creaked,
and it came back to its upright position again.
And then the footsteps came down the room lightly, towards the window;
there was a pause, and then the great shutters swung back, and the white
moonlight poured in. Its brilliancy was unbroken by any shadow, by any
sign of material substance.
I tried to cry out, to make some sound, to awaken Tom; this sense of
utter loneliness in the presence of the Inexplicable was maddening. I
don't know whether my lips obeyed my will or no; at all events, Tom lay
motionless, with his deaf ear up, and gave no sign.
The shutters closed as silently as they had opened; the moonlight was
gone, the firelight also, and in utter darkness I waited. If I could
only _see_! If something were visible, I should not mind it so much; but
this ghastly hearing of every little sound, every rustle of a gown,
every breath, yet seeing nothing, was soul-destroying. I think in my
abject terror I prayed that I might see, only see; but the darkness was
unbroken.
Then the footsteps began to waver fitfully, and I heard the rustle of
garments sliding to the floor, the clatter of little shoes flung down,
the rattle of buttons, and of metal against wood.
Rigors shot over me, and my whole body shivered with collapse as I sank
back on the pillow, waiting with every nerve tense, listening with all
my life.
The coverlid was turned back beside me, and in another moment the great
bed sank a little as something slipped between the sheets with an
audible sigh.
I called to my aid every atom of remaining strength, and, with a cry
that shivered between my clattering teeth, I hurled myself headlong from
the bed on to the floor.
I must have lain for some time stunned and unconscious, for when I
finally came to myself it was cold in the room, there was no last glow
of lingering coals in the fireplace, and I was stiff with chill.
It all flashed over me like the haunting of a heavy dream. I laughed a
little at the dim memory, with the thought, "I must try to recollect all
the details; they will do to tell Tom," and rose stiffly to return to
bed, when--there it was again, and my heart stopped,--the hand on the
door.
I paused and listened. The door opened with a muffled creak, closed
again, and I heard the lock turn rustily. I would have died now before
getting into that bed again; but there was terror equally without; so I
stood trembling and listened,--listened to heavy, stealthy steps
creeping along on the other side of the bed. I clutched the coverlid,
staring across into the dark.