The burned mill stood in the bright moonlight, its charred door yawning
on the road. It looked like the sun-dried skull of a buffalo resting
forlornly on the dry sand of a parched plain. Yet about it were the
trees shot through with a milky light and beyond it was the silver
blade of the Saccarac River. Dreeme walked slowly through the door
wondering if she would be waiting there for him. Inside he paused with
a brief start of surprise and anger as his eyes located the figure in
the broken embrasure. The moonlight flowed in crystal over a cloven
head bowed forward in a listening attitude. This shaven cranium seemed
phosphorescent in the rich glow.
“Good evening, doctor,” said Jeffrey Westcott. There was the hint of
a grim levity in his voice. He stood up, his powerful arms swinging
ape-like at his sides, waiting for the young doctor to approach closer.
Dreeme eyed him speculatively and without fear. Of course. He might
have known if he had thought clearly enough about it.
“I’m afraid that this is an abrupt surprise for you,” remarked the
farmer. His tone was studiously polite, the tone of a man about to have
business dealings with a stranger. The snarl that had permeated it the
first night when Dreeme had removed the bullet from his plump calf
was missing. The young doctor approached him slowly and sat down in
the embrasure. Well, if he was in for a scene.... Westcott turned, the
moonlight rippling across his flat face. His eyes and teeth glittered
in the flood of light.
“It is a surprise,” said Dreeme calmly. “I expected to meet your wife
here.”
He might as well have it over with at once.
“She is detained,” answered Westcott softly.
“You must not misunderstand me,” proceeded Dreeme, a trifle stiffly.
“Your wife and I....”
Westcott spread a broad hand deprecatingly.
“I know my wife,” he said in a very low voice.
There was silence then while Dreeme shifted his eyes from the farmer
to the scummed waters of the mill-pond. They were like an old opaque
mirror in the moon. Did he know his wife, though? Did anybody know his
wife. Astarte Syriaca. The wife of the Afrit. What was she?
“No, no, doctor,” resumed Westcott as though he were reading Dreeme’s
thoughts. “My wife’s little vagaries do not disturb me. She discommodes
me at infrequent times but I have a remedy for it.”
Dreeme glanced at Westcott’s long powerful arms.
“I suppose you beat her,” he remarked shortly.
The farmer flung back his head and laughed, a low rumbling laugh, a
hollow burst of merriment that rattled among the blackened beams.
“Nothing so simple as that,” he said, after he had recovered himself.
“Nothing so simple as that. You’re a trifle primitive, doctor.”
There was a faint hint of hysteria behind the calmness of Westcott.
Dreeme could sense it, a far-away excitement that was kept under
control only by an effort of the mind. The farmer was laboring under an
unrest that he desired to conceal. The young doctor sat coolly gazing
into the scummed mirror of the mill-pond. There were no faces there,
not even the reflection of the silver drum-head of the moon, nothing
but a glow, a blank meaningless glow. The farmer sucked in a long
breath suddenly.
“When are you going away, Doctor Dreeme?” he inquired. There was a
finality in the question that made it as much an order as a query.
“I don’t expect to go away,” said Dreeme.
So that was it? He was to be forced out of town, was he?
“Do you find much that holds you here?” Westcott’s tone was studiously
innocent, devoid of any sly innuendo. Yet the implied order was there.
“I find much that interests me here,” answered the young doctor. He
wanted to add, “Even you,” but thought better of it. Let the farmer
show his teeth in his own way. Suddenly he felt Westcott’s broad hand
on his shoulder.
“Doctor Dreeme,” the farmer said. “You had better go away from here.
The farmers don’t want you any more. They are suspicious and ill at
ease with you. You are fashioned from a different kind of flesh than
they are. Your mind works differently. There are doctors who can come
from the outside, from that world of cities where everybody is more
or less the same in social relationships, and settle here and be of
some use but you are not one of them. Old Doctor Lathrop was like
that. You are too ... too speculative, too eager to find out things,
too unwilling to permit the valley to go its own way and employ its
own methods. The itch of curiosity is too strong inside you. These
men who scrape at the soil do not want active intelligences about
them. They distrust strangers. Go away. Forget that you were ever here
and forget the people who are here. The world has forgotten them and
they desire no less than to stay forgotten. This is good advice that
I am giving you for I know what I am talking about. I may not mingle
much with these people but I know their minds. After all, I am one of
them. I tell you to go away ... before you are sent away in a manner
humiliating to you.”
The heavy hand dropped from Dreeme’s shoulders. The dark eyes studied
him curiously.
“Thanks for the advice,” said the young doctor. “I’ll stay.”
“Why are you so obtuse?” asked Westcott sadly. Behind the intonations
fluttered the tiny scarlet bird of hysteria.
Dreeme became a trifle angry.
“I’m not obtuse,” he snapped. “That’s why you want me to go away.
You’re afraid of what I’ll find out. Of what I’ll discover about your
wax dolls and your goats’ heads and your hypnotic charlatanry and your
murdered hired man and ... and your place called Dagon!”
Westcott’s face became distorted in the moonlight. The scarlet bird flew
upward with a feverish beating of wings.
“You fool! You fool!” he cried, in a strained raucous voice. “That’s
it! You must be made to leave this valley even if you are carried out
of it!”
Dreeme laughed shortly.
The blazing eyes of Westcott moved closer to his face.
“Do you think we care one tinker’s damn about you?” he shouted. “Do you
flatter yourself that we are afraid of you? You simple idiot! We are
doing our best to get rid of you without hurting you! You mean nothing
to us. You are stumbling about in the darkness and don’t know where you
are. You are pitting your puny mind and strength against a power that
is as old as the Egyptians, a power that established itself in this
valley nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. We who have listened
to the voice of the Master need fear nothing but deliverance from the
Master.”
“Have I gotten on your nerves as badly as that?” cried Dreeme
maliciously.
Westcott’s voice had changed and a crazy ecstasy was in it. The scarlet
bird filled the burned mill with a hysteric swishing of wings.
“He walks on the hills at night. He whistles to the Sacred Goat and
snaps his fingers at the moon and stars. In the dark palms of his hands
is all the power of the earth. He stands at the place called Dagon and
his feet are rooted like mountains.”
Dreeme rose to his feet. Westcott was swaying like a drunken man and a
thin white froth bubbled on his lips.
“Aie-e-e-e, Asmodeus!” he screamed. “Sweep this man out of my father’s
holy place!”
Dreeme thought he was about to fall upon the ground and he stretched
out a hand toward him. Westcott shuddered all through his heavy body.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, his delirium passed away. The madness
died out of his eyes and voice and he sank down in the embrasure. The
scarlet bird had flown away on the wind.
Westcott lifted his hand to his eyes and sat for a moment in silence.
Then he turned to Dreeme.
“I am taken with seizures,” he said rapidly. “I am an extremely nervous
man. You must not take my outbreak too seriously. You are a doctor. You
know.”
Dreeme sat down opposite him in the embrasure. The far-away light in
the depths of his mind was glowing so brightly that it dazzled his
reason. Shapes passed before it and they were familiar but he could
not quite identify them. He glanced sharply at Westcott. The farmer,
quite himself, was smiling slyly, secretively.
“Nervous delirium,” he said confidentially, tapping his cloven head. “I
lose control of myself.”
Dreeme eyed him searchingly.
“I am not so sure,” he said. “Are you all right now?”
Westcott nodded. The young doctor noted that the farmer’s hands were
quivering, however.
“As you admit I am a doctor,” he said, “perhaps you will give me a
doctor’s privilege of questioning you. Do you ever take drugs?”
“I do not take drugs,” replied Westcott, “and I do not give you a
doctor’s privilege of questioning me. When I need a doctor I send for
one. I do not need one now.”
The bright moon placed a silver sword between them. Westcott rose to
his feet.
“I have given you my advice,” he said, “You will do as you please about
it.”
He turned toward the door.
“Wait,” cried Dreeme. Westcott turned on his heel and regarded him
smilingly.
“Will you answer three questions?” the young doctor asked. Westcott
said:
“Ask them and I will answer or not as I see fit.”
“Why did you hypnotize Deborah?”
“I didn’t hypnotize Deborah.”
“Who killed Wagner?”
“I don’t know who killed Wagner.”
“Where is the place called Dagon?”
“I never heard of the place called Dagon.”
“Three lies in as many seconds,” said Dreeme bitterly.
“Only two of them were lies,” remarked Westcott. He actually chuckled.
His hands had stopped trembling and he stood easily, nonchalantly,
watching Dreeme sardonically with his large dark eyes.
“No, doctor,” he said. “You are beating at a stone wall. When I first
saw you I detested you. Later I revised my reaction to you. In fact, I
feel a sympathetic pity for you. You are so ... so obtuse. Sooner or
later you will cut your own throat.”
“You say you belong here,” broke out Dreeme, ignoring the farmer’s
remarks. “I don’t believe it. You don’t talk like a farmer. You have
nothing in common with Slater or Bidwell or Barnson. You live alone out
in that secluded house. Are you so ashamed of yourself that you exist
so secretly? What are you up to in that room lined with books? Are you
fashioning yourself into the image of an old god?”
The last question had popped into his head suddenly. He was quite
fearless, indeed, he experienced the peculiar sensation that there
was a conversational _rapport_ between him and the farmer if he
could only find the key to it. There was no doubt in his mind now
that Westcott was mad, that he was ridden by some monstrous theory,
that he pursued some irrational objective. He suspected that if he
could discover the proper opening Westcott would pour out as much of
it as he dared. He began to believe that the farmer was a theoretical
fool masked as a lion. His last question had arrested Westcott who had
already turned to go.
“What’s that?” asked the farmer. “What’s that?”
He turned slowly. He said:
“What do you know about old gods?”
“Perhaps I know more than you think,” insinuated Dreeme craftily.
Westcott eyed him suspiciously and with some concern.
“I wonder ...” he mused to himself and then broke off. He surveyed
Dreeme coolly.
“You picked that question up somewhere?” he said. “You never thought of
it yourself.”
A light dawned on him and he smiled.
“Ah, dear Martha,” he murmured. “Dear talkative Martha.”
He came back and sat down in the embrasure. The moonlight flung great
silver arms about him.
“You bring to life an inborn loquaciousness,” he said. “I had forgotten
the need of conversation. Doctor Dreeme, I am not an ignorant man.
I have studied in three countries and I bear a degree from one of
the most famous German universities. I have traveled in Arabia and
in Persia and in India. I have lived among the secret priests of
unknown religions. Behind all their conflicting dogmas I discovered
one objective. Years ago the peculiar circumstances of my birth pushed
me into a specific line of investigation. The seeds of that particular
knowledge for which I sought were buried in this valley and I settled
here with the determination to foster them and cause them to grow.
You say that I have nothing in common with the farmers of Marlborough
but that only reveals your ignorance. I have this in common with
them,--they, too, know of the seed. They, too, keep the ground fertile
that it may grow in its appointed time. Their lives and the lives of
their forefathers are but a preparation for the time when that seed
will sprout. I am the self-constituted gardener. I am the man who
directs.”
He paused and gazed across the moonlit room. His eyes were filmed,
trance-like, and he seemed to be looking inward at the secret growths
of his mind.
“To fashion myself in the image of an old god,” he murmured. “That
is a crass way of putting it. There are no old gods. There are only
new gods, gods builded out of our invincible wills and forced by the
strength of intelligence into the domains of high powers. The greatest
of all gods is man’s will. If a man possesses enough knowledge he can
do anything, shape the destinies of those about him, influence the
comings and goings upon the surface of the earth, cause wars and the
breakup of nations, and even, when the seed is sprouted and the tree
has flowered, defeat the purpose of death.”
Westcott seemed entirely unconscious of Dreeme. He was talking to
himself now.
“‘And the will therein lieth which dieth not,’” he quoted. “The
instincts of man are constantly drawn toward what, for want of a better
word, we call evil, as a filing of iron is drawn toward a magnet. Evil
is therefore the fountainhead of life. All the gods, Buddha, Allah,
Christ, are the enemies of the will for they pretend to dominate it.
The only god is that demon of the mind who places himself in bold
antagonism to the high tyrants of the heavens. Satan is the only god
and he is the god that we daily create out of our will. All that we
are springs out of evil. We have misunderstood evil so long, masked it
in outrageous masks and clothed it in obscene garments, that we forget
that it is a pure essence, that it is evil--as we understand evil--only
when we compare it with our artificially created good. The animals
know no evil because they know no good. They know nothing but a great
impulse pulling them one way always,--the way of self-emancipation.
It should be so with us. There is neither evil nor good but a sole
purpose and that purpose is the domination of the will over matter,
the power of regulating time by the exertion of the will. Within us
the sixth sense lies dormant. We taste, touch, smell, hear and see
but these are animal functions. The sixth sense is to will. When that
is discovered we shall be the lords of creation. How can we develop
and strengthen this weak will that staggers like an infant child in
the dark corridors of our brains? The old magicians did not know. I
have read all their books and my house is filled with them. Can the
will be sharpened by symbols, by monstrous symbols that tear our time
accustomed minds from the old impulses and subserviencies? May we
by building an artificial structure of liturgies and ceremonies and
sacrifices, by constant allegories that call the imaginative faculties
of the will into exertion, discipline and exercise that weakness that
is our shame today? In other words, may we by a complete reversal of
all those religious mummeries that subjected our will and made it puny
before the imaginary gods, destroy the prison walls we have builded
about ourselves? We made the gods by worshiping them, by fearing them.
Can we unmake them by reviling them, by walking boldly before those
pillars of hollow smoke? There was once a group of people who believed
that the will might become paramount if they followed the dictates of
their mystic senses regardless of so-called good. They called the will
by a symbolic name and they met in secret forest clearings. They made a
pledge with evil and they barely understood why they did it. They....”
Westcott stopped suddenly and looked at Dreeme. The trance-like light
died out of his dark eyes.
“I will not tell you any more,” he said. “Why should I talk to you of
these things. You do not understand.”
“There are some things I understand,” answered Dreeme. “You associate
Satan with the free will. You imagine you can strengthen your own will
to superhuman dimensions by denying the impulses of good. You....”
“I deny no impulses,” said Westcott roughly. “I follow the solitary
impulse.”
He rose to his feet.
“Good-night, doctor,” he said. “Take my advice and go away.”
“Go away!” cried Dreeme. “Why should I go away??”
“Because,” replied Westcott, “even a fool may learn wisdom.”
He strode heavily to the door, his injured leg swaying his body from
side to side as he walked. He did not even turn back as he passed out
into the full moonlight. A moment later Dreeme heard his uneven stride
as he passed over the little bridge. Dreeme sat alone in the burned
mill and looked at the scummed water of the quiet pond. One thing was
certain. Westcott was a mad man. He was a megalomaniac eaten up by a
ridiculous theory that gave him an excuse for any excesses he desired.
Anything might fit into his theory of strengthening the will. Even
murder. Constant brooding upon his purpose had awakened an hysteric
ecstasy in him and there were times when this ecstasy broke into an
uncontrollable display. Dreeme tried to remember what he had read about
these lunacies in the past. Somewhere, he was sure, he had learned that
an abnormal intellectual power went hand in hand with an infant-like
abandonment to symbols. For instance, one of these fanatics might
display the most brilliant intellectuality in building up an elaborate
and mystically logical structure and this structure might be built
upon the most absurd and impossible foundation. Or, again, the mad
man might reveal the most refined cunning to a certain point and then
observe a cloud in the sky, a leaf on the ground, the note of a bird
in the darkness and be swung abruptly from his purpose. Such men were
dangerous. Any slight incident might provoke their madness.
Dreeme had an instantaneous picture of Westcott sitting alone among
his books and searching through the yellowed leaves for the secret
of the mastery of the will, building up impossible theories out of
insane hints, drawing into the crazy net of his mind all the obsolete
mysticisms of the dark ages, of the Egyptians, of the Indian fakirs,
of the Satanists. He was partly sane and partly mad. One half of his
brain functioned with surprising agility; the other was a dark morass
of supernatural superstitions and primitive impulses. It was plain that
he was employing the community for his dark purposes and it was equally
plain that the community, because of some secret injection of blood,
favored these impulses. These farmers were ridden by an ancient fear
which Jeffrey Westcott kept alive. They did not see him often but they
knew that he was there and while he was there, sitting in his lonely
house and avoided by those about him, he would continue to dominate the
valley. He employed some legend for his own ends and the farmers were
in some way the inheritors of that legend.
Dreeme rose to his feet and proceeded out of the burned mill and down
the road toward Marlborough. He had never seen the moon so white, so
lustrous. It was as though the valley were bathed in a crystal liquid,
as though the air were full of sparkling essences that flowed through
the tree-tops and along the fronts of the farm-houses. He drew in long
draughts of the clear cool air as he went his way, a little surprised
at it for the day had been so hot and the sun had been so like a
fountain of pale fire spraying the dry streets. As he walked along he
wondered why he had ever feared Westcott. It was easy enough to handle
a man like that. One had but to keep an eye on him. That was all. And
yet ... Dreeme was not so sure. Westcott’s actions were unpredictable.
The actions of any lunatic were unpredictable. He might be smiling and
suave one minute and a ferocious beast the next. What had he desired
with Deborah, for instance? In what way could she serve to strengthen
that will that was apparently his only god? It was too much to believe
that he desired her only as an aid to his wife in the farm-house. In
some way Deborah entered into his crazy scheme. Well, he would keep
his eyes open and his wits sharpened. He would stand between Westcott
and Deborah to the end of time. The end of time. That was a long period
but it was not long enough for him to watch over Deborah.
His mind reverted to the interview with Westcott. It was funny. Why
had the farmer shown so little rage at the idea of Martha Westcott’s
meeting with him? Was Martha playing her game with the connivance of
her husband? Dreeme was inclined to think that this was not so, that
Westcott, sure of his power over his wife, let her run to the end of
the rope which he held and then pulled her back when he thought she had
gone far enough. Perhaps he practised his will upon her, forcing her to
do the things which he did not want her to do only for the pleasure of
stopping her when he felt like it. Dreeme turned in at his gate still
brooding and was about to open his door when he heard the creak-creak
of Walden Slater’s rocker. He would go around the house and see if he
could engage the taciturn farmer in conversation.
Walden Slater sat slumped in his chair, a corncob pipe stuck at a crazy
angle in his wide mouth. He was looking at the moon.
“It’s bright tonight,” remarked Dreeme, sinking down on the stair to
the little back piazza.
Walden Slater grunted, removed his pipe, and rubbed his long upper lip
with a huge hand.
“Aren’t you up late?” asked Dreeme.
“Uh-huh,” said the farmer.
“It must be about eleven o’clock,” continued Dreeme.
“Ten-thirty,” said the farmer. “I just heard the kitchen clock.”
“What’s wrong?” questioned the young doctor.
Walden Slater rocked slowly. Creak-creak. Creak-creak.
“I dunno’s there’s anything wrong,” he said mildly.
“Have they done anything about Wagner?” asked Dreeme.
Walden Slater squirmed about in his chair and put his pipe down on the
floor.
“Took him to Leeminster,” he said ungraciously.
Dreeme laughed aloud. He said:
“You old curmudgeon!”
Walden Slater grinned with some difficulty and then remarked:
“I’m thinking.”
Dreeme rose to his feet, still smiling.
“This is a nice social neighborhood,” he said to the moon.
Walden Slater thrust his pipe back in his mouth and resumed his
inspection of the great white globe that floated in the heavens above
him. Dreeme turned the corner of the house slowly.
He didn’t feel sleepy. The night was too fine, too exhilarating.
It was like a heady wine, some mystic vintage that ran through his
body and sharpened every impulse, every wit. It was on a night like
this that the imagination might spring hawk-like into the air and
bring down fair and impossible prey. Dreeme wondered how far the
mind might travel through the starry immensities above him, through
the glittering star-fields unplowed by Time, before it reached ...
something. Humphrey Lathrop did not believe in the supernatural. He
clung to the theory of the supernormal, of mysteries that might be
explained as the intelligence of man lifted itself higher and higher
and even of mysteries that might never be explained but which were yet
felt in the intuitive senses as supernormal and not supernatural. Poor
old Humphrey! The dear old frog swelling larger and larger! He sat in
his cottage retired from Time and Lucinda squabbled about his frequent
potations of apple-jack. He was happy, though. As happy as anybody
could be who had long ago put ambition behind him and had not very much
before him to expect.
Dreeme paused before his own door and half-put out a hand to turn the
knob. The door was ajar. That was funny. He was sure he had closed it
carefully when he started out for the burned mill. He stood looking at
the door vacantly, his mind wheeling about elsewhere, wheeling through
the enormous starry arc that revolved in the sky above him, wheeling
through the cool and quiet expanse of the sleeping valley. Why should
he go in and sleep when there was no sleep in his eyes? He was not
tired. He would continue to walk until he was wearier than he was now.
He turned from the door and retraced his steps along the path to the
road. As he turned into the sandy stretch he heard the creak-creak of
Walden Slater’s rocker. The farmer was thinking, doggedly following
some faint light that glimmered before him. Poor Walden! Dreeme smiled
to himself as he stood in the sandy road and listened to the faint
protest of the rocking chair. He was beginning to pity everybody.
Was this a testimony of his own exhilaration, a sign of his unsought
superiority? He began to whistle softly some old tune that crept back
into his consciousness. He didn’t know what it was but it seemed to fit
the night.
The sound of the Slater front door softly opening caused him to turn
his head. Who would dare to walk through that blank closed parlor stiff
with its horse-hair stuffed chairs and its lumpy sofa and its colored
portraits of dead and vanished Slaters? He stood by the fence, his
face turned toward the door and waited. A slender form came down the
steps and along the path toward him. She walked slowly, almost with
diffidence, and she did not speak until she was standing close beside
him. He noticed that her dress was white, her party dress undoubtedly.
The moon poured its silver light over her and she stood like a white
ghost in a white world, her blue eyes sparkling and her small mouth
curled in a faint smile. Reaching out his hand he drew her toward him.
“I’ve been waiting by the window all evening,” she said.