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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House of the Vampire, by George Sylvester
+Viereck
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The House of the Vampire
+
+
+Author: George Sylvester Viereck
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 23, 2005  [eBook #17144]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF THE VAMPIRE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Janet Blenkinship, Brian Janes, and
+the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE VAMPIRE
+
+by
+
+
+GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK
+
+Author of
+Nineveh and Other Poems
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Moffat, Yard & Company
+1912
+Copyright, 1907, by
+Moffat, Yard & Company
+New York
+Published September, 1907
+Reprinted October, 1907
+The Premier Press
+New York
+
+
+
+
+_To My Mother_
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE
+
+OF THE
+
+VAMPIRE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The freakish little leader of the orchestra, newly imported from Sicily
+to New York, tossed his conductor's wand excitedly through the air,
+drowning with musical thunders the hum of conversation and the clatter
+of plates.
+
+Yet neither his apish demeanour nor the deafening noises that responded
+to every movement of his agile body detracted attention from the figure
+of Reginald Clarke and the young man at his side as they smilingly wound
+their way to the exit.
+
+The boy's expression was pleasant, with an inkling of wistfulness, while
+the soft glimmer of his lucid eyes betrayed the poet and the dreamer.
+The smile of Reginald Clarke was the smile of a conqueror. A suspicion
+of silver in his crown of dark hair only added dignity to his bearing,
+while the infinitely ramified lines above the heavy-set mouth spoke at
+once of subtlety and of strength. Without stretch of the imagination one
+might have likened him to a Roman cardinal of the days of the Borgias,
+who had miraculously stepped forth from the time-stained canvas and
+slipped into twentieth century evening-clothes.
+
+With the affability of complete self-possession he nodded in response to
+greetings from all sides, inclining his head with special politeness to
+a young woman whose sea-blue eyes were riveted upon his features with a
+look of mingled hate and admiration.
+
+The woman, disregarding his silent salutation, continued to stare at him
+wild-eyed, as a damned soul in purgatory might look at Satan passing in
+regal splendour through the seventy times sevenfold circles of hell.
+
+Reginald Clarke walked on unconcernedly through the rows of gay diners,
+still smiling, affable, calm. But his companion bethought himself of
+certain rumours he had heard concerning Ethel Brandenbourg's mad love
+for the man from whose features she could not even now turn her eyes.
+Evidently her passion was unreciprocated. It had not always been so.
+There was a time in her career, some years ago in Paris, when it was
+whispered that she had secretly married him and, not much later,
+obtained a divorce. The matter was never cleared up, as both preserved
+an uncompromising silence upon the subject of their matrimonial
+experience. Certain it was that, for a space, the genius of Reginald
+Clarke had completely dominated her brush, and that, ever since he had
+thrown her aside, her pictures were but plagiarisms of her former
+artistic self.
+
+The cause of the rupture between them was a matter only of surmise; but
+the effect it had on the woman testified clearly to the remarkable power
+of Reginald Clarke. He had entered her life and, behold! the world was
+transfixed on her canvases in myriad hues of transcending radiance; he
+had passed from it, and with him vanished the brilliancy of her
+colouring, as at sunset the borrowed amber and gold fade from the face
+of the clouds.
+
+The glamour of Clarke's name may have partly explained the secret of his
+charm, but, even in circles where literary fame is no passport, he
+could, if he chose, exercise an almost terrible fascination. Subtle and
+profound, he had ransacked the coffers of mediæval dialecticians and
+plundered the arsenals of the Sophists. Many years later, when the
+vultures of misfortune had swooped down upon him, and his name was no
+longer mentioned without a sneer, he was still remembered in New York
+drawing-rooms as the man who had brought to perfection the art of
+talking. Even to dine with him was a liberal education.
+
+Clarke's marvellous conversational power was equalled only by his
+marvellous style. Ernest Fielding's heart leaped in him at the thought
+that henceforth he would be privileged to live under one roof with the
+only writer of his generation who could lend to the English language the
+rich strength and rugged music of the Elizabethans.
+
+Reginald Clarke was a master of many instruments. Milton's mighty organ
+was no less obedient to his touch than the little lute of the
+troubadour. He was never the same; that was his strength. Clarke's
+style possessed at once the chiselled chasteness of a Greek marble
+column and the elaborate deviltry of the late Renaissance. At times his
+winged words seemed to flutter down the page frantically like Baroque
+angels; at other times nothing could have more adequately described his
+manner than the timeless calm of the gaunt pyramids.
+
+The two men had reached the street. Reginald wrapped his long spring
+coat round him.
+
+"I shall expect you to-morrow at four," he said.
+
+The tone of his voice was deep and melodious, suggesting hidden depths
+and cadences.
+
+"I shall be punctual."
+
+The younger man's voice trembled as he spoke.
+
+"I look forward to your coming with much pleasure. I am interested in
+you."
+
+The glad blood mounted to Ernest's cheeks at praise from the austere
+lips of this arbiter of literary elegance.
+
+An almost imperceptible smile crept over the other man's features.
+
+"I am proud that my work interests you," was all the boy could say.
+
+"I think it is quite amazing, but at present," here Clarke drew out a
+watch set with jewels, "I am afraid I must bid you good-bye."
+
+He held Ernest's hand for a moment in a firm genial grasp, then turned
+away briskly, while the boy remained standing open-mouthed. The crowd
+jostling against him carried him almost off his feet, but his eyes
+followed far into the night the masterful figure of Reginald Clarke,
+toward whom he felt himself drawn with every fiber of his body and the
+warm enthusiasm of his generous youth.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+With elastic step, inhaling the night-air with voluptuous delight,
+Reginald Clarke made his way down Broadway, lying stretched out before
+him, bathed in light and pulsating with life.
+
+His world-embracing intellect was powerfully attracted by the Giant
+City's motley activities. On the street, as in the salon, his magnetic
+power compelled recognition, and he stepped through the midst of the
+crowd as a Circassian blade cleaves water.
+
+After walking a block or two, he suddenly halted before a jeweller's
+shop. Arrayed in the window were priceless gems that shone in the glare
+of electricity, like mystical serpent-eyes--green, pomegranate and
+water-blue. And as he stood there the dazzling radiance before him was
+transformed in the prism of his mind into something great and very
+wonderful that might, some day, be a poem.
+
+Then his attention was diverted by a small group of tiny girls dancing
+on the sidewalk to the husky strains of an old hurdy-gurdy. He joined
+the circle of amused spectators, to watch those pink-ribboned bits of
+femininity swaying airily to and fro in unison with the tune. One
+especially attracted his notice--a slim olive-coloured girl from a land
+where it is always spring. Her whole being translated into music, with
+hair dishevelled and feet hardly touching the ground, the girl suggested
+an orange-leaf dancing on a sunbeam. The rasping street-organ,
+perchance, brought to her melodious reminiscences of some flute-playing
+Savoyard boy, brown-limbed and dark of hair.
+
+For several minutes Reginald Clarke followed with keen delight each
+delicate curve her graceful limbs described. Then--was it that she grew
+tired, or that the stranger's persistent scrutiny embarrassed her?--the
+music oozed out of her movements. They grew slower, angular, almost
+clumsy. The look of interest in Clarke's eyes died, but his whole form
+quivered, as if the rhythm of the music and the dance had mysteriously
+entered into his blood.
+
+He continued his stroll, seemingly without aim; in reality he followed,
+with nervous intensity, the multiform undulations of the populace,
+swarming through Broadway in either direction. Like the giant whose
+strength was rekindled every time he touched his mother, the earth,
+Reginald Clarke seemed to draw fresh vitality from every contact with
+life.
+
+He turned east along Fourteenth street, where cheap vaudevilles are
+strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy
+bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry
+attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a
+particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the
+lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this
+sordid wilderness of décolleté art. Street-snipes, a few workingmen,
+dilapidated sportsmen, and women whose ruined youth thick layers of
+powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore,
+constituted the bulk of the audience. Reginald Clarke, apparently
+unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his appearance
+excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the
+solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a programme. The drink he left
+untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the
+announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar, paying
+no attention to the boards, but studying the audience with cursory
+interest until the appearance of Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl.
+
+When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The words of her song
+were crude, but not without a certain lilt that delighted the uncultured
+ear, while the girl's voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant.
+When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner
+changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt
+attention, eagerly gazing at her. For, as she sang the last line and
+tore the hyacinth-blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a
+strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable
+faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her
+spell.
+
+Clarke, too, was captivated by that tremour, the infinite sadness of
+which suggested the plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust
+preys on creatures marked for its spoil.
+
+The singer paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew
+nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the
+refrain. As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza, an
+inscrutable smile curled on Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's
+relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard
+and cracked: the tremour had gone from her voice.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Long before the appointed time Ernest walked up and down in front of the
+abode of Reginald Clarke, a stately apartment-house overlooking
+Riverside Drive.
+
+Misshapen automobiles were chasing by, carrying to the cool river's
+marge the restlessness and the fever of American life. But the bustle
+and the noise seemed to the boy only auspicious omens of the future.
+
+Jack, his room-mate and dearest friend, had left him a month ago, and,
+for a space, he had felt very lonely. His young and delicate soul found
+it difficult to grapple with the vague fears that his nervous brain
+engendered, when whispered sounds seemed to float from hidden corners,
+and the stairs creaked under mysterious feet.
+
+He needed the voice of loving kindness to call him back from the valley
+of haunting shadows, where his poet's soul was wont to linger overlong;
+in his hours of weakness the light caress of a comrade renewed his
+strength and rekindled in his hand the flaming sword of song.
+
+And at nightfall he would bring the day's harvest to Clarke, as a
+worshipper scattering precious stones, incense and tapestries at the
+feet of a god.
+
+Surely he would be very happy. And as the heart, at times, leads the
+feet to the goal of its desire, while multicoloured dreams, like
+dancing-girls, lull the will to sleep, he suddenly found himself
+stepping from the elevator-car to Reginald Clarke's apartment.
+
+Already was he raising his hand to strike the electric bell when a sound
+from within made him pause half-way.
+
+"No, there's no help!" he heard Clarke say. His voice had a hard,
+metallic clangour.
+
+A boyish voice answered plaintively. What the words were Ernest could
+not distinctly hear, but the suppressed sob in them almost brought the
+tears to his eyes. He instinctively knew that this was the finale of
+some tragedy.
+
+He withdrew hastily, so as not to be a witness of an interview that was
+not meant for his ears.
+
+Reginald Clarke probably had good reason for parting with his young
+friend, whom Ernest surmised to be Abel Felton, a talented boy, whom the
+master had taken under his wings.
+
+In the apartment a momentary silence had ensued.
+
+This was interrupted by Clarke: "It will come again, in a month, in a
+year, in two years."
+
+"No, no! It is all gone!" sobbed the boy.
+
+"Nonsense. You are merely nervous. But that is just why we must part.
+There is no room in one house for two nervous people."
+
+"I was not such a nervous wreck before I met you."
+
+"Am I to blame for it--for your morbid fancies, your extravagance, the
+slow tread of a nervous disease, perhaps?"
+
+"Who can tell? But I am all confused. I don't know what I am saying.
+Everything is so puzzling--life, friendship, you. I fancied you cared
+for my career, and now you end our friendship without a thought!"
+
+"We must all follow the law of our being."
+
+"The laws are within us and in our control."
+
+"They are within us and beyond us. It is the physiological structure of
+our brains, our nerve-cells, that makes and mars our lives.
+
+"Our mental companionship was so beautiful. It was meant to last."
+
+"That is the dream of youth. Nothing lasts. Everything flows--panta rei.
+We are all but sojourners in an inn. Friendship, as love, is an
+illusion. Life has nothing to take from a man who has no illusions."
+
+"It has nothing to give him."
+
+They said good-bye.
+
+At the door Ernest met Abel.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked.
+
+"For a little pleasure trip."
+
+Ernest knew that the boy lied.
+
+He remembered that Abel Felton was at work upon some book, a play or a
+novel. It occurred to him to inquire how far he had progressed with it.
+
+Abel smiled sadly. "I am not writing it."
+
+"Not writing it?"
+
+"Reginald is."
+
+"I am afraid I don't understand."
+
+"Never mind. Some day you will."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"I am so happy you came," Reginald Clarke said, as he conducted Ernest
+into his studio. It was a large, luxuriously furnished room overlooking
+the Hudson and Riverside Drive.
+
+Dazzled and bewildered, the boy's eyes wandered from object to object,
+from picture to statue. Despite seemingly incongruous details, the whole
+arrangement possessed style and distinction.
+
+A satyr on the mantelpiece whispered obscene secrets into the ears of
+Saint Cecilia. The argent limbs of Antinous brushed against the garments
+of Mona Lisa. And from a corner a little rococo lady peered coquettishly
+at the gray image of an Egyptian sphinx. There was a picture of Napoleon
+facing the image of the Crucified. Above all, in the semi-darkness,
+artificially produced by heavy draperies, towered two busts.
+
+"Shakespeare and Balzac!" Ernest exclaimed with some surprise.
+
+"Yes," explained Reginald, "they are my gods."
+
+His gods! Surely there was a key to Clarke's character. Our gods are
+ourselves raised to the highest power.
+
+Clarke and Shakespeare!
+
+Even to Ernest's admiring mind it seemed almost blasphemous to name a
+contemporary, however esteemed, in one breath with the mighty master of
+song, whose great gaunt shadow, thrown against the background of the
+years has assumed immense, unproportionate, monstrous dimensions.
+
+Yet something might be said for the comparison. Clarke undoubtedly was
+universally broad, and undoubtedly concealed, with no less exquisite
+taste than the Elizabethan, his own personality under the splendid
+raiment of his art. They certainly were affinities. It would not have
+been surprising to him to see the clear calm head of Shakespeare rise
+from behind his host.
+
+Perhaps--who knows?--the very presence of the bust in his room had, to
+some extent, subtly and secretly moulded Reginald Clarke's life. A man's
+soul, like the chameleon, takes colour from its environment. Even
+comparative trifles, the number of the house in which we live, or the
+colour of the wallpaper of a room, may determine a destiny.
+
+The boy's eyes were again surveying the fantastic surroundings in which
+he found himself; while, from a corner, Clarke's eyes were watching his
+every movement, as if to follow his thoughts into the innermost
+labyrinth of the mind. It seemed to Ernest, under the spell of this
+passing fancy, as though each vase, each picture, each curio in the
+room, was reflected in Clarke's work. In a long-queued, porcelain
+Chinese mandarin he distinctly recognised a quaint quatrain in one of
+Clarke's most marvellous poems. And he could have sworn that the grin of
+the Hindu monkey-god on the writing-table reappeared in the weird rhythm
+of two stanzas whose grotesque cadence had haunted him for years.
+
+At last Clarke broke the silence. "You like my studio?" he asked.
+
+The simple question brought Ernest back to reality.
+
+"Like it? Why, it's stunning. It set up in me the queerest train of
+thought."
+
+"I, too, have been in a whimsical mood to-night. Fancy, unlike genius,
+is an infectious disease."
+
+"What is the peculiar form it assumed in your case?"
+
+"I have been wondering whether all the things that environ us day by day
+are, in a measure, fashioning our thought-life. I sometimes think that
+even my little mandarin and this monkey-idol which, by the way, I
+brought from India, are exerting a mysterious but none the less real
+influence upon my work."
+
+"Great God!" Ernest replied, "I have had the identical thought!"
+
+"How very strange!" Clarke exclaimed, with seeming surprise.
+
+"It is said tritely but truly, that great minds travel the same roads,"
+Ernest observed, inwardly pleased.
+
+"No," the older man subtly remarked, "but they reach the same
+conclusion by a different route."
+
+"And you attach serious importance to our fancy?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Clarke was gazing abstractedly at the bust of Balzac.
+
+"A man's genius is commensurate with his ability of absorbing from life
+the elements essential to his artistic completion. Balzac possessed this
+power in a remarkable degree. But, strange to say, it was evil that
+attracted him most. He absorbed it as a sponge absorbs water; perhaps
+because there was so little of it in his own make-up. He must have
+purified the atmosphere around him for miles, by bringing all the evil
+that was floating in the air or slumbering in men's souls to the point
+of his pen.
+
+"And he"--his eyes were resting on Shakespeare's features as a man might
+look upon the face of a brother--"he, too, was such a nature. In fact,
+he was the most perfect type of the artist. Nothing escaped his mind.
+From life and from books he drew his material, each time reshaping it
+with a master-hand. Creation is a divine prerogative. Re-creation,
+infinitely more wonderful than mere calling into existence, is the
+prerogative of the poet. Shakespeare took his colours from many
+palettes. That is why he is so great, and why his work is incredibly
+greater than he. It alone explains his unique achievement. Who was he?
+What education did he have, what opportunities? None. And yet we find in
+his work the wisdom of Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh's fancies and
+discoveries, Marlowe's verbal thunders and the mysterious loveliness of
+Mr. W.H."
+
+Ernest listened, entranced by the sound of Clarke's mellifluous voice.
+He was, indeed, a master of the spoken word, and possessed a miraculous
+power of giving to the wildest fancies an air of vraisemblance.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"Yes," said Walkham, the sculptor, "it's a most curious thing."
+
+"What is?" asked Ernest, who had been dreaming over the Sphinx that was
+looking at him from its corner with the sarcastic smile of five thousand
+years.
+
+"How our dreams of yesterday stare at us like strangers to-day."
+
+"On the contrary," remarked Reginald, "it would be strange if they were
+still to know us. In fact, it would be unnatural. The skies above us and
+the earth underfoot are in perpetual motion. Each atom of our physical
+nature is vibrating with unimaginable rapidity. Change is identical with
+life."
+
+"It sometimes seems," said the sculptor, "as if thoughts evaporated like
+water."
+
+"Why not, under favorable conditions?"
+
+"But where do they go? Surely they cannot perish utterly?"
+
+"Yes, that is the question. Or, rather, it is not a question. Nothing
+is ever lost in the spiritual universe."
+
+"But what," inquired Ernest, "is the particular reason for your
+reflection?"
+
+"It is this," the sculptor replied; "I had a striking motive and lost
+it."
+
+"Do you remember," he continued, speaking to Reginald, "the Narcissus I
+was working on the last time when you called at my studio?"
+
+"Yes; it was a striking thing and impressed me very much, though I
+cannot recall it at the moment."
+
+"Well, it was a commission. An eccentric young millionaire had offered
+me eight thousand dollars for it. I had an absolutely original
+conception. But I cannot execute it. It's as if a breeze had carried it
+away."
+
+"That is very regrettable."
+
+"Well, I should say so," replied the sculptor.
+
+Ernest smiled. For everybody knew of Walkham's domestic troubles. Having
+twice figured in the divorce court, he was at present defraying the
+expenses of three households.
+
+The sculptor had meanwhile seated himself at Reginald's writing-table,
+unintentionally scanning a typewritten page that was lying before him.
+Like all artists, something of a madman and something of a child, he at
+first glanced over its contents distractedly, then with an interest so
+intense that he was no longer aware of the impropriety of his action.
+
+"By Jove!" he cried. "What is this?"
+
+"It's an epic of the French Revolution," Reginald replied, not without
+surprise.
+
+"But, man, do you know that I have discovered my motive in it?"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Ernest, looking first at Reginald and then at
+Walkham, whose sanity he began to doubt.
+
+"Listen!"
+
+And the sculptor read, trembling with emotion, a long passage whose
+measured cadence delighted Ernest's ear, without, however, enlightening
+his mind as to the purport of Walkham's cryptic remark.
+
+Reginald said nothing, but the gleam in his eye showed that this time,
+at least, his interest was alert.
+
+Walkham saw the hopelessness of making clear his meaning without an
+explanation.
+
+"I forget you haven't a sculptor's mind. I am so constituted that, with
+me, all impressions are immediately translated into the sense of form. I
+do not hear music; I see it rise with domes and spires, with painted
+windows and Arabesques. The scent of the rose is to me tangible. I can
+almost feel it with my hand. So your prose suggested to me, by its
+rhythmic flow, something which, at first indefinite, crystallised
+finally into my lost conception of Narcissus."
+
+"It is extraordinary," murmured Reginald. "I had not dreamed of it."
+
+"So you do not think it rather fantastic?" remarked Ernest,
+circumscribing his true meaning.
+
+"No, it is quite possible. Perhaps his Narcissus was engaging the
+sub-conscious strata of my mind while I was writing this passage. And
+surely it would be strange if the undercurrents of our mind were not
+reflected in our style."
+
+"Do you mean, then, that a subtle psychologist ought to be able to read
+beneath and between our lines, not only what we express, but also what
+we leave unexpressed?"
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+"Even if, while we are writing, we are unconscious of our state of mind?
+That would open a new field to psychology."
+
+"Only to those that have the key, that can read the hidden symbols. It
+is to me a matter-of-course that every mind-movement below or above the
+threshold of consciousness must, of a necessity, leave its imprint
+faintly or clearly, as the case may be, upon our activities."
+
+"This may explain why books that seem intolerably dull to the majority,
+delight the hearts of the few," Ernest interjected.
+
+"Yes, to the few that possess the key. I distinctly remember how an
+uncle of mine once laid down a discussion on higher mathematics and
+blushed fearfully when his innocent wife looked over his shoulder. The
+man who had written it was a roué."
+
+"Then the seemingly most harmless books may secretly possess the power
+of scattering in young minds the seed of corruption," Walkham remarked.
+
+"If they happen to understand," Clarke observed thoughtfully. "I can
+very well conceive of a lecherous text-book of the calculus, or of a
+reporter's story of a picnic in which burnt, under the surface,
+undiscoverable, save to the initiate, the tragic passion of Tristram and
+Iseult."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in Reginald Clarke's
+studio. The spring was now well advanced and had sprinkled the meadows
+with flowers, and the bookshelves of the reviewers with fiction. The
+latter Ernest turned to good account, but from the flowers no poem
+blossomed forth. In writing about other men's books, he almost forgot
+that the springtide had brought to him no bouquet of song. Only now and
+then, like a rippling of water, disquietude troubled his soul.
+
+The strange personality of the master of the house had enveloped the
+lad's thoughts with an impenetrable maze. The day before Jack had come
+on a flying visit from Harvard, but even he was unable to free Ernest's
+soul from the obsession of Reginald Clarke.
+
+Ernest was lazily stretching himself on a couch, waving the smoke of
+his cigarette to Reginald, who was writing at his desk.
+
+"Your friend Jack is delightful," Reginald remarked, looking up from his
+papers. "And his ebon-coloured hair contrasts prettily with the gold in
+yours. I should imagine that you are temperamental antipodes."
+
+"So we are; but friendship bridges the chasm between."
+
+"How long have you known him?"
+
+"We have been chums ever since our sophomore year."
+
+"What attracted you in him?"
+
+"It is no simple matter to define exactly one's likes and dislikes. Even
+a tiny protoplasmic animal appears to be highly complex under the
+microscope. How can we hope to analyse, with any degree of certitude,
+our souls, especially when, under the influence of feeling, we see as
+through a glass darkly."
+
+"It is true that personal feeling colours our spectacles and distorts
+the perspective. Still, we should not shrink from self-analysis. We must
+learn to see clearly into our own hearts if we would give vitality to
+our work. Indiscretion is the better part of literature, and it
+behooves us to hound down each delicate elusive shadow of emotion, and
+convert it into copy."
+
+"It is because I am so self-analytical that I realise the complexity of
+my nature, and am at a loss to define my emotions. Conflicting forces
+sway us hither and thither without neutralising each other. Physicology
+isn't physics. There were many things to attract me to Jack. He was
+subtler, more sympathetic, more feminine, perhaps, than the rest of my
+college-mates."
+
+"That I have noticed. In fact, his lashes are those of a girl. You still
+care for him very much?"
+
+"It isn't a matter of caring. We are two beings that live one life."
+
+"A sort of psychic Siamese twins?"
+
+"Almost. Why, the matter is very simple. Our hearts root in the same
+soil; the same books have nourished us, the same great winds have shaken
+our being, and the same sunshine called forth the beautiful blossom of
+friendship."
+
+"He struck me, if you will pardon my saying so, as a rather commonplace
+companion."
+
+"There is in him a hidden sweetness, and a depth of feeling which only
+intimate contact reveals. He is now taking his post-graduate course at
+Harvard, and for well-nigh two months we have not met; yet so many
+invisible threads of common experience unite us that we could meet after
+years and still be near each other."
+
+"You are very young," Reginald replied.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Ah--never mind."
+
+"So you do not believe that two hearts may ever beat as one?"
+
+"No, that is an auditory delusion. Not even two clocks beat in unison.
+There is always a discrepancy, infinitesimal, perhaps, but a discrepancy
+nevertheless."
+
+A sharp ring of the bell interrupted the conversation. A moment later a
+curly head peeped through the door.
+
+"Hello, Ernest! How are you, old man?" the intruder cried, with a laugh
+in his voice. Then, noticing Clarke, he shook hands with the great man
+unceremoniously, with the nonchalance of the healthy young animal bred
+in the atmosphere of an American college.
+
+His touch seemed to thrill Clarke, who breathed heavily and then stepped
+to the window, as if to conceal the flush of vitality on his cheek.
+
+It was a breath of springtide that Jack had brought with him. Youth is a
+Prince Charming. To shrivelled veins the pressure of his hand imparts a
+spark of animation, and middle age unfolds its petals in his presence,
+as a sunflower gazing at late noon once more upon its lord.
+
+"I have come to take Ernest away from you," said Jack. "He looks a
+trifle paler than usual, and a day's outing will stir the red corpuscles
+in his blood."
+
+"I have no doubt that you will take very good care of him," Reginald
+replied.
+
+"Where shall we go?" Ernest asked, absent-mindedly.
+
+But he did not hear the answer, for Reginald's scepticisms had more
+deeply impressed him than he cared to confess to himself.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The two boys had bathed their souls in the sea-breeze, and their eyes in
+light.
+
+The tide of pleasure-loving humanity jostling against them had carried
+their feet to the "Lion Palace." From there, seated at table and
+quenching their thirst with high-balls, they watched the feverish
+palpitations of the city's life-blood pulsating in the veins of Coney
+Island, to which they had drifted from Brighton Beach.
+
+Ernest blew thoughtful rings of smoke into the air.
+
+"Do you notice the ferocious look in the mien of the average frequenter
+of this island resort?" he said to Jack, whose eyes, following the
+impulse of his more robust youth, were examining specimens of feminine
+flotsam on the waves of the crowd.
+
+"It is," he continued, speaking to himself for want of an audience,
+"the American who is in for having a 'good time.' And he is going to get
+it. Like a huntsman, he follows the scent of happiness; but I warrant
+that always it eludes him. Perhaps his mad race is only the epitome of
+humanity's vain pursuit of pleasure, the eternal cry that is never
+answered."
+
+But Jack was not listening. There are times in the life of every man
+when a petticoat is more attractive to him than all the philosophy of
+the world.
+
+Ernest was a little hurt, and it was not without some silent
+remonstrance that he acquiesced when Jack invited to their table two
+creatures that once were women.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"But they are interesting."
+
+"I cannot find so."
+
+They both had seen better times--of course. Then money losses came, with
+work in shop or factory, and the voice of the tempter in the commercial
+wilderness.
+
+One, a frail nervous little creature, who had instinctively chosen a
+seat at Ernest's side, kept prattling in his ear, ready to tell the
+story of her life to any one who was willing to treat her to a drink.
+Something in her demeanour interested him.
+
+"And then I had a stroke of luck. The manager of a vaudeville was my
+friend and decided to give me a trial. He thought I had a voice. They
+called me Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl. At first it seemed as if people
+liked to hear me. But I suppose that was because I was new. After a
+month or two they discharged me."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"I suppose I was just used up, that's all."
+
+"Frightful!"
+
+"I never had much of a voice--and the tobacco smoke--and the wine--I
+love wine."
+
+She gulped down her glass.
+
+"And do you like your present occupation?"
+
+"Why not? Am I not young? Am I not pretty?"
+
+This she said not parrotwise, but with a simple coquettishness that was
+all her own.
+
+On the way to the steamer a few moments later, Ernest asked,
+half-reproachfully: "Jack--and you really enjoyed this conversation?"
+
+"Didn't you?"
+
+"Do you mean this?"
+
+"Why, yes; she was--very agreeable."
+
+Ernest frowned.
+
+"We're twenty, Ernest. And then, you see, it's like a course in
+sociology. Susie--"
+
+"Susie, was that her name?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So she had a name?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"She shouldn't. It should be a number."
+
+"They may not be pillars of society; still, they're human."
+
+"Yes," said Ernest, "that is the most horrible part of it."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The moon was shining brightly.
+
+Swift and sure the prow of the night-boat parted the silvery foam.
+
+The smell of young flesh. Peals of laughter. A breathless pianola. The
+tripping of dancing-feet. Voices husked with drink and voices soft with
+love. The shrill accents of vulgarity. Hustling waiters. Shop-girls.
+Bourgeois couples. Tired families of four and upward. Sleeping children.
+A boy selling candy. The crying of babies.
+
+The two friends were sitting on the upper deck, muffled in their long
+rain-coats.
+
+In the distance the Empire City rose radiant from the mist.
+
+"Say, Ernest, you should spout some poetry as of old. Are your lips
+stricken mute, or are you still thinking of Coney Island?"
+
+"Oh, no, the swift wind has taken it away. I am clean, I am pure. Life
+has passed me. It has kissed me, but it has left no trace."
+
+He looked upon the face of his friend. Their hands met. They felt, with
+keen enjoyment, the beauty of the night, of their friendship, and of the
+city beyond.
+
+Then Ernest's lips moved softly, musically, twitching with a strange
+ascetic passion that trembled in his voice as he began:
+
+  _"Huge steel-ribbed monsters rise into the air
+     Her Babylonian towers, while on high,
+     Like gilt-scaled serpents, glide the swift trains by,
+   Or, underfoot, creep to their secret lair.
+   A thousand lights are jewels in her hair,
+     The sea her girdle, and her crown the sky;
+     Her life-blood throbs, the fevered pulses fly.
+   Immense, defiant, breathless she stands there.
+
+   "And ever listens in the ceaseless din,
+     Waiting for him, her lover, who shall come,
+       Whose singing lips shall boldly claim their own,
+     And render sonant what in her was dumb,
+   The splendour, and the madness, and the sin,
+       Her dreams in iron and her thoughts of stone."_
+
+He paused. The boat glided on. For a long time neither spoke a word.
+
+After a while Jack broke the silence: "And are you dreaming of becoming
+the lyric mouth of the city, of giving utterance to all its yearnings,
+its 'dreams in iron and its thoughts of stone'?"
+
+"No," replied Ernest, simply, "not yet. It is strange to what
+impressions the brain will respond. In Clarke's house, in the midst of
+inspiring things, inspiration failed me. But while I was with that girl
+an idea came to me--an idea, big, real."
+
+"Will it deal with her?"
+
+Ernest smiled: "Oh, no. She personally has nothing to do with it. At
+least not directly. It was the commotion of blood and--brain. The
+air--the change. I don't know what."
+
+"What will it be?" asked Jack, with interest all alert.
+
+"A play, a wonderful play. And its heroine will be a princess, a little
+princess, with a yellow veil."
+
+"What of the plot?"
+
+"That I shall not tell you to-day. In fact, I shall not breathe a word
+to any one. It will take you all by surprise--and the public by storm."
+
+"So it will be playable?"
+
+"If I am not very much mistaken, you will see it on Broadway within a
+year. And," he added graciously, "I will let you have two box-seats for
+the first night."
+
+They both chuckled at the thought, and their hearts leaped within them.
+
+"I hope you will finish it soon," Jack observed after a while. "You
+haven't done much of late."
+
+"A similar reflection was on my mind when you came yesterday. That
+accounts for the low spirits in which you found me."
+
+"Ah, indeed," Jack replied, measuring Ernest with a look of wonder. "But
+now your face is aglow. It seems that the blood rushes to your head
+swifter at the call of an idea than at the kiss of a girl."
+
+"Thank God!" Ernest remarked with a sigh of relief. "Mighty forces
+within me are fashioning the limpid thought. Passion may grip us by the
+throat momentarily; upon our backs we may feel the lashes of desire and
+bathe our souls in flames of many hues; but the joy of activity is the
+ultimate passion."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+It seemed, indeed, as if work was to Ernest what the sting of pleasure
+is to the average human animal. The inter-play of his mental forces gave
+him the sensuous satisfaction of a woman's embrace. His eyes sparkled.
+His muscle tightened. The joy of creation was upon him.
+
+Often very material reasons, like stone weights tied to the wings of a
+bird, stayed the flight of his imagination. Magazines were waiting for
+his copy, and he was not in the position to let them wait. They supplied
+his bread and butter.
+
+Between the bread and butter, however, the play was growing scene by
+scene. In the lone hours of the night he spun upon the loom of his fancy
+a brilliant weft of swift desire--heavy, perfumed, Oriental--interwoven
+with bits of gruesome tenderness. The thread of his own life intertwined
+with the thread of the story. All genuine art is autobiography. It is
+not, however, necessarily a revelation of the artist's actual self, but
+of a myriad of potential selves. Ah, our own potential selves! They are
+sometimes beautiful, often horrible, and always fascinating. They loom
+to heavens none too high for our reach; they stray to yawning hells
+beneath our very feet.
+
+The man who encompasses heaven and hell is a perfect man. But there are
+many heavens and more hells. The artist snatches fire from both. Surely
+the assassin feels no more intensely the lust of murder than the poet
+who depicts it in glowing words. The things he writes are as real to him
+as the things that he lives. But in his realm the poet is supreme. His
+hands may be red with blood or white with leprosy: he still remains
+king. Woe to him, however, if he transcends the limits of his kingdom
+and translates into action the secret of his dreams. The throng that
+before applauded him will stone his quivering body or nail to the cross
+his delicate hands and feet.
+
+Sometimes days passed before Ernest could concentrate his mind upon his
+play. Then the fever seized him again, and he strung pearl on pearl,
+line on line, without entrusting a word to paper. Even to discuss his
+work before it had received the final brush-strokes would have seemed
+indecent to him.
+
+Reginald, too, seemed to be in a turmoil of work. Ernest had little
+chance to speak to him. And to drop even a hint of his plans between the
+courses at breakfast would have been desecration.
+
+Sunset followed sunset, night followed night. The stripling April had
+made room for the lady May. The play was almost completed in Ernest's
+mind, and he thought, with a little shudder, of the physical travail of
+the actual writing. He felt that the transcript from brain to paper
+would demand all his powers. For, of late, his thoughts seemed strangely
+evanescent; they seemed to run away from him whenever he attempted to
+seize them.
+
+The day was glad with sunshine, and he decided to take a long walk in
+the solitude of the Palisades, to steady hand and nerve for the final
+task.
+
+He told Reginald of his intention, but met with little response.
+Reginald's face was wan and bore the peculiar pallor of one who had
+worked late at night.
+
+"You must be frightfully busy?" Ernest asked, with genuine concern.
+
+"So I am," Reginald replied. "I always work in a white heat. I am
+restless, nervous, feverish, and can find no peace until I have given
+utterance to all that clamours after birth."
+
+"What is it that is so engaging your mind, the epic of the French
+Revolution?"
+
+"Oh, no. I should never have undertaken that. I haven't done a stroke of
+work on it for several weeks. In fact, ever since Walkham called, I
+simply couldn't. It seemed as if a rough hand had in some way destroyed
+the web of my thought. Poetry in the writing is like red hot glass
+before the master-blower has fashioned it into birds and trees and
+strange fantastic shapes. A draught, caused by the opening of a door may
+distort it. But at present I am engaged upon more important work. I am
+modelling a vessel not of fine-spun glass, but of molten gold."
+
+"You make me exceedingly anxious to know what you have in store for us.
+It seems to me you have reached a point where even you can no longer
+surpass yourself."
+
+Reginald smiled. "Your praise is too generous, yet it warms like
+sunshine. I will confess that my conception is unique. It combines with
+the ripeness of my technique the freshness of a second spring."
+
+Ernest was bubbling with anticipated delights. His soul responded to
+Reginald's touch as a harp to the winds. "When," he cried, "shall we be
+privileged to see it?"
+
+Reginald's eyes were already straying back to his writing table. "If the
+gods are propitious," he remarked, "I shall complete it to-night.
+To-morrow is my reception, and I have half promised to read it then."
+
+"Perhaps I shall be in the position soon to let you see my play."
+
+"Let us hope so," Reginald replied absent-mindedly. The egotism of the
+artist had once more chained him to his work.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+That night a brilliant crowd had gathered in Reginald Clarke's house.
+From the studio and the adjoining salon arose a continual murmur of
+well-tuned voices. On bare white throats jewels shone as if in each a
+soul were imprisoned, and voluptuously rustled the silk that clung to
+the fair slim forms of its bearers in an undulating caress. Subtle
+perfumes emanated from the hair and the hands of syren women,
+commingling with the soft plump scent of their flesh. Fragrant tapers,
+burning in precious crystal globules stained with exquisite colours,
+sprinkled their shimmering light over the fashionable assemblage and
+lent a false radiance to the faces of the men, while in the hair and the
+jewels of the women each ray seemed to dance like an imp with its mate.
+
+A seat like a throne, covered with furs of tropic beasts of prey, stood
+in one corner of the room in the full glare of the light, waiting for
+the monarch to come. Above were arranged with artistic _raffinement_
+weird oriental draperies, resembling a crimson canopy in the total
+effect. Chattering visitors were standing in groups, or had seated
+themselves on the divans and curiously-fashioned chairs that were
+scattered in seeming disorder throughout the salon. There were critics
+and writers and men of the world. Everybody who was anybody and a little
+bigger than somebody else was holding court in his own small circle of
+enthusiastic admirers. The Bohemian element was subdued, but not
+entirely lacking. The magic of Reginald Clarke's name made stately dames
+blind to the presence of some individuals whom they would have passed on
+the street without recognition.
+
+Ernest surveyed this gorgeous assembly with the absent look of a
+sleep-walker. Not that his sensuous soul was unsusceptible to the
+atmosphere of culture and corruption that permeated the whole, nor to
+the dazzling colour effects that tantalised while they delighted the
+eye. But to-night they shrivelled into insignificance before the
+splendour of his inner vision. A radiant dreamland palace, his play, had
+risen from the night of inchoate thought. It was wonderful, it was real,
+and needed for its completion only the detail of actual construction.
+And now the characters were hovering in the recesses of his brain, were
+yearning to leave that many-winded labyrinth to become real beings of
+paper and ink. He would probably have tarried overlong in this fanciful
+mansion, had not the reappearance of an unexpected guest broken his
+reverie.
+
+"Jack!" he exclaimed in surprise, "I thought you a hundred miles away
+from here."
+
+"That shows that you no longer care for me," Jack playfully answered.
+"When our friendship was young, you always had a presentiment of my
+presence."
+
+"Ah, perhaps I had. But tell me, where do you hail from?"
+
+"Clarke called me up on the telephone--long-distance, you know. I
+suppose it was meant as a surprise for you. And you certainly looked
+surprised--not even pleasantly. I am really head-over-heels at work.
+But you know how it is. Sometimes a little imp whispers into my ears
+daring me to do a thing which I know is foolish. But what of it? My legs
+are strong enough not to permit my follies to overtake me."
+
+"It was certainly good of you to come. In fact, you make me very glad. I
+feel that I need you to-night--I don't know why. The feeling came
+suddenly--suddenly as you. I only know I need you. How long can you
+stay?"
+
+"I must leave you to-morrow morning. I have to hustle somewhat. You know
+my examinations are taking place in a day or two and I've got to cram up
+a lot of things."
+
+"Still," remarked Ernest, "your visit will repay you for the loss of
+time. Clarke will read to us to-night his masterpiece."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I don't know. I only know it's the real thing. It's worth all the
+wisdom bald-headed professors may administer to you in concentrated
+doses at five thousand a year."
+
+"Come now," Jack could not help saying, "is your memory giving way?
+Don't you remember your own days in college--especially the mathematical
+examinations? You know that your marks came always pretty near the
+absolute zero."
+
+"Jack," cried Ernest in honest indignation, "not the last time. The last
+time I didn't flunk."
+
+"No, because your sonnet on Cartesian geometry roused even the
+math-fiend to compassion. And don't you remember Professor Squeeler,
+whose heart seemed to leap with delight whenever he could tell you that,
+in spite of incessant toil on your part, he had again flunked you in
+physics with fifty-nine and a half per cent.?"
+
+"And he wouldn't raise the mark to sixty! God forgive him,--I cannot."
+
+Here their exchange of reminiscences was interrupted. There was a stir.
+The little potentates of conversation hastened to their seats, before
+their minions had wholly deserted them.
+
+The king was moving to his throne!
+
+Assuredly Reginald Clarke had the bearing of a king. Leisurely he took
+his seat under the canopy.
+
+A hush fell on the audience; not a fan stirred as he slowly unfolded his
+manuscript.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The music of Reginald Clarke's intonation captivated every ear.
+Voluptuously, in measured cadence, it rose and fell; now full and strong
+like the sound of an organ, now soft and clear like the tinkling of
+bells. His voice detracted by its very tunefulness from what he said.
+The powerful spell charmed even Ernest's accustomed ear. The first page
+gracefully glided from Reginald's hand to the carpet before the boy
+dimly realised that he was intimately familiar with every word that fell
+from Reginald's lips. When the second page slipped with seeming
+carelessness from the reader's hand, a sudden shudder ran through the
+boy's frame. It was as if an icy hand had gripped his heart. There could
+be no doubt of it. This was more than mere coincidence. It was
+plagiarism. He wanted to cry out. But the room swam before his eyes.
+Surely he must be dreaming. It was a dream. The faces of the audience,
+the lights, Reginald, Jack--all phantasmagoria of a dream.
+
+Perhaps he had been ill for a long time. Perhaps Clarke was reading the
+play for him. He did not remember having written it. But he probably had
+fallen sick after its completion. What strange pranks our memories will
+play us! But no! He was not dreaming, and he had not been ill.
+
+He could endure the horrible uncertainty no longer. His overstrung
+nerves must find relaxation in some way or break with a twang. He turned
+to his friend who was listening with rapt attention.
+
+"Jack, Jack!" he whispered.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That is my play!"
+
+"You mean that you inspired it?"
+
+"No, I have written it, or rather, was going to write it."
+
+"Wake up, Ernest! You are mad!"
+
+"No, in all seriousness. It is mine. I told you--don't you
+remember--when we returned from Coney Island--that I was writing a
+play."
+
+"Ah, but not this play."
+
+"Yes, this play. I conceived it, I practically wrote it."
+
+"The more's the pity that Clarke had preconceived it."
+
+"But it is mine!"
+
+"Did you tell him a word about it?"
+
+"No, to be sure."
+
+"Did you leave the manuscript in your room?"
+
+"I had, in fact, not written a line of it. No, I had not begun the
+actual writing."
+
+"Why should a man of Clarke's reputation plagiarise your plays, written
+or unwritten?"
+
+"I can see no reason. But--"
+
+"Tut, tut."
+
+For already this whispered conversation had elicited a look like a stab
+from a lady before them.
+
+Ernest held fast to the edge of a chair. He must cling to some reality,
+or else drift rudderless in a dim sea of vague apprehensions.
+
+Or was Jack right?
+
+Was his mind giving way? No! No! No! There must be a monstrous secret
+somewhere, but what matter? Did anything matter? He had called on his
+mate like a ship lost in the fog. For the first time he had not
+responded. He had not understood. The bitterness of tears rose to the
+boy's eyes.
+
+Above it all, melodiously, ebbed and flowed the rich accents of Reginald
+Clarke.
+
+Ernest listened to the words of his own play coming from the older man's
+mouth. The horrible fascination of the scene held him entranced. He saw
+the creations of his mind pass in review before him, as a man might look
+upon the face of his double grinning at him from behind a door in the
+hideous hours of night.
+
+They were all there! The mad king. The subtle-witted courtiers. The
+sombre-hearted Prince. The Queen-Mother who had loved a jester better
+than her royal mate, and the fruit of their shameful alliance, the
+Princess Marigold, a creature woven of sunshine and sin.
+
+Swiftly the action progressed. Shadows of impending death darkened the
+house of the King. In the horrible agony of the rack the old jester
+confessed. Stripped of his cap and bells, crowned with a wreath of
+blood, he looked so pathetically funny that the Princess Marigold could
+not help laughing between her tears.
+
+The Queen stood there all trembling and pale. Without a complaint she
+saw her lover die. The executioner's sword smote the old man's head
+straight from the trunk. It rolled at the feet of the King, who tossed
+it to Marigold. The little Princess kissed it and covered the grinning
+horror with her yellow veil.
+
+The last words died away.
+
+There was no applause. Only silence. All were stricken with the dread
+that men feel in the house of God or His awful presence in genius.
+
+But the boy lay back in his chair. The cold sweat had gathered on his
+brow and his temples throbbed. Nature had mercifully clogged his head
+with blood. The rush of it drowned the crying voice of the nerves,
+deadening for a while both consciousness and pain.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Somehow the night had passed--somehow in bitterness, in anguish. But it
+had passed.
+
+Ernest's lips were parched and sleeplessness had left its trace in the
+black rings under the eyes, when the next morning he confronted Reginald
+in the studio.
+
+Reginald was sitting at the writing-table in his most characteristic
+pose, supporting his head with his hand and looking with clear piercing
+eyes searchingly at the boy.
+
+"Yes," he observed, "it's a most curious psychical phenomenon."
+
+"You cannot imagine how real it all seemed to me."
+
+The boy spoke painfully, dazed, as if struck by a blow.
+
+"Even now it is as if something has gone from me, some struggling
+thought that I cannot--cannot remember."
+
+Reginald regarded him as a physical experimenter might look upon the
+subject of a particularly baffling mental disease.
+
+"You must not think, my boy, that I bear you any malice for your
+extraordinary delusion. Before Jack went away he gave me an exact
+account of all that has happened. Divers incidents recurred to him from
+which it appears that, at various times in the past, you have been on
+the verge of a nervous collapse."
+
+A nervous collapse! What was the use of this term but a euphemism for
+insanity?
+
+"Do not despair, dear child," Reginald caressingly remarked. "Your
+disorder is not hopeless, not incurable. Such crises come to every man
+who writes. It is the tribute we pay to the Lords of Song. The
+minnesinger of the past wrote with his heart's blood; but we moderns dip
+our pen into the sap of our nerves. We analyse life, love art--and the
+dissecting knife that we use on other men's souls finally turns against
+ourselves.
+
+"But what shall a man do? Shall he sacrifice art to hygiene and
+surrender the one attribute that makes him chiefest of created things?
+Animals, too, think. Some walk on two legs. But introspection
+differentiates man from the rest. Shall we yield up the sweet
+consciousness of self that we derive from the analysis of our emotion,
+for the contentment of the bull that ruminates in the shade of a tree or
+the healthful stupidity of a mule?"
+
+"Assuredly not."
+
+"But what shall a man do?"
+
+"Ah, that I cannot tell. Mathematics offers definite problems that admit
+of a definite solution. Life states its problems with less exactness and
+offers for each a different solution. One and one are two to-day and
+to-morrow. Psychical values, on each manipulation, will yield a
+different result. Still, your case is quite clear. You have overworked
+yourself in the past, mentally and emotionally. You have sown unrest,
+and must not be surprised if neurasthenia is the harvest thereof."
+
+"Do you think--that I should go to some sanitarium?" the boy falteringly
+asked.
+
+"God forbid! Go to the seashore, somewhere where you can sleep and play.
+Take your body along, but leave your brain behind--at least do not
+take more of it with you than is necessary. The summer season in
+Atlantic City has just begun. There, as everywhere in American society,
+you will be much more welcome if you come without brains."
+
+Reginald's half-bantering tone reassured Ernest a little. Timidly he
+dared approach once more the strange event that had wrought such havoc
+with his nervous equilibrium.
+
+"How do you account for my strange obsession--one might almost call it a
+mania?"
+
+"If it could be accounted for it would not be strange."
+
+"Can you suggest no possible explanation?"
+
+"Perhaps a stray leaf on my desk a few indications of the plot, a
+remark--who knows? Perhaps thought-matter is floating in the air.
+Perhaps--but we had better not talk of it now. It would needlessly
+excite you."
+
+"You are right," answered Ernest gloomily, "let us not talk of it. But
+whatever may be said, it is a marvellous play."
+
+"You flatter me. There is nothing in it that you may not be able to do
+equally well--some day."
+
+"Ah, no," the boy replied, looking up to Reginald with admiration. "You
+are the master."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Lazily Ernest stretched his limbs on the beach of Atlantic City. The
+sea, that purger of sick souls, had washed away the fever and the fret
+of the last few days. The wind was in his hair and the spray was in his
+breath, while the rays of the sun kissed his bare arms and legs. He
+rolled over in the glittering sand in the sheer joy of living.
+
+Now and then a wavelet stole far into the beach, as if to caress him,
+but pined away ere it could reach its goal. It was as if the enamoured
+sea was stretching out its arms to him. Who knows, perhaps through the
+clear water some green-eyed nymph, or a young sea-god with the tang of
+the sea in his hair, was peering amorously at the boy's red mouth. The
+people of the deep love the red warm blood of human kind. It is always
+the young that they lure to their watery haunts, never the shrivelled
+limbs that totter shivering to the grave.
+
+Such fancies came to Ernest as he lay on the shore in his bathing
+attire, happy, thoughtless,--animal.
+
+The sun and the sea seemed to him two lovers vying for his favor. The
+sudden change of environment had brought complete relaxation and had
+quieted his rebellious, assertive soul. He was no longer a solitary unit
+but one with wind and water, herb and beach and shell. Almost
+voluptuously his hand toyed with the hot sand that glided caressingly
+through his fingers and buried his breast and shoulder under its
+glittering burden.
+
+A summer girl who passed lowered her eyes coquettishly. He watched her
+without stirring. Even to open his mouth or to smile would have seemed
+too much exertion.
+
+Thus he lay for hours. When at length noon drew nigh, it cost him a
+great effort of will to shake off his drowsy mood and exchange his airy
+costume for the conventional habilaments of the dining-room.
+
+He had taken lodgings in a fashionable hotel. An unusual stroke of good
+luck, hack-work that paid outrageously well, had made it possible for
+him to idle for a time without a thought of the unpleasant necessity of
+making money.
+
+One single article to which he signed his name only with reluctance had
+brought to him more gear than a series of golden sonnets.
+
+"Surely," he thought, "the social revolution ought to begin from above.
+What right has the bricklayer to grumble when he receives for a week's
+work almost more than I for a song?"
+
+Thus soliloquising, he reached the dining-room. The scene that unfolded
+itself before him was typical--the table over-loaded, the women
+over-dressed.
+
+The luncheon was already in full course when he came. He mumbled an
+apology and seated himself on the only remaining chair next to a youth
+who reminded him of a well-dressed dummy. With slight weariness his eyes
+wandered in all directions for more congenial faces when they were
+arrested by a lady on the opposite side of the table. She was clad in a
+silk robe with curiously embroidered net-work that revealed a nervous
+and delicate throat. The rich effect of the net-work was relieved by the
+studied simplicity with which her heavy chestnut-colored hair was
+gathered in a single knot. Her face was turned away from him, but there
+was something in the carriage of her head that struck him as familiar.
+When at last she looked him in the face, the glass almost fell from his
+hand: it was Ethel Brandenbourg. She seemed to notice his embarrassment
+and smiled. When she opened her lips to speak, he knew by the haunting
+sweetness of the voice that he was not mistaken.
+
+"Tell me," she said wistfully, "you have forgotten me? They all have."
+
+He hastened to assure her that he had not forgotten her. He recollected
+now that he had first been introduced to her in Walkham's house some
+years ago, when a mere college boy, he had been privileged to attend one
+of that master's famous receptions. She had looked quite resolute and
+very happy then, not at all like the woman who had stared so strangely
+at Reginald in the Broadway restaurant.
+
+He regarded this encounter as very fortunate. He knew so much of her
+personal history that it almost seemed to him as if they had been
+intimate for years. She, too, felt on familiar ground with him. Neither
+as much as whispered the name of Reginald Clarke. Yet it was he, and the
+knowledge of what he was to them, that linked their souls with a common
+bond.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+It was the third day after their meeting. Hour by hour their intimacy
+had increased. Ethel was sitting in a large wicker-chair. She restlessly
+fingered her parasol, mechanically describing magic circles in the sand.
+Ernest lay at her feet. With his knees clasped between his hands, he
+gazed into her eyes.
+
+"Why are you trying so hard to make love to me?" the woman asked, with
+the half-amused smile with which the Eve near thirty receives the homage
+of a boy. There is an element of insincerity in that smile, but it is a
+weapon of defence against love's artillery.
+
+Sometimes, indeed, the pleading in the boy's eyes and the cry of the
+blood pierces the woman's smiling superiority. She listens, loves and
+loses.
+
+Ethel Brandenbourg was listening, but the idea of love had not yet
+entered into her mind. Her interest in Ernest was due in part to his
+youth and the trembling in his voice when he spoke of love. But what
+probably attracted her most powerfully was the fact that he intimately
+knew the man who still held her woman's heart in the hollow of his hand.
+It was half in play, therefore, that she had asked him that question.
+
+Why did he make love to her? He did not know. Perhaps it was the
+irresistible desire to be petted which young poets share with
+domesticated cats. But what should he tell her? Polite platitudes were
+out of place between them.
+
+Besides he knew the penalty of all tender entanglements. Women treat
+love as if it were an extremely tenuous wire that can be drawn out
+indefinitely. This is a very expensive process. It costs us the most
+precious, the only irretrievable thing in the universe--time. And to him
+time was song; for money he did not care. The Lord had hallowed his lips
+with rhythmic speech; only in the intervals of his singing might he
+listen to the voice of his heart--strangest of all watches, that tells
+the time not by minutes and hours, but by the coming and going of love.
+
+The woman beside him seemed to read his thoughts.
+
+"Child, child," she said, "why will you toy with love? Like Jehovah, he
+is a jealous god, and nothing but the whole heart can placate him. Woe
+to the woman who takes a poet for a lover. I admit it is fascinating,
+but it is playing _va banque_. In fact, it is fatal. Art or love will
+come to harm. No man can minister equally to both. A genuine poet is
+incapable of loving a woman."
+
+"Pshaw! You exaggerate. Of course, there is a measure of truth in what
+you say, but it is only one side of the truth, and the truth, you know,
+is always Janus-faced. In fact, it often has more than two faces. I can
+assure you that I have cared deeply for the women to whom my love-poetry
+was written. And you will not deny that it is genuine."
+
+"God forbid! Only you have been using the wrong preposition. You should
+have said that it was written at them."
+
+Ernest stared at her in child-like wonder.
+
+"By Jove! you are too devilishly clever!" he exclaimed.
+
+After a little silence he said not without hesitation: "And do you apply
+your theory to all artists, or only to us makers of rhyme?"
+
+"To all," she replied.
+
+He looked at her questioningly.
+
+"Yes," she said, with a new sadness in her voice, "I, too, have paid the
+price."
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"I loved."
+
+"And art?"
+
+"That was the sacrifice."
+
+"Perhaps you have chosen the better part," Ernest said without
+conviction.
+
+"No," she replied, "my tribute was brought in vain."
+
+This she said calmly, but Ernest knew that her words were of tragic
+import.
+
+"You love him still?" he observed simply.
+
+Ethel made no reply. Sadness clouded her face like a veil or like a grey
+mist over the face of the waters. Her eyes went out to the sea,
+following the sombre flight of the sea-mews.
+
+In that moment he could have taken her in his arms and kissed her with
+infinite tenderness.
+
+But tenderness between man and woman is like a match in a
+powder-magazine. The least provocation, and an amorous explosion will
+ensue, tumbling down the card-houses of platonic affection. If he
+yielded to the impulse of the moment, the wine of the springtide would
+set their blood afire, and from the flames within us there is no escape.
+
+"Come, come," she said, "you do not love me."
+
+He protested.
+
+"Ah!" she cried triumphantly, "how many sonnets would you give for me?
+If you were a usurer in gold instead of in rhyme, I would ask how many
+dollars. But it is unjust to pay in a coin that we value little. To a
+man starving in gold mines, a piece of bread weighs more than all the
+treasures of the earth. To you, I warrant your poems are the standard of
+appreciation. How many would you give for me? One, two, three?"
+
+"More."
+
+"Because you think love would repay you with compound interest," she
+observed merrily.
+
+He laughed.
+
+And when love turns to laughter the danger is passed for the moment.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Thus three weeks passed without apparent change in their relations.
+Ernest possessed a personal magnetism that, always emanating from him,
+was felt most deeply when withdrawn. He was at all times involuntarily
+exerting his power, which she ever resisted, always on the alert, always
+warding off.
+
+When at last pressure of work made his immediate departure for New York
+imperative, he had not apparently gained the least ground. But Ethel
+knew in her heart that she was fascinated, if not in love. The personal
+fascination was supplemented by a motherly feeling toward Ernest that,
+sensuous in essence, was in itself not far removed from love. She
+struggled bravely and with external success against her emotions, never
+losing sight of the fact that twenty and thirty are fifty.
+
+Increasingly aware of her own weakness, she constantly attempted to
+lead the conversation into impersonal channels, speaking preferably of
+his work.
+
+"Tell me," she said, negligently fanning herself, "what new inspiration
+have you drawn from your stay at the seaside?"
+
+"Why," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "volumes and volumes of it. I
+shall write the great novel of my life after I am once more quietly
+installed at Riverside Drive."
+
+"The great American novel?" she rejoined.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Who will be your hero--Clarke?"
+
+There was a slight touch of malice in her words, or rather in the pause
+between the penultimate word and the last. Ernest detected its presence,
+and knew that her love for Reginald was dead. Stiff and cold it lay in
+her heart's chamber--beside how many others?--all emboxed in the coffin
+of memory.
+
+"No," he replied after a while, a little piqued by her suggestion,
+"Clarke is not the hero. What makes you think that he casts a spell on
+everything I do?"
+
+"Dear child," she replied, "I know him. He cannot fail to impress his
+powerful personality upon all with whom he comes in contact, to the
+injury of their intellectual independence. Moreover, he is so brilliant
+and says everything so much better than anybody else, that by his very
+splendor he discourages effort in others. At best his influence will
+shape your development according to the tenets of his mind--curious,
+subtle and corrupted. You will become mentally distorted, like one of
+those hunchback Japanese trees, infinitely wrinkled and infinitely
+grotesque, whose laws of growth are not determined by nature, but by the
+diseased imagination of the East."
+
+"I am no weakling," Ernest asserted, "and your picture of Clarke is
+altogether out of perspective. His splendid successes are to me a source
+of constant inspiration. We have some things in common, but I realise
+that it is along entirely different lines that success will come to me.
+He has never sought to influence me, in fact, I never received the
+smallest suggestion from him." Here the Princess Marigold seemed to peer
+at him through the veil of the past, but he waved her aside. "As for my
+story," he continued, "you need not go so far out of your way to find
+the leading character?"
+
+"Who can it be?" Ethel remarked, with a merry twinkle, "You?"
+
+"Ethel," he said sulkingly, "be serious. You know that it is you."
+
+"I am immensely flattered," she replied. "Really, nothing pleases me
+better than to be immortalised in print, since I have little hope
+nowadays of perpetuating my name by virtue of pencil or brush. I have
+been put into novels before and am consumed with curiosity to hear the
+plot of yours."
+
+"If you don't mind, I had rather not tell you just yet," Ernest said.
+"It's going to be called Leontina--that's you. But all depends on the
+treatment. You know it doesn't matter much what you say so long as you
+say it well. That's what counts. At any rate, any indication of the plot
+at this stage would be decidedly inadequate."
+
+"I think you are right," she ventured. "By all means choose your own
+time to tell me. Let's talk of something else. Have you written
+anything since your delightful book of verse last spring? Surely now is
+your singing season. By the time we are thirty the springs of pure lyric
+passion are usually exhausted."
+
+Ethel's inquiry somehow startled him. In truth, he could find no
+satisfactory answer. A remark relative to his play--Clarke's play--rose
+to the threshold of his lips, but he almost bit his tongue as soon as he
+realised that the strange delusion which had possessed him that night
+still dominated the undercurrents of his cerebration. No, he had
+accomplished but little during the last few months--at least, by way of
+creative literature. So he replied that he had made money. "That is
+something," he said. "Besides, who can turn out a masterpiece every
+week? An artist's brain is not a machine, and in the respite from
+creative work I have gathered strength for the future. But," he added,
+slightly annoyed, "you are not listening."
+
+His exclamation brought her back from the train of thoughts that his
+words had suggested. For in his reasoning she had recognised the same
+arguments that she had hourly repeated to herself in defence of her
+inactivity when she was living under the baneful influence of Reginald
+Clarke. Yes, baneful; for the first time she dared to confess it to
+herself. In a flash the truth dawned upon her that it was not her love
+alone, but something else, something irresistable and very mysterious,
+that had dried up the well of creation in her. Could it be that the same
+power was now exerting its influence upon the struggling soul of this
+talented boy? Rack her brains as she might, she could not definitely
+formulate her apprehensions and a troubled look came into her eyes.
+
+"Ethel," the boy repeated, impatiently, "why are you not listening? Do
+you realise that I must leave you in half an hour?"
+
+She looked at him with deep tenderness. Something like a tear lent a
+soft radiance to her large child-like eyes.
+
+Ernest saw it and was profoundly moved. In that moment he loved her
+passionately.
+
+"Foolish boy," she said softly; then, lowering her voice to a whisper:
+"You may kiss me before you go."
+
+His lips gently touched hers, but she took his head between her hands
+and pressed her mouth upon his in a long kiss.
+
+Ernest drew back a little awkwardly. He had not been kissed like this
+before.
+
+"Poet though you are," Ethel whispered, "you have not yet learned to
+kiss."
+
+She was deeply agitated when she noticed that his hand was fumbling for
+the watch in his vest-pocket. She suddenly released him, and said, a
+little hurt: "No, you must not miss your train. Go by all means."
+
+Vainly Ernest remonstrated with her.
+
+"Go to him," she said, and again, "go to him."
+
+With a heavy heart the boy obeyed. He waved his hat to her once more
+from below, and then rapidly disappeared in the crowd. For a moment
+strange misgivings cramped her heart, and something within her called
+out to him: "Do not go! Do not return to that house." But no sound
+issued from her lips. Worldly wisdom had sealed them, had stifled the
+inner voice. And soon the boy's golden head was swallowed up in the
+distance.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+While the train sped to New York, Ethel Brandenbourg was the one object
+engaging Ernest's mind. He still felt the pressure of her lips upon his,
+and his nostrils dilated at the thought of the fragrance of her hair
+brushing against his forehead.
+
+But the moment his foot touched the ferry-boat that was to take him to
+Manhattan, the past three weeks were, for the time being at least,
+completely obliterated from his memory. All his other interests that he
+had suppressed in her company because she had no part in them, came
+rushing back to him. He anticipated with delight his meeting with
+Reginald Clarke. The personal attractiveness of the man had never seemed
+so powerful to Ernest as when he had not heard from him for some time.
+Reginald's letters were always brief. "Professional writers," he was
+wont to say, "cannot afford to put fine feeling into their private
+correspondence. They must turn it into copy." He longed to sit with the
+master in the studio when the last rays of the daylight were tremulously
+falling through the stained window, and to discuss far into the
+darkening night philosophies young and old. He longed for Reginald's
+voice, his little mannerisms, the very perfume of his rooms.
+
+There also was a deluge of letters likely to await him in his apartment.
+For in his hurried departure he had purposely left his friends in the
+dark as to his whereabouts. Only to Jack he had dropped a little note
+the day after his meeting with Ethel.
+
+He earnestly hoped to find Reginald at home, though it was well nigh ten
+o'clock in the evening, and he cursed the "rapid transit" for its
+inability to annihilate space and time. It is indeed disconcerting to
+think how many months, if not years, of our earthly sojourn the dwellers
+in cities spend in transportation conveyances that must be set down as a
+dead loss in the ledger of life. A nervous impatience against things
+material overcame Ernest in the subway. It is ever the mere stupid
+obstacle of matter that weights down the wings of the soul and prevents
+it from soaring upward to the sun.
+
+When at last he had reached the house, he learned from the hall-boy that
+Clarke had gone out. Ruffled in temper he entered his rooms and went
+over his mail. There were letters from editors with commissions that he
+could not afford to reject. Everywhere newspapers and magazines opened
+their yawning mouths to swallow up what time he had. He realised at once
+that he would have to postpone the writing of his novel for several
+weeks, if not longer.
+
+Among the letters was one from Jack. It bore the postmark of a little
+place in the Adirondacks where he was staying with his parents. Ernest
+opened the missive not without hesitation. On reading and rereading it
+the fine lines on his forehead, that would some day deepen into
+wrinkles, became quite pronounced and a look of displeasure darkened his
+face. Something was wrong with Jack, a slight change that defied
+analysis. Their souls were out of tune. It might only be a passing
+disturbance; perhaps it was his own fault. It pained him, nevertheless.
+Somehow it seemed of late that Jack was no longer able to follow the
+vagaries of his mind. Only one person in the world possessed a similar
+mental vision, only one seemed to understand what he said and what he
+left unsaid. Reginald Clarke, being a man and poet, read in his soul as
+in an open book. Ethel might have understood, had not love, like a
+cloud, laid itself between her eyes and the page.
+
+It was with exultation that Ernest heard near midnight the click of
+Reginald's key in the door. He found him unchanged, completely,
+radiantly himself. Reginald possessed the psychic power of undressing
+the soul, of seeing it before him in primal nakedness. Although no word
+was said of Ethel Brandenbourg except the mere mention of her presence
+in Atlantic City, Ernest intuitively knew that Reginald was aware of the
+transformation that absence had wrought in him. In the presence of this
+man he could be absolutely himself, without shame or fear of
+mis-understanding; and by a strange metamorphosis, all his affection
+for Ethel and Jack went out for the time being to Reginald Clarke.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+The next day Ernest wrote a letter of more or less superficial
+tenderness to Ethel. She had wounded his pride by proving victorious in
+the end over his passion and hers; besides, he was in the throes of
+work. When after the third day no answer came, he was inclined to feel
+aggrieved. It was plain now that she had not cared for him in the least,
+but had simply played with him for lack of another toy. A flush of shame
+rose to his cheeks at the thought. He began to analyse his own emotions,
+and stunned, if not stabbed, his passion step by step. Work was calling
+to him. It was that which gave life its meaning, not the love of a
+season. How far away, how unreal, she now seemed to him. Yes, she was
+right, he had not cared deeply; and his novel, too, would be written
+only _at_ her. It was the heroine of his story that absorbed his
+interest, not the living prototype.
+
+Once in a conversation with Reginald he touched upon the subject.
+Reginald held that modern taste no longer permitted even the
+photographer to portray life as it is, but insisted upon an individual
+visualisation. "No man," he remarked, "was ever translated bodily into
+fiction. In contradiction to life, art is a process of artificial
+selection."
+
+Bearing in mind this motive, Ernest went to work to mould from the
+material in hand a new Ethel, more real than life. Unfortunately he
+found little time to devote to his novel. It was only when, after a good
+day's work, a pile of copy for a magazine lay on his desk, that he could
+think of concentrating his mind upon "Leontina." The result was that
+when he went to bed his imagination was busy with the plan of his book,
+and the creatures of his own brain laid their fingers on his eyelid so
+that he could not sleep.
+
+When at last sheer weariness overcame him, his mind was still at work,
+not in orderly sequence but along trails monstrous and grotesque.
+Hobgoblins seemed to steal through the hall, and leering incubi
+oppressed his soul with terrible burdens. In the morning he awoke
+unrested. The tan vanished from his face and little lines appeared in
+the corners of his mouth. It was as if his nervous vitality were sapped
+from him in some unaccountable way. He became excited, hysterical. Often
+at night when he wrote his pot-boilers for the magazines, fear stood
+behind his seat, and only the buzzing of the elevator outside brought
+him back to himself.
+
+In one of his morbid moods he wrote a sonnet which he showed to Reginald
+after the latter's return from a short trip out of town. Reginald read
+it, looking at the boy with a curious, lurking expression.
+
+  _O gentle Sleep, turn not thy face away,
+      But place thy finger on my brow, and take
+      All burthens from me and all dreams that ache;
+   Upon mine eyes a cooling balsam lay,
+   Seeing I am aweary of the day.
+      But, lo! thy lips are ashen and they quake.
+      What spectral vision sees thou that can shake
+   Thy sweet composure, and thy heart dismay?
+   Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam
+   Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream
+     Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head
+       Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse
+     The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed,
+       Or startle Nero in his golden house._
+
+"Good stuff," Reginald remarked, laying down the manuscript; "when did
+you write it?"
+
+"The night when you were out of town," Ernest rejoined.
+
+"I see," Reginald replied.
+
+There was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused
+Ernest's attention.
+
+"What do you see?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Nothing," Reginald replied, with immovable calm, "only that your state
+of nerves is still far from satisfactory."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+After Ernest's departure Ethel Brandenbourg's heart was swaying hither
+and thither in a hurricane of conflicting feelings. Before she had time
+to gain an emotional equilibrium, his letter had hurled her back into
+chaos. A false ring somewhere in Ernest's words, reechoing with an
+ever-increasing volume of sound, stifled the voice of love. His jewelled
+sentences glittered, but left her cold. They lacked that spontaneity
+which renders even simple and hackeneyed phrases wonderful and unique.
+Ethel clearly realised that her hold upon the boy's imagination had been
+a fleeting midsummer night's charm, and that a word from Reginald's lips
+had broken the potency of her spell. She almost saw the shadow of
+Reginald's visage hovering over Ernest's letter and leering at her from
+between the lines in sinister triumph. Finally reason came and
+whispered to her that it was extremely unwise to give her heart into the
+keeping of a boy. His love, she knew, would have been exacting,
+irritating at times. He would have asked her to sympathise with every
+phase of his life, and would have expected active interest on her part
+in much that she had done with long ago. Thus, untruth would have stolen
+into her life and embittered it. When mates are unequal, Love must paint
+its cheeks and, in certain moods at least, hide its face under a mask.
+Its lips may be honeyed, but it brings fret and sorrow in its train.
+
+These things she told herself over and over again while she penned a
+cool and calculating answer to Ernest's letter. She rewrote it many
+times, and every time it became more difficult to reply. At last she put
+her letter aside for a few days, and when it fell again into her hand it
+seemed so unnatural and strained that she destroyed it.
+
+Thus several weeks had passed, and Ernest no longer exclusively occupied
+her mind when, one day early in September, while glancing over a
+magazine, she came upon his name in the table of contents. Once more
+she saw the boy's wistful face before her, and a trembling something
+stirred in her heart. Her hand shook as she cut the pages, and a mist of
+tears clouded her vision as she attempted to read his poem. It was a
+piece of sombre brilliance. Like black-draped monks half crazed with
+mystic devotion, the poet's thoughts flitted across the page. It was the
+wail of a soul that feels reason slipping from it and beholds madness
+rise over its life like a great pale moon. A strange unrest emanated
+from it and took possession of her. And again, with an insight that was
+prophetic, she distinctly recognised behind the vague fear that had
+haunted the poet the figure of Reginald Clarke.
+
+A half-forgotten dream, struggling to consciousness, staggered her by
+its vividness. She saw Clarke as she had seen him in days gone by,
+grotesquely transformed into a slimy sea-thing, whose hungry mouths shut
+sucking upon her and whose thousand tentacles encircled her form. She
+closed her eyes in horror at the reminiscence. And in that moment it
+became clear to her that she must take into her hands the salvation of
+Ernest Fielding from the clutches of the malign power that had
+mysteriously enveloped his life.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The summer was brief, and already by the middle of September many had
+returned to the pleasures of urban life. Ethel was among the
+first-comers; for, after her resolve to enter the life of the young poet
+once more, it would have been impossible for her to stay away from the
+city much longer. Her plan was all ready. Before attempting to see
+Ernest she would go to meet Reginald and implore him to free the boy
+from his hideous spell. An element of curiosity unconsciously entered
+her determination. When, years ago, she and Clarke had parted, the man
+had seemed, for once, greatly disturbed and had promised, in his
+agitation, that some day he would communicate to her what would
+exonerate him in her eyes. She had answered that all words between them
+were purposeless, and that she hoped never to see his face again. The
+experience that the years had brought to her, instead of elucidating
+the mystery of Reginald's personality, had, on the contrary, made his
+behaviour appear more and more unaccountable. She had more than once
+caught herself wishing to meet him again and to analyse dispassionately
+the puzzling influences he had exerted upon her. And she could at last
+view him dispassionately; there was triumph in that. She was dimly aware
+that something had passed from her, something by which he had held her,
+and without which his magnetism was unable to play upon her.
+
+So when Walkham sent her an invitation to one of his artistic "at homes"
+she accepted, in the hope of meeting Reginald. It was his frequentation
+of Walkham's house that had for several years effectively barred her
+foot from crossing the threshold. It was with a very strange feeling she
+greeted the many familiar faces at Walkham's now; and when, toward ten
+o'clock, Reginald entered, politely bowing in answer to the welcome from
+all sides, her heart beat in her like a drum. But she calmed herself,
+and, catching his eye, so arranged it that early in the evening they
+met in an alcove of the drawing-room.
+
+"It was inevitable," Reginald said. "I expected it."
+
+"Yes," she replied, "we were bound to meet."
+
+Like a great rush of water, memory came back to her. He was still
+horribly fascinating as of old--only she was no longer susceptible to
+his fascination. He had changed somewhat in those years. The lines about
+his mouth had grown harder and a steel-like look had come into his eyes.
+Only for a moment, as he looked at her, a flash of tenderness seemed to
+come back to them. Then he said, with a touch of sadness: "Why should
+the first word between us be a lie?"
+
+Ethel made no answer.
+
+Reginald looked at her half in wonder and said: "And is your love for
+the boy so great that it overcame your hate of me?"
+
+Ah, he knew! She winced.
+
+"He has told you?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+There was something superhuman in his power of penetration. Why should
+she wear a mask before him, when his eyes, like the eyes of God, pierced
+to the core of her being?
+
+"No," she replied, "it is not love, but compassion for him."
+
+"Compassion?"
+
+"Yes, compassion for your victim."
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"Reginald!"
+
+"I am all ear."
+
+"I implore you."
+
+"Speak."
+
+"You have ruined one life."
+
+He raised his eyebrows derogatively.
+
+"Yes," she continued fiercely, "ruined it! Is not that enough?"
+
+"I have never wilfully ruined any one's life."
+
+"You have ruined mine."
+
+"Wilfully?"
+
+"How else shall I explain your conduct?"
+
+"I warned you."
+
+"Warning, indeed! The warning that the snake gives to the sparrow
+helpless under its gaze."
+
+"Ah, but who tells you that the snake is to blame? Is it not rather the
+occult power that prescribes with blood on brazen scroll the law of our
+being?"
+
+"This is no solace to the sparrow. But whatever may be said, let us drop
+the past. Let us consider the present. I beg of you, leave this boy--let
+him develop without your attempting to stifle the life in him or
+impressing upon it the stamp of your alien mind."
+
+"Ethel," he protested, "you are unjust. If you knew--" Then an idea
+seemed to take hold of him. He looked at her curiously.
+
+"What if I knew?" she asked.
+
+"You shall know," he said, simply. "Are you strong?"
+
+"Strong to withstand anything at your hand. There is nothing that you
+can give me, nothing that you can take away."
+
+"No," he remarked, "nothing. Yes, you have changed. Still, when I look
+upon you, the ghosts of the past seem to rise like live things."
+
+"We both have changed. We meet now upon equal grounds. You are no
+longer the idol I made of you."
+
+"Don't you think that to the idol this might be a relief, not a
+humiliation? It is a terrible torture to sit in state with lips
+eternally shut. Sometimes there comes over the most reticent of us a
+desire to break through the eternal loneliness that surrounds the soul.
+It is this feeling that prompts madmen to tear off their clothes and
+exhibit their nakedness in the market-place. It's madness on my part, or
+a whim, or I don't know what; but it pleases me that you should know the
+truth."
+
+"You promised me long ago that I should."
+
+"To-day I will redeem my promise, and I will tell you another thing that
+you will find hard to believe."
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"That I loved you."
+
+Ethel smiled a little sceptically. "You have loved often."
+
+"No," he replied. "Loved, seriously loved, I have, only once."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+They were sitting in a little Italian restaurant where they had often,
+in the old days, lingered late into the night over a glass of Lacrimæ
+Christi. But no pale ghost of the past rose from the wine. Only a
+wriggling something, with serpent eyes, that sent cold shivers down her
+spine and held her speechless and entranced.
+
+When their order had been filled and the waiter had posted himself at a
+respectful distance, Reginald began--at first leisurely, a man of the
+world. But as he proceeded a strange exultation seemed to possess him
+and from his eyes leaped the flame of the mystic.
+
+"You must pardon me," he commenced, "if I monopolise the conversation,
+but the revelations I have to make are of such a nature that I may well
+claim your attention. I will start with my earliest childhood. You
+remember the picture of me that was taken when I was five?"
+
+She remembered, indeed. Each detail of his life was deeply engraven on
+her mind.
+
+"At that time," he continued, "I was not held to be particularly bright.
+The reason was that my mind, being pre-eminently and extraordinarily
+receptive, needed a stimulus from without. The moment I was sent to
+school, however, a curious metamorphosis took place in me. I may say
+that I became at once the most brilliant boy in my class. You know that
+to this day I have always been the most striking figure in any circle in
+which I have ever moved."
+
+Ethel nodded assent. Silently watching the speaker, she saw a gleam of
+the truth from afar, but still very distant and very dim.
+
+Reginald lifted the glass against the light and gulped its contents.
+Then in a lower voice he recommenced: "Like the chameleon, I have the
+power of absorbing the colour of my environment."
+
+"Do you mean that you have the power of absorbing the special virtues
+of other people?" she interjected.
+
+"That is exactly what I mean."
+
+"Oh!" she cried, for in a heart-beat many things had become clear to
+her. For the first time she realised, still vaguely but with increasing
+vividness, the hidden causes of her ruin and, still more plainly, the
+horrible danger of Ernest Fielding.
+
+He noticed her agitation, and a look of psychological curiosity came
+into his eyes.
+
+"Ah, but that is not all," he observed, smilingly. "That is nothing. We
+all possess that faculty in a degree. The secret of my strength is my
+ability to reject every element that is harmful or inessential to the
+completion of my self. This did not come to me easily, nor without a
+struggle. But now, looking back upon my life, many things become
+transparent that were obscure even to me at the time. I can now follow
+the fine-spun threads in the intricate web of my fate, and discover in
+the wilderness of meshes a design, awful and grandly planned."
+
+His voice shook with conviction, as he uttered these words. There was
+something strangely gruesome in this man. It was thus that she had
+pictured to herself the high-priest of some terrible and mysterious
+religion, demanding a human sacrifice to appease the hunger of his god.
+She was fascinated by the spell of his personality, and listened with a
+feeling not far removed from awe. But Reginald suddenly changed his tone
+and proceeded in a more conversational manner.
+
+"The first friend I ever cared for was a boy marvellously endowed for
+the study of mathematics. At the time of our first meeting at school, I
+was unable to solve even the simplest algebraical problem. But we had
+been together only for half a month, when we exchanged parts. It was I
+who was the mathematical genius now, whereas he became hopelessly dull
+and stuttered through his recitations only with a struggle that brought
+the tears to his eyes. Then I discarded him. Heartless, you say? I have
+come to know better. Have you ever tasted a bottle of wine that had been
+uncorked for a long time? If you have, you have probably found it
+flat--the essence was gone, evaporated. Thus it is when we care for
+people. Probably--no, assuredly--there is some principle prisoned in
+their souls, or in the windings of their brains, which, when escaped,
+leaves them insipid, unprofitable and devoid of interest to us.
+Sometimes this essence--not necessarily the finest element in a man's or
+a woman's nature, but soul-stuff that we lack--disappears. In fact, it
+invariably disappears. It may be that it has been transformed in the
+processes of their growth; it may also be that it has utterly vanished
+by some inadvertence, or that we ourselves have absorbed it."
+
+"Then we throw them away?" Ethel asked, pale, but dry-eyed. A shudder
+passed through her body and she clinched her glass nervously. At that
+moment Reginald resembled a veritable Prince of Darkness, sinister and
+beautiful, painted by the hand of a modern master. Then, for a space, he
+again became the man of the world. Smiling and self-possessed, he filled
+the glasses, took a long sip of the wine and resumed his narrative.
+
+"That boy was followed by others. I absorbed many useless things and
+some that were evil. I realised that I must direct my absorptive
+propensities. This I did. I selected, selected well. And all the time
+the terrible power of which I was only half conscious grew within me."
+
+"It is indeed a terrible power," she cried; "all the more terrible for
+its subtlety. Had I not myself been its victim, I should not now find it
+possible to believe in it."
+
+"The invisible hand that smites in the dark is certainly more fearful
+than a visible foe. It is also more merciful. Think how much you would
+have suffered had you been conscious of your loss."
+
+"Still it seems even now to me that it cannot have been an utter,
+irreparable loss. There is no action without reaction. Even I--even
+we--must have received from you some compensation for what you have
+taken away."
+
+"In the ordinary processes of life the law of action and reaction is
+indeed potent. But no law is without exception. Think of radium, for
+instance, with its constant and seemingly inexhaustible outflow of
+energy. It is a difficult thing to imagine, but our scientific men have
+accepted it as a fact. Why should we find it more difficult to conceive
+of a tremendous and infinite absorptive element? I feel sure that it
+must somewhere exist. But every phenomenon in the physical world finds
+its counterpart in the psychical universe. There are radium-souls that
+radiate without loss of energy, but also without increase. And there are
+souls, the reverse of radium, with unlimited absorptive capacities."
+
+"Vampire-souls," she observed, with a shudder, and her face blanched.
+
+"No," he said, "don't say that." And then he suddenly seemed to grow in
+stature. His face was ablaze, like the face of a god.
+
+"In every age," he replied, with solemnity, "there are giants who attain
+to a greatness which by natural growth no men could ever have reached.
+But in their youth a vision came to them, which they set out to seek.
+They take the stones of fancy to build them a palace in the kingdom of
+truth, projecting into reality dreams, monstrous and impossible. Often
+they fail and, tumbling from their airy heights, end a quixotic career.
+Some succeed. They are the chosen. Carpenter's sons they are, who have
+laid down the Law of a World for milleniums to come; or simple
+Corsicans, before whose eagle eye have quaked the kingdoms of the earth.
+But to accomplish their mission they need a will of iron and the wit of
+a hundred men. And from the iron they take the strength, and from a
+hundred men's brains they absorb their wisdom. Divine missionaries, they
+appear in all departments of life. In their hand is gathered to-day the
+gold of the world. Mighty potentates of peace and war, they unlock new
+seas and from distant continents lift the bars. Single-handed, they
+accomplish what nations dared not hope; with Titan strides they scale
+the stars and succeed where millions fail. In art they live, the makers
+of new periods, the dreamers of new styles. They make themselves the
+vocal sun-glasses of God. Homer and Shakespeare, Hugo and Balzac--they
+concentrate the dispersed rays of a thousand lesser luminaries in one
+singing flame that, like a giant torch, lights up humanity's path."
+
+She gazed at him, open-mouthed. The light had gone from his visage. He
+paused, exhausted, but even then he looked the incarnation of a force no
+less terrible, no less grand. She grasped the immensity of his
+conception, but her woman's soul rebelled at the horrible injustice to
+those whose light is extinguished, as hers had been, to feed an alien
+flame. And then, for a moment, she saw the pale face of Ernest staring
+at her out of the wine.
+
+"Cruel," she sobbed, "how cruel!"
+
+"What matter?" he asked. "Their strength is taken from them, but the
+spirit of humanity, as embodied in us, triumphantly marches on."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Reginald's revelations were followed by a long silence, interrupted only
+by the officiousness of the waiter. The spell once broken, they
+exchanged a number of more or less irrelevant observations. Ethel's mind
+returned, again and again, to the word he had not spoken. He had said
+nothing of the immediate bearing of his monstrous power upon her own
+life and that of Ernest Fielding.
+
+At last, somewhat timidly, she approached the subject.
+
+"You said you loved me," she remarked.
+
+"I did."
+
+"But why, then--"
+
+"I could not help it."
+
+"Did you ever make the slightest attempt?"
+
+"In the horrible night hours I struggled against it. I even implored you
+to leave me."
+
+"Ah, but I loved you!"
+
+"You would not be warned, you would not listen. You stayed with me, and
+slowly, surely, the creative urge went out of your life."
+
+"But what on earth could you find in my poor art to attract you? What
+were my pictures to you?"
+
+"I needed them, I needed you. It was a certain something, a rich colour
+effect, perhaps. And then, under your very eyes, the colour that
+vanished from your canvases reappeared in my prose. My style became more
+luxurious than it had been, while you tortured your soul in the vain
+attempt of calling back to your brush what was irretrievably lost."
+
+"Why did you not tell me?"
+
+"You would have laughed in my face, and I could not have endured your
+laugh. Besides, I always hoped, until it was too late, that I might yet
+check the mysterious power within me. Soon, however, I became aware that
+it was beyond my control. The unknown god, whose instrument I am, had
+wisely made it stronger than me."
+
+"But why," retorted Ethel, "was it necessary to discard me, like a
+cast-off garment, like a wanton who has lost the power to please?"
+
+Her frame shook with the remembered emotion of that moment, when years
+ago he had politely told her that she was nothing to him.
+
+"The law of being," Reginald replied, almost sadly, "the law of my
+being. I should have pitied you, but the eternal reproach of your
+suffering only provoked my anger. I cared less for you every day, and
+when I had absorbed all of you that my growth required, you were to me
+as one dead, as a stranger you were. There was between us no further
+community of interest; henceforth, I knew, our lives must move in
+totally different spheres. You remember that day when we said good-bye?"
+
+"You mean that day when I lay before you on my knees," she corrected
+him.
+
+"That day I buried my last dream of personal happiness. I would have
+gladly raised you from the floor, but love was utterly gone. If I am
+tenderer to-day than I am wont to be, it is because you mean so much to
+me as the symbol of my renunciation. When I realised that I could not
+even save the thing I loved from myself, I became hardened and cruel to
+others. Not that I know no kindly feeling, but no qualms of conscience
+lay their prostrate forms across my path. There is nothing in life for
+me but my mission."
+
+His face was bathed in ecstasy. The pupils were luminous, large and
+threatening. He had the look of a madman or a prophet.
+
+After a while Ethel remarked: "But you have grown into one of the
+master-figures of the age. Why not be content with that? Is there no
+limit to your ambition?"
+
+Reginald smiled: "Ambition! Shakespeare stopped when he had reached his
+full growth, when he had exhausted the capacity of his contemporaries. I
+am not yet ready to lay down my pen and rest."
+
+"And will you always continue in this criminal course, a murderer of
+other lives?"
+
+He looked her calmly in the face. "I do not know."
+
+"Are you the slave of your unknown god?"
+
+"We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes: You, Ernest, I. There is
+no freedom on the face of the earth nor above. The tiger that tears a
+lamb is not free, I am not free, you are not free. All that happens must
+happen; no word that is said is said in vain, in vain is raised no
+hand."
+
+"Then," Ethel retorted, eagerly, "if I attempted to wrest your victim
+from you, I should also be the tool of your god?"
+
+"Assuredly. But I am his chosen."
+
+"Can you--can you not set him free?"
+
+"I need him--a little longer. Then he is yours."
+
+"But can you not, if I beg you again on my knees, at least loosen his
+chains before he is utterly ruined?"
+
+"It is beyond my power. If I could not rescue you, whom I loved, what in
+heaven or on earth can save him from his fate? Besides, he will not be
+utterly ruined. It is only a part of him that I absorb. In his soul are
+chords that I have not touched. They may vibrate one day, when he has
+gathered new strength. You, too, would have spared yourself much pain
+had you striven to attain success in different fields--not where I had
+garnered the harvest of a lifetime. It is only a portion of his talent
+that I take from him. The rest I cannot harm. Why should he bury that
+remainder?"
+
+His eyes strayed through the window to the firmament, as if to say that
+words could no more bend his indomitable will than alter the changeless
+course of the stars.
+
+Ethel had half-forgotten the wrong she herself had suffered at his
+hands. He could not be measured by ordinary standards, this dazzling
+madman, whose diseased will-power had assumed such uncanny proportions.
+But here a young life was at stake. In her mind's eye she saw Reginald
+crush between his relentless hands the delicate soul of Ernest Fielding,
+as a magnificent carnivorous flower might close its glorious petals upon
+a fly.
+
+Love, all conquering love, welled up in her. She would fight for Ernest
+as a tiger cat fights for its young. She would place herself in the way
+of the awful force that had shattered her own aspirations, and save, at
+any cost, the brilliant boy who did not love her.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+The last rays of the late afternoon sun fell slanting through Ernest's
+window. He was lying on his couch, in a leaden, death-like slumber that,
+for the moment at least, was not even perturbed by the presence of
+Reginald Clarke.
+
+The latter was standing at the boy's bedside, calm, unmoved as ever. The
+excitement of his conversation with Ethel had left no trace on the
+chiselled contour of his forehead. Smilingly fastening an orchid of an
+indefinable purple tint in his evening coat, radiant, buoyant with life,
+he looked down upon the sleeper. Then he passed his hand over Ernest's
+forehead, as if to wipe off beads of sweat. At the touch of his hand the
+boy stirred uneasily. When it was not withdrawn his countenance twitched
+in pain. He moaned as men moan under the influence of some anæsthetic,
+without possessing the power to break through the narrow partition that
+separates them from death on the one side and from consciousness on the
+other. At last a sigh struggled to his seemingly paralysed lips, then
+another. Finally the babbling became articulate.
+
+"For God's sake," he cried, in his sleep, "take that hand away!"
+
+And all at once the benignant smile on Reginald's features was changed
+to a look of savage fierceness. He no longer resembled the man of
+culture, but a disappointed, snarling beast of prey. He took his hand
+from Ernest's forehead and retired cautiously through the half-open
+door.
+
+Hardly had he disappeared when Ernest awoke. For a moment he looked
+around, like a hunted animal, then sighed with relief and buried his
+head in his hand. At that moment a knock at the door was heard, and
+Reginald re-entered, calm as before.
+
+"I declare," he exclaimed, "you have certainly been sleeping the sleep
+of the just."
+
+"It isn't laziness," Ernest replied, looking up rather pleased at the
+interruption. "But I've a splitting headache."
+
+"Perhaps those naps are not good for your health."
+
+"Probably. But of late I have frequently found it necessary to exact
+from the day-hours the sleep which the night refuses me. I suppose it is
+all due to indigestion, as you have suggested. The stomach is the source
+of all evil."
+
+"It is also the source of all good. The Greeks made it the seat of the
+soul. I have always claimed that the most important item in a great
+poet's biography is an exact reproduction of his menu."
+
+"True, a man who eats a heavy beefsteak for breakfast in the morning is
+incapable of writing a sonnet in the afternoon."
+
+"Yes," Reginald added, "we are what we eat and what our forefathers have
+eaten before us. I ascribe the staleness of American poetry to the
+griddle-cakes of our Puritan ancestors. I am sorry we cannot go deeper
+into the subject at present. But I have an invitation to dinner where I
+shall study, experimentally, the influence of French sauces on my
+versification."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+"Au revoir." And, with a wave of the hand, Reginald left the room.
+
+When the door had closed behind him, Ernest's thoughts took a more
+serious turn. The tone of light bantering in which the preceding
+conversation had taken place had been assumed on his part. For the last
+few weeks evil dreams had tortured his sleep and cast their shadow upon
+his waking hours. They had ever increased in reality, in intensity and
+in hideousness. Even now he could see the long, tapering fingers that
+every night were groping in the windings of his brain. It was a
+well-formed, manicured hand that seemed to reach under his skull,
+carefully feeling its way through the myriad convolutions where thought
+resides.
+
+And, oh, the agony of it all! A human mind is not a thing of stone, but
+alive, horribly alive to pain. What was it those fingers sought, what
+mysterious treasures, what jewels hidden in the under-layer of his
+consciousness? His brain was like a human gold-mine, quaking under the
+blow of the pick and the tread of the miner. The miner! Ah, the miner!
+Ceaselessly, thoroughly, relentlessly, he opened vein after vein and
+wrested untold riches from the quivering ground; but each vein was a
+live vein and each nugget of gold a thought!
+
+No wonder the boy was a nervous wreck. Whenever a tremulous nascent idea
+was formulating itself, the dream-hand clutched it and took it away,
+brutally severing the fine threads that bind thought to thought. And
+when the morning came, how his head ached! It was not an acute pain, but
+dull, heavy, incessant.
+
+These sensations, Ernest frequently told himself, were morbid fancies.
+But then, the monomaniac who imagines that his arms have been mangled or
+cut from his body, might as well be without arms. Mind can annihilate
+obstacles. It can also create them. Psychology was no unfamiliar ground
+to Ernest, and it was not difficult for him to seek in some casual
+suggestion an explanation for his delusion, the fixed notion that
+haunted him day and night. But he also realized that to explain a
+phenomenon is not to explain it away. The man who analyses his emotions
+cannot wholly escape them, and the shadow of fear--primal, inexplicable
+fear--may darken at moments of weakness the life of the subtlest
+psychologist and the clearest thinker.
+
+He had never spoken to Reginald of his terrible nightmares. Coming on
+the heel of the fancy that he, Ernest, had written "The Princess With
+the Yellow Veil," a fancy that, by the way, had again possessed him of
+late, this new delusion would certainly arouse suspicion as to his
+sanity in Reginald's mind. He would probably send him to a sanitarium;
+he certainly would not keep him in the house. Beneficence itself in all
+other things, his host was not to be trifled with in any matter that
+interfered with his work. He would act swiftly and without mercy.
+
+For the first time in many days Ernest thought of Abel Felton. Poor boy!
+What had become of him after he had been turned from the house? He would
+not wait for any one to tell him to pack his bundle. But then, that was
+impossible; Reginald was fond of him.
+
+Suddenly Ernest's meditations were interrupted by a noise at the outer
+door. A key was turned in the lock. It must be he--but why so soon? What
+could have brought him back at this hour? He opened the door and went
+out into the hall to see what had happened. The figure that he beheld
+was certainly not the person expected, but a woman, from whose shoulders
+a theatre-cloak fell in graceful folds,--probably a visitor for
+Reginald. Ernest was about to withdraw discreetly, when the electric
+light that was burning in the hallway fell upon her face and illumined
+it.
+
+Then indeed surprise overcame him. "Ethel," he cried, "is it you?"
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Ernest conducted Ethel Brandenbourg to his room and helped her to remove
+her cloak.
+
+While he was placing the garment upon the back of a chair, she slipped a
+little key into her hand-bag. He looked at her with a question in his
+eyes.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "I kept the key; but I had not dreamed that I would
+ever again cross this threshold."
+
+Meanwhile it had grown quite dark. The reflection of the street lanterns
+without dimly lit the room, and through the twilight fantastic shadows
+seemed to dance.
+
+The perfume of her hair pervaded the room and filled the boy's heart
+with romance. Tenderness long suppressed called with a thousand voices.
+The hour, the strangeness and unexpectedness of her visit, perhaps even
+a boy's pardonable vanity, roused passion from its slumbers and once
+again wrought in Ernest's soul the miracle of love. His arm encircled
+her neck and his lips stammered blind, sweet, crazy and caressing
+things.
+
+"Turn on the light," she pleaded.
+
+"You were not always so cruel."
+
+"No matter, I have not come to speak of love."
+
+"Why, then, have you come?"
+
+Ernest felt a little awkward, disappointed, as he uttered these words.
+
+What could have induced her to come to his rooms? He loosened his hold
+on her and did as she asked.
+
+How pale she looked in the light, how beautiful! Surely, she had
+sorrowed for him; but why had she not answered his letter? Yes, why?
+
+"Your letter?" She smiled a little sadly. "Surely you did not expect me
+to answer that?"
+
+"Why not?" He had again approached her and his lips were close to hers.
+"Why not? I have yearned for you. I love you."
+
+His breath intoxicated her; it was like a subtle perfume. Still she did
+not yield.
+
+"You love me now--you did not love me then. The music of your words was
+cold--machine-made, strained and superficial. I shall not answer, I told
+myself: in his heart he has forgotten you. I did not then realise that a
+dangerous force had possessed your life and crushed in your mind every
+image but its own."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Do you think I would have come here if it were a light matter? No, I
+tell you, it is a matter of life and death to you, at least as an
+artist."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Have you done a stroke of work since I last saw you?"
+
+"Yes, let me see, surely, magazine articles and a poem."
+
+"That is not what I want to know. Have you accomplished anything big?
+Have you grown since this summer? How about your novel?"
+
+"I--I have almost finished it in my mind, but I have found no chance to
+begin with the actual writing. I was sick of late, very sick."
+
+No doubt of it! His face was pinched and pale, and the lines about the
+mouth were curiously contorted, like those of a man suffering from a
+painful internal disease.
+
+"Tell me," she ventured, "do you ever miss anything?"
+
+"Do you mean--are there thieves?"
+
+"Thieves! Against thieves one can protect oneself."
+
+He stared at her wildly, half-frightened, in anticipation of some
+dreadful revelation. His dream! His dream! That hand! Could it be more
+than a dream? God! His lips quivered.
+
+Ethel observed his agitation and continued more quietly, but with the
+same insistence: "Have you ever had ideas, plans that you began without
+having strength to complete them? Have you had glimpses of vocal visions
+that seemed to vanish no sooner than seen? Did it ever seem to you as if
+some mysterious and superior will brutally interfered with the workings
+of your brain?"
+
+Did it seem so to him! He himself could not have stated more plainly
+the experience of the last few months. Each word fell from her lips like
+the blow of a hammer. Shivering, he put his arm around her, seeking
+solace, not love. This time she did not repulse him and, trustingly, as
+a child confides to his mother, he depicted to her the suffering that
+harrowed his life and made it a hell.
+
+As she listened, indignation clouded her forehead, while rising tears of
+anger and of love weighed down her lashes. She could bear the pitiful
+sight no longer.
+
+"Child," she cried, "do you know who your tormentor is?"
+
+And like a flash the truth passed from her to him. A sudden intimation
+told him what her words had still concealed.
+
+"Don't! For Christ's sake, do not pronounce his name!" he sobbed. "Do
+not breathe it. I could not endure it. I should go mad."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Very quietly, with difficulty restraining her own emotion so as not to
+excite him further, Ethel had related to Ernest the story of her
+remarkable interview with Reginald Clarke. In the long silence that
+ensued, the wings of his soul brushed against hers for the first time,
+and Love by a thousand tender chains of common suffering welded their
+beings into one.
+
+Caressingly the ivory of her fingers passed through the gold of his hair
+and over his brow, as if to banish the demon-eyes that stared at him
+across the hideous spaces of the past. In a rush a thousand incidents
+came back to him, mute witnesses of a damning truth. His play, the
+dreams that tormented him, his own inability to concentrate his mind
+upon his novel which hitherto he had ascribed to nervous disease--all,
+piling fact on fact, became one monstrous monument of Reginald Clarke's
+crime. At last Ernest understood the parting words of Abel Felton and
+the look in Ethel's eye on the night when he had first linked his fate
+with the other man's. Walkham's experience, too, and Reginald's remarks
+on the busts of Shakespeare and Balzac unmistakably pointed toward the
+new and horrible spectre that Ethel's revelation had raised in place of
+his host.
+
+And then, again, the other Reginald appeared, crowned with the lyric
+wreath. From his lips golden cadences fell, sweeter than the smell of
+many flowers or the sound of a silver bell. He was once more the divine
+master, whose godlike features bore no trace of malice and who had
+raised him to a place very near his heart.
+
+"No," he cried, "it is impossible. It's all a dream, a horrible
+nightmare."
+
+"But he has himself confessed it," she interjected.
+
+"Perhaps he has spoken in symbols. We all absorb to some extent other
+men's ideas, without robbing them and wrecking their thought-life.
+Reginald may be unscrupulous in the use of his power of impressing upon
+others the stamp of his master-mind. So was Shakespeare. No, no, no!
+You are mistaken; we were both deluded for the moment by his picturesque
+account of a common, not even a discreditable, fact. He may himself have
+played with the idea, but surely he cannot have been serious."
+
+"And your own experience, and Abel Felton's and mine--can they, too, be
+dismissed with a shrug of the shoulder?"
+
+"But, come to think of it, the whole theory seems absurd. It is
+unscientific. It is not even a case of mesmerism. If he had said that he
+hypnotised his victims, the matter would assume a totally different
+aspect. I admit that something is wrong somewhere, and that the home of
+Reginald Clarke is no healthful abode for me. But you must also remember
+that probably we are both unstrung to the point of hysteria."
+
+But to Ethel his words carried no conviction.
+
+"You are still under his spell," she cried, anxiously.
+
+A little shaken in his confidence, Ernest resumed: "Reginald is utterly
+incapable of such an action, even granting that he possessed the
+terrible power of which you speak. A man of his splendid resources, a
+literary Midas at whose very touch every word turns into gold, is under
+no necessity to prey on the thoughts of others. Circumstances, I admit,
+are suspicious. But in the light of common day this fanciful theory
+shrivels into nothing. Any court of law would reject our evidence as
+madness. It is too utterly fantastic, utterly alien to any human
+experience."
+
+"Is it though?" Ethel replied with peculiar intonation.
+
+"Why, what do you mean?"
+
+"Surely," she answered, "you must know that in the legends of every
+nation we read of men and women who were called vampires. They are
+beings, not always wholly evil, whom every night some mysterious impulse
+leads to steal into unguarded bedchambers, to suck the blood of the
+sleepers and then, having waxed strong on the life of their victims,
+cautiously to retreat. Thence comes it that their lips are very red. It
+is even said that they can find no rest in the grave, but return to
+their former haunts long after they are believed to be dead. Those whom
+they visit, however, pine away for no apparent reason. The physicians
+shake their wise heads and speak of consumption. But sometimes, ancient
+chronicles assure us, the people's suspicions were aroused, and under
+the leadership of a good priest they went in solemn procession to the
+graves of the persons suspected. And on opening the tombs it was found
+that their coffins had rotted away and the flowers in their hair were
+black. But their bodies were white and whole; through no empty sockets
+crept the vermin, and their sucking lips were still moist with a little
+blood."
+
+Ernest was carried away in spite of himself by her account, which
+vividly resembled his own experience. Still he would not give in.
+
+"All this is impressive. I admit it is very impressive. But you yourself
+speak of such stories as legends. They are unfounded upon any tangible
+fact, and you cannot expect a man schooled in modern sciences to admit,
+as having any possible bearing upon his life, the crude belief of the
+Middle Ages!"
+
+"Why not?" she responded. "Our scientists have proved true the wildest
+theories of mediæval scholars. The transmutation of metals seems to-day
+no longer an idle speculation, and radium has transformed into potential
+reality the dream of perpetual motion. The fundamental notions of
+mathematics are being undermined. One school of philosophers claims that
+the number of angles in a triangle is equal to more than two right
+angles; another propounds that it is less. Even great scientists who
+have studied the soul of nature are turning to spiritism. The world is
+overcoming the shallow scepticism of the nineteenth century. Life has
+become once more wonderful and very mysterious. But it also seems that,
+with the miracles of the old days, their terrors, their nightmares and
+their monsters have come back in a modern guise."
+
+Ernest became even more thoughtful. "Yes," he observed, "there is
+something in what you say." Then, pacing the room nervously, he
+exclaimed: "And still I find it impossible to believe your explanation.
+Reginald a vampire! It seems so ludicrous. If you had told me that such
+creatures exist somewhere, far away, I might have discussed the matter;
+but in this great city, in the shadow of the Flatiron Building--no!"
+
+She replied with warmth: "Yet they exist--always have existed. Not only
+in the Middle Ages, but at all times and in all regions. There is no
+nation but has some record of them, in one form or another. And don't
+you think if we find a thought, no matter how absurd it may seem to us,
+that has ever occupied the minds of men--if we find, I say, such a
+perennially recurrent thought, are we not justified in assuming that it
+must have some basis in the actual experience of mankind?"
+
+Ernest's brow became very clouded, and infinite numbers of hidden
+premature wrinkles began to show. How wan he looked and how frail! He
+was as one lost in a labyrinth in which he saw no light, convinced
+against his will, or rather, against his scientific conviction, that she
+was not wholly mistaken.
+
+"Still," he observed triumphantly, "your vampires suck blood; but
+Reginald, if vampire he be, preys upon the soul. How can a man suck
+from another man's brain a thing as intangible, as quintessential as
+thought?"
+
+"Ah," she replied, "you forget, thought is more real than blood!"
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Only three hours had passed since Ethel had startled Ernest from his
+sombre reveries, but within this brief space their love had matured as
+if each hour had been a year. The pallor had vanished from his cheeks
+and the restiveness from his eyes. The intoxication of her presence had
+rekindled the light of his countenance and given him strength to combat
+the mighty forces embodied in Reginald Clarke. The child in him had made
+room for the man. He would not hear of surrendering without a struggle,
+and Ethel felt sure she might leave his fate in his own hand. Love had
+lent him a coat of mail. He was warned, and would not succumb. Still she
+made one more attempt to persuade him to leave the house at once with
+her.
+
+"I must go now," she said. "Will you not come with me, after all? I am
+so afraid to think of you still here."
+
+"No, dear," he replied. "I shall not desert my post. I must solve the
+riddle of this man's life; and if, indeed, he is the thing he seems to
+be, I shall attempt to wrest from him what he has stolen from me. I
+speak of my unwritten novel."
+
+"Do not attempt to oppose him openly. You cannot resist him."
+
+"Be assured that I shall be on my guard. I have in the last few hours
+lived through so much that makes life worth living, that I would not
+wantonly expose myself to any danger. Still, I cannot go without
+certainty--cannot, if there is some truth in our fears, leave the best
+of me behind."
+
+"What are you planning to do?"
+
+"My play--I am sure now that it is mine--I cannot take from him; that is
+irretrievably lost. He has read it to his circle and prepared for its
+publication. And, no matter how firmly convinced you or I may be of his
+strange power, no one would believe our testimony. They would pronounce
+us mad. Perhaps we _are_ mad!"
+
+"No; we are not mad; but it is mad for you to stay here," she asserted.
+
+"I shall not stay here one minute longer than is absolutely essential.
+Within a week I shall have conclusive proof of his guilt or innocence."
+
+"How will you go about it?"
+
+"His writing table--"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes, perhaps I can discover some note, some indication, some proof--"
+
+"It's a dangerous game."
+
+"I have everything to gain."
+
+"I wish I could stay here with you," she said. "Have you no friend, no
+one whom you could trust in this delicate matter?"
+
+"Why, yes--Jack."
+
+A shadow passed over her face.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "I have a feeling that you care more for him
+than for me?"
+
+"Nonsense," he said, "he is my friend, you, you--immeasurably more."
+
+"Are you still as intimate with him as when I first met you?"
+
+"Not quite; of late a troubling something, like a thin veil, seems to
+have passed between us. But he will come when I call him. He will not
+fail me in my hour of need."
+
+"When can he be here?"
+
+"In two or three days."
+
+"Meanwhile be very careful. Above all, lock your door at night."
+
+"I will not only lock, but barricade it. I shall try with all my power
+to elucidate this mystery without, however, exposing myself to needless
+risks."
+
+"I will go, then. Kiss me good-bye."
+
+"May I not take you to the car?"
+
+"You had better not."
+
+At the door she turned back once more. "Write me every day, or call me
+up on the telephone."
+
+He straightened himself, as if to convince her of his strength. Yet when
+at last the door had closed behind her, his courage forsook him for a
+moment. And, if he had not been ashamed to appear a weakling before the
+woman he loved, who knows if any power on earth could have kept him in
+that house where from every corner a secret seemed to lurk!
+
+There was a misgiving, too, in the woman's heart as she left the boy
+behind,--a prey to the occult power that, seeking expression in multiple
+activities, has made and unmade emperors, prophets and poets.
+
+As she stepped into a street car she saw from afar, as in a vision, the
+face of Reginald Clarke. It seemed very white and hungry. There was no
+human kindness in it--only a threat and a sneer.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+For over an hour Ernest paced up and down his room, wildly excited by
+Ethel's revelations. It required an immense amount of self-control for
+him to pen the following lines to Jack: "I need you. Come."
+
+After he had entrusted the letter to the hall-boy, a reaction set in and
+he was able to consider the matter, if not with equanimity, at least
+with a degree of calmness. The strangest thing to him was that he could
+not bring himself to hate Reginald, of whose evil influence upon his
+life he was now firmly convinced. Here was another shattered idol; but
+one--like the fragment of a great god-face in the desert--intensely
+fascinating, even in its ruin. Then yielding to a natural impulse,
+Ernest looked over his photographs and at once laid hold upon the
+austere image of his master and friend. No--it was preposterous; there
+was no evil in this man. There was no trace of malice in this face, the
+face of a prophet or an inspired madman, a poet. And yet, as he
+scrutinised the picture closely a curious transformation seemed to take
+place in the features; a sly little line appeared insinuatingly about
+Reginald's well-formed mouth, and the serene calm of his Jupiter-head
+seemed to turn into the sneak smile of a thief. Nevertheless, Ernest was
+not afraid. His anxieties had at last assumed definite shape; it was
+possible now to be on his guard. It is only invisible, incomprehensible
+fear, crouching upon us from the night, that drives sensitive natures to
+the verge of madness and transforms stern warriors into cowards.
+
+Ernest realised the necessity of postponing the proposed investigation
+of Reginald's papers until the morning, as it was now near eleven, and
+he expected to hear at any moment the sound of his feet at the door.
+Before retiring he took a number of precautions. Carefully he locked the
+door to his bedroom and placed a chair in front of it. To make doubly
+sure, he fastened the handle to an exquisite Chinese vase, a gift of
+Reginald's, that at the least attempt to force an entrance from without
+would come down with a crash.
+
+Then, although sleep seemed out of the question, he went to bed. He had
+hardly touched the pillow when a leaden weight seemed to fall upon his
+eyes. The day's commotion had been too much for his delicate frame. By
+force of habit he pulled the cover over his ear and fell asleep.
+
+All night he slept heavily, and the morning was far advanced when a
+knock at the door that, at first, seemed to come across an immeasurable
+distance, brought him back to himself. It was Reginald's manservant
+announcing that breakfast was waiting.
+
+Ernest got up and rubbed his eyes. The barricade at the door at once
+brought back to his mind with startling clearness the events of the
+previous evening.
+
+Everything was as he had left it. Evidently no one had attempted to
+enter the room while he slept. He could not help smiling at the
+arrangement which reminded him of his childhood, when he had sought by
+similar means security from burglars and bogeys. And in the broad
+daylight Ethel's tales of vampires seemed once more impossible and
+absurd. Still, he had abundant evidence of Reginald's strange influence,
+and was determined to know the truth before nightfall. Her words, that
+thought is more real than blood, kept ringing in his ears. If such was
+the case, he would find evidence of Reginald's intellectual burglaries,
+and possibly be able to regain a part of his lost self that had been
+snatched from him by the relentless dream-hand.
+
+But under no circumstances could he face Reginald in his present state
+of mind. He was convinced that if in the fleeting vision of a moment the
+other man's true nature should reveal itself to him, he would be so
+terribly afraid as to shriek like a maniac. So he dressed particularly
+slowly in the hope of avoiding an encounter with his host. But fate
+thwarted this hope. Reginald, too, lingered that morning unusually long
+over his coffee. He was just taking his last sip when Ernest entered the
+room. His behaviour was of an almost bourgeois kindness. Benevolence
+fairly beamed from his face. But to the boy's eyes it had assumed a new
+and sinister expression.
+
+"You are late this morning, Ernest," he remarked in his mildest manner.
+"Have you been about town, or writing poetry? Both occupations are
+equally unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the
+inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest
+had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it
+the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of the criminal.
+
+He could not endure it; he could not look upon that face any longer. His
+feet almost gave way under him, cold sweat gathered on his brow, and he
+sank on a chair trembling and studiously avoiding the other man's gaze.
+
+At last Reginald rose to go. It seemed impossible to accuse this
+splendid impersonation of vigorous manhood of cunning and underhand
+methods, of plagiarisms and of theft. As he stood there he resembled
+more than anything a beautiful tiger-cat, a wonderful thing of strength
+and will-power, indomitable and insatiate. Yet who could tell whether
+this strength was not, after all, parasitic. If Ethel's suspicions were
+justified, then, indeed, more had been taken from him than he could ever
+realise. For in that case it was his life-blood that circled in those
+veins and the fire of his intellect that set those lips aflame!
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Reginald Clarke had hardly left the room when Ernest hastily rose from
+his seat. While it was likely that he would remain in undisturbed
+possession of the apartment the whole morning, the stake at hand was too
+great to permit of delay.
+
+Palpitating and a little uncertain, he entered the studio where,
+scarcely a year ago, Reginald Clarke had bidden him welcome. Nothing had
+changed there since then; only in Ernest's mind the room had assumed an
+aspect of evil. The Antinous was there and the Faun and the Christ-head.
+But their juxtaposition to-day partook of the nature of the blasphemous.
+The statues of Shakespeare and Balzac seemed to frown from their
+pedestals as his fingers were running through Reginald's papers. He
+brushed against a semblance of Napoleon that was standing on the
+writing-table, so that it toppled over and made a noise that weirdly
+re-echoed in the silence of the room. At that moment a curious family
+resemblance between Shakespeare, Balzac, Napoleon--and Reginald,
+forcibly impressed itself upon his mind. It was the indisputable
+something that marks those who are chosen to give ultimate expression to
+some gigantic world-purpose. In Balzac's face it was diffused with
+kindliness, in that of Napoleon sheer brutality predominated. The image
+of one who was said to be the richest man of the world also rose before
+his eyes. Perhaps it was only the play of his fevered imagination, but
+he could have sworn that this man's features, too, bore the mark of
+those unoriginal, great absorptive minds who, for better or for worse,
+are born to rob and rule. They seemed to him monsters that know neither
+justice nor pity, only the law of their being, the law of growth.
+
+Common weapons would not avail against such forces. Being one, they were
+stronger than armies; nor could they be overcome in single combat.
+Stealth, trickery, the outfit of the knave, were legitimate weapons in
+such a fight. In this case the end justified the means, even if the
+latter included burglary.
+
+After a brief and fruitless search of the desk, he attempted to force
+open a secret drawer, the presence of which he had one day accidentally
+discovered. He tried a number of keys to no account, and was thinking of
+giving up his researches for the day until he had procured a skeleton
+key, when at last the lock gave way.
+
+The drawer disclosed a large file of manuscript. Ernest paused for a
+moment to draw breath. The paper rustled under his nervous fingers. And
+there--at last--his eyes lit upon a bulky bundle that bore this legend:
+"_Leontina_, A Novel."
+
+It was true, then--all, his dream, Reginald's confession. And the house
+that had opened its doors so kindly to him was the house of a Vampire!
+
+Finally curiosity overcame his burning indignation. He attempted to
+read. The letters seemed to dance before his eyes--his hands trembled.
+
+At last he succeeded. The words that had first rolled over like drunken
+soldiers now marched before his vision in orderly sequence. He was
+delighted, then stunned. This was indeed authentic literature, there
+could be no doubt about it. And it was his. He was still a poet, a great
+poet. He drew a deep breath. Sudden joy trembled in his heart. This
+story set down by a foreign hand had grown chapter by chapter in his
+brain.
+
+There were some slight changes--slight deviations from the original
+plan. A defter hand than his had retouched it here and there, but for
+all that it remained his very own. It did not belong to that thief. The
+blood welled to his cheek as he uttered this word that, applied to
+Reginald, seemed almost sacrilegious.
+
+He had nearly reached the last chapter when he heard steps in the
+hallway. Hurriedly he restored the manuscript to its place, closed the
+drawer and left the room on tiptoe.
+
+It was Reginald. But he did not come alone. Someone was speaking to him.
+The voice seemed familiar. Ernest could not make out what it said. He
+listened intently and--was it possible? Jack? Surely he could not yet
+have come in response to his note! What mysterious power, what dim
+presentiment of his friend's plight had led him hither? But why did he
+linger so long in Reginald's room, instead of hastening to greet him?
+Cautiously he drew nearer. This time he caught Jack's words:
+
+"It would be very convenient and pleasant. Still, some way, I feel that
+it is not right for me, of all men, to take his place here."
+
+"That need not concern you," Reginald deliberately replied; "the dear
+boy expressed the desire to leave me within a fortnight. I think he will
+go to some private sanitarium. His nerves are frightfully overstrained."
+
+"This seems hardly surprising after the terrible attack he had when you
+read your play."
+
+"That idea has since then developed into a monomania."
+
+"I am awfully sorry for him. I cared for him much, perhaps too much. But
+I always feared that he would come to such an end. Of late his letters
+have been strangely unbalanced."
+
+"You will find him very much changed. In fact, he is no longer the
+same."
+
+"No," said Jack, "he is no longer the friend I loved."
+
+Ernest clutched for the wall. His face was contorted with intense agony.
+Each word was like a nail driven into his flesh. Crucified upon the
+cross of his own affection by the hand he loved, all white and trembling
+he stood there. Tears rushed to his eyes, but he could not weep.
+Dry-eyed he reached his room and threw himself upon his bed. Thus he
+lay--uncomforted and alone.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Terrible as was his loneliness, a meeting with Jack would have been more
+terrible. And, after all, it was true, a gulf had opened between them.
+
+Ethel alone could bring solace to his soul. There was a great void in
+his heart which only she could fill. He hungered for the touch of her
+hand. He longed for her presence strongly, as a wanton lusts for
+pleasure and as sad men crave death.
+
+Noiselessly he stole to the door so as not to arouse the attention of
+the other two men, whose every whisper pierced his heart like a dagger.
+When he came to Ethel's home, he found that she had gone out for a
+breath of air. The servant ushered him into the parlor, and there he
+waited, waited, waited for her.
+
+Greatly calmed by his walk, he turned the details of Clarke's
+conversation over in his mind, and the conviction grew upon him that
+the friend of his boyhood was not to blame for his course of action.
+Reginald probably had encircled Jack's soul with his demoniacal
+influence and singled him out for another victim. That must never be. It
+was his turn to save now. He would warn his friend of the danger that
+threatened him, even if his words should be spoken into the wind. For
+Reginald, with an ingenuity almost satanic, had already suggested that
+the delusion of former days had developed into a monomania, and any
+attempt on his part to warn Jack would only seem to confirm this theory.
+In that case only one way was left open. He must plead with Reginald
+himself, confront at all risks that snatcher of souls. To-night he would
+not fall asleep. He would keep his vigil. And if Reginald should
+approach his room, if in some way he felt the direful presence, he must
+speak out, threaten if need be, to save his friend from ruin. He had
+fully determined upon this course when a cry of joy from Ethel, who had
+just returned from her walk, interrupted his reverie. But her gladness
+changed to anxiety when she saw how pale he was. Ernest recounted to
+her the happenings of the day, from the discovery of his novel in
+Reginald's desk to the conversation which he had accidentally overheard.
+He noticed that her features brightened as he drew near the end of his
+tale.
+
+"Was your novel finished?" she suddenly asked.
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Then you are out of danger. He will want nothing else of you. But you
+should have taken it with you."
+
+"I had only sufficient presence of mind to slip it back into the drawer.
+To-morrow I shall simply demand it."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind. It is in his handwriting, and you have
+no legal proof that it is yours. You must take it away secretly. And he
+will not dare to reclaim it."
+
+"And Jack?"
+
+She had quite forgotten Jack. Women are invariably selfish for those
+they love.
+
+"You must warn him," she replied.
+
+"He would laugh at me. However, I must speak to Reginald."
+
+"It is of no avail to speak to him. At least, you must not do so before
+you have obtained the manuscript. It would unnecessarily jeopardise our
+plans."
+
+"And after?"
+
+"After, perhaps. But you must not expose yourself to any danger."
+
+"No, dear," he said, and kissed her; "what danger is there, provided I
+keep my wits about me? He steals upon men only in their sleep and in the
+dark."
+
+"Be careful, nevertheless."
+
+"I shall. In fact, I think he is not at home at this moment. If I go now
+I may be able to get hold of the manuscript and hide it before he
+returns."
+
+"I cannot but tremble to think of you in that house."
+
+"You shall have no more reason to tremble in a day or two."
+
+"Shall I see you to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't think so. I must go over my papers and things so as to be ready
+at any moment to leave the house."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then--"
+
+He took her in his arms and looked long and deeply into her eyes.
+
+"Yes," she replied--"at least, perhaps."
+
+Then he turned to go, resolute and happy. How strangely he had matured
+since the summer! Her heart swelled with the consciousness that it was
+her love that had effected this transformation.
+
+"As I cannot expect you to-morrow, I shall probably go to the opera, but
+I shall be at home before midnight. Will you call me up then? A word
+from you will put me at ease for the night, even if it comes over the
+telephone."
+
+"I will call you up. We moderns have an advantage over the ancients in
+this respect: the twentieth-century Pyramus can speak to Thisbe even if
+innumerable walls sever his body from hers."
+
+"A quaint conceit! But let us hope that our love-story will end less
+tragically," she said, tenderly caressing his hair. "Oh, we shall be
+happy, you and I," she added, after a while. "The iron finger of fate
+that lay so heavily on our lives is now withdrawn. Almost withdrawn.
+Yes, almost. Only almost."
+
+And then a sudden fear overcame her.
+
+"No," she cried, "do not go, do not go! Stay with me; stay here. I feel
+so frightened. I don't know what comes over me. I am afraid--afraid for
+you."
+
+"No, dear," he rejoined, "you need not be afraid. In your heart you
+don't want me to desert a friend, and, besides, leave the best part of
+my artistic life in Reginald's clutch."
+
+"Why should you expose yourself to God knows what danger for a friend
+who is ready to betray you?"
+
+"You forget friendship is a gift. If it exacts payment in any form, it
+is no longer either friendship or a gift. And you yourself have assured
+me that I have nothing to fear from Reginald. I have nothing to give to
+him."
+
+She rallied under his words and had regained her self-possession when
+the door closed behind him. He walked a few blocks very briskly. Then
+his pace slackened. Her words had unsettled him a little, and when he
+reached home he did not at once resume his exploration of Reginald's
+papers. He had hardly lit a cigarette when, at an unusually early hour,
+he heard Reginald's key in the lock.
+
+Quickly he turned the light out and in the semi-darkness, lit up by an
+electric lantern below, barricaded the door as on the previous night.
+Then he went to bed without finding sleep.
+
+Supreme silence reigned over the house. Even the elevator had ceased to
+run. Ernest's brain was all ear. He heard Reginald walking up and down
+in the studio. Not the smallest movement escaped his attention. Thus
+hours passed. When the clock struck twelve, he was still walking up and
+down, down and up, up and down.
+
+One o'clock.
+
+Still the measured beat of his footfall had not ceased. There was
+something hypnotic in the regular tread. Nature at last exacted its toll
+from the boy. He fell asleep.
+
+Hardly had he closed his eyes when again that horrible nightmare--no
+longer a nightmare--tormented him. Again he felt the pointed delicate
+fingers carefully feeling their way along the innumerable tangled
+threads of nerve-matter that lead to the innermost recesses of self....
+
+A subconscious something strove to arouse him, and he felt the fingers
+softly withdrawn.
+
+He could have sworn that he heard the scurrying of feet in the room.
+Bathed in perspiration he made a leap for the electric light.
+
+But there was no sign of any human presence. The barricade at the door
+was undisturbed. But fear like a great wind filled the wings of his
+soul.
+
+Yet there was nothing, nothing to warrant his conviction that Reginald
+Clarke had been with him only a few moments ago, plying his horrible
+trade. The large mirror above the fireplace only showed him his own
+face, white, excited,--the face of a madman.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+The next morning's mail brought a letter from Ethel, a few lines of
+encouragement and affection. Yes, she was right; it would not do for him
+to stay under one roof with Reginald any longer. He must only obtain the
+manuscript and, if possible, surprise him in the attempt to exercise his
+mysterious and criminal power. Then he would be in the position to
+dictate terms and to demand Jack's safety as the price of his silence.
+
+Reginald, however, had closeted himself that day in his studio busily
+writing. Only the clatter of his typewriter announced his presence in
+the house. There was no chance for conversation or for obtaining the
+precious manuscript of "Leontina."
+
+Meanwhile Ernest was looking over his papers and preparing everything
+for a quick departure. Glancing over old letters and notes, he became
+readily interested and hardly noticed the passage of the hours.
+
+When the night came he only partly undressed and threw himself upon the
+bed. It was now ten. At twelve he had promised Ethel to speak to her
+over the telephone. He was determined not to sleep at all that night. At
+last he would discover whether or not on the previous and other nights
+Reginald had secretly entered his room.
+
+When one hour had passed without incident, his attention relaxed a
+little. His eyes were gradually closing when suddenly something seemed
+to stir at the door. The Chinese vase came rattling to the floor.
+
+At once Ernest sprang up. His face had blanched with terror. It was
+whiter than the linen in which they wrap the dead. But his soul was
+resolute.
+
+He touched a button and the electric light illuminated the whole
+chamber. There was no nook for even a shadow to hide. Yet there was no
+one to be seen. From without the door came no sound. Suddenly something
+soft touched his foot. He gathered all his will power so as not to
+break out into a frenzied shriek. Then he laughed, not a hearty laugh,
+to be sure. A tiny nose and a tail gracefully curled were brushing
+against him. The source of the disturbance was a little Maltese cat, his
+favourite, that by some chance had remained in his room. After its essay
+at midnight gymnastics the animal quieted down and lay purring at the
+foot of his bed.
+
+The presence of a living thing was a certain comfort, and the reservoir
+of his strength was well nigh exhausted.
+
+He dimly remembered his promise to Ethel, but his lids drooped with
+sheer weariness. Perhaps an hour passed in this way, when suddenly his
+blood congealed with dread.
+
+He felt the presence of the hand of Reginald
+Clarke--unmistakably--groping in his brain as if searching for something
+that had still escaped him.
+
+He tried to move, to cry out, but his limbs were paralysed. When, by a
+superhuman effort, he at last succeeded in shaking off the numbness that
+held him enchained, he awoke just in time to see a figure, that of a
+man, disappearing in the wall that separated Reginald's apartments from
+his room....
+
+This time it was no delusion of the senses. He heard something like a
+secret door softly closing behind retreating steps. A sudden fierce
+anger seized him. He was oblivious of the danger of the terrible power
+of the older man, oblivious of the love he had once borne him, oblivious
+of everything save the sense of outraged humanity and outraged right.
+
+The law permits us to shoot a burglar who goes through our pockets at
+night. Must he tolerate the ravages of this a thousand times more
+dastardly and dangerous spiritual thief? Was Reginald to enjoy the fruit
+of other men's labour unpunished? Was he to continue growing into the
+mightiest literary factor of the century by preying upon his betters?
+Abel, Walkham, Ethel, he, Jack, were they all to be victims of this
+insatiable monster?
+
+Was this force resistless as it was relentless?
+
+No, a thousand times, no!
+
+He dashed himself against the wall at the place where the shadow of
+Reginald Clarke had disappeared. In doing so he touched upon a secret
+spring. The wall gave way noiselessly. Speechless with rage he crossed
+the next room and the one adjoining it, and stood in Reginald's studio.
+The room was brilliantly lighted, and Reginald, still dressed, was
+seated at his writing-table scribbling notes upon little scraps of paper
+in his accustomed manner.
+
+At Ernest's approach he looked up without evincing the least sign of
+terror or surprise. Calmly, almost majestically, he folded his arms over
+his breast, but there was a menacing glitter in his eyes as he
+confronted his victim.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Silently the two men faced each other. Then Ernest hissed:
+
+"Thief!"
+
+Reginald shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Vampire!"
+
+"So Ethel has infected you with her absurd fancies! Poor boy! I am
+afraid.... I have been wanting to tell you for some time.... But I
+think... We have reached the parting of our road!"
+
+"And that you dare to tell me!"
+
+The more he raged, the calmer Reginald seemed to become.
+
+"Really," he said, "I fail to understand.... I must ask you to leave my
+room!"
+
+"You fail to understand? You cad!" Ernest cried. He stepped to the
+writing-table and opened the secret drawer with a blow. A bundle of
+manuscripts fell on the floor with a strange rustling noise. Then,
+seizing his own story, he hurled it upon the table. And behold--the last
+pages bore corrections in ink that could have been made only a few
+minutes ago!
+
+Reginald smiled. "Have you come to play havoc with my manuscripts?" he
+remarked.
+
+"Your manuscripts? Reginald Clarke, you are an impudent impostor! You
+have written no word that is your own. You are an embezzler of the mind,
+strutting through life in borrowed and stolen plumes!"
+
+And at once the mask fell from Reginald's face.
+
+"Why stolen?" he coolly said, with a slight touch of irritation. "I
+absorb. I appropriate. That is the most any artist can say for himself.
+God creates; man moulds. He gives us the colours; we mix them."
+
+"That is not the question. I charge you with having wilfully and
+criminally interfered in my life; I charge you with having robbed me of
+what was mine; I charge you with being utterly vile and rapacious, a
+hypocrite and a parasite!"
+
+"Foolish boy," Reginald rejoined austerely. "It is through me that the
+best in you shall survive, even as the obscure Elizabethans live in him
+of Avon. Shakespeare absorbed what was great in little men--a greatness
+that otherwise would have perished--and gave it a setting, a life."
+
+"A thief may plead the same. I understand you better. It is your
+inordinate vanity that prompts you to abuse your monstrous power."
+
+"You err. Self-love has never entered into my actions. I am careless of
+personal fame. Look at me, boy! As I stand before you I am Homer, I am
+Shakespeare ... I am every cosmic manifestation in art. Men have doubted
+in each incarnation my individual existence. Historians have more to
+tell of the meanest Athenian scribbler or Elizabethan poetaster than of
+me. The radiance of my work obscured my very self. I care not. I have a
+mission. I am a servant of the Lord. I am the vessel that bears the
+Host!"
+
+He stood up at full length, the personification of grandeur and power. A
+tremendous force trembled in his very finger tips. He was like a
+gigantic dynamo, charged with the might of ten thousand magnetic storms
+that shake the earth in its orbit and lash myriads of planets through
+infinities of space....
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Ernest or any other man would have quailed
+before him. But the boy in that epic moment had grown out of his
+stature. He felt the sword of vengeance in his hands; to him was
+intrusted the cause of Abel and of Walkham, of Ethel and of Jack. His
+was the struggle of the individual soul against the same blind and cruel
+fate that in the past had fashioned the ichthyosaurus and the mastodon.
+
+"By what right," he cried, "do you assume that you are the literary
+Messiah? Who appointed you? What divine power has made you the steward
+of my mite and of theirs whom you have robbed?"
+
+"I am a light-bearer. I tread the high hills of mankind.... I point the
+way to the future. I light up the abysses of the past. Were not my
+stature gigantic, how could I hold the torch in all men's sight? The
+very souls that I tread underfoot realise, as their dying gaze follows
+me, the possibilities with which the future is big.... Eternally secure,
+I carry the essence of what is cosmic ... of what is divine.... I am
+Homer ... Goethe ... Shakespeare.... I am an embodiment of the same
+force of which Alexander, Cæsar, Confucius and the Christos were also
+embodiments.... None so strong as to resist me."
+
+A sudden madness overcame Ernest at this boast. He must strike now or
+never. He must rid humanity of this dangerous maniac--this demon of
+strength. With a power ten times intensified, he raised a heavy chair so
+as to hurl it at Reginald's head and crush it.
+
+Reginald stood there calmly, a smile upon his lips.... Primal cruelties
+rose from the depth of his nature.... Still he smiled, turning his
+luminous gaze upon the boy ... and, behold ... Ernest's hand began to
+shake ... the chair fell from his grasp.... He tried to call for help,
+but no sound issued from his lips.... Utterly paralysed he
+confronted ... the Force....
+
+Minutes--eternities passed.
+
+And still those eyes were fixed upon him.
+
+But this was no longer Reginald!
+
+It was all brain ... only brain ... a tremendous brain-machine ...
+infinitely complex ... infinitely strong. Not more than a mile away
+Ethel endeavoured to call to him through the night. The telephone rang,
+once, twice, thrice, insistingly. But Ernest heard it not. Something
+dragged him ... dragged the nerves from his body dragged, dragged,
+dragged.... It was an irresistible suction ... pitiless ... passionless
+... immense.
+
+Sparks, blue, crimson and violet, seemed to play around the living
+battery. It reached the finest fibres of his mind.... Slowly ... every
+trace of mentality disappeared.... First the will ... then feeling ...
+judgment ... memory ... fear even.... All that was stored in his
+brain-cells came forth to be absorbed by that mighty engine....
+
+The Princess With the Yellow Veil appeared ... flitted across the room
+and melted away. She was followed by childhood memories ... girls'
+heads, boys' faces.... He saw his dead mother waving her arms to him....
+An expression of death-agony distorted the placid features.... Then,
+throwing a kiss to him, she, too, disappeared. Picture on picture
+followed.... Words of love that he had spoken ... sins, virtues,
+magnanimities, meannesses, terrors ... mathematical formulas even, and
+snatches of songs. Leontina came and was swallowed up.... No, it was
+Ethel who was trying to speak to him ... trying to warn.... She waved
+her hands in frantic despair.... She was gone.... A pale face ... dark,
+dishevelled hair.... Jack.... How he had changed! He was in the circle
+of the vampire's transforming might. "Jack," he cried. Surely Jack had
+something to explain ... something to tell him ... some word that if
+spoken would bring rest to his soul. He saw the words rise to the boy's
+lips, but before he had time to utter them his image also had vanished.
+And Reginald ... Reginald, too, was gone.... There was only the mighty
+brain ... panting ... whirling.... Then there was nothing.... The
+annihilation of Ernest Fielding was complete.
+
+Vacantly he stared at the walls, at the room and at his master. The
+latter was wiping the sweat from his forehead. He breathed deeply....
+The flush of youth spread over his features.... His eyes sparkled with a
+new and dangerous brilliancy.... He took the thing that had once been
+Ernest Fielding by the hand and led it to its room.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+With the first flush of the morning Ethel appeared at the door of the
+house on Riverside Drive. She had not heard from Ernest, and had been
+unable to obtain connection with him at the telephone. Anxiety had
+hastened her steps. She brushed against Jack, who was also directing his
+steps to the abode of Reginald Clarke.
+
+At the same time something that resembled Ernest Fielding passed from
+the house of the Vampire. It was a dull and brutish thing, hideously
+transformed, without a vestige of mind.
+
+"Mr. Fielding," cried Ethel, beside herself with fear as she saw him
+descending.
+
+"Ernest!" Jack gasped, no less startled at the change in his friend's
+appearance.
+
+Ernest's head followed the source of the sound, but no spark of
+recognition illumined the deadness of his eyes. Without a present and
+without a past ... blindly ... a gibbering idiot ... he stumbled down
+the stairs.
+
+
+
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