The House of the Vampire Part 7

"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 a.n.a.lyse 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 a.n.a.lysis of our emotion, for the contentment of the bull that ruminates in the shade of a tree or the healthful stupidity of a mule?"

"a.s.suredly 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.

"G.o.d forbid! Go to the seash.o.r.e, 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 rea.s.sured 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-G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e 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, a.s.sertive soul. He was no longer a solitary unit but one with wind and water, herb and beach and sh.e.l.l. 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s almost fell from his hand: it was Ethel Brandenbourg. She seemed to notice his embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.sure 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 plat.i.tudes were out of place between them.