by R. W. Heilig
Vampire House
By
R.W. Heilig
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 demeanor nor the deafening noises that responded
to every movement of his agile body detracted attention from the figure
of David Gardner 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 David Gardner 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 splendor through the seventy times sevenfold circles of hell.
David Gardner walked on unconcernedly through the rows of gay diners,
still smiling, affable, calm. But his companion bethought himself of
certain rumors he had heard concerning Kelly Parish'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 David
Gardner 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 David Gardner. 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 Gardner'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 medieval 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.
Gardner's marvellous conversational power was equalled only by his
marvellous style. Chance Gavin'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.
David Gardner 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. Gardner'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. David 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 Chance'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 Gardner drew out a
watch set with jewels, "I am afraid I must bid you good-bye."
He held Chance'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 David Gardner,
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,
David Gardner 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 Circassia blade cleaves water.
After walking a block or two, he suddenly halted before a jeweler’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. He
r whole being translated into music, with
hair disheveled 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 David Gardner 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 Gardner'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,
David Gardner 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, David Gardner 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. David Gardner, 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, Gardner'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.
Gardner, 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 Gardner'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 Chance walked up and down in front of the
abode of David Gardner, 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 Gardner, 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 David Gardner'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 Gardner say. His voice had a hard,
metallic clangour.
A boyish voice answered plaintively. What the words were Chance 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.
David Gardner probably had good reason for parting with his young
friend, whom Chance 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 Gardner: "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 Chance met Abel.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"For a little pleasure trip."
Chance 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?"
"David is."
"I am afraid I don't understand."
"Never mind. Some day you will."
IV
"I am so happy you came," David Gardner said, as he conducted Chance
into his studio. It was a large, luxuriously furnished room overlooking
the Hudson and Riverside Drive.