Vampire House

by R. W. Heilig

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 David Gardner's name made stately dames

  blind to the presence of some individuals whom they would have passed on

  the street without recognition.

  Chance 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?"

  "Gardner 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 Chance, "your visit will repay you for the loss of

  time. Gardner 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 Chance 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 David Gardner 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 David Gardner'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 Chance's accustomed ear. The first page

  gracefully glided from David's hand to the carpet before the boy

  dimly realised that he was intimately familiar with every word that fell

  from David'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, David, Jack--all phantasmagoria of a dream.

  Perhaps he had been ill for a long time. Perhaps Gardner 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, Chance! 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 Gardner 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 Gardner'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.

  Chance 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 J
ack 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 David

  Gardner.

  Chance 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.

  Chance's lips were parched and sleeplessness had left its trace in the

  black rings under the eyes, when the next morning he confronted David

  in the studio.

  David 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."

  David 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," David 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."

  David's half-bantering tone reassured Chance 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 Chance 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 David with admiration. "You

  are the master."

  XIII

  Lazily Chance 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 c
ame to Chance 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