“Humph, I hope your optimism is justified,” I grunted as I followed him across the close-cropped lawn to the stone path and marched toward the lights in the cedars.
We had progressed a hundred feet or so along the path when a sudden squealing cry, followed by a crashing in the thicket at the clearing edge, stopped us in our tracks. Something fluttering and white, gleaming like a ghost in the faint starlight, broke through the bushes, and a soft slapping noise, as though someone were beating his hands lightly and quickly together, sounded as the figure approached us.
“Oh, sirs, run, run for your lives, it—it’s Pan!” the girl called in a frightened voice as she came abreast of us. “Run, run, if you want to live; he’s there, I tell you! I saw his face among the leaves!”
One of de Grandin’s small, slender hands rose with an involuntary gesture to stroke his little blond mustache as he surveyed our admonisher. She was tall and built with a stately, statuesque beauty which was doubly enhanced by the simple white linen garment which fell in straight lines from her lovely bare shoulders to her round, bare ankles. The robe was bound about the waist with a corded girdle which crossed above her breast, and was entirely sleeveless, though cut rather high at the neck, exposing only a few inches of white throat. Her feet, narrow and high-arched, and almost as white as the linen of her robe, were innocent of any covering, and I realized that the slapping sound I had heard was the impact of her bare soles on the stones of the path as she ran.
“Tiens, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin declared with a bow, “you are as lovely as Pallas Athene herself. Who is it has dared frighten you? Cordieu, I shall do myself the honor of twisting his unmannerly nose!”
“No, no!” the girl besought in a trembling voice. “Do not go back, sir, please! I tell you Pan—the Great God Pan, Himself—is in those bushes. I went to bathe in the fountain a few minutes ago, and as I came from the water I—I saw his face grinning at me between the rhododendron bushes! It was only for a second, and I was so frightened I did not look again, but—oh, let us go to the house! Hurry, hurry, or we may see him in good earnest, and—” She broke off with a shudder and turned from us, walking hurriedly, but with consummate grace, toward the knot of cedars before us.
“Sacré nom!” de Grandin murmured as he fell in behind her. “Is it that we have arrived at a home for the feeble-minded, Friend Trowbridge, or is this beautiful one a goddess from the days of old? Nom d’un coq, she speaks the English like an American, but her costume, her so divine beauty, they are things of the days when Pygmalion hewed living flesh from out the lifeless marble!”
THE MURMUR OF FEMININE voices, singing softly in unison, came to us as we made our way through the row of cedar trees and approached the house. The building was almost square, as well as we could determine in the uncertain light, constructed of some sort of white or light-colored stone, and fronted by a wide portico with tall pillars topped with Doric capitals. The girl ran lightly up the three wide steps leading to the porch, her bare feet making no sound on the stone treads, and we followed her, wondering what sort of folk dwelt in this bit of classic Greece seemingly dropped from some other star in the midst of the New Jersey woods.
“Morbleu!” de Grandin exclaimed softly in wonderment as we paused at the wide, doorless entrance. Inside the house, or temple, was a large apartment, almost fifty feet square, paved with alternate slabs of white and grey-green stone. In the center stood a square column of black stone, some three feet in height, topped by an urn of some semi-transparent substance in which a light glowed dimly. The place was illuminated by a series of flaring torches hung in rings let into the walls, their uncertain, flickering light showing us a circle of ten young women, dressed in the same simple classic costume as that worn by the girl we had met outside, kneeling about the central urn, their faces bowed modestly toward the floor, white arms raised above their heads, hands bent inward toward the center of the room. As we stood at gaze the girl who had preceded us hurried soundlessly across the checkered pavement and sank to her knees, inclining her shapely head and raising her arms in the same position of mute adoration assumed by the others.
“Name of a sacred pig!” de Grandin whispered. “We have here the votaries, but the hierophant, where is he?”
“There, I think,” I answered, nodding toward the lighted urn in the pavement’s center.
“Parbleu, yes,” my companion assented, “and a worthy one for such a class, n’est-ce-pas?”
Standing beside the central altar, if such it could be called, was a short, pudgy little man, clothed in a short chiton of purple cloth bordered about neck, sleeves and bottom with a zig-zag design of gold braid. His bald head, gleaming in the torchlight, was crowned with a wreath of wild laurel, and a garland of roses hung about his fat, creased neck like an overgrown Hawaiian lei. Clasped in the crook of his left elbow was a zither, or some similar musical instrument, while a little stick, ending in a series of curved teeth, something like the fingers of a Japanese back-scratcher, was clasped in his dimpled right hand.
“Come, my children,” the comic little man exclaimed in a soft, unctuous voice, “let us to our evening worship. Beauty is love, love beauty; that is all ye know and all ye need to know. Come, Chloë, Thisbe, Daphne, Clytie, let us see how well you know the devotion of beauty!”
He waved his stick like a monarch gesturing with his scepter, and drew its claw-tipped end across the strings of his zither, striking a chord, whereat the kneeling girls began singing, or, rather, humming, a lilting, swinging tune vaguely reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, and four of their number leaped nimbly to their feet, ran lightly to the center of the room, joined hands in a circle and began a dance of light, lithe grace.
Faster and faster their white feet whirled in the convolutions of the dance, their graceful arms weaving patterns of living beauty as they swung in time to the measures of the song. They formed momentary tableaux of sculptural loveliness, only to break apart instantly into quadruple examples of individual posturing such as would have set an artist mad with delight.
The music ceased on a long-drawn, quavering note, the four dancers ran quickly back to their positions in the circle, and dropped again to their knees, extending their arms above their heads and bending their supple hands inward.
“It is well,” the fat little man pronounced oracularly. “The day is done; let us to our rest.”
The girls rose with a subdued rustling of white garments and separated into whispering, laughing groups, while the little man posed more pompously than ever beside the lighted urn.
“Tiens, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin whispered with a chuckle, “do you behold how this bantam would make a peacock of himself? He is vain, this one. Surely, we shall spend the night here!
“Monsieur,” he emerged from the shadow of the doorway and advanced toward the absurd figure posturing beside the urn, “we are two weary travelers, lost in the midst of these woods, without the faintest notion of the direction of the nearest inn. Will you not, of your so splendid generosity, permit that we spend the night beneath your roof?”
“Eh, what’s that?” the other exclaimed with a start as he beheld the little Frenchman for the first time. “What d’ye want? Spend the night here? No, no; I can’t have that. Get my school talked about. Couldn’t possibly have it. Never have any men in this place.”
“Ah, but Monsieur,” de Grandin replied smoothly, “you do forget that you are already here. If it were but a question of having male guests at this so wonderful school of the arts, is not the reputation of the establishment already ruined? Surely a gentleman with so much of the appeal to beauty as Monsieur unquestionably possesses would cause much gossip if he were not so well known for his discretion. And, Monsieur’s discretion being already so firmly established, who would dare accuse him of anything save great-heartedness if he did permit two wanderers—and medical men in the bargain—to remain overnight in his house? Permit me, Monsieur; I am Dr. Jules de Grandin, of the Sorbonne, and this is Dr. Sam
uel Trowbridge, of Harrisonburg, New Jersey, both entirely at your good service, Monsieur.”
The little fellow’s fat face creased in a network of wrinkles as he regarded de Grandin with a self-satisfied smirk. “Ah, you appreciate the pure beauty of our school?” he remarked with almost pathetic eagerness. “I am Professor Judson—Professor Herman Judson, sir—of the School of the Worship of Beauty. These—ah—young ladies whom you have seen here tonight are a few of my pupils. We believe that the old ideals—the old thought—of ancient Greece is a living, motivating thing today, just as it was in centuries gone by. We assert sir, that the religion of beauty which actuated the Greeks is still a living, vital thing. We believe that the old gods are not dead; but come to those who woo them with the ancient rite of song and the dance. In fine, sir, we are pagans—apostles of the religion of neo-paganism!”
He drew himself up to his full height, which could not have exceeded five feet six inches, and glared defiantly at de Grandin, as though expecting a shocked protest at his announcement.
The Frenchman’s smile became wider and blander than ever. “Capital, Monsieur,” he congratulated. “Anyone with the eye of a blind man could see that you are the very personality to head such an incontestably sensible school of thought. The expertness with which your pupils perform their dances shows that they have a teacher worthy of all your claims. We do felicitate you most heartily, Monsieur. Meantime”—he slipped the pack from his shoulders and lowered it to the pavement—“you will undoubtlessly permit that we shall pass the night here? No?”
“We-ell,” the professor’s doubt gave way slowly, “you seem to be more appreciative than the average modern barbarian. Yes, you may remain here overnight; but you must be off in the morning—early in the morning, mind you. Never do to have the neighbors seeing strange men coming from this place. Understand?”
“Perfectly, Monsieur,” de Grandin answered with a bow. “And, if we might make so bold, may we trespass on your hospitality for a bite—the merest morsel of food?”
“U’m, pay for it?” the other demanded dubiously.
“But assuredly,” de Grandin replied, producing a roll of bills. “It would cause us the greatest anguish, I do assure you, if it were ever said that we accepted the hospitality of the great Professor ’Erman Judson without making adequate return.”
“Very well,” the professor assented, and hurried through a door at the farther end of the apartment, returning in a few minutes with a tray of cold roast veal, warm, ripe apples, a loaf of white bread and a jug of more than legally strong, sour wine.
“Ah,” de Grandin boasted as he washed down a sandwich with a draft of the acid liquor, “did I not tell you we should spend the night here, Friend Trowbridge?”
“You certainly made good your promise,” I agreed as I shoved the remains of my meal from me, undid my pack and prepared to pillow my head on my rolled-up jacket. “See you in the morning, old fellow.”
“Very good,” he agreed. “Meantime, I go out of doors to smoke a last cigarette before I join you in sleep.”
I MIGHT HAVE SLEPT AN hour, perhaps a little more, when a sharp, insistent poke in my ribs woke me sufficiently to understand the words whispered fiercely in my ear. “Trowbridge, Trowbridge, my friend,” Jules de Grandin breathed so low I could scarcely make out the syllables. “This house, it is not all as it should be, I fear me.”
“Eh, what’s that?” I demanded sleepily, sitting up and blinking half comprehendingly at his dim outline in the semidarkness of the big room.
“S-s-sh, not so loud,” he cautioned, then leaned nearer, speaking rapidly: “Do you know from whence your English word ‘panic’ comes, my friend?”
“What?” I demanded in disgust. “Did you wake me up to discuss etymology—after a day’s hiking? Good Lord, man—”
“Be still!” he ordered sharply; then, inconsistently, “Answer me, if you please; whence comes that word?”
“Hanged if I know,” I replied, “and I’m hanged if I care a whoop, either. It can come from the Cannibal Islands, for all I—”
“Quiet!” he commanded, then hurried on: “In the old days when such things were, my friend, Pan, the god of Nature, was very real to the people. They believed, firmly, that whoso saw Pan after nightfall, that one died instantly. Therefore, when a person is seized with a blind, unreasoning fear; even to this day, we say he has a panic. Of what consequence is this? Remember, my friend, the young lady whom we did meet as we approached this house told us she had seen Pan’s face grinning at her from out the bushes as she bathed. Is it not so?”
“I guess so,” I answered, putting my head back on my improvised pillow and preparing to sleep while he talked.
But he shook my shoulder with a sharp, imperative gesture. “Listen, my friend,” he besought, “when I did go out of doors to smoke my cigarette, I met one of those beautiful young women who frequent this temple of the new heathenism, and engaged her in conversation. From her I learned much, and some of it sounds not good to my ears. For instance, I learn that this Professor Herman Judson is a much misunderstood man. Oh, but yes. The lawyers, they have misunderstood him many times. Once they misunderstood him so that he was placed in the state’s prison for deceiving gullible women with fortune-telling tricks. Again he was misunderstood so that he went to the Bastille for attempting to secure some money which a certain deceased lady’s heirs believed should have gone to them—which did go to them eventually.”
“Well, what of it?” I growled. “That’s no affair of ours. We’re not a committee on the morals of dancing masters, are we?”
“Eh, are we not so?” he replied. “I am not entirely sure of that, my friend. I fear we, too, are about to misunderstand this Professor Judson. Some other things I find out from that young lady with the Irish nose and the Greek costume. This professor he has founded this school of dancing and paganism, taking for his pupils only young women who have no parents or other near relations, but much money. He is not minded to be misunderstood by heirs-at-law. What think you of that, hein?”
“I think he’s got more sense than we gave him credit for,” I replied.
“Undoubtlessly,” he agreed, “very much more; for also I discovered that Monsieur le Professeur has had his school regularly incorporated, and has secured from each of his pupils a last will and testament in which she does leave the bulk of her estate to the corporation.”
“Well,” I challenged, giving up hope of getting my sleep till he had talked himself out, “what of it? The man may be sincere in his attempt to found some sort of aesthete cult, and he’ll need money, for the project.”
“True, quite true,” he conceded, nodding his head like a China mandarin, “but attend me, Friend Trowbridge; while we walked beneath the stars I did make an occasion to take that young lady’s hand in mine, and—”
“You old rake!” I cut in, grinning, but he shut me off with a snort of impatience.
“— and that was but a ruse to feel her pulse,” he continued. “Parbleu, my friend, her heart did race like the engine of a moteur! Not with emotion for me—never think it, for I did talk to her like a father or uncle, well, perhaps more like a cousin—but because it is of an abnormal quickness. Had I a stethoscope with me I could have told more, but as it is I would wager a hundred dollars that she suffers a chronic myocarditis, and the prognosis of that ailment is always grave, my friend. Think you a moment—what would happen if that young girl with a defective heart should see what she took to be the face of the great god Pan peering at her from the leaves, as the lady we first saw declared she did? Remember, these children believe in the deities of old, my friend.”
“By George!” I sat bolt upright. “Do you mean—you don’t mean that—”
“No, my friend, as yet I mean nothing,” he replied evenly, “but it would be well if we emulated the cat, and slept with one eye and both ears open this night. Perhaps”—he shrugged his shoulders impatiently—“who knows what we may see in this house where the dead gods
are worshiped with song and the dance?”
A MARBLE PAVEMENT IS A poor substitute for a bed, even when the sleeper is thoroughly fatigued from a long day’s tramp, and I slept fitfully, troubled by all manner of unpleasant dreams. The forms of lithe, classically draped young girls dancing about a fire-filled urn alternated with visions of goat-legged, grinning satyrs in my sleep as I rolled from side to side on my hard bed; but the sudden peal of devilish laughter, quavering sardonically, almost like the bleating of a goat, was the figment of no dream. I sat suddenly up, wide-awake, as a feminine scream, keen-edged with the terror of death, rent the tomblike stillness of the early morning, and ten white-draped forms came rushing in the disorder of abject fright into the room about us.
Torches were being lighted, one from another, and we beheld the girls, their tresses unloosed from the classic fillets which customarily bound them, their robes hastily adjusted, huddled fearfully in a circle about the glowing urn, while outside, in the moonless night, the echo of that fearful scream seemed wandering blindly among the evergreens.
“Professor, Professor!” one of the girls cried, wringing her hands in an agony of apprehension. “Professor, where are you? Chloë’s missing, Professor!”
“Eh, what is it that you say?” de Grandin demanded, springing up and gazing questioningly about him. “What is this? One of your number missing! And the professor, too? Parbleu; me, I shall investigate this! Do you attend the young ladies, Friend Trowbridge. I, Jules de Grandin, shall try conclusions with whatever god or devil accosts the missing one!”
The Horror on the Links Page 22