He rose, pacing impatiently across the hall. “What to do? What to do?” he demanded, striking his open hands against his forehead.
I followed his nervous steps with my eyes, but my brain was too numbed by the hideous things I had just seen to be able to respond to his question.
I looked hopelessly past him at the angle of the wall by the great fireplace, rubbed my eyes and looked again. Slowly, but surely, the wall was declining from the perpendicular.
“De Grandin,” I shouted, glad of some new phenomenon to command my thoughts, “the wall—the wall’s leaning!”
“Eh, the wall?” be queried. “Pardieu, yes! It is the rain; the foundations are undermined. Quick, quick, my friend! To the cellars, or those unfortunate ones are undone!”
We scrambled down the stairs leading to the basement, but already the earth floor was sopping with water. The well leading to the madman’s sub-cellar was more than half full of bubbling, earthy ooze.
“Mary, have pity!” de Grandin exclaimed. “Like rats in a trap, they did die. God rest their tired souls”—he shrugged his shoulders as he turned to retrace his steps—“it is better so. Now, Friend Trowbridge, do you hasten aloft and bring down that young girl from the room above. We must run for it if we do not wish to be crushed under the falling timbers of this house of abominations!”
THE STORM HAD SPENT itself and a red, springtime sun was peeping over the horizon as de Grandin and I trudged up my front steps with the mutilated girl stumbling wearily between us. We had managed to flag a car when we got out.
“Put her to bed, my excellent one,” de Grandin ordered Nora, my housekeeper, who came to meet us enveloped in righteous indignation and an outing flannel nightgown. “Parbleu, she has had many troubles!”
In the study, a glass of steaming whisky and hot water in one hand, a vile-smelling French cigarette in the other, he faced me across the desk. “How was it you knew not that house, my friend?” he demanded.
I grinned sheepishly. “I took the wrong turning at the detour,” I explained, “and got on the Yerbyville Road. It’s just recently been hard-surfaced, and I haven’t used it for years because it was always impassable. Thinking we were on the Andover Pike all the while, I never connected the place with the old Olmsted Mansion I’d seen hundreds of times from the road.”
“Ah, yes,” he agreed, nodding thoughtfully, “a little turn from the right way, and—pouf!—what a distance we have to retrace.”
“Now, about the girl upstairs,” I began, but he waved the question aside.
“The mad one had but begun his devil’s work on her,” he replied. “I, Jules de Grandin, will operate on her eyes and make them as straight as before, nor will I accept one penny for my work. Meantime, we must find her kindred and notify them she is safe and in good hands.
“And now”—he handed me his empty tumbler—“a little more whisky, if you please, Friend Trowbridge.”
The Great God Pan
“BUT OF COURSE, MY friend,” Jules de Grandin conceded as he hitched his pack higher on his shoulders and leaned forward against the grade of the wooded hill, “I grant you American roads are better than those of France; but look to what inconvenience these same good roads put us. Everything in America is arranged for the convenience of the motorist—the man who covers great distances swiftly. Your roads are the direct result of motorized transportation for the millions, and, consequently, you and I must tramp half the night and very likely sleep under the stars, because there is no inn to offer shelter.
“Now in France, where roads were laid out for stage-coaches hundreds of years before your Monsieur Ford was dreamed of, there is an abundance of resting places for the pedestrian. Here—” He spread his hands in an eloquent gesture of deprecation.
“Oh, well,” I comforted, “we started out on a hiking trip, you know, and we’ve had mighty fine weather so far. A night in the open won’t do us any harm. That cleared place at the top of the hill looks like a good spot to make camp.”
“Eh, yes, I suppose so,” he acquiesced as he breasted the crown of the hill and paused for breath. “Parbleu,” he gazed about him, “I fear we trespass, Friend Trowbridge! This is no natural glade, it has been cleared for human habitation. Behold!” He waved his arm in a commanding gesture.
“By George, you’re right!” I agreed in disappointment as I surveyed the clearing.
“The trees—beech, birch and poplar—had been cut away for the space of an acre or more, and the stumps removed, the cleared land afterward being sown with grass as smooth and well cared for as a private estate’s lawn. Twenty yards ahead a path of flat, smooth stones was laid in the sod, running from a dense thicket of dwarf pine and rhododendron across the sward to a clump of tall, symmetrical cedars standing almost in the center of the clearing. Through the dark, bearded boughs of the evergreens we caught the fitful gleam of lights as the soft summer-evening breeze swayed the branches.”
“Too bad,” I murmured; “guess we’ll have to push on a little farther for our bivouac.”
“Mille cochons, non!” de Grandin denied. “Not I. Parbleu, but my feet faint from exhaustion, and my knees cry out for the caress of Mother Earth with a piety they have not known these many years! Come, let us go to the proprietor of that mansion and say, ‘Monsieur, here are two worthy gentleman tramps who crave the boon of a night’s lodging and a meal, also a bath and a cup of wine, if that so entirely detestable Monsieur Volstead has allowed you to retain any.’ He will not refuse us, my friend. Morbleu, a man with the charity of a Senegalese idol would not turn us away in the circumstances! I shall ask him with tears in my voice—pardieu, I shall weep like a lady in the cinema; I shall wring my hands and entreat him! Never fear, my friend, we shall lodge in yonder house this night, or Jules de Grandin goes supperless to a bed of pine-needles.”
“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 consum
mate 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. Samuel 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 cau
se 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.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 9