“Never mind,” said Eric, looking down at her tenderly; “perhaps I can teach you to think my way.”
It was a feverish night for Alora. In the morning, as soon as she had seen her aunt safely off to make a visit in the next township, she set about her preparations. There was no one in the house, and yet she found herself stealing softly from room to room on tip toe, collecting her things like a thief.
At times a feeling of shame nearly put an end to the work; then a thought of what would happen on the next day if she stayed came to goad her on. Everything was ready at last, even to the cloak that was to hide this backsliding daughter of Township No. 1.
It was nine to a minute when Eric came. “Let me have your things, Alora; we haven’t a moment’s time to spare.”
There were the inevitable few last indispensables to get together. Alora had gone up stairs for the fourth time to rummage for something, when unexpectedly she came upon a little book in white and gold. It was the “Life of Chauvel.”
Eric was pacing the hall below, his small remnant of patience evaporating rapidly. “Come, Alora, we can’t wait any longer. We’ve only twenty minutes now.” And after a minute, “You must come at once, Alora!”
When she came down it was with her hat and cloak off. Eric looked at her in astonishment.
“I can’t go.” She held the book in her hand. “I found this and I can’t go.”
“Alora!” There was despair and entreaty in his voice.
“I’ve promised to him,” she said, pointing to the face on the cover. “Think of what he endured. I’ve been proud to believe in him, and now when my turn comes to suffer a little I turn coward. I can’t be untrue to that dead man. And, Eric—”
The bell in the town hall clock rang the half hour with its usual solemnity. Eric sank into a chair. “We’re too late!”
She realized fully what his words meant to her, but in the determination to be faithful to her belief at any cost she was not troubled about herself. The misfortune seemed to have fallen not on her but on Eric. She stood before him without a word or a motion.
Presently there was the sound of voices in the hall, and the maid brought in a letter. Alora broke the seal and read through the paper, at first listlessly, and then, as she began to understand it, she gave an excited little gasp and thrust the paper into Eric’s hand.
“Oh, Eric, it’s not too late. Read it!”
Eric was on his feet just in time to receive Alora and her shower of tears. He managed to keep one arm around her, while with the other he held the paper behind her back, where the lamplight fell on it, and read its surprising contents:
“Dear Madam, it is with profound regret that the Bureau begs to inform you that owing to a clerical error the number of the citizen assigned you was given as 504, instead of 405 (Eric Holt), which latter number is hereby substituted. In view of the unfortunate mistake, your marriage, if you so desire, will be postponed for ten days. Permit us to render our most sincere apologies.”
It was signed by the Secretary of the Bureau.
Alora has given her husband much assistance, since her marriage, in preparing his monograph on “Is Our Marriage System a Failure?” Now that it has been conclusively proved that our system of marriage as it exists at present is not Chauvel’s at all, and was not included in his original scheme, Alora’s last bit of compunction in opposing it has been removed.
Eric says that so long as he lives his first duty shall be to do all in his power to abolish a system which makes it possible for the life happiness or unhappiness of two persons to depend upon the possibility of a clerical error.
The Black Cat
April, 1907
THE MANSION OF FORGETFULNESS
by Don Mark Lemon
DON Mark Lemon would appear to have been a minor acolyte of the San Francisco group of literati who experienced their golden age at the turn of the century. San Francisco was then a magazine publishing center that encouraged development of western authors. Surprisingly, a good number had an inclination toward science fiction and fantasy, including names as distinguished as Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, George Sterling, and W. C. Morrow. At the end there were even patrons of Clark Ashton Smith.
Lemon’s book, Plays and Poems, was published in that city by L. Roesch Co. in 1899. Another book of verse, Ione and other Poems, would be issued by a New York firm, the Broadway Publishing Company, in 1905. He also collaborated with a relative, Eli Lemon Sheldon, on a volume of basic information titled Everybody’s Writing Desk. Eli Lemon Sheldon had enjoyed considerable success with a very similar book, Everybody’s Pocket Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing (Harper’s, 1892), which went into a number of editions. Lemon apparently never got any of his fiction between hard covers.
The Mansion of Forgetfulness is a vignette which deals with the ability of man to invent devices that can artificially help mental problems. The shaping and reshaping of personality has been in recent times the basis of much science fiction including not only neurotic and psychopathic problems, but also depression brought on by unbearable grief, the inability to eliminate the pangs of conscience, the hurt of unrequited love, and other conditions that affect the behavior of man.
There is no question that procedures to influence such psychological problems will eventually be perfected, bringing about thought control for the good as well as harm of the individual. Man’s trouble is that he frequently deliberately cripples himself psychologically because he does not want to forget the loss of a loved one or a wrong he has done another, because he feels a sense or guilt or of disloyalty at doing so. Don Mark Lemon has stripped away the senselessness of this attitude in a piece rich in irony.
Don Mark Lemon also has to his credit the distinction of having contributed two short stories to The Thrill Book, a semi-monthly magazine published by Street & Smith in 1919, which was intended to be an all-fantasy publication, but somehow fell short of its aim. Today, the magazine is so rare and obscure that to have had a story published in it is of interest primarily to scholars, and precious few of them could validate the claim. For the record, the two stories were The Whispering from the Grave (July 15, 1919) where a phonograph is planted in the grave of a murdered man to trap his killer through superstitious fear; and The Spider and the Fly August 1, 1919) in which a woman bitten by a “whistling” spider gradually adopts a spider’s attitudes, with dire results for her husband. Both stories are extremely well written.
FOUR months after the salt waves had laid at his feet the cold form of his Love, came the news that Herbert Munson was the possessor of a startling secret. He had, it was stated, discovered a Purple Ray that would wither and destroy certain human cells of memory without injury or danger to neighboring cells. This rumor was followed by the still more amazing report that Munson had erected the Mansion of Forgetfulness, to which all who would free their minds of a hopeless passion might repair, and in one brief hour, forget.
And, sure enough, here they came—those who loved not wisely but too well, those who loved deeply but hopelessly, and those who loved the Dead and could endure their grief no longer—and the Purple Ray “plucked from the memory its rooted sorrow” and they went forth from the Mansion of Forgetfulness unscarred and fancy-free.
Yet he who showed others how to forget would not himself forget. It was agony to know that she was dead, and he would never see her face again, yet he shrank from forgetfulness as the soul shrinks from oblivion. Try as he would, he could not drag himself from the haunted halls of memory, though he remembered that the world without was wonderfully fair, and other women, perhaps as lovely as she, were waiting there to love and be loved. No! Let others forget, he would not! Not that he lived in hope, for had he not kissed the salt foam from her dead face? But that memory was all that remained of a Love who was no more.
He watched them come and go—watched the many, ah, too many, pilgrims arrive with sorrowful, love-haunted faces, but depart with unconcerned, care-free looks, and at times he feared that his philan
thropy was a sacrilege. There seemed something unholy in this sudden transmutation of grief into gladness—this swift thrusting aside of the tragic presence of sorrow—yet they had chosen of their own free will to forget a hopeless passion, and they could now return whence they came and love again, more wisely if less deeply.
Some came, thinking to blot out other memories than that of a hopeless love—memories of sin and crime—but the Purple Ray would not be thwarted to such base purposes, and they left, abashed and disappointed.
It was in winter, when the snow was changed to crystal as it fell upon the walls and cornices of the beautiful marble edifice, or piled itself in drifts of sifted diamonds against the stained glass windows, when a lady came alone across the vales and entered the broad gateway of the Mansion of Forgetfulness.
Something in her manner—perhaps her agitated hesitation at the portals—moved the master to accost her.
“Kind friend,” he said, “were it not better to remember what you now seek to forget?” As he spoke he drew closer about his face the cowl he wore to conceal his identity from the merely curious.
A sigh was the only immediate answer, as the pilgrim leaned wearily against a marble pillar. Then came the low spoken words:
“Perhaps I may only half-forget. I would remember, yet not remember so acutely.”
“No, you will wholly forget. The Purple Ray is oblivion itself.”
“Ah, well, better I kill these painful memories than break my heart!”
“Then, if it must be so, enter and forget.”
“Show me the way and let me go quickly,” was the plea of the veiled lady. “I have come far, and the worst is only a few steps farther on.”
“Come, then!” and the master led the way to the room of the Purple Ray.
An hour passed, when the door was opened and the veiled visitor came forth and descended the broad stairway. She moved quickly and lightly, and at the foot of the stairs she laughed musically as she again met the master.
“Have you forgotten?” he asked.
“Forgotten! I know that I have forgotten something, else why am I here, yet I do not know what I have forgotten.”
“So they all say!”
A flush of rosy light shone from a slender window overhead, haloing the pilgrim like a saint.
“How beautiful everything is!” she exclaimed. “Why do I wear this veil? I will no longer!”
So saying, she loosened it, disclosing a face young and exquisitely fair. The man shrank back as if pierced by a bolt.
“My God, it is her spirit!” he gasped.
“No, no!” protested the visitor. “I am not a spirit, and I fear I am too, too human.”
“You are Morella!” whispered the man, staring before him like one peering through intense darkness.
“I am. Who are you that you ask?”
“Morella! I thought you dead! I kissed you for dead and then the waves swept me away and I saw you no more.”
“Some fishermen once found me on a sandy beach, where they said I fainted. Who are you?”
The man drew back his cowl. “Look!” There was no light of recognition in the other’s eyes. “My God! the Ray has blotted out all memory!”
“Pray tell me what you mean, and let me go,” came the passionless words.
A groan was the only reply, and the man hid his face in his hands.
“You seem to know what I have forgotten. Has it aught to do with you?”
“O Morella, it were better that I thought you dead than to know that you have forgotten! Do you not recall our betrothal? See, you have the ring upon your hand! Does it not awaken one recollection of other days?”
The girl gazed blankly at the ring on her hand, and shook her head.
“Has the Ray blotted out every fair memory! Have you returned to life only to forget! Try to think, dearest: Do you not remember that day in Naples when we pledged eternal love for one another?”
“I remember no betrothal.” A deep look of pity came into the speaker’s eyes when she saw the pain her words had caused. “If remembrance is so sad, why do you not also forget?”
“My love!” he groaned, “you are making the world darker to me than to dying eyes! You ask me to forget! You!”
“You forget that I have forgotten.”
The man groaned in utter anguish.
As she turned to go he stayed her by a gentle touch. “Wait here while I, too, go and kill that memory!”
He dragged himself up the broad stairway, looking back once when he had reached the landing, then turned and staggered toward the room of the Purple Ray.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: A History of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911
CATASTROPHES
The Thames Valley Catastrophe by Grant Allen
The Doom of London by Robert Barr
A Corner in Lightning by George Griffith
The Tilting Island by Thomas J. Vivian and Grena J. Bennett
Finis by Frank Lillie Pollock
MARVELOUS INVENTIONS
An Express of the Future by Jules Verne
The Ray of Displacement by Harriet Prescott Spofford
Congealing the Ice Trust by Capt. H. G. Bishop, USA
Lord Beden’s Motor by J. B. Harris-Burland
MONSTERS AND HORRORS
The Death-Trap by George Daulton
The Air Serpent by Will A. Page
The Monster of Lake LaMetrie by Wardon Allan Curtis
The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson
FUTURE WAR
The Land Ironclads by H. G. Wells
The Dam by Hugh S. Johnson
Submarined by Walter Wood
MAN-EATING PLANTS
The Purple Terror by Fred M. White
Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant by Howard R. Garis
FAR-OUT HUMOR
An Experiment in Gyro Hats by Ellis Parker Butler
The Hybrid Hyperborean Ant by Roy L. McCardell
SCIENTIFIC CRIME AND DETECTION
Where the Air Quivered by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
In re State vs. Forbes by Warren Earle
MEDICAL MIRACLES
Old Doctor Rutherford by D. F. Hannigan
Itself by Edgar Mayhew Bacon
ADVENTURES IN PSYCHOLOGY
Citizen 504 by Charles H. Palmer
The Mansion of Forgetfulness by Don Mark Lemon
Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911 Page 47