Lord of the Hollow Dark

by Russell Kirk

  “Is somebody coming?” Sweeney broke in. They listened for a moment.

  “In Haggat they did not damage my eardrums,” the Archvicar resumed. “One might hear anything in this house, but that was not the sound of footsteps. I repeat: why fetch this ingenuous Marina here, why her baby? They don’t share the jaded appetites of our other lodgers, and they have no money to contribute to our common fund, which can afford to pay a large rent for Balgrummo Lodging and to post a huge bond against damage. What are Marina and tiny Michael expected to give to this ‘gathering,’ this ‘retreat’? I feel misgivings.”

  The Archvicar’s face, ordinarily so bland, showed lines of perplexity. “Is this house harmless, quite disarmed?” the old man asked.

  He gestured toward the walls of this handsome grand room. They were hung with the remains of a collection of weapons, chiefly African and Asiatic: the remains only, for, as Sweeney now noticed, every chased or jeweled scabbard was empty; axes and pikes were missing from their mountings or deprived of their heads; the shields and pieces of body armor looked lonely.

  “The police took away all edged weapons the morning after Balgrummo’s Trouble,” Gerontion explained, “and they are locked in some Edinburgh vault, rusting, as Lord Balgrummo was left to rust here. Nothing remained with which the last lord might rend flesh and bone. But even now, is this house quite innocuous? You and I have our own skins to think of. For Apollinax, whatever he means to do here, are you and I expendable? Why Marina and the baby? Unriddle me these riddles, Herr Doktor Apeneck Sweeney.”

  Then a door creaked. The Archvicar’s accustomed blandness of expression fell back upon his face like an old-fangled gutta-percha mask. Sweeney swung round in his chair.

  Grishkin of the opulent figure had entered the upper end of the drawing room. “The Master is with you,” she announced, unsmiling.

  Sweeney covertly assessed her, part by part: such a woman would have no scruples, but she was not soft enough for him. The Archvicar’s “Coppelia doll” image had been apt. Sweeney preferred shrieking innocence.

  “Dear lady, at your coming we crawl between dry ribs to keep our metaphysics warm,” the Archvicar told her, struggling to rise with the aid of his stick. Grishkin stared at him with a slight frown of puzzlement, and withdrew as Apollinax came forward into the firelight.

  Apollinax wore evening dress: probably the first time it had been worn in the house since 1913, Sweeney reflected irrelevantly. The flickering fire on the hearth played upon Apollinax’s curious face.

  “Archvicar, Mr. Sweeney,” Apollinax said in his resonant voice, which seemed to bubble up from depths, “no ceremony just now, if you please. You may seat yourselves.”

  Apollinax took a straight severe chair which might have come down from the age of John Knox. His large eyes glowed like the fire’s embers. “You are tired,” he began, “but there’s much to explain. You are to memorize all details. Listen to me, without comment, for ten minutes of instruction.”

  Somehow Apollinax had always looked unfinished, Sweeney had thought more than once. The skin of Apollinax’s face was like a baby’s. He was a small man, smaller than the Archvicar, so that one was surprised to hear that resonant, if sometimes high-pitched, voice of his. His little ears were rather conspicuously pointed. He was so very civilized-and yet one could fancy him peering from behind an ilex in some Greek forest. Now why did that odd image pop into Sweeney’s head? To talk with Apollinax-or, usually, to listen to him—was like a confrontation with a clever and alarming fetus. Physically, Apollinax was infantile, or something less than that; intellectually, he was old, old, the old man of the sea, or perhaps of the mountain.

  The Master spoke to them as if old Kronos had been at his back. Now and again Apollinax paused briefly, although tolerating no interruption. And when he paused, he smiled at them in his peculiar way, an expression not unpleasant but not reassuring. It passed through Sweeney’s mind that the smile of Apollinax was noticeably like the curious compressed smiles upon the faces of statues of archaic Hellas.

  For all the energy of his talk, Apollinax told them nothing but administrative details. This gathering was to last no more than six days. No one was to leave the house during its progress, except perhaps for a stroll in the policies, and then only to the back of the Lodging, up the Den. Apollinax would require some architectural advice and practice from Sweeney; from the Archvicar, certain researches in the Muniment Room, and officiating in a liturgy on Ash Wednesday night.

  Grishkin, assigned to general superintendence of the young staff, would communicate routine instructions. All participants in this retreat would be required to observe a certain decorum, satisfying themselves with simple foods, abstaining from other pleasures of the flesh. No intoxicants would be served. All would take dinner together. Gerontion and Sweeney must complete all their preparations by Wednesday, no matter how hard and long they must work meanwhile. Prompt and accurate compliance with fuller instructions, to be given tomorrow and Monday, would be expected and enforced.

  Apollinax’s sentences, as Gerontion had suggested, were dry and passionate, despite the mundaneness of what he told them. He said no word of the Timeless Moment.

  This man did have something, Sweeney knew: something powerfully attractive, something frightening. “Charismatic?” Yes, that might be the word, but no talking in tongues. Sweeney had heard and seen Apollinax a dozen times, although usually orders had reached him through intermediaries. This Apollinax could get anything he wanted, fetus though he looked. What could he possibly want now?

  The Archvicar, Sweeney noticed, was listening with the palms of his hands over his goggle-glasses, almost as if dazzled. Apollinax, speaking, had fixed his look upon Gerontion—to Sweeney’s relief, he being spared the full power of those large, disturbing eyes.

  Apollinax finished with a tinkling laugh, incongruous, which disturbed Sweeney, often though he had heard that laugh before. “Are there questions, gentlemen?”

  The Archvicar looked up and moved his lips a little, but thought better of it, apparently, for no words emerged.

  “Keep your wits about you, Gerontion,” said Apollinax, laughing again, as if to soften the harshness of the admonition. “You are old. Well, then, breakfast at eight for everyone.” He smiled his archaic smile, rose, turned abruptly, and was gone into the recesses of the Lodging. A damp draft swept in from some door he had opened, so that the dying coals on the hearth flared up for a moment.

  “A very kind and pleasant gentleman,” the Archvicar commented, looking shrewdly at Sweeney. Not much trusting the Archvicar, Sweeney did not reply.

  Outside the tall windows a light rain was falling. Sweeney heard a rustle behind the wainscoting; this sprawling place must be full of vermin.

  “What tricks the shadows play!” said the Archvicar, maliciously. “Are we quite alone in this room? By all means, stick to the flesh, my boy, reveling in its pleasures. Does Grishkin please you? Do step smartly when you obey her orders. Whatever might become of you if you thought on the spirit in this house?” He hobbled toward the door into the corridor, Sweeney following him.

  “I’m sure you’ll sleep sweetly after your long drive, Sweeney. If something claws at your windowpanes, remind yourself that it must be merely an owl. Not for the world would I think of diminishing your manly materialism. Shall I show you to your chamber?”

  Sweeney was about to curse the old toad, when he remembered that he might not find the way to his room without the Archvicar’s guidance. Where might Marina’s room be? He would find out tomorrow, without asking this old tormentor.

  As they went out the door, Sweeney noticed that the Archvicar, for all his smoked glasses, sent a quick glance either way along the corridor. The old man took him to his bedroom door, and then produced from an inner pocket a sheaf of notepaper, which he handed to Sweeney.

  “In the watches of the night,” he said, “you may wish to run through this, whiling away the sleepless hours. The Master authorizes me to show all to
you; he has my revised copy, and these sheets are my original draft. You must give it all back to me tomorrow. I should have preferred not to set it down in writing, but Apollinax insisted. One can tumble into infinite mischief through putting pen to paper.

  “But so! The Master intends you to undertake a difficult task for him this week, Sweeney, in your capacity as architect, even if your diploma is a forgery. This memorandum of mine will give you some concept of what you are to open-supposing you can find the place at all. Some of Apollinax’s unkempt boys will be assigned to help you, but much of the labor must be done by your own dainty hands, with a pick, underground. Do try not to bring this house down about our ears.”

  Sweeney was taken aback. “I was hired as a courier.” Ruffling through the sheets of paper, he noticed some rough architectural sketches.

  “For my part, I certainly wouldn’t choose you as an architect,” the Archvicar assented, patting him gently upon the shoulder, “but the Master hasn’t anyone else to hand, don’t you know, and for this sort of job he scarcely can be expected to bring in some blabbing Edinburgh contractor. This, my boy, is what comes of forged credentials. ‘O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.’”

  Then, beginning to hobble away, Gerontion put in his parting shot: “If you’re distressed in the night, Sweeney, don’t reach for the bellpull. One never knows what might respond from below stairs in Balgrummo Lodging.” Chuckling, Gerontion vanished round a corner.

  Yet Sweeney, entering his room, did not feel wholly alone. He wished that he might.

  3

  The Ecstasy of the Animals

  Her baby, the best of babies, slept soundly; but Marina, what with the excitement of the day and the strangeness of the place, could not contrive to fall asleep, physically exhausted though she was. On getting into bed, she had turned off the gas jet above the bed head; but now she did not dare to light it again, knowing that these things often went on with a loud pop that might wake her baby. Happily there was also a paraffin lamp on her bedside table, and that she lit.

  She would read herself to sleep. Having been told that everyone at Balgrummo Lodging would have a name from Eliot’s verses clapped to him, she had brought with her Eliot’s Collected Poems. She did not know why Mr. Apollinax had decided upon this ritualistic renaming-he had applied it to himself also, she had discovered on looking at the book’s table of contents-but it was rather fun. She had not read much poetry. If she were to be Marina, she must try to understand “Marina.” This past week she had read that poem several times, but T. S. Eliot was difficult to apprehend. It was a beautiful poem, and it was supposed to be about a daughter’s return.

  Yet the lines might mean so very many things! They were concerned with escape from death, she could see that. The second stanza seemed to be about people who lose the life eternal because of their sins. The wages of sin... Well, she had not sharpened the tooth of the dog. Nor had she glittered with the glory of the hummingbird, except perhaps for those three months after leaving the convent, when she had foolishly bought many pretty dresses, with the pleasing of Harry in mind. Nor had she sat in the sty of contentment; she never had felt satisfied with herself, before the convent, or in it, or after it.

  But now this-this line about suffering the ecstasy of the animals-yes, that she had done, with Harry, of her own free will. That was why the dear tiny Michael lay in his cradle; also why, abandoned by Harry, she had been left no place to turn except this Balgrummo Lodging, this strange place, and the mystical promise of Mr. Apollinax. She had coupled as beasts couple, glorying in her defiance, hoping that Harry loved her as she loved him, and finding at last that he had not loved her at all.

  Of course they could not take her back into the convent now. She had been such a fool! But the order had been falling to pieces all about her, with most of the young nuns leaving, along with many of the middle-aged ones. They all had talked about self-fulfillment, and of how the steps of Jesus led into the world, and of helping the working classes and the poor, and much else. So she had decided that she had no vocation after all: she had renounced her vows only a year after she had taken them.

  Actually—or so she had thought at that hour of renunciation—hadn’t she entered the order mostly because her father had died, and two years earlier her sister had married and gone to New Zealand? There had been no one else to live with, really, and she had no skills, and no boy she had met seemed interesting. So she had taken the veil on the advice of old Father Connery-he, too, was dead now, and well out of the Church mess-and during her novitiate she had tried hard, and after taking her vows she had told herself that she was content to serve so. In retrospect, hadn’t she been as nearly satisfied (though that was a perilous state, according to T. S. Eliot) in the convent as she ever had been anywhere before or since, except for the one first glorious month with Harry? If the order had not disintegrated about her, she would have remained cloistered, with her duties, her liturgy, her rosary, and would have sought nothing more.

  The baby moaned in his sleep, breaking her reverie. Marina leaped out of bed to stroke him, and he subsided. What did babies dream about-ghosts? How still this house was! A London girl, she had not known there could be such dead silence. It was past midnight. She slipped back into bed, but did not take up the Collected Poems at once.

  The ecstasy of the animals! Once out of the convent, she had discovered that “working with the poor” had become a gainful occupation for a multitude of civil servants, leaving little function for her, and that the poor often had a good deal more money than she possessed. Her father the General had left her something, but what with the decline of the pound it had become barely enough to allow her to exist as one of the poor herself. And, frankly, she had not known how to go about working with the poor; she had been given no instruction in that art, and the East End had seemed like a foreign land to her. Possibly the Church could have found a useful place for her in one of its volunteer societies, but when she had left the convent, she had left the Church, too, and had felt awkward about turning back. At that juncture, Harry had happened along.

  So lively, so good-looking, so admiring of her, Harry had persuaded her to live with him-or rather, he had moved into her flat-after merely a fortnight’s friendship. She had been so lonely, and Harry so amusing, and he had said they couldn’t afford to marry yet, and that had been true enough. For five months they had lived quite well on her little capital. When that had been spent, Harry had ceased to be amusing. When he had learned that there was to be a baby, he had turned disagreeable, and had ordered her to “get rid of it now.”

  And when she had refused again and again to do that, and had cried hard each time, Harry had gone away, finding another girl. He never came back. But that had not been the worst of it.

  By selling her mother’s rings and necklace and some other things that her father had left to her, Marina had managed to scrape along until the baby was born. What a perfect baby, looking so like the General! The day after she had brought her baby back from the hospital, a woman she never had seen came to call on her. The woman said she had known the General slightly, and had learned from a friend that Marina was in difficulties, and had a baby but not a husband, and what was she going to do, and what did she think about free love, and about abortion, and many other things, and had she really been in love?

  Marina, pleased to have a caller who had known the General, had talked fully and candidly, and the woman had been very attentive and fairly sympathetic. Everything that Marina had said soon appeared in a weekend paper. The General had been famous in the War, and his daughter’s troubles were grist to the mill of a paper like that. The woman caller had been a reporter, though she hadn’t said so. When Marina had seen the ghastly article in the paper, she had wanted to die.

  A note from Harry had arrived in the next day’s post. “You were stubborn about that thing in your belly,” Harry’s note had read, “so I gave the paper a tip, and now we’re quits. Don’t you love the at
tention you’ve gotten?” That had been the last, and the worst, of Harry. The nastiest parts of the newspaper story had been those about her life as a nun. If it hadn’t been for the baby, Marina would have leaped from a bridge.

  She had not left the flat for days after that paper had appeared, but the telephone had rung many times, and nearly all the callers had been unknown men who had seen her picture in the paper-she had given the woman a photo-and had looked up her number. At the end of a week, she had arranged to have the telephone disconnected.

  Two men had even come to her door, but the chain had kept them from entering. Then, on the same day the telephone had been taken out, Mr. Apollinax had rung the doorbell.

  Had he been alone, of course she would not have admitted him, despite his eyes and his grand manner, and so she would have lost her chance for a Timeless Moment. But he had taken the trouble to bring with him a rather overdressed old lady, with jowls and small eyes, whom he had introduced as Mrs. Equitone. So she had given them tea; and although Mrs. Equitone had said little, simply staring at Mr. Apollinax most of the time, Mr. Apollinax had said a great deal. And he had been ever so considerate, scarcely glancing at tiny Michael, in his cradle close at hand.

  That had been little more than a month ago. His eyes glowing with sympathy, Mr. Apollinax first had apologized for coming round at all, uninvited; then he had said that he knew how much she must have suffered from that shocking piece in the paper; had mentioned that Britain owed gratitude to the General; and had gone on to tell her of the little society for the life of the spirit over which he presided. For some, it was the vita nuova.

  “Don’t you agree, Mrs. Equitone?”

  “Quite, quite,” Mrs. Equitone had replied, nodding vigorously, her age considered.

  There was to be an especially important meeting of the society at a country house near Edinburgh, during February, Mr. Apollinax had explained, and to Marina’s astonishment, he had invited her to participate.