The Stuff of Dreams: The Weird Stories of Edward Lucas White (Dover Horror Classics)

by Edward Lucas White

  ‘Woman fashion,’ he commented. ‘You are above that in most things, I know. Try a straight story from the beginning.’

  She reflected:

  ‘The beginning,’ she said, ‘was before I began to remember. David and I were playmates before we could talk. Boy and girl, lad and lass, we always belonged to each other, there was no love-making between us, I think, for it was all love-living. I do not believe he ever asked me to marry him or promised to marry me, or so much as talked marriage. But we had a clear understanding that we were to marry as soon as we could, at the earliest possible day. He did not merely seem wrapped up in me, he was. God knows he was all my life. Then he had no more than seen Marian Conway when he fell in love with her. There is no use in dwelling on what I suffered. He married almost at once and I gave myself up to that empty life of frivolity which made me a reigning beauty and brought me scores of suitors for none of whom I cared anything and which gave me not a particle of satisfaction. Then after they had lost both their children Marian died. David was frightfully overcome by his loss. He had loved her inconceivably and he showed his grief in the most heart-rending ways. He had the coffin opened over and over after it had been closed. He had it even lifted out of the grave and opened yet once more for one more look at her face. He spent every moment from her death to her burial in a sort of adoration of her corpse, and he did stranger things. I do not know whether it was Mr Llewellyn’s valet who told, but at any rate the story got out among the servants. The night before she was buried he had her laid out in her coffin and a second coffin exactly like it set beside hers. He stayed locked in the room all night. They believed he lay in the other coffin. At any rate in the morning it was closed, and he did not allow it to be opened. What he had placed in it no one knew. They said it was as heavy as the other. Two hearses, one behind the other, carried the coffins to the graveyard. Her grave is not under the monument—you have seen the monument?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘only a picture of it.’

  ‘Well, she is not buried under it, and the second coffin was placed on hers.’

  She stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘it is so hard to go on. But it is true. As soon as David was free I felt I had an object in life. I — I followed him, I might almost say pursued him all over the world, and when we met I courted him, and it seems strange, but I asked him to marry me. And’ — she hesitated — ‘he refused twice.’

  ‘He did not want to marry you?’ Vargas asked incredulously.

  ‘He refused. It was at Cairo, that first time. He said he could not love anyone any more, all his love, his very self, was buried in Marian’s grave. The second time was at Hongkong. Then he said he always had cared for me and still cared for me, but that affection was as nothing compared to his passion for Marian, that he would never marry, and especially he would not marry me because of his regard for me, that I would not be contented or happy with him, that I was thinking of the lad he had been and that boy was buried in his wife’s grave, that he was nothing more than a walking ghost, a wraith of what he had been, a spirit condemned to wander its allotted time on earth until his hour should come and he be called to join Marian.

  ‘The third time was in Paris. He said he was indifferent to everything, to anything, to love or hate or death or life; that he cared nothing whether he married me or not. If I cared as much as I seemed to he would marry me to please me. I told him that what I had always wanted was to be with him, that what I most wanted was to spend with him as much as possible of my time until death parted us. He said if that was what I wanted I could have it, but he was nothing more than a shadow of his old self and I was sure to be unhappy. And I am unhappy. He is generosity, gentleness, kindness and consideration itself, but he does not care. I hoped, of course, that his grief for Marian would soften, fade away and vanish, that he would cease to mourn for her, that his interest in life would reawaken, that I could win his love and that we would both be happy. But I am not. His utter indifference to me, to anything, to everything is preying on my feelings, I must do something. I shall lose my mind.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Vargas asked.

  ‘It is enough,’ she asserted, ‘and more than enough. Do you think it a small matter?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ he declared, ‘I comprehend your disappointment in respect to your hopes, your chagrin at your baffled efforts to win him back to be his old self, your pain at his inertness. But by your own showing you have no grievance against your husband.’

  ‘That I have not,’ she maintained. ‘Not a shadow of a grievance against him. My grievance is for him as much as for myself and against — against the way the world is made.’

  Vargas looked at her for some little time.

  ‘You do not say what you are thinking,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I am considering how to express it,’ he said. ‘However I express it I am sure to offend you.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ she replied. ‘Say it at once.’

  ‘You must realize that if I am to advise you truly I must speak plainly,’ he hesitated.

  ‘I do realize it,’ she told him.

  ‘You will then pardon what I have to say?’ he ventured.

  ‘I will pardon anything except beating about the bush,’ she rapped out.

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘it seems to me that your coming to me, your state of mind, your trouble, as you have related it all turns upon a piece of femininity to which you should be altogether superior, to which I should have imagined you were altogether superior. You look, and I have always imagined you, free from any trace of the eternal feminine. Here it crops out. Men in general find that women in general have no feeling for the mutuality of a contract. Some women may be exceptions, but women habitually ignore the other side of a contract and see only their own side. Here you display the same defect. Mr Llewellyn practically proposed a contract to you: on his side he to marry you, on your side, you to put up with his complete indifference to you, to everything and be content with his actual companionship such as he is. He has fulfilled and is fulfilling his part of the contract, you seek escape from yours.’

  ‘I think,’ she snapped. ‘You are insufferably brutal.’

  ‘The eternal feminine again,’ he retorted. ‘Worse and more of it. I told you I should offend you.’

  ‘You do offend me. I have confidence in you, but I did not come here to be scolded or to be preached at. I do not want criticism, I want advice. Don’t tell me my shortcomings, real or imaginary, think over my troubles and my needs and tell me what to do.’

  ‘That is plain enough,’ he asserted. ‘Do your obvious duty. Keep your part of your contract with your husband. Give no sign that you suffer from the absence of feeling of which he warned you. Make the most of your life with him. Hope for a change in him but do not try to force it, do not rebel if it does not come.’

  ‘I know I ought to endure,’ she wailed. ‘But I cannot, I must do something. I must act. I must.’

  ‘You have asked for my advice,’ he said, ‘and you have it.’

  ‘And what good is it to me?’ she objected, ‘I ask for help and you string out platitudinous precepts like a snuffy, detestable old-fashioned evangelical domine. Is this all the help you can give me?’

  ‘All,’ said Vargas humbly. ‘If I knew of any other it should be at your service.’

  ‘You could consult your slate for me, as I proposed,’ she suggested.

  ‘Great heavens above!’ he cried, ‘I have told you that all that is imposture.’

  ‘It might turn out genuine for once,’ she persisted. ‘Don’t people have real trances? Don’t many people believe in the answers from slates and planchettes and ouija boards?’

  ‘Perhaps they do,’ Vargas admitted. ‘But I never had a real trance, never saw one, never knew of one. And to my knowledge no slate or other such device ever gave any answer or wrote anything unless I or some other shuffler made it write or answer.’

  ‘But
could you not try just once for my sake,’ she implored.

  ‘Why on earth,’ he demanded, ‘are you, so sane and sensible in appearance, so set on this mummery?’

  ‘Because of the other dream,’ she faltered.

  ‘The other dream!’ he exclaimed. ‘You had another dream?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I was going to tell you but you interrupted me. The dream about the advertisement did not convince me. I felt it might be coincidence after all. That was more than a month ago and I disregarded it. But night before last I dreamed I was told, ‘The message on the slate will be true.’ I fought against it all day yesterday, all last night. To-day I gave up and came. I want you to consult your slate for me.’

  ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘this is dreadful. Can nothing make you see the truth. There is not anything supernatural about this trade of mine. It is as simple as a Punch and Judy show. There the puppets do nothing save as the showman controls them; so of my slate and of my trances.’

  ‘But it might surprise you,’ she persisted. ‘It might come true once. Won’t you try for me?’

  ‘I know,’ he mused, ‘that there is such a thing as auto-hypnotism. To humor you I might try to put myself into a genuine trance. But there would be nothing about it to help you, just a mere natural sleep, artificially induced. If I babbled in it the words would have no significance, and no writing would appear on the slate unless I put it there.’

  ‘Just try,’ she pleaded, ‘for my sake, to quiet me. If there is nothing, then I shall believe you.’

  ‘There will be nothing on the slate,’ he maintained. ‘But suppose I should mumble some fragments of words. You might take those accidental vocables for a revelation, they might become an obsession upon you, they might warp your judgment and do you great harm. I feel we should be running a foolish risk. Give up this idea of the trance and the slate, I beg of you.’

  ‘And I beg of you to try it. You said you would do anything for me. That is what I want and nothing else.’

  He shook his head, his expression crestfallen, baffled, puzzled, even alarmed.

  ‘If you insist—’ he faltered.

  ‘I do insist,’ she said.

  ‘You wish,’ he inquired, ‘to proceed exactly as I usually do with my simulated trance and pretended spirit replies?’

  ‘Precisely,’ she affirmed.

  He opened a drawer below one of the cabinets and took out a hinged double slate. It was made like a child’s school-slate, but the rims instead of being wood, were of silver, the edges beaded and the flat of each rim chased in a pattern of pentacles, swastikas and pentagrams; a pentacle, a right-hand swastika, a pentagram, a left-hand swastika and so on all round. In the drawer was a box of fresh slatepencils. This he held out to her and told her to choose one. At his bidding she broke off a short fragment and put it between the two leaves of the slate, the four faces of which were entirely blank.

  ‘Settle yourself in your chair,’ he instructed her, ‘hold the slate in your lap. Hold it fast with both hands. First take off your other glove.’

  As she did this he settled himself into the armchair opposite her, took a silver paper-knife from the table and held it upright, gazing at its point.

  ‘You are not to move or speak until I tell you,’ he directed her.

  So they sat, she holding in her lap the slate shut fast upon the pencil within, her fingers enforcing its closure; he gazing intently at the point of the scimitar-shaped paper-knife. She became aware of the slow, pompous tick of a tall clock in the hallway; of faint noises, as of activity in a pantry, proceeding from somewhere in the rear of the house and barely audible through the closed window. She had expected to see him stiffen, his eyes roll up or some such manifestation appear. Nothing of the kind happened. For a long time, a very long time, she watched him staring fixedly at the sharp end of the paper-cutter. Then she saw it waver, saw his eyes close and his head, propped against the back of the armchair, move ever so little sideways, as the neckmuscles relaxed. His hands opened, the knife dropped on his knee and he was to all appearances peacefully asleep. Presently his even, regular breathing was a sound more apparent than the tick of the clock outside.

  All of a sudden Mrs Llewellyn felt herself ridiculous. Here she was, holding a childish toy, facing a strange man with whom she was entirely alone and who was apparently enjoying a needed snooze. She had an impulse to laugh and was on the point of rising, disembarrassing herself of her burden and leaving the house.

  At that instant she felt a movement between the fast-shut slates. They lay level upon her lap, firmly set. She had not jarred or tilted them, yet she felt the pencil move. Felt it move and heard it too. Her mood of impatient self-contempt and irritated derision was instantly obliterated under a wave of terrified awe. She controlled a spasm of panic, an impulse to let go her hold upon her frightful charge, to scream, to run away. Rigid, trembling breathing quick, her heart hammering her ribs, she sat, her fingers gripping the slates, listening for another movement. It came. Faintly at first, she felt and heard it, then more distinctly. Slowly, very slowly, with intervals of silence, the bit of pencil crawled, tapped and scratched about. While listening to it, and still more while listening for it, she was under so terrific a tension that she felt if nothing happened to relieve her, she must faint or shriek. When she continued listening for a long, an interminable, an unbearable time and heard nothing but the clock in the hall and Vargas’ breathing in the room, she felt she was about to do both.

  Then the clairvoyant uttered a choked sound, the incipience of that feeble wailing groan or groaning wail of a sleeper in a nightmare. His feet moved, his undeformed leg stiffened, his hands clenched, his head rolled from side to side, he writhed, the effort expended at each successive groan was more and more excessive, each sound feebler and more pitiful.

  Then Mrs Llewellyn did scream.

  Instantly Vargas struggled into a sitting posture his face contorted, his eyes bulging, staring at her.

  ‘Did I speak, did I speak?’ he gasped.

  Mrs Llewellyn was past articulation, but she shook her head.

  ‘I passed into a real trance, a real trance,’ he babbled.

  She could only cling to the slate and gaze.

  ‘I had a frightful dream,’ Vargas panted. ‘I dreamed there was a message on the plate. It frightened me, but what it was has escaped me.’

  ‘There is a message on the slate,’ she managed to utter, ‘I heard the pencil writing.’

  Vargas, holding to the back of his chair, assisted himself to his feet. From her fingers, mechanically clenched on it, he gently disengaged the slate and put it on the table. Opening one of the cabinets he took out a decanter and two glasses, half filling one he placed it in her numb grasp.

  ‘Drink that,’ he dictated, draining the other full glass as he spoke.

  Half dazed she obeyed him. Her face flushed angrily and the glass broke as she set it down.

  ‘You have given me brandy!’ she cried in indignation.

  ‘You needed it,’ he asserted. ‘It will steady you, but you will not feel it. Compose yourself and we will look at the slate.’

  She stood up beside him and he laid the slate open. There was writing on each leaf of it, on one side legible, on the other reversed.

  ‘Oh,’ she said and sat down heavily. He brought a small chair, set it beside hers and seated himself upon it, the slates open in his hands, before them both. Fine-lined, legible, plainly made by the point of the pencil, was the writing, on one leaf of the slates; on the other reversed writing with coarse strokes, plainly made by the splintered end, which was worn slightly at one place. All the writing was in the same individual script.

  ‘This is not my handwriting,’ said Vargas.

  ‘It is my husband’s,’ she gasped.

  The words on the slate were:

  ‘That which is buried in that coffin is alive. If disinterred it will die.’

  Vargas opened the other cabinet. The inside of its door was a mirror. Bef
ore this he held the slates. On the other leaf the broad-stroked script showed the same words.

  ‘What does it mean?’ she pleaded, ‘oh! What does it mean?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ said Vargas, roughly.

  ‘How can that be,’ she moaned. ‘It must mean something. It does mean something. I feel it does.’

  ‘That is just the point,’ he said, ‘that is what I feared before, and warned you of. Here are some chance words. They mean nothing, except that you or I or both of us have been intensely strung up with emotion. But if you cannot see that or be made to see that, you are lost. If you feel that they mean something, then they do mean that something to you, that that is your danger. Do not yield to it.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me, to try to convince me that those words, twice written, in the same handwriting, in my husband’s hand of all hands, formed upon those slates while I held them myself, came there by accident?’

  ‘Not by accident,’ he argued. ‘By some operation of unguessed forces set in motion by your excitement or mine or both; but blind forces, meaningless as the voices in dreams.’

  ‘Am I to believe meaningless,’ she demanded, ‘the voices in my dreams that sent me to that advertisement and to you and told me expect an answer from the slates, a true answer?’

  ‘Madame,’he reasoned, ‘the series of coincidences is startling, but it is nothing but a series of coincidences. Try to rise superior to it.’

  ‘And you won’t help me,’ she wailed. ‘You won’t tell me what this message means? ’I have told you my belief as to how it originated,’ he said, ‘I have told you that I do not attach any other significance to it.’

  ‘Oh,’ she groaned, ‘I must go home.’

  ‘Your carriage is at the door,’ he said.

  ‘My carriage!’ she exclaimed. ‘How did it get there?’

  ‘Not your own carriage,’ he explained, ‘but one for you. I telephoned for it.’

  ‘You have not left me an instant,’ she asserted incredulously.

  ‘When I brought you a glass of water I told the maid to telephone for a carriage and tell it to wait. It will be there.’