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

by Edward Lucas White

  ‘I thank you,’ she said, ‘and now, what do I owe you? What is your fee?’

  Vargas flushed all over his face and neck, a deep brownish-red.

  ‘Mrs Llewellyn,’ he said with great dignity, ‘I take pay from my dupes for my fripperies of deception. But no money, not all the money on earth could pay me to do what I have done for you to-day, no sum could induce me to go through it again for anyone else. For you I would do anything. But what I have done was not done for payment, nor will anything I may do be done except for you, for whom I would do any service in my power.’

  ‘I ask your pardon,’ she said. ‘Where is the carriage? I shall faint if I stay here.’

  Some weeks later, in the same room, the clairvoyant and the lady again faced each other.

  ‘I had hoped never to see you again,’ he said.

  ‘Did you Imagine that I could escape from the compulsion of all that series of manifestations?’ she asked.

  ‘I tried to believe that you might,’ he answered.

  ‘Have you been able to shake off its hold on you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Not entirely,’ he confessed. ‘But dazing as the coincidences were, the effect on my emotions will wear off, like the smart of a burn; and, as one forgets the fury of past sufferings, I shall forget the turmoil of my feelings. There was no clear intelligibility, no definite significance in it at all.’

  ‘Not in that message!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Certainly not,’ he asseverated.

  ‘Yes there was,’ she contradicted.

  ‘Madame,’ he said earnestly, ‘if you fancy you perceive any genuine coherence in those fortuitous words you have put the meaning there yourself, your imagination is riveting upon your soul fetters of your own forging.’

  ‘My imagination and my soul have nothing to do with my insight into the spirit of that message, she said calmly. ‘My heart cries out for help and my intellect has pondered at leisure upon what you call a fortuitous series of coincidences, a chance string of meaningless words. I see no incoherence, rather convincing coherence, in the sequence of your reading of horoscopes, my dreaming of dreams, leading up to the imperative behest given me from your slate.’

  ‘Madame,’ he cried, ‘this is heart-rending. I told you I dreaded the effect upon you of any sort of mummery. You forced me to it. I should have had strength to refuse you. I yielded. Now my cowardice will ruin you.’

  ‘Was not your trance genuine?’ she queried.

  ‘Entirely genuine, entirely too genuine.’

  ‘Did not the writing appear upon the slate independent of your will or of mine?’ she demanded.

  ‘It did,’ he admitted.

  ‘Can you explain how it came there?’ she wound up.

  ‘Alas, no,’ he confessed, shaking his head.

  ‘You can scarcely reproach me for accepting it as a message,’ she concluded triumphantly.

  ‘I do not reproach you,’ he said, ‘I reproach myself as culpable.’

  ‘I rather thank you for what you have done for me,’ she almost smiled at him. ‘It gives me hope. I have meditated carefully upon the message and I am convinced that I comprehend its meaning.’

  ‘That is the worst possible state of mind you could get into,’ he groaned. ‘Can I not make you realize the truth? It is not as you think you see it.’

  ‘I do not think,’ she said. ‘I know. I am convinced, and I mean to act on my convictions.’

  ‘This is terrible,’ he muttered. Then he controlled himself, shifted his position in his chair and asked: ‘And what are your convictions? What do you mean to do?’

  ‘My conviction,’ she said, ‘is that David’s love for Marian is in some way bound up with whatever he had buried in that coffin. I mean to have the coffin disinterred.’

  ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘this thing gets worse the more you tell me of it. You are in danger of coming under the domination of a fixed idea, even if you are not already under its sway. Fight against it. Shake it off.’

  ‘There is no use in your talking that way to me,’ she said. ‘I mean to do it. I shall do it.’

  ‘Has your husband consented?’ Vargas asked.

  ‘He has,’ she replied.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that he has agreed to your opening his wife’s grave?’

  ‘He has agreed,’ she asserted.

  ‘But did he make no demur?’ the clairvoyant inquired.

  ‘He said he did not care what I did, I could do anything I pleased.’

  ‘Was that all he said?’ Vargas persisted.

  ‘Not all,’ she admitted. ‘He asked me if I had not told him that what I wanted in this life was to spend as much as possible of my time on earth with him, for us two to be together as much as circumstances would allow, and as long as death would permit. I told him of course I had said it, not once but over and over. He asked me if I still felt that way. I told him I did. He said it made no difference to him, he was past any feelings, but if that was what I really wanted he advised me to let that grave alone.’

  ‘Take his advice, by all means,’ Vargas exclaimed. ‘It is good advice. You let that grave alone.’

  ‘I am determined,’ she told him.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘will you listen to me?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she replied. ‘If you have anything to say to the purpose. But not to fault-findings or to scoldings.’

  ‘Mrs Llewellyn,’ Vargas began. ‘what happened during your former visit to me has demolished the entire structure of my spiritual existence. I had the sincerest disbelief in astrology, in prophecy, in ghosts, in apparitions, in superstitions, each and all, in supernaturalism in general, in religions, individually and collectively, in the idea of future life. Upon the most materialistic convictions my intellectual life was placid and unruffled, and my soullife, if I had any, undisturbed by anything save occasional and very evanescent twinges of conscience over the contemptible duplicity of my way of livelihood. Intermittently only I despised myself. Mostly I only despised my dupes and generally not even that. Rather I merely smiled tolerantly at the childishness of their profitable credulity. Never did I have the remotest approach to any shadow of belief that there could be anything occult beneath or behind any such jugglery as I continually made use of. The matter of your horoscope and mine I took as mere coincidence. It might affect my feelings never my reason; my heart, never my head. My head is involved now, my reason at fault. In the writing on that slate I am face to face with something, if not supernatural, at least preternatural. The thing is beyond our ordinary experience of the ordinary operation of those forces which make the world go. It depends upon something not yet understood, not necessarily inexplicable, but unexplained. It is uncanny. I don’t like it. Yet I do not yield to its influence. I am not swept away. If I dwell upon it, I know it will unsettle my reason. I do not mean to dwell upon it, I mean to get away from it, to ignore it, to forget it, and I counsel you to do likewise.’

  ‘Your counsel,’ she said, ‘has a long-winded preamble, but is entirely unacceptable.’

  ‘I have more to say,’ he went on. ‘Mere bewilderment of mind is not an adequate ground for action. There is a fine old proverb that says, ‘When in doubt, do nothing.’ Take its advice and your husband’s; do nothing.’

  ‘But I am not in doubt,’ she protested. ‘I am convinced that I was meant to come to you, that the message was meant for me, and that I know what it means. I am determined to act upon it.’

  He shook his head with a gesture of despair, but continued:

  ‘I have more yet to say and on another point. I advise you to go away from all this. You should and you can. You have your own wealth and your husband’s opulence at your disposal. You have one of the finest steam-yachts on the seas awaiting your pleasure. Much as you have traveled, the globe has many fascinating regions still new to you. Your husband and you have practically not traveled at all since your marriage. You should still hope for your husband’s recovery of his spirits by natural means. Travel is
the most obvious prescription. Try that. Because your husband had not emerged from his brooding upon his loss and grief during two years of wandering alone with a valet; because he has not recovered his spirits after two years of matrimony spent in the neighborhood of his first wife’s grave, in mansions full of memories of her, is no reason for not hoping that his elasticity will revive during months or years spent with you among delightful scenes of novelty, far from anything to recall his mind to old associations.’

  ‘I have no hope in any such attempt,’ she said wearily. ‘When I cannot bear my life here with a mate who is no more than a likeness of the man I loved, why drag this soulless semblance about the oceans of the earth in the hope of seeing it awake to love me? Shall I expect a miracle from salt air or the rays of the Southern cross?’

  ‘Mrs Llewellyn,’ Vargas said, ‘I have taken the liberty of making inquiries, quite unobtrusively, concerning your husband’s treatment of you. I find that it is the general impression that he is a very uxorious, a very loverly husband. Except the barest minimum required for his affairs, he spends his entire time with you. His best friends, his boyhood’s chums, his life-long cronies he never converses with, never chats with, hardly talks to, and for all his genial cordiality and courtesy, barely more than greets in passing. He is seldom seen at his clubs and very briefly. To all appearances he devotes himself to you wholly. You have all the external trappings of happiness: health, beauty, a devoted husband, the most desirable intimates, countless friends, luxurious surroundings, and unlimited affluence. It is for you to put life into all this, it is your duty to recall to it what you miss. You should leave no natural means untried turning to what you propose.’

  ‘My determination is irrevocably taken,’ she said.

  ‘But what do you expect to find in the coffin?’ he queried.

  ‘I have no expectations, not even any anticipations,’ she said. ‘We may find keepsakes of some kind; there cannot be love-letters, for they scarcely separated a day after they met, or an hour after they married. There may be nothing in the coffin. But I am convinced that whatever it does or does not contain, David’s love for Marian is bound up with the closure of that coffin. I believe that if it is opened he will be released from his passion of grief and be free to love me.’

  ‘You mean practically to resort to an incantation, a sort of witchcraft. The notion is altogether unworthy of you, especially while so natural a device as travel remains untried.’

  ‘You do not understand,’ she said, ‘that I feel compelled to do something.’

  ‘Is not going for a cruise doing something?’ he asked.

  ‘Practically doing nothing,’ she replied. ‘Just being with David and watching for the change that never comes. You don’t know how that makes me feel forced to take some action.’

  ‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘because you have not told me.’

  ‘I cannot tell you,’ she said, ‘because I cannot find any words to express what I feel. I could not convey it to you, the loneliness that overwhelms me when I am alone with David. It is worse than being alone; I cannot imagine feeling so lonely lost in a wilderness, solitary in the desert, adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Being with David, as he is, makes me feel’ — her voice sank to a whisper and her face grew pale, her lips gray — ‘oh, it makes me feel as if I were worse than with nobody. It makes me feel as if I were with nothing, with nothing at all.’

  ‘I sympathize with you deeply,’ said Vargas. ‘But all you say only deepens my conviction that your one road to safety lies in striving to overcome these feelings; your best hope is change of scene and travel. Above all let that grave alone.’

  ‘My determination is irrevocably taken,’ she repeated.

  ‘Mrs Llewellyn,’ Vargas asked, ‘how, in your belief, did the writing you saw upon the slate come there?’

  ‘I have no conception at all as to how it came there,’ she replied.

  ‘None at all?’ he probed.

  ‘None definitely,’ she said. ‘Vaguely I suppose I conceive it came there by the power of some consciousness and will beyond our ken.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ he queried, ‘by the intervention of a ghost, or spirit or some such disembodied entity?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted, ‘but I have not thought it out at all.’

  ‘Granted a spirit,’ he suggested, ‘might it not be a malignant sprite, an imp bent on doing you harm, upon entrapping you to your destruction?’

  ‘I don’t credit such an idea for a moment,’ she said. ‘The message has given me hope. Your innuendoes seek to rob me of my hope.’

  ‘I seek to save you,’ Vargas said, ‘to dislodge you from your fortalice of resolve.’

  ‘For the third time,’ she said, ‘I tell you that my determination is irrevocably taken.’

  Vargas awkwardly stood up. He clung to the back of a chair and gazed at her steadily. His, face, from a far-off solemn look of resigned desperation gradually took on an expression of prophetic resolve.

  ‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘if I must shock you. I wish to put to you a question.’

  ‘Put it,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Mrs Llewellyn,’ the clairvoyant asked in a deep, slow voice. ‘Have you kept your marriage vows?’

  ‘Sir,’ she said angrily, rising. ‘You are insulting me.’

  ‘Not a particle,’ he persisted. ‘You have not answered my question.’

  ‘To answer it is superfluous,’ she said, facing him in trembling wrath. ‘Of course I have kept them. You know how utterly I love my husband.’

  ‘You regard your vows as sacred?’ he asked relentlessly.

  ‘Of course,’ she said wearily.

  ‘Why then,’ he demanded, ‘do you attach less sanctity to your verbal compact with your husband? Your duty as a wife is to keep one compact as well as the other. Keep both. Do not be recalcitrant against the terms of your agreement. Endure his indifference and strive patiently to win his love. It is your duty, as much as it is your duty to keep your marriage vows.’

  ‘You assume a rôle,’ she said, ‘very unsuitable for you. Preaching misfits you, and it has no effect on me. I know and feel all this. But there is the plain meaning of that message. I shall open that grave.’

  ‘I have done all I can,’ he said dispiritedly. ‘I cannot dissuade you.’

  ‘You cannot,’ she said.

  ‘How then can I serve you?’ he asked. ‘I have not yet discovered to what I owe the honor of this second visit. Why are you here?’

  ‘I wish you to be present at the opening of the coffin,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sure,’ he demanded, ‘that that would not be most unseemly? The first Mrs Llewellyn, I believe, left no near relatives. But would not even her cousins resent such an intrusion as my presence there? Would not your husband still more resent it? Would it not be in very bad taste?’

  ‘I do not make requests,’ she said, ‘that are in bad taste. As for my husband, he resents and will resent nothing, as he approves and will approve of nothing. My brother will be there and he will not find anything unseemly in your presence.’

  ‘Nevertheless I hesitate to agree,’ said Vargas.

  ‘You have expressed,’ said she, ‘a very deep regard for me, will you not do this since I ask it?’

  ‘I will,’ he said with an effort.

  ‘Then whenever I write you and send a carriage for you, you will be there at the time named?’

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  Sometime before the appointed hour, at that spot where a driveway approached nearest to the Llewellyn monument, Vargas painfully emerged from a closed carriage, the blue shades of which were drawn down. He spoke to some one inside and shut the door. He had taken but two or three hobbling steps, when another carriage closely followed his stopped where his had stopped. Its shades were also drawn down. When its door opened a well dressed man got out. As Vargas had done he spoke to some one inside and closed the door. When he turned Vargas saw a man of usual, very conventional appe
arance, the sort of man visible by scores in fashionable clubs. His build and carriage were those of a man naturally jaunty in his movements. His well-fleshed, healthy face, smooth shaven except for a thick brown mustache, was such a face as lends itself naturally to expressions of good fellowship and joviality. His brown eyes were prone to merriment. But there was no sparkle in them, no geniality in his air, no springiness in his movements. He wore his brown derby a trifle, the merest trifle, to one side, but his expression was careworn, he looked haggard. He had the air of a man used to having his own way, but he held himself now without any elasticity. He looked the deformed clairvoyant up and down with one quick glance, fixed him with a direct gaze as he approached and greeted him with an engaging air of easy politeness, neither stiff nor familiar.

  ‘My name is Palgrave,’ he said, ‘I presume you are Mr Vargas.’

  ‘The same,’ said the clairvoyant, with not a little constraint.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the other holding out his hand and diminishing Vargas’ embarrassment by the heartiness of his handshake. ‘Glad to have a chance for a talk with you. My sister has told me of her visits to you.’

  Vargas controlled his expression, but shot one lightning glance at the other’s face, reading there instantly how much Mrs Llewellyn had told her brother and how much she had not told him.

  There was something very taking about Mr Palgrave’s manner, which put Vargas completely at his ease. It was more than conciliatory, it was almost friendly, almost sympathetic. It not so much expressed readiness to admit to a confidential understanding, as gave the impression of continuing a well-established natural attitude of entire trust and complete comprehension. It had an unmistakable tinge, as unexpected as gratifying, of level esteem and unspoken gratitude.

  There was a rustic seat by the path and by a common impulse both moved toward it. At the clubman’s courteous gesture, the cripple, with his unavoidable wrenching jolt, lowered himself painfully to the level of the bench. Mr Palgrave seated himself beside him, crossed his knees and half turned toward him. He rested his left elbow on the back of the bench. His other hand held his cane, which he tapped against the side of his foot. The waiting carriages, one behind the other, were under a big elm some distance off; their drivers lay on the grass beside them. No one else was in sight except where, rather farther off in another direction, six laborers, their coats off, sat with a superintendent near them, in the shade of a Norway maple, near the Llewellyn monument; which dominated the neighborhood from its low, broad knoll.