Scarcely less easy was it to defend his wearing his twin revolvers even with dinner-dress, for he put on evening-dress for dinner, with the punctiliousness of an Englishman in the wilderness, put it on as often as he dined and yet wore it so naturally and unobtrusively, that no more than the incongruous belt did it embarrass the guests he made at home in any kind of clothes they happened to be wearing. His admirers pointed to this as a kind of exploit, as something of which only a perfectly sane and exceptionally fine man could be capable. They adduced his clear-headed business sense, his excellent judgment on matters pertaining to real estate, his knowledge of horseflesh, his horsemanship, his coolness, skill and exceptional good temper at cards, as cumulative proofs of his perfect sanity. They admitted he was peculiar on one or two points but minimized these as negligible eccentricities. They were ready to descant to any extent on his personal charm, and this indeed all were agreed upon. To attract visitors by good dinners, good liquors, good cigars and endless card playing was easy. To keep his visitors at their ease and entertained for hours with mere conversations while seated on his veranda, was no small feat in itself and a hundred times a feat when their host obtruded upon them the ever visible butts of his big revolvers and kept a repeating rifle standing against each jamb of his front door. This tension of perpetual preparedness for an imminent attack might well have scared away everybody and left Case a hermit. It did nothing of the kind. It was acquiesced in at first, later tacitly accepted and finally ignored altogether. With it was ignored his strange complexion. I had myself puzzled over this: after long groping about in my mind I had realized what it reminded me of, and I found others who agreed with me in respect to it. It was like the paleness one sees for the half of a breath on the face of a strong, healthy man when in sudden alarm, astonishment or horror his blood flows momently back to his heart. Under such stress of unforeseen agitation a normal countenance might exhibit that hue for a fraction of a second, on Case’s visage it was abiding, like the war paint on an armor-clad, drab-gray and dreary. Yet it produced no effect of gloom in his associates. He not only did not put a damper upon high spirits but diffused an atmosphere of gaiety and good fellowship.
And he did so not only in spite of his ever-visible weapons and of his uncanny, somber complexion, but also in spite of the strange and daunting habit of his eyes. I had seen something like it once and again in a frontiersman who knew that his one chance of surviving his enemy was to shoot first and who expected the crucial instant at any moment. I had watched in more than one town the eyes of such an individual scan each man who approached with one swift glance of inquiry, of keen uncertainty dying instantly into temporary relief. Such was the look with which Case invariably met me. It had in it hesitation, doubt, and, as it were, an element of half-conscious approach to alarm. It was as if he said to himself:
‘Is that Radford? It looks like him. If it is Radford, all right. But is it really Radford after all?’
I grew used in time to this lightning scrutiny of me every time he caught sight of me. His other friends grew used to it. But it was the subject of endless talk among us. His eyes had an inexplicable effect on every one. And not the least factor in their mystery was that he bestowed this glance not only upon all men, but upon women, children, animals, birds, even insects. He regarded a robin or a butterfly with the same flash of transient interest which he bestowed upon a horse or a man. And his eyes seemed to keep him cognizant of every moving thing before, behind and above him. Nothing, living which entered his horizon seemed to escape his notice.
Beverly remarked:
‘Case is afrald of something, is always looking for something. But what the devil is it he is looking for? He acts as if lie did not know what to expect and suspected everything.’
Dr Boone said:
‘Case behaves somewhat as if he were suffering from a delusion of persecution. But most of the symptoms are conspicuously absent. I am puzzled like the rest of you.’
The effect upon strangers of this eerie quality of Case’s vision was by no means pleasant. Yet his merest acquaintances soon became used to it and his intimates ceased to notice it at all. His personal charm made it seem a trifle. Night after night his card room was the scene of jollity. His table gathered the most desirable comrades the countryside afforded. Evening after evening his cronies sat in the comfortable wicker chairs on his broad veranda, little Turkish tables bearing decanters and cigars set among them, Colonel Case the center and life of the group.
He talked easily and he talked well. To start him talking of the countries he had seen was not easy, but, once he began, his stories of Egypt and Abyssinia, of Persia and Burmah, of Siam and China were always entertaining. Very seldom, almost never did he tell of his own experiences. Generally he told of having heard from others the tales he repeated, even when he spoke so that we suspected him of telling events in which he had taken part.
It was impossible to pin him down to a date, almost as hard to elicit the definite name of a locality. He gave minute particulars of incidents and customs, but dealt in generalities as to place and time. Especially he was strong in local superstitions and beliefs.
He told countless tales, all good, of crocodiles and ichneumons in Egypt, gazelles and ghouls in Persia, elephants and tigers in Burmah, deer and monkeys in Siam, badgers and foxes in China and sorcerers and enchanters anywhere. He spoke of the last two in as matter-of-fact a tone as of any of the others.
He told legends of the contests of various Chinese sages and saints, with magicians and wizards; of the malice and wiles of these wicked practitioners of somber arts; of the sort of super-sense developed by the adepts, their foes, enabling them to tell of the approach or presence of a sorcerer whatever disguise he assumed, even if he had the power of making himself invisible.
Several legendary anecdotes turned on this point of the invisibility of the wicked enemy and the prescience of his intended victim.
One was of a holy man said to have lived in Singan Fu about the time of the crusades. Knowing that he was threatened with the vengeance of a wizard, he provided himself with a sword entirely of silver, since the flesh of a wizard was considered proof against all baser metals. He likewise had at hand a quantity of the ashes of a sacred tree.
While seated in his study he felt an inimical presence. He snatched up his silver blade, stood upon the defensive and shouted a signal previously agreed upon. Hearing it his servants locked the doors of the house and rushed in with boxes of the sacred ashes. Scattering it on the floor, they could see on the fresh ashes the footsteps of the wizard. One of the servants, according to his master’s instructions, had brought a live fowl. Slicing off its head he waved the spouting neck towards the air over the footprints. According to Chinese belief fowls’ blood has the magical property of disclosing anyone invisible through incantation. In fact where the blood drops fell upon the wizard, they remained visible, there appeared a gory eye and cheek. Slashing at his revealed enemy the sage slew him with the silver sword, after which his body was with all speed burned to ashes. This was the invariable ending of all his similar tales.
Stories like this Case delighted in, but beyond this penchant for the weird and occult, for even childish tales of distant lands, his conversation in general showed no sign of peculiarity or eccentricity. Only once or twice did he startle us. Some visitors to town were among the gathering on his veranda and fell into a discussion of the contrasting qualities of Northerners and Southerners. Inevitably the discussion degenerated into a rather acrimonious and petty citation of all the weak points of each section and a rehash of all the stale sneers at either. The wordy Alabamian who led one side of the altercation descanted on the necessary and inherited vileness of the descendants of the men who burnt the Salem witches. Case had been listening silently. Then he cut in with an emphatic, trenchant directness unusual to him.
‘Witches,’ he announced, ‘ought to be burnt always and everywhere.’
We sat a moment startled and mute.
&nb
sp; The Alabamian spoke first.
‘Do you believe in witches, Sir?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ Case affirmed.
‘Ever been bewitched?’ the Alabamian queried. He was rather young and dogmatically assertive.
‘Do you believe in Asiatic cholera?’ Case queried in his turn.’
‘Certainly, Sir,’ the Alabamian asserted.
‘Ever had it?’ Case inquired meaningly.
‘No,’ the Alabamian admitted. ‘No, Sir, never.’
‘Ever had yellow fever?’ Case questioned him.
‘Never, Sir, thank God,’ the Alabamian replied fervently.
‘Yet I’ll bet,’ Case hammered at him, ‘that you would be among the first to join a shot-gun quarantine if an epidemic broke out within a hundred miles of you. You have never had it, but you believe in it with every fiber of your being.
‘That’s just the way with me. I’ve never been bewitched, but I believe in witchcraft. Belief in witchcraft is like faith in any one of a dozen fashionable religions, not a subject for argument or proof, but a habit of mind. That’s my habit of mind. I won’t discuss it, but I’ve no hesitation about asserting it.
‘Witchcraft is like leprosy, both spread among nations indifferent to them, both disappear before unflinching severity. The horror of both among our ancestors abolished both in Europe and kept them from gaining a foothold in this country. Both exist and flourish in other corners of the world, along with other things undreamed of in some complacent philosophies. Leprosy can be repressed only by isolation, the only thing that will abolish witchcraft is fire, fire Sir.’
That finished that discussion. No one said another word on the subject. But it started a round of debates on Case’s mental condition, which ran on for days, everywhere except at Case’s house, and which brought up all that could be said about personal aloofness, pensioned dogs, exposed revolvers and pig-skin belts.
V
The mellow fall merged into Indian Summer. The days were short and the afternoons chill. The weather did not permit the evening gatherings on Case’s veranda. No more did it allow Mary Kenton to sit in her rocker between the two left-hand columns of the big white portico. Yet it was both noticeable and noticed that she never failed to step out upon that portico, no matter what the weather, each afternoon; that in the twilight or in the late dusk the wave of her hand and the sweep of the horseman’s big, broad-brimmed felt hat answered each other unfailingly.
The coterie of Case’s chums, friends and hangers-on gathered then mostly around the generous log-fire in his ample drawing-room, when they were not in the card-room, the billiard-room or at table. I made one of that coterie frequently and enjoyed my hours there with undiminished zest. When I dined there I habitually occupied the foot of the long table, facing Case at the head. The hall door of the dining-room was just at my right hand.
One evening in early December I was so seated at the foot of the table. The weather had been barely coolish for some days, the skies had been clear and everything was dry. That night was particularly mild. We had sat down rather early and it was not yet seven o’clock when Pompey began to pass the cigars. No one had yet lit up. Some one had asked Case a question and the table was still listening for his answer. I, like the rest, was looking at him. Then it all happened in a tenth, in a hundredth of the time necessary to tell it; so quickly that, except Case, no one had time to move a muscle.
Case’s eyes were on his questioner. I did not see the door open, but I saw his gaze shift to the door, saw his habitual glance of startled uncertainty. But instead of the lightning query of his eyes softening into relief and indifference, it hardened instantaneously into decision. I saw his hand go to his holster, saw the revolver leap out, saw the aim, saw his face change, heard his explosive exclamation:
‘Good God, it is!’ saw the muzzle kick up as the report crushed our ear drums and through the smoke saw him push back his chair and spring up.
The rest of us were all too dazed to try to stand. Like me they all looked toward the door.
There stood Mary Kenton, all in pink, a pink silk opera cloak half off her white shoulders, a single strand of pale coral round her slender throat, a pink pompom In her glossy hair. She was standing as calmly as if nothing had happened, her arms hidden in the cloak, her right hand holding it together in front. Her rings sparkled on her fingers as her breast-pin sparkled on her low corsage.
‘Cousin Cassius,’ she said, ‘you have a theatrical way of receiving unexpected, visitors,’
‘Good God, Mary,’ he said. ‘It is really you. I saw it was really you Just in time.’
‘Of course it is really I,’ she retorted. ‘Whom or what did you think it really was?’
‘Not you,’ he answered thickly. ‘Not you.’
His voice died away.
‘Now you know it is really I,’ she said crisply, ‘you might at least offer me a chair.’
At that the spell of our amazement left us and we all sprang to our feet.
She seated herself placidly to the right of the fireplace.
‘I hear your port is excellent,’ she said laughingly.
Before Case could hand her the glass she wavered a little in the chair, but a mere swallow revived her.
‘I had not anticipated,’ she said, ‘so startling a reception.’
We stood about in awkward silence.
‘Pray ask your guests to be seated, Cousin Cassius,’ she begged. ‘I did not mean to disturb your gaiety.’
We took our chairs, but those on her side of the table were turned outward toward the fireplace, where Case stood facing her.
‘I owe you an explanation,’ she said easily. ‘Milly Wilberforce is staying with me and she bet me a box of Maillard’s that I would not pay you a call. As I never take a dare, as the weather is fine, and as we have all your guests for chaperons, I thought a brief call between cousins could do no harm.’
‘It has not,’ said Case fervently; ‘but it very nearly did. And now will you let me escort you home? The Judge will be anxious about you.’
‘Papa doesn’t know I am here, of course,’ she said. ‘When he finds out, I’ll quiet him. If you won’t come to see me, at least I have once come to see you.’
Case held the door wide for her, shut it behind him, and left us staring at the bullet hole in the door frame.
One morning of the following spring Case was driving me townward from Shelby Manor, when, not a hundred feet in front of us, Mary Kenton’s buggy entered the pike from a cross-road. As it turned, mare, vehicle and all went over sideways with a terrific crash. Mary must have fallen clear for the next instant she was at the mare’s head.
Case did succeed in holding his fiery colts and in pulling them to a stand-still alongside the wreck, but it was all even he could do. I jumped out, meaning to take the colts’ bits and let Case help Mary. But she greeted me imperiously.
‘Cousin Jack, please come sit on Bonnie’s head.’
I took charge of Bonnie in my own fashion and she stood up entirely unhurt.
‘How on earth did you come to do it, Mary?’ Colonel Case wondered, for she was a perfect horse-woman.
‘Accidents will happen,’ she answered lightly, ‘and I am glad of this one. You have really spoken to me, and that is worth a hundred smashes.’
‘But I wrote to you,’ he protested. ‘I wrote to you and explained.’
‘One letter,’ she sniffed contemptuously. ‘You should have kept on, you silly man, I might have answered the fifth or sixth or even the second.’
He stared at her and no wonder for she was fascinatingly coquettish.
‘I don’t mind Jack a bit, you know,’ she went on. ‘Jack is my loyal knight and unfailing partisan. He keeps my secrets and does everything I ask of him. For instance, he will not demur an atom now when I ask him to throw Bonnie’s harness into the buggy and ride her to town for me.
‘You see,’ she smiled at him dazzlingly, ‘another advantage of my upset is that the buggy is so smas
hed that you cannot decently refuse to drive me home.’
‘But Mary,’ he protested, ‘I explained fully to you.’
‘You didn’t really expect me to believe all that fol-de-rol?’ she cried. ‘Suppose I did, I don’t see any dwergs around, and if all Malebolge were in plain sight I’d make you take me anyhow.’
Inevitably he did, but that afternoon their daily ceremony of hand-wave from the portico and hat-wave from horseback was resumed and was continued as their sole intercourse.
VI
It was full midsummer when a circus came to Brexington. Case and I started for a ride together on the afternoon of its arrival, passed the tents already raised and met the procession on its way through town from the freight yard of the railroad. We pulled our horses to one side of the street and sat watching the show.
There were Cossacks and cowboys, Mexican vaqueros and Indians on mustangs. There were two elephants, a giraffe, and then some camels which set our mounts snorting and swerving about. Then came the cages, one of monkeys, another of parrots, cockatoos and macaws, others with wolves, bears, hyenas, a lion, a lioness, a tiger, and a beautiful leopard.
Case made a movement and I heard a click. I looked round and beheld him with his revolver cocked and pointed at the leopard’s cage. He did not fire but kept the pistol aimed at the cage until it was out of range. Then he thrust it back into its holster and watched the fag-end of the procession go by. All he said was:
‘You will have to excuse me, Radford, I have urgent business at home.’
Towards dusk Cato came to me in great agitation.
‘Mahs’r Cash done gone off’n he haid,’ he delared. ‘He shuah done loss he sainsus.’ I told him to return home and I would stroll up there casually.
I found Case in the woodshed, uncle Rastus with him. Hung by the hind legs like new-slaughtered hogs were a dozen of the biggest dogs of which Rastus had had charge. Their throats were cut and each dripped into a tin pail. Rastus, his ebony face paled to a sort of mud-gray, held a large tin pail and a new white-washer’s brush.
The Stuff of Dreams: The Weird Stories of Edward Lucas White (Dover Horror Classics) Page 13