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

by Edward Lucas White

  ‘Under the afternoon sun I saw the green meadow, the white curve of bones, the rotting corpses, the pink slab, the feathered sirens, their sweet serene faces uplifted, singing on in a rapt trance.

  ‘I took but one look. I fled. The whale-boat passed the outlet of the lagoon. North by east I steered.

  ‘Parts of the Indian Ocean are almost free of storms. The atoll was apparently in one of those parts. I soon passed out of it. Three storms blew me about, I lost my dead-reckoning, I lost count of the days. Between the storms I lashed the tiller amidships, double-reefed the sail and slept as I needed sleep. Through the storms I bailed furiously, the whale-boat riding at a sea-anchor of oars and sails. I had been at sea alone for all of twenty-one days when I was rescued, not three hundred miles from Ceylon, by a tramp steamer out of Colombo bound for Adelaide.’

  Here he broke off, stood up and for the rest of the watch maintained his sentry-go by the break of the poop.

  Next day we towed into the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, then still the capital of an Empire, and mildly enthusiastic for Dom Pedro. I hastened to go ashore. When my boat was ready the deaf mate was forward, superintending the scaling of the hatches.

  After some days of discomfort at the Hotel des Etrangers and of worse at Young’s Hotel I found a harborage with five jolly bachelors housekeeping in a delightful villa up on Rua dos Jonquillos on Santa Theresa. The Nipsic was in the harbor and I thought I knew a lieutenant on her and went off one day to visit her. After my visit my boatman landed me at the Red Steps. As I trod up the steps a man came down. He was English all over, irreproachably shod, trousered, coated, gloved, hatted and monocled. Behind him two porters carried big, new portmanteaux. I recognized the man whom I had known as John Wilson of Liverpool, second mate of the Medorus, the man who had seen the Sirens.

  Not only did I recognize him, but he recognized me. He gave me no far off British stare. His eyes lit, even the monocled eye. He held out his hand.

  ‘I am going home,’ he said, nodding toward a steamer at anchor, ‘I am glad we met. I enjoyed our talks. Perhaps we may meet again.’

  He shook hands without any more words. I stood at the top of the steps and watched his boat put off, watched it as it receded. As I watched a bit of paper on a lower step caught my eye. I went down and picked it up. It was an empty envelope, with an English stamp and postmark, addressed:

  GEOFFREY CECIL, ESQ.

  c.o. SWANWICK & CO.,

  54 Rua de Alfandega,

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

  I looked after the distant boat. I could barely make him out as he sat in the stern. I never saw him again.

  Naturally I asked every Englishman I ever met if he had ever heard of a deaf man named Geoffrey Cecil. For more than ten years I elicited no response. Then at lunch, in the Hotel Victoria at Interlaken, I happened to be seated opposite a stout, elderly Briton. He perceived that I was an American and became affable and agreeable. I never saw him after that lunch and never learned his name. But through our brief meal together we conversed freely.

  At a suitable opportunity I put my usual query.

  ‘Geoffrey Cecil?’ he said. ‘Deaf Geoffrey Cecil? Of course I know of him. Knew him too. He was or is Earl of Aldersmere!’

  ‘Was or is?’ I queried.

  ‘It was this way,’ my interlocutor explained. ‘The ninth Earl of Aldersmere had three sons. All predeceased him and each left one son. Geoffrey was the heir. He had wanted to go into the Navy, but his deafness cut him off from that. When he quarreled with his father he naturally ran away to sea. Track of him was lost. He was supposed dead. That was years before his father’s death. When his father died nothing had been heard of him for ten years. But when his grandfather died and his cousin Roger supposed himself Earl, some firm of solicitors interposed, claiming that Geoffrey was alive. That was in 1885. It was a full six months before Geoffrey turned up. Roger was no end disappointed. Geoffrey paid no attention to anything but buying or chartering a steam-yacht. She sailed as soon as possible, passed the canal, touched at Aden, and has never been heard of since. That was nine years ago.’

  ‘Is Roger Cecil alive?’ I asked.

  ‘Very much alive,’ affirmed my informant.

  ‘You may tell him from me,’ I declared, ‘that he is now the Eleventh Earl of Aldersmere.’

  The Picture Puzzle

  I

  OF COURSE the instinct of the police and detectives was to run down their game. That was natural. They seemed astonished and contemptuous when I urged that all I wanted was my baby; whether the kidnappers were ever caught or not made no difference to me. They kept arguing that unless precautions were taken the criminals would escape and I kept arguing that if they became suspicious of a trap they would keep away and my only chance to recover our little girl would be gone forever. They finally agreed and I believe they kept their promise to me. Helen always felt the other way and maintained that their watchers frightened off whoever was to meet me. Anyhow I waited in vain, waited for hours, waited again the next day and the next and the next. We put advertisements in countless papers, offering rewards and immunity, but never heard anything more.

  I pulled myself together in a sort of a way and tried to do my work. My partner and clerks were very kind. I don’t believe I ever did anything properly in those days, but no one ever brought any blunder to my attention. If they came across any they set it right for me. And at the office it was not so bad. Trying to work was good for me. It was worse at home and worse at night. I slept hardly at all.

  Helen, if possible, slept less than I. And she had terrible spasms of sobs that shook the bed. She would try to choke them down, thinking I was asleep and she might wake me. But she never went through a night without at least one frightful paroxysm of tears.

  In the daylight she controlled herself better, made a heart-breaking and yet heart-warming effort at her normal cheeriness over the breakfast things, and greeted me beautifully when I came home. But the moment we were alone for the evening she would break down.

  I don’t know how many days that sort of thing kept up. I sympathized in silence. It was Helen herself who suggested that we must force ourselves to be diverted somehow. The theatre was out of the question. Not merely the sight of a four-year-old girl with yellow locks threw Helen into a passion of uncontrollable sobbing, but all sorts of unexpected trifles reminded her of Amy and affected her almost as much. Confined to our home we tried cards, chess and everything else we could think of. They helped her as little as they helped me.

  Then one afternoon Helen did not come to greet me. Instead as I came in I heard her call, quite in her natural voice.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad that is you. Come and help me.’

  I found her seated at the library table, her back to the door. She had on a pink wrapper and her shoulders had no despondent droop, but a girlish altertness. She barely turned her head as I entered, but her profile showed no signs of recent weeping. Her face was its natural color.

  ‘Come and help me,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t find the other piece of the boat.’

  She was absorbed, positively absorbed in a picture puzzle.

  In forty seconds I was absorbed too. It must have been six minutes before we identified the last piece of the boat. And then we went on with the sky and were still at it when the butler announced dinner.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ I asked, over the soup, which Helen really ate.

  ‘Mrs Allstone brought it,’ Helen replied, ‘just before lunch.’

  I blessed Mrs Allstone.

  Really it seems absurd, but those idiotic jig-saw puzzles were our salvation. They actually took our minds off everything else. At first I dreaded finishing one. No sooner was the last piece in place than I felt a sudden revulsion, a booming of blood in my ears, and the sense of loss and misery rushed over me like a wave of scalding water. And I knew it was worse for Helen.

  But after some days each seemed not merely a respite from pain, but a sedative as well. After a two
hours’ struggle with a fascinating tangle of shapes and colors, we seemed numb to our bereavement and the bitterness of the smart seemed blunted.

  We grew fastidious as to manufacture and finish; learned to avoid crude and clumsy products as bores; developed a pronounced taste for pictures neither too soft nor too plain in color-masses; and became connoisseurs as to cutting, utterly above the obvious and entirely disenchanted with the painfully difficult. We evolved into adepts, quick to recoil from fragments barren of any clue of shape or markings and equally prompt to reject those whose meaning was too definite and insistent. We trod delicately the middle way among segments not one of which was without some clue of outline or tint, and not one of which imparted its message without interrogation, inference and reflection.

  Helen used to time herself and try the same puzzle over and over on successive days until she could do it in less than half an hour. She declared that a really good puzzle was interesting the fourth or fifth time and that an especially fine puzzle was diverting if turned face down and put together from the shapes merely, after it had been well learned the other way. I did not enter into the craze to that extent, but sometimes tried her methods for variety.

  We really slept, and Helen, though worn and thin, was not abject, not agonized. Her nights passed, if not wholly without tears, yet with only those soft and silent tears, which are more a relief than suffering. With me she was nearly her old self and very brave and patient. She greeted me naturally and we seemed able to go on living.

  Then one day she was not at the door to welcome me. I had hardly shut it before I heard her sobbing. I found her again at the library table and over a puzzle. But this time she had just finished it and was bowed over it on the table, shaken all over by her grief.

  She lifted her head from her crossed arms, pointed and buried her face in her hands. I understood. The picture I remembered from a magazine of the year before: a Christmas tree with a bevy of children about it and one (we had remarked it at the time) a perfect likeness of our Amy.

  As she rocked back and forth, her hands over her eyes, I swept the pieces into their box and put on the lid.

  Presently Helen dried her eyes and looked at the table.

  ‘Oh! why did you touch it,’ she wailed. ‘It was such a comfort to me.’

  ‘You did not seem comforted,’ I retorted. ‘I thought the contrast . . .’ I stopped.

  ‘You mean the contrast between the Christmas we expected and the Christmas we are going to have?’ she queried. ‘You mean you thought that was too much for me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘It wasn’t that at all,’ she averred. ‘I was crying for joy. That picture was a sign.’

  ‘A sign?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ she declared, ‘a sign that we shall get her back in time for Christmas. I’m going to start and get ready right away.’

  At first I was glad of the diversion. Helen had the nursery put in order as if she expected Amy the next day, hauled over all the child’s clothes and was in a bustling state of happy expectancy. She went vigorously about her preparation for a Christmas celebration, planned a Christmas Eve dinner for our brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives, and a children’s party afterwards with a big tree and a profusion of goodies and gifts.

  ‘You see,’ she explained, ‘everyone will want their own Christmas at home. So shall we, for we’ll just want to gloat over Amy all day. We won’t want them on Christmas any more than they’ll want us. But this way we can all be together and celebrate and rejoice over our good luck.’

  She was as elated and convinced as if it was a certainty. For a while her occupation with preparations was good for her, but she was so forehanded that she was ready a week ahead of time and had not a detail left to arrange. I dreaded a reaction, but her artificial exaltation continued unabated. All the more I feared the inevitable disappointment and was genuinely concerned for her reason. The fixed idea that that accidental coincidence was a prophecy and a guarantee dominated her totally. I was really afraid that the shock of the reality might kill her. I did not want to dissipate her happy delusion, but I could not but try to prepare her for the certain blow. I talked cautiously in wide circles around what I wanted and I did not want to say.

  II

  On December 22nd, I came home early, just after lunch, in fact. Helen met me, at the door, with such a demeanor of suppressed high spirits, happy secrecy and tingling anticipation that for one moment I was certain Amy had been found and was then in the house.

  ‘I’ve something wonderful to show you,’ Helen declared, and led me to the library.

  There on the table was a picture-puzzle fitted together.

  She stood and pointed to it with the air of exhibiting a marvel.

  I looked at it but could not conjecture the cause of her excitement. The pieces seemed too large, too clumsy and too uniform in outline. It looked a crude and clumsy puzzle, beneath her notice.

  ‘Why did you buy it?’ I asked.

  ‘I met a peddler on the street,’ she answered, ‘and he was so wretched-looking, I was sorry for him. He was young and thin and looked haggard and consumptive. I looked at him and I suppose I showed my feelings. He said:

  ‘Lady, buy a puzzle. It will help you to your heart’s desire.’

  ‘His words were so odd I bought it, and now just look at what it is.’

  I was groping for some foothold upon which to rally my thoughts.

  ‘Let me see the box in which it came,’ I asked.

  She produced it and I read on the top.

  ‘GUGGENHEIM’S DOUBLE PICTURE

  PUZZLE.

  TWO IN ONE.

  MOST FOR THE MONEY.

  ASK FOR GUGGENHEIM’S’

  And on the end—

  ‘ASTRAY.

  A BREATH OF AIR.

  50 CENTS.’

  ‘It’s queer,’ Helen remarked. ‘But it is not a double puzzle at all, though the pieces have the same paper on both sides. One side is blank. I suppose this is ASTRAY. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Astray?’ I queried, puzzled.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, in a disappointed, disheartened, almost querulous tone. ‘I thought you would be so much struck with the resemblance. You don’t seem to notice it at all. Why even the dress is identical!’

  ‘The dress?’ I repeated. ‘How many times have you done this?’

  ‘Only this once,’ she said. ‘I had just finished it when I heard your key in the lock.’

  ‘I should have thought,’ I commented, ‘that it would have been more interesting to do it face up first.’

  ‘Face up!’ She cried. ‘It is face up.’

  Her air of scornful superiority completely shook me out of my sedulous consideration of a moment before.

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘that’s the back of the puzzle. There are no colors there. It’s all pink.’

  ‘Pink!’ she exclaimed pointing. ‘Do you call that pink!’

  ‘Certainly it’s pink,’ I asserted.

  ‘Don’t you see there the white of the old man’s beard,’ she queried, pointing again. ‘And there the black of his boots? And there the red of the little girl’s dress?’

  ‘No,’ I declared. ‘I don’t see anything of the kind. It’s all pink. There isn’t any picture there at all.’

  ‘No picture!’ she cried. ‘Don’t you see the old man leading the child by the hand?’

  ‘No,’ I said harshly, ‘I don’t see any picture and you know I don’t. There isn’t any picture there. I can’t make out what you are driving at. It seems a senseless joke.’

  ‘Joke! I joke!’ Helen half whispered. The tears came into her eyes.

  ‘You are cruel,’ she said, ‘and I thought you would be struck by the resemblance.’

  I was overwhelmed by a pang of self-reproach, solicitude and terror.

  ‘Resemblance to what?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Can’t you see it?’ she insisted.

  ‘Tell me,’ I pleaded. ‘Show me
just what you want me to notice most.’

  ‘The child,’ she said pointing, ‘is just exactly Amy and the dress is the very red suit she had on when—’

  ‘Dear,’ I said, ‘try to collect yourself. Indeed you only imagine what you tell me. There is no picture on this side of the sections. The whole thing is pink. That is the back of the puzzle.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can say such a thing,’ she raged at me. ‘I can’t make out why you should. What sort of a test are you putting me through? What does it all mean?’

  ‘Will you let me prove to you that this is the back of the puzzle?’ I asked.

  ‘If you can,’ she said shortly.

  I turned the pieces of the puzzle over, keeping them together as much as possible. I succeeded pretty well with the outer pieces and soon had the rectangle in place. The inner pieces were a good deal mixed up, but even before I had fitted them I exclaimed:

  ‘There look at that!’

  ‘Well,’ she asked. ‘What do you expect me to see?’

  ‘What do you see?’ I asked in turn.

  ‘I see the back of a puzzle,’ she answered.

  ‘Don’t you see those front steps?’ I demanded,pointing

  ‘I don’t see anything,’ she asserted, ‘except green.’

  ‘Do you call that green?’ I queried pointing.

  ‘I do,’ she declared.

  ‘Don’t you see the brickwork front of the house?’ I insisted, ‘and the lower part of a window and part of a door. Yes and those front-steps in the corner?’

  ‘I don’t see anything of the kind,’ she asseverated. ‘Any more than you do. What I see is just what you see. It’s the back of the puzzle, all pale green.’

  I had been feverishly putting together the last pieces as she spoke. I could not believe my eyes and, as the last piece fitted in, was struck with amazement.

  The picture showed an old red-brick house, with brown blinds, all open. The top of the front steps was included in the lower right hand corner, most of the front door above them, all of one window on its level, and the side of another. Above appeared all of one of the second floor windows, and parts of those to right and left of it. The other windows were closed, but the sash of the middle one was raised and from it leaned a little girl, a child with frowzy hair, a dirty face and wearing a blue and white cheek frock. The child was a perfect likeness of our lost Amy, supposing she had been starved and neglected. I was so affected that I was afraid I should faint. I was positively husky when I asked: