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

by Edward Lucas White

  ‘Not a bruise on me, as far as I know.’ I replied.

  ‘Then,’ he laughed, ‘my prescription is two hours abed. Get undressed and horizontal and stay so till you really feel like getting up. And not more than one nip of Pembroke’s guest-brandy, either. Get flat with no unnecessary delay and sleep if you can.’

  As we went on I noted that neither Radnor close by nor Mrs Radnor on the veranda seemed aware of anything remarkable in Pembroke’s attire; they must be habituated by him to it or to similar or even more fantastic raiment.

  We appeared to walk the length or width of the village, to the villa farthest from the beach. As we entered I had a glimpse on one hand of a parlor with an ample round center-table, inviting armchairs and walls lined with bookcases, through whose doors I espied some handsome bindings; on the other hand of a cozy dining-room with a polished table and beyond it a sideboard loaded with silverware and decorated porcelain.

  By the newel-post of the broad, easy stair stood a paragon of a Chinese butler.

  ‘Wu,’ said Pembroke, ‘Mr Denbigh is to occupy this house. Show him to his bedroom and call Fong. Mr Denbigh needs him at once. And tell Fong that Mr Denbigh has lost all his baggage and needs a change of clothes promptly.’

  Without any sudden movement or appearance of haste, without a word, he turned and was out of the villa and away before I could speak.

  I found myself domiciled in an abode delightfully situated, each outlook a charming picture, and inside admirably designed and lavishly provided with every imaginable comfort and luxury. The servants were all Chinese. One took care of the lawn, flowers and shrubberies, another swept the rooms; there was an unsurpassable Chinese cook, whom I never saw, and something I heard made me infer that he had a helper. I had at my beck a Chinese valet, a Chinese errand-boy and the deferential butler, who managed the house and anticipated my every want.

  Except for frequent baths I think I slept most of the ensuing forty-eight hours. What I swallowed I took in bed. My second breakfast on the island I ate in the dainty, exquisitely appointed dining-room. After that I had energy enough to loll in one of the rattan lounging-chairs on the veranda, comfortably clad in neat, cool, well-cut, well-fitting garments chosen from the amazing abundance which Fong had ready for me, how so exactly suitable for me I could not conjecture. I had not been long on the veranda when Radnor strolled by, whistling ‘The Carnival of Venice.’ He came up and joined me. Early in our chat he said:

  ‘Probably you will be unable to refrain from asking questions; but I fancy that I shall feel at liberty to answer very few of your queries. Nearly everything I know about this island and about happenings on it I have learned not as a mere man or as a mere dweller here, but as Pembroke’s resident physician; it is all confidential. Most of what you learn here you’ll have to absorb by observation and inference. And I don’t mind telling you that the less you learn the better will Pembroke be pleased, and I likewise.’

  He did tell me that the villas were tenanted chiefly by the members of Pembroke’s private orchestra and band, mostly Hungarians, Bohemians, Poles and Italians, with such other satellites as a sculptor, an architect, an engineer, a machinist, a head carpenter, a tailor and an accountant. The other village was populated entirely by Asiatics, Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos, and others; who performed all the labor of the island.

  The next morning. about the same time, as I was similarly lounging on my veranda, Pembroke appeared, in the same bizarre attire, or lack of attire, in which I had previously seen him. He sat with me a half hour or so, asked courteously after my health and comfort and remarked:

  ‘I am glad you feel contented: you’ll probably abide here some time.’

  I said nothing. He glanced away from me, up under the edge of the veranda roof through the overarching boughs. My eyes followed his. I caught glints of pink from far-off flamingoes.

  ‘Glorious, birds!’ Pembroke exclaimed, rapturously. ‘They nest on several of the low outlying keys, which, with the coral-reefs scattered between them, make it impossible for any craft bigger than a cat-boat to approach this side of the island. They have multiplied amazingly since I began shepherding them. I love them! I glory in them!’

  At the word he left me, as abruptly and swiftly as after our first encounter.

  Thereafter, for some weeks of what I can describe only as luxuriously comfortable and very pleasant captivity, I diverted myself by reading the very well-chosen and varied books of the villa’s fairly large library, by getting acquainted with the inhabitants of the other villas, and by roaming about the lower part of the valley. The very evening of our chat Radnor had invited me to dinner, for which Fong fitted me out irreproachably, and at which I found Mrs Radnor charming and the other guests, Conway the architect, and his wife and sister, very agreeable companions. After that I was a guest at dinner at one or another of the villas each evening, so that I lunched and breakfasted alone at my abode, but never dined there.

  Once only I inspected the other village and found its neatness and the apparent contentment of its inhabitants, especially the women and children, very charming. But I seemed to divine that they felt the presence of a European or American as an intrusion: I avoided the village thereafter.

  Some of the men of that village tended the trees, shrubberies, vines and gardens of the valley, and kept it a paradise, luxuriant with every sort of fruit and vegetable which could be grown in that soil and climate.

  I saw nothing more of Pembroke and found that I could not approach his palace on the hill-top, for there was an extremely adequate steel fence of tall L-irons, sharp at the top, across the valley and down to the beach beyond either village, which barrier was patrolled by heavily-built, muscular guards, seemingly Scotch and not visibly armed, who respectfully intimated that no one passed any of its gates or along either beach, without Mr Pembroke’s express permit. Very seldom did I so much as catch a glimpse of Pembroke on the terraces of his palace, but I did see on them knots, even bevies, of women whose outlines, even at that distance, suggested that they were young and personable, certainly that they were gayly clad in bright-colored silks. Near or with them I saw no man, excepting Asiatic servitors, and Pembroke himself, who powerfully suggested an oriental despot among his sultanas.

  By the inadvertent utterance of some one, I forget whom, I learned that the guards had a cantonment or barrack on the other side of the island.

  I enjoyed rambling about the valley, as far as I was permitted, for both the variety and the beauty of its products were amazing

  Still more amazing to me was the number of ever-flowing ornamental fountains. The Bahamas are proverbially hampered by scanty water supply. But here I found, apparently, a superabundance of clear, pure, drinkable water. There was a fountain near the village, where a seated bronze figure, seemingly of some Asiatic god or saint unknown to me, held in each hand a great serpent grasped by its throat, and from the open mouth of each snake poured a spout of water into the basin before the statue. There were other fountains, each with a figure or group of figures of bronze, in the formal garden by the village of villas. And beyond it, set against the scooped-out flank of one of the range of enclosing hills, was a huge concrete edifice of basins and outstanding groups of statuary and statues and groups in niches, more or less reminiscent of the Fountain of Trevi. I was dumbfounded at the flow of water from this extravagantly ornate and overloaded structure. There were many jets squirting so as to cross each other in the air, even to interlace, as it were. But midway of the whole construction, behind the middle basin, was a sort of grotto with, centrally, an open entrance like a low doorway or manhole, on either side of which were two larger apertures like low latticed windows, filled in with elaborately patterned bronze gratings, through the lower part of which flowed two streams of water as copious as brooks, which cascaded into the main basin.

  Beyond this rococco fountain was a plot of ground enclosed by a hedge, serving as garden for a tiny cottage of one low story. In it lived an old Welsh woman, sp
oken of by the inhabitants of the village as ‘Mother Bevan.’ She always wore the hideous Welsh national costume and hobbled about leaning on a stout malacca walking-stick with an ivory cross-head tipped with gold bosses. She cared for and delighted in a numerous flock of snow-white geese which somehow seemed thriving in this, one would suppose, for them far too tropical climate. Among them was a large and very handsome gander, which reminded me of my childhood’s pet. The flock spent much of its time swimming and splashing in the basins of the enormous grotto-fountain.

  When I asked Radnor about the abundance of water and its apparent waste, he said:

  ‘No mystery there nor any secrets. Pembroke could spend anything he pleased on wildcat artesian drilling and had the perverse luck to strike a generous flow just as his drillers were about to tell him that no humanly constructed implements could drill any deeper. It’s no spouting well, though, and a less opulent proprietor than Pembroke could not afford to pump it as he does. The power-station is on the other side of the island, near the harbor. It uses oil fuel of some kind. There is never any stint of water for any use and the surplus is made to do ornamental duty, as you see.’

  I was interested in the old Welsh woman and in her tiny cottage, so oddly discordant with the Italianate concrete fountain near it and the spacious villas not far off. Except the Asiatics of the village and the barrier-guards I had found affable every dweller on the island; most of them sociable. I accosted the grotesque old crone, as she leaned over her gate and discovered in her the unexpected pecullarity that all her answers were in rhyming lines, rather cleverly versified, which she uttered, indeed, slowly, in a measured voice, but without the slightest symptom of hesitation. Her demeanor was distinctly forbidding and her words by no means conciliatory. I recall only one of her doggerels, which ended our first interview:

  ‘Man fallen out of the sky.

  ‘God never intended us to fly.

  ‘It’s impious to ascend so high.

  ‘’Twas wicked of you ever to try.

  ‘No lover of reprobates am I.’

  Except for this queer old creature I encountered no unfriendly word or look from any of my neighbors. I enjoyed the dinners to which I was invited and liked my fellow-guests at them; indeed I disliked no one with whom I talked; but, on the other hand, I was attracted to no one, and, while I felt entirely welcome wherever I was invited and altogether at my ease, and pleased to be invited again later, at no household did I feel free to drop in at odd times for casual chat. I found many congenial fellow-diners, but no one increasingly congenial, no one who impressed me as likely to be glad to have me call uninvited.

  Therefore, as I always loved the open air, as I somehow felt lonely on my own veranda and nowhere intimate enough to lounge on any other, I took to spending many hours of the mornings, before the heat of the midday grew intense, out in the shade of the little park, to which I was attracted by many of its charming features, especially by the pink masses of flowering bougainvillea here and there through it. I always carried a book, sometimes I read, oftener I merely gazed about at the enchanting vistas, overhead at the uncountable flamingoes, or between the trees out to seaward at the dazzling white heaps of billowy cumulus clouds, like titanic snow-clad mountains, bulging and growing on the towering thunder-heads forming against the vivid blue sky out over the ocean.

  I think it was on my second morning in the park that I caught a glimpse of Mother Bevan crossing a path at some distance. Later I caught other glimpses of her crossing other paths. Each morning I caught similar glimpses of her. On the fifth or sixth morning I suddenly became conscious of an inward impression that she was, again and again, making the circuit of the park, circling about me as it were, like a witch weaving a spell about an intended victim.

  Next morning I affected an absorption in my book and kept an alert, and I was certain, an imperceptible watch in all directions. I made sure that Mother Bevan was indeed perambulating the outer portions of the park, stumping along, leaning heavily on her cross-headed cane, and I made sure also that after she had completed one circuit about me she kept on her way and completed another and another.

  I was curious, puzzled, incensed; derisive of myself for so much as entertaining the idea of any one, in 1921, attempting witchcraft; concerned for fear that my wits were addled; and, while unable to rid myself of the notion, yet completely skeptical of any effect on me and unconscious of any.

  But, the very next day, seated on the same marble bench, by the same fountain, among the same pink masses of bougainvillea in flower, I was aware not only of Mother Bevan circumambulating the outskirts of the park, but also of her numerous flock of noisy, self-important, white geese waddling about, not far from me, and indubitably walking round and round me in ever lessening circles, the big gander always nearest me. At first I felt incredulous, then silly, then resentful. And, as the gander, now and then honking, circled about me for the fifth or sixth time, I became conscious of an inner impulse, of an all but overmastering inner impulse, to seek out Pembroke and to tell him that I was willing to do anything he wanted me to do; to pledge myself to do anything he wanted me to do.

  I took alarm. I felt, shamefacedly, but vividly, that I was being made the subject of some sort of attempted necromancy. All of a sudden I found myself aflame with resentment, with hatred of that gander. I leapt to my feet, I hurled my book at him, I ran after him, I threw at him my bamboo walking-stick, barely missing him. I retrieved the walkingstick and pursued the retreating bird, and threw the cane at him a second time, almost hitting him.

  The geese half waddled, half flew towards the beetling atrocities of the ornate rococco hill-side fountain; I followed, still infuriated. There was, along the walk before the fountain, an edging of lumps of coral rock defining the border of the flower-beds. I picked up an armful of the smaller pieces of angular coral rock, chased the geese into the big main basin of the fountain and pelted that gander with jagged chunks of coral. He fled through the central manhole into the grotto and hissed at me through one of the gratings, behind which he was safe from my missiles.

  Suddenly overwhelmed by a revulsion of shame and a tendency to laugh at myself, I beat a retreat to my veranda. There I sat, pondering my situation and my experiences.

  I recalled that, at every dinner to which I had been invited, there had been, practically, but two subjects of conversation: the boredom of life on tropical islands in general and on Pembroke island in particular; and the worth, the fine qualities, the charm, the perfection of Pembroke himself.

  I watched a chance to find Radnor at leisure, to waylay him, to entice him to my veranda. When the atmosphere of our talk seemed auspicious, I said:

  ‘See here, Radnor! I know you said you meant to elude any queries I might put to you, but there is one question you’ll have to answer, somehow. Why are all these people here?’

  ‘That is easy,’ Radnor laughed. ‘I have no objection to answering that question. They are here because Pembroke wants them here.’

  ‘I didn’t phrase my question well,’ I said, ‘but you know what I mean. No one I have met really likes being here. Why do they stay?’

  ‘That’s easy, too,’ Radnor smiled. ‘Almost anyone will stay almost anywhere if lodged comfortably and paid enough. Pembroke provides his hirelings with an overplus of luxuries and is more than liberal in payment.’

  ‘That does not explain what intrigues me,’ I pursued. ‘I haven’t yet hit on the right words to express my idea. But you really understand me, I think, though you pretend you don’t. All the inhabitants of these villas are not merely uneasy, they are consciously homesick, acutely homesick, homesick to a degree which no luxurious surroundings, no prospective savings could alleviate. They are pining for home. What keeps them here’?’

  ‘Put it down,’ said Radnor, weightily, ‘to the unescapable charm of the island. That keeps them here.’

  ‘Did you say witchery or enchantment?’ I queried, meaningly.

  Radnor was emphatic.


  ‘I said charm!’ he uttered. ‘Let it go at that.’

  ‘I am not in the least inclined,’ I retorted, ‘to let it go at that. I take it that this is no joke, certainly not anything to be dismissed by a clever play on words. I insist on knowing what makes all these people stay here. They all declare, at every opportunity, that they are dying of ennui, that the climate is uncongenial, that they long for temperate skies, for northern vegetation, for frosty nights. What keeps them here?’

  ‘I tell you,’ said Radnor, ‘that, like me, most human beings will do anything, anything lawful and reasonable, if paid high enough.’

  ‘The rest aren’t like you,’ I asserted. ‘You and Mrs Radnor impress me as free agents, doing, for a consideration, what you have been asked to do, and what you both, after weighing the pros and cons, have agreed to do. All the others, Europeans, Americans and Asiatics, except Mother Bevan, appear like beings hypnotized and moving in a trance, mere living automatons, without any will of their own, actuated solely by Pembroke’s will; as much so as if they were mechanical dolls. They impress me as being mesmerized or bewitched. I seriously vow that I believe they have been subjected to some supernatural or magical influence. They are as totally dominated by Pembroke as if they were the ends of his fingers.’

  Radnor looked startled.

  ‘It will do no good,’ I cried, ‘to contradict me or to deny it.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Radnor said, as if thinking out loud. He went on:

  ‘You are right. Except Mother Bevan and me and Lucille every human being on this island is completely under Pembroke’s influence, gained largely through the help of Mother Bevan.’

  ‘Why not you and your wife?’ I queried.

  ‘Lucille, because of me,’ he replied. ‘Pembroke found out, by trying Melville here and Kennard, that, after being put under his influence, while retaining surgical skill, a physician loses all ability to diagnose and prescribe. He had to ship Kennard and Melville back home, and pension them till their faculties recovered their tone.’