Transcript

Chapter IX · Sinister House

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Chapter nine of Sinister House by Leland Hall. This LibriVox recording was in the
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public domain. Read by Ben Tucker. Chapter nine. It was with mixed
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feelings of fear and love that I started out with Giles early the next afternoon
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to walk over to Eric's. I had slept until nearly noon and felt,
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if not refreshed, at least calm. I realized instinctively that I had need
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to be calm. I felt that we were walking on to the conclusion of
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the drama. Annette had telephoned to doctor Gresham, Eric's line being still out
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of order. I guess the poor fellow hadn't thought to do anything about it,
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and had learned that Julia was suffering only from a heavy cold. The
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doctor wouldn't say much, but he hinted that Julia's nerves were highly wrought up
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that she ought to have a change. The sky was overcast, it was
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cold, and the wind was rising. Giles and I swung along the road
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against it, silent for a good quarter of an hour, during which,
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thanks to the healthy exercise and the buffeting wind, I straightened out my mind
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and arrived at a rational decision as to my stand and conduct in this affair.
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Believe me, there was one stark fact I could not but face.
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I had turned Eric away from my house as I would have turned a carrier
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of pestilence. I felt for Eric as keenly as I had ever felt,
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but with the difference much as I knew he was suffering. I tried to
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harden my mind to believe that it was his own fault. Yet it really
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wasn't. I mean, he was not entirely blameworthy. He was acting almost
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as an animal would act, because something in his life had beaten him down
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to just that. He was determined to shun what had wickedly maltreated him.
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But by Gemini, a man hasn't a right to his own life, not
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even to his own past. If he wishes to live wholly alone, that's
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different. But there's hardly a man who can do that. Life does not
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let him. You know that my sympathies are easily aroused. They had been
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greatly excited by the suffering, visible acutely only to me of my two friends.
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Recent events, however, had shown me that sympathy, all in the
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guise of understanding, may be absurdly and dangerously blind. I was beginning to
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understand that afternoon. What more thoughtful natures than mine understand an early manhood,
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What certain temperaments are aware of instinctively from the first. The conventions of society
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and the activities of business all point to the fact that a man is only
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a piece in a machine, really not self important, but important only in
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his relations to others. Oh, I thought many things that are probably old
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and stale to the world, no matter how new, to what Net calls
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my simple nature. It isn't worth while recounting them. But I wasn't wholly
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converted. I could not turn Eric away from my house when he was in
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trouble. I had to turn him away or my own flesh and blood,
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my son would suffer cruelly. Just the same, I resented Giles prodding into
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Eric's past life, as if Giles and I had been thinking along the same
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line. He turned to me after we had gone a mile or so and
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said, I'm sorry, Pierre, you didn't hear the story of the Snarts
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as I told it last night. Greer has been mixed up with them in
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the past. It's a remarkable Don't for Heaven's sake tell it to me.
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I cried, it's an evil sounding name, and I'm sure it was an
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evil family it was, said Giles laconically. Then it's rotten luck that Julia
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and Eric, who are the salt of the earth, should have come to
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a house they had anything to do with luck. Oh no, not luck.
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There's a queer streak in human natures. Men come back to places for
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secret reasons, for feelings they cannot resist more than men come back. I
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said, look here, Pierre, Giles began sharply. You know that,
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simple minded as you are, you indulge yourself too much in the luxury of
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the dramatic, of the melodramatic. Indeed, you'll pass for a gentle soul,
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not too fiery, content with what the French call the menus pleasure.
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You're honest and kind and trustworthy. But upon my soul, sometimes I think
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you're a good deal of a damned fool. I cannot keep from smiling,
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partly because it was so like Giles, so true to type, as he
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would say, to pitch in to me with interpretations of myself. Partly because
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to be called a damned fool on that afternoon was strangely comforting. But I
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didn't say anything. I think that perhaps it's because I held my mouth shut
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so much during these horrid days that I ever wrote the story at all.
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I used to feel ashamed, then now I don't well. Giles went on
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in regard to this affair between mister and missus Greer, They're nervous, sensitive,
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and highly strung, not the sort of people you have seen much of
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or can be expected to understand. Therefore, they take on in your mind
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and heroic shape, and trail you along into a world of myths and goblins.
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The house they live in, which I grant is not up to date,
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gives you the creeps, the figures of speech they use aszoom in your
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imagination, a grotesque reality. On such things, your simple mind loves to
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dwell, and you think them over and over until your too easily stimulated imagination
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jumps out of your control and you are no longer responsible for what you claim
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to see and hear. You must control your mind and use it. You
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must take facts for what they are. He would have gone on and on,
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but I said, Giles, you are a wiser man than I,
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and for these few remarks on myself, many thinks I suppose experience teaches us
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to know ourselves, and I am learning in this which will always remain one
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of the most horrible in my life. I know that Annette thinks my mind
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is diseased. You think that it is unexercised, uncontrolled. Strangely enough,
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I think that my wits are about me. Now let me talk a little
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more. There are what you call facts well and good. You can say
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that in French for me if you want to. I will grant that my
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keen sympathy for Julia and for Eric too may have made me a little blind,
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but they like me. There's one fact in Neither an unexercized mine nor
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a too keen sympathy can do away with the fact that Julia and I too
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have You know, I could not say it. The great fact, Giles
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broke in, is that Eric Greer has kept to himself something that, by
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praying on him, has begun to pray on his wife and on his friends.
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True crime or misadventure. And I am inclined to think there are both,
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the one perhaps palliated by the other, something in his past life which
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demands an accounting or a confession. There's my explanation, what's yours? Remember,
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I can substantiate what I claim. I preferred to keep silent, and
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we walked on without a word, tramp tramp against the wind along the flat
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highway until the hemlocks by Eric's house hove in view. Then Giles turned suddenly
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to me and said, when there's a rotten thing in a man, the
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surgeon must cut it out. Watch Eric, whatever happens this afternoon, I
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am glad Julia will not be present. That took the wind out of me.
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I could not imagine what Giles had arranged for my dear little Flivver was
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standing in the driveway by the door, and just as we came up,
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Eric stepped from the house, evidently about to drive it back to me.
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When he saw us, however, he stood waiting, a finger on his
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lips. How I whispered, is Julia, she is asleep? Just now?
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He whispered back. The doctor judges that her cold is not serious.
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But I think we will go away for a change in a day or two.
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He looked pale and haggard, and his hand, as I took it,
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felt cold. Giles had little to say. I cannot fancy that Eric
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and Giles could ever have had much to say to each other. The one
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visionary and reserved the other rather cynical and very outspoken. There was a pause
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of a minute or so, embarrassing to all of us. But though Eric
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was preoccupied, I think he did not want us to jump into the ford
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and go back at once. After a while, he collected himself enough to
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invite us to be seated on the little veranda to the left of the front
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door. There happened to be three old chairs there. Giles looked at his
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watch. It's about four. He said to me. I say, career,
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could you give us a drop of tea? I've told you that such
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bluntness was what I envied in Giles Pharaoh. Eric responded, I'm sorry.
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I think the household is a little disorganized, and since Julia's asleep now,
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perhaps we'd better stay out of doors and will have to indulge me. Anyhow,
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I've got a hundred things to do about shutting up the house. My
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mind's disturbed too, But we can sit here a little while if you like,
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though, we'd better talk quietly. Julia's right up there, and he
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pointed to the corner room. Have a cigar, then, Eric I offered,
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forgetting that he did not smoke, He declined it and tipped his chair
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back against the wall. Giles and I were both facing him from the way.
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He pulled his cap down over his eyes and rested his head against the
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wall. I thought he must be tired, and his face, what I
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could see of it, was hollow and lined. So you're going to leave
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us, I began, Where are you going? Julia will go to stay
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with her cousin in a little town up state. You are not going with
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her. No, Eric replied in a very low voice. I I it
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sounded as if he had made up his mind to say he had to go
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elsewhere for reasons of business, but he broke off. I wondered if Julia
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and he had come to an understanding. I saw Giles look at his watch
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again, and it struck me as queer, because not five minutes could have
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passed since he had looked at it before. Alongside the veranda, the dead
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leaves on the bushes were rattling in the cold wind, which tore round the
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corner of the house. I fancied I heard a sort of banging in the
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distance, as of a loosened shudder. Everything was restless, gray and chill,
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and we three men alone on the bleak Veranda must have looked forlorn,
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Eric pulling his cap yet lower over his face so that all I could see
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of it was his mouth, and Chin said to me, I suppose,
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Pierre, you don't know of anyone who would hire this house furnished. Why?
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Perhaps that depends the thought of Eric's leaving the neighborhood. Together with the
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cold, dreariness of the day, the knowledge that the sprightly Julia who used
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to enliven us so was lying sick in one of the gloomy rooms above us,
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and the premonition that something disagreeable was going to happen, made an ordinary
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business conversation strange. Indeed, Now I thought the chances very unfavorable tenants for
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that sort of house would be rare in these days, anyhow, and at
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this time of the year, et cetera, et cetera, if I felt
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like selling Pierre, Eric went on, in a dreary voice, how much
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would the place spring? How much land you own? What you see here
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within the trees, and perhaps out to the road. Well, it wouldn't
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bring very much, I'm afraid, Eric, perhaps twenty five hundred, possibly
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three thousand. So little I saw a bitter smile, twist his lips so
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little, he repeated, and the cold wind swept his words away. It
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was hardly worth it. I turned round to size up the land, to
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do anything, rather than submit to the spirit of desolation that was moaning about
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us. There it was, the short empty driveway curving from under the hemlocks
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as from a tunnel, the half moon of land within it, the little
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bit of lawn on either side, where the grass was already dead and brownish.
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Fraid not more, Eric, I sighed, and turned back to face
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him. I'm afraid not more. Though I could not see his eyes,
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I knew that he had suddenly fixed them upon something behind me, something that
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must have come into the driveway in the last second. So sure was I
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of this that out of curiosity I should have turned round again, but for
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the amazing transformation which came over him, and which held me fixed in my
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chair and powerless to move. His jaw dropped so that his mouth hung open.
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He put up a trembling hand to cover his eyes, pushing back the
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cap from his brow as he did so. Then, very slowly, as
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if at the cost of great effort, over himself, he brought that hand
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back to the arm of his chair. I saw his eyes dilated, horrified,
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starting out of their sockets, still with a slowness that to me was
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excruciating. He lowered one foot from the wrong of the chair, feeling for
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the floor of the verandah, finding it, and then he let the chair,
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which had been tilted back against the wall of the house, come forward
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on its four legs. Slowly, terribly slowly. He regained control of himself,
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closed his mouth, set his jaw behind me. I heard the crunching
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of steps on the gravel. Someone was approaching, more or less hesitatingly,
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but steadily, someone whose appearance must have been to Eric as unspeakably what shall
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I say, a blasting, as the apparition of the female specter of malice
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had been to me. Even Giles groaned, overcome by the look on Eric's
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face, that ever fine handsome features, so often a glow with ardor and
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love, could become such a mask of hateful tragedy. He was getting to
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his feet, his loose raincoat fastened by only one button, flapping and almost
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tearing in the wind. Instinctively, I put out a hand towards him.
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He did not see it, He saw nothing but what was approaching him?
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With steps that were beginning to falter under his breath, he said, come
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on, I am not afraid of you, you rotting white devil. It
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was not more than a whisper, but it was terrible. Suddenly he stiffened
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to his full height. He snatched his cap from his head and flung it
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on the floor. Nostrils dilated and quivering, eyes blazing, he stamped on
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the floor. His hair blew like a wild man's in the strong cold wind.
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He cried out, with all the power of his full voice, come
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on, I say, what do you want? There was about him at
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that moment, and nobleness of rage, a majesty of defiance, something greatly
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heroic. I was fascinated by him. I could not take my eyes from
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him, and I only heard what went on A rather lisping voice. A
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woman's answered, I want to see mister Greer. Mister Greer replied Eric,
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still in that extraordinarily resonant, trumpet like voice, is not at home.
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He has gone away, Oh, said the woman. Then I will come
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again. I heard her footsteps as she retreated, and when they had grown
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faint, in my mind told me that the woman had descended into the tunnel,
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through the hemlocks, and gone out of sight. Then I saw Eric
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lay a hand on the veranda rail, vault over it and light on the
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brown grass just beyond the bushes. He stumbled but did not fall. I
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turned to watch him, crouching like a tiger. He darted across the lawn
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to the right, paused a second on a spot. Whence he could see
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that woman, now out of my sight, pursuing her way through the gloomily
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shadowed tunnel. Darted a little farther, always to keep her in view,
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across the lawn, down the driveway, into the tunnel. Maybe he stalked
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her. Thus as far as the road, I saw no more of him
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till he returned to us. Heaven save us. I groaned, what have
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you done? Giles? But all Giles would say, and he said it
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again and again was she must have been dreadful. She must have been dreadful.
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We waited without saying anything more, chilled by the comfortless, harsh wind,
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vague to each other in the failing gray light. And then Eric came
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back to us. Think of it. He was dazed, and he mounted
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the veranda steps wearily. The force of the wind had torn the button from
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his coat, so that the body of it flapped behind him. From his
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manner, it was evident that he was quite unconscious of the staggering effect his
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dramatic lie had had upon us. And indeed our amazement might well, from
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his point of view, have been quite negligible. Our moral sensibilities had been
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stunned, perhaps, but he well. He stopped and caught up his cap
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as the wind was blowing it away. Then he half sat on the rickety
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railing of the verandah, looking down at his cap, which he still held
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in his hands, and slowly fingered. His face was relaxed, I thought,
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he said, at last, it was a woman who I know is
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dead. He dropped his cap and took hold of the railing. Hold a
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snart, Giles asked, in a low, cold tone. I was shocked.
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But the effect of that name on Eric was like that of the touch
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of red hot iron on a maddened animal. He sprang to his feet,
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wrenching the rail with such force as to tear it from its standards. It
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was rotten anyhow, but his wildness lasted only a few seconds. With what
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must have been a more than normally human effort, he calmed himself. What
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makes you think that pharaoh? He returned, speaking quite evenly. Because this
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woman who has given you such a start is her cousin, and is said
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to look astonishingly like her. There could never have been more than two such
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as they calm yourself, Greer, I am calm, said Eric. I
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took a long breath, tentatively to make sure my lungs could function. Giles's
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temerity had knocked me breathless. It was a sanctimonious family, Giles remarked,
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apparently incongruously. Was it, yes, singularly colorless before the world, like
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that blanched fungus which grows in damp cellars. There was a sort of secret
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evil name in the neighborhood, though that was colorless too. They were cold
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blooded, all abnormally blonde. I was going to tell you last night when
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you interrupted me that Morgan Snart built this house. I'm surprised you are not
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more curious about it. Who me, yes, especially you. You bought
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the house, you know, I suppose through Grimmer and Strode. Eric's reply
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was spoken quietly. But if the gale had burst into a hurricane, I
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could not have been more startled, or our mask of tranquility more wildly swept
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away. None of your business. That's what he said. For the first
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and only time I saw Giles flabbergasted. He paled with anger. He stood
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up and began speaking rapidly, the words almost tumbling over each other. I
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happen to know that Grimmer and Strode were Morgan Snart's executors. Through them,
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I know that this house was never for sale. I know that on the
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death of Morgan Snart, this house passed to his daughter, and on the
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death of a few hours later of his daughter, it passed to the name.
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If ever it was spoken, was drowned. And Eric's loud, insane
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laughter. He threw back his head and laughed at the sky peal after peal.
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It made me almost sick to hear him. I had not known laughter
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could be such a voice of anguish. All the time, the wind was
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flapping his raincoat behind him, flattening his trousers against his thin legs. His
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long black hair mixed with gray, tossed about his head and face. He
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laughed until I thought I must stuff my fingers in my ears. He lifted
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his hands high before him, and the section of the rotten railing he still
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held, fell from them with a dull noise to the floor. Then he
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went slowly into the house, crying through his laughter. Oh my wife,
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Julia, Oh, my wife, Julia. His terrible laughter still came to
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us from within. I was speechless, Giles said, damned, madman.
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Listen, Pierre, shut up. I cried not a word. You've driven
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him mad. Keep your facts to yourself. Present, and not more than
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a minute, Eric came out again. His laughter had been in our ears,
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but at the sight of us, whose presence he may have forgotten,
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he ceased laughing. Suddenly. The sudden silence was in itself unnerving. No,
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he said, eyeing us mournfully. I may not go to my wife
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Julia. I am forbidden. He looked curiously at Giles and pointed a finger
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at him in the silence before he spoke again. I heard the distant banging
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of the loosened shudder. I think you are a ghoul in a dead man's
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grave, he said, in his habitual melancholy voice. But you have not
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learned all. Even you do not know who died first. Before Giles could
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make any reply to this crazy statement, Eric stepped from the porch and walked
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out of our sight into the blackness of the hemlocks. He did not leave
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us to silence. There was always the wind and the banging of that shutter.
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And then I heard a weak voice above my head, calling Eric,
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Eric. Oh, but it sounded miles away over a wind torn sea,
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Herrick, Herik. I knew Eric was out of his head. I ran
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into the house. Darkness was falling outside. Within was already deepest gloom.
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I rushed upstairs like a wanderer in a nightmare. I knew not where or
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which door for me to find. But I paused and listened and tried,
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and at last I opened the door and walked into a chamber, where,
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almost invisible in the dusk, little Julia lay in a great bed. Julia,
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I said, going softly to the bedside. Eric is away. I
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am, Pierre, stay with me. A moment. I am frightened.
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I dreamed I heard Eric laughing like a man gone mad. What a horrid
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dream, Julia, Where is Eric? I will find him, Yes,
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find me Eric. He must not be alone with his black thoughts. I
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will find him, Julia. But is it best to bring him back to
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you? You are not strong the night is here. Though the whole house
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was trembling in the force of the wind, cheerless, dark, and full
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of drafts, yet for the time being it was empty of evil. Never
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did those sinister spirits lurk in its corners or lope along its shadowy walls.
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While the Master was away. Only the memory of dread now haunted it.
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For the present, all was actually well, though dreary and under the spell
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of a foreboding. I should have been glad to prevail upon Julia, not
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to call back Eric from wandering abroad with his black thoughts, with his malevolent
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familiars. If only he could have slipped them a mile or so away upon
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the road, and left them bobbing and fluttering against the wind, powerless to
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follow him. But that he could not do. They would come into the
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house with him. They were strong after sundown. Julia was weak this night.
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The odds would be with them. Julia, I will find Eric,
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but let me take him away with me. I am afraid to be a
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I will fetch a Nette. She will stay with you tonight. Giles is
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downstairs too, Pierre, she said, calmly, thinking for my boy.
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You cannot take Eric to your house. You know, Yes, I know,
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I repeated, shuddering. If I am to die tonight, I want
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Eric with me. You will not die tonight, Julia. Not of your
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cold. No, not of my cold, she whispered hoarsely. It was
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so dark I could hardly make out her form in the bed, but I
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knew she had relapsed into a state of exhaustion. So I went downstairs to
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the ford. Giles was sitting where I had left him. He was still
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angry, but puzzled more to know what Eric's last cryptic words had meant.
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I requested him to stay at the house at least until I returned with the
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net. Then I started off, but I did not go at once to
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my own home. I drove a mile up the highway in the other direction,
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looking for Eric. The twilight had deepened into night. If Eric had
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left the road, I could not hope to see him. But until I
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turned back towards my house, I thought my lights might pick him out ahead
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of me. Even after I turned, I rather thought I had guessed wrong
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on the direction he had taken, and that I should discover him on the
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road the other way. But I didn't, though my eyes were strained for
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the sight of him. Where was he on this wild night? I will
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say that I had never imagined him gone to the high cliffs over the river
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to make an end of himself. I apprehended nothing worse than roaming half the
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night in search of him, and passing the other half beside him, still
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tramping, perhaps, but perhaps before a fire at the Carraway club, that
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could be arranged. As I drew near my home, having missed him so
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far on the way, I put on all speed. There was a chance
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that he had set out for my house. I meant that he should not
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enter it. He wasn't there. The children were in the kitchen with a
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net, having their supper. I kissed them good night there and called Annette
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into the living room. A fire was blazing on the hearth, and the
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room was warm and cheerful. It was hard to tell my wife we must
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leave it. But I can't leave the children alone to night, she cried,
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I can't do it. You know. The telephone is out of order
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too. Yet I persuaded her to come with me. She saw that I
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dreaded what was ahead of me. That night. We hoped. I don't
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know what we hoped, but I had a premonition that the matter was going
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to be settled one way or the other. It might be settled early,
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it might be settled late. I remember one poignant detail of our departure.
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That was the sound of the bolts shot too behind us. It seemed like
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a defiance to Eric. Why Annette put the children to bed herself in our
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room. She made Felicia promise to sleep on a couch in the same room
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and to lock the room door. She insisted upon Felicia's closing the front door
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behind us, almost before we had crossed the threshold, and she would not
25:55
leave the porch until she had heard the click of the bolt shot home,
25:57
and sighed against Eric, who was wandering half crazed with some terrible secret grief
26:03
through a cold, wild and friendless night. I see a Nette now making
26:08
her way down the granelithic walk in the light of the forward lamps, holding
26:12
her hat on her head against the wind, her wide mouthed knitting bag inflated
26:17
and pulling at her arm, her skirts slashing like the canvas flap of a
26:21
tent. She went first, and I followed her. So we had often
26:25
gone to the theater, and now the curtain was about to rise on the
26:29
last act of the strangest drama and the most terrible I have ever witnessed.
26:34
End of Chapter nine