George Sylvester Viereck - The House of the Vampire
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George Sylvester Viereck >> The House of the Vampire
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7 THE HOUSE OF THE VAMPIRE
by
GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK
Author of
Nineveh and Other Poems
New York
Moffat, Yard & Company
1912
Copyright, 1907, by
Moffat, Yard & Company
New York
Published September, 1907
Reprinted October, 1907
The Premier Press
New York
_To My Mother_
THE HOUSE
OF THE
VAMPIRE
I
The freakish little leader of the orchestra, newly imported from Sicily
to New York, tossed his conductor's wand excitedly through the air,
drowning with musical thunders the hum of conversation and the clatter
of plates.
Yet neither his apish demeanour nor the deafening noises that responded
to every movement of his agile body detracted attention from the figure
of Reginald Clarke and the young man at his side as they smilingly wound
their way to the exit.
The boy's expression was pleasant, with an inkling of wistfulness, while
the soft glimmer of his lucid eyes betrayed the poet and the dreamer.
The smile of Reginald Clarke was the smile of a conqueror. A suspicion
of silver in his crown of dark hair only added dignity to his bearing,
while the infinitely ramified lines above the heavy-set mouth spoke at
once of subtlety and of strength. Without stretch of the imagination one
might have likened him to a Roman cardinal of the days of the Borgias,
who had miraculously stepped forth from the time-stained canvas and
slipped into twentieth century evening-clothes.
With the affability of complete self-possession he nodded in response to
greetings from all sides, inclining his head with special politeness to
a young woman whose sea-blue eyes were riveted upon his features with a
look of mingled hate and admiration.
The woman, disregarding his silent salutation, continued to stare at him
wild-eyed, as a damned soul in purgatory might look at Satan passing in
regal splendour through the seventy times sevenfold circles of hell.
Reginald Clarke walked on unconcernedly through the rows of gay diners,
still smiling, affable, calm. But his companion bethought himself of
certain rumours he had heard concerning Ethel Brandenbourg's mad love
for the man from whose features she could not even now turn her eyes.
Evidently her passion was unreciprocated. It had not always been so.
There was a time in her career, some years ago in Paris, when it was
whispered that she had secretly married him and, not much later,
obtained a divorce. The matter was never cleared up, as both preserved
an uncompromising silence upon the subject of their matrimonial
experience. Certain it was that, for a space, the genius of Reginald
Clarke had completely dominated her brush, and that, ever since he had
thrown her aside, her pictures were but plagiarisms of her former
artistic self.
The cause of the rupture between them was a matter only of surmise; but
the effect it had on the woman testified clearly to the remarkable power
of Reginald Clarke. He had entered her life and, behold! the world was
transfixed on her canvases in myriad hues of transcending radiance; he
had passed from it, and with him vanished the brilliancy of her
colouring, as at sunset the borrowed amber and gold fade from the face
of the clouds.
The glamour of Clarke's name may have partly explained the secret of his
charm, but, even in circles where literary fame is no passport, he
could, if he chose, exercise an almost terrible fascination. Subtle and
profound, he had ransacked the coffers of mediaeval dialecticians and
plundered the arsenals of the Sophists. Many years later, when the
vultures of misfortune had swooped down upon him, and his name was no
longer mentioned without a sneer, he was still remembered in New York
drawing-rooms as the man who had brought to perfection the art of
talking. Even to dine with him was a liberal education.
Clarke's marvellous conversational power was equalled only by his
marvellous style. Ernest Fielding's heart leaped in him at the thought
that henceforth he would be privileged to live under one roof with the
only writer of his generation who could lend to the English language the
rich strength and rugged music of the Elizabethans.
Reginald Clarke was a master of many instruments. Milton's mighty organ
was no less obedient to his touch than the little lute of the
troubadour. He was never the same; that was his strength. Clarke's
style possessed at once the chiselled chasteness of a Greek marble
column and the elaborate deviltry of the late Renaissance. At times his
winged words seemed to flutter down the page frantically like Baroque
angels; at other times nothing could have more adequately described his
manner than the timeless calm of the gaunt pyramids.
The two men had reached the street. Reginald wrapped his long spring
coat round him.
"I shall expect you to-morrow at four," he said.
The tone of his voice was deep and melodious, suggesting hidden depths
and cadences.
"I shall be punctual."
The younger man's voice trembled as he spoke.
"I look forward to your coming with much pleasure. I am interested in
you."
The glad blood mounted to Ernest's cheeks at praise from the austere
lips of this arbiter of literary elegance.
An almost imperceptible smile crept over the other man's features.
"I am proud that my work interests you," was all the boy could say.
"I think it is quite amazing, but at present," here Clarke drew out a
watch set with jewels, "I am afraid I must bid you good-bye."
He held Ernest's hand for a moment in a firm genial grasp, then turned
away briskly, while the boy remained standing open-mouthed. The crowd
jostling against him carried him almost off his feet, but his eyes
followed far into the night the masterful figure of Reginald Clarke,
toward whom he felt himself drawn with every fiber of his body and the
warm enthusiasm of his generous youth.
II
With elastic step, inhaling the night-air with voluptuous delight,
Reginald Clarke made his way down Broadway, lying stretched out before
him, bathed in light and pulsating with life.
His world-embracing intellect was powerfully attracted by the Giant
City's motley activities. On the street, as in the salon, his magnetic
power compelled recognition, and he stepped through the midst of the
crowd as a Circassian blade cleaves water.
After walking a block or two, he suddenly halted before a jeweller's
shop. Arrayed in the window were priceless gems that shone in the glare
of electricity, like mystical serpent-eyes--green, pomegranate and
water-blue. And as he stood there the dazzling radiance before him was
transformed in the prism of his mind into something great and very
wonderful that might, some day, be a poem.
Then his attention was diverted by a small group of tiny girls dancing
on the sidewalk to the husky strains of an old hurdy-gurdy. He joined
the circle of amused spectators, to watch those pink-ribboned bits of
femininity swaying airily to and fro in unison with the tune. One
especially attracted his notice--a slim olive-coloured girl from a land
where it is always spring. Her whole being translated into music, with
hair dishevelled and feet hardly touching the ground, the girl suggested
an orange-leaf dancing on a sunbeam. The rasping street-organ,
perchance, brought to her melodious reminiscences of some flute-playing
Savoyard boy, brown-limbed and dark of hair.
For several minutes Reginald Clarke followed with keen delight each
delicate curve her graceful limbs described. Then--was it that she grew
tired, or that the stranger's persistent scrutiny embarrassed her?--the
music oozed out of her movements. They grew slower, angular, almost
clumsy. The look of interest in Clarke's eyes died, but his whole form
quivered, as if the rhythm of the music and the dance had mysteriously
entered into his blood.
He continued his stroll, seemingly without aim; in reality he followed,
with nervous intensity, the multiform undulations of the populace,
swarming through Broadway in either direction. Like the giant whose
strength was rekindled every time he touched his mother, the earth,
Reginald Clarke seemed to draw fresh vitality from every contact with
life.
He turned east along Fourteenth street, where cheap vaudevilles are
strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy
bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry
attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a
particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the
lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this
sordid wilderness of decollete art. Street-snipes, a few workingmen,
dilapidated sportsmen, and women whose ruined youth thick layers of
powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore,
constituted the bulk of the audience. Reginald Clarke, apparently
unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his appearance
excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the
solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a programme. The drink he left
untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the
announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar, paying
no attention to the boards, but studying the audience with cursory
interest until the appearance of Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl.
When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The words of her song
were crude, but not without a certain lilt that delighted the uncultured
ear, while the girl's voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant.
When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner
changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt
attention, eagerly gazing at her. For, as she sang the last line and
tore the hyacinth-blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a
strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable
faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her
spell.
Clarke, too, was captivated by that tremour, the infinite sadness of
which suggested the plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust
preys on creatures marked for its spoil.
The singer paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew
nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the
refrain. As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza, an
inscrutable smile curled on Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's
relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard
and cracked: the tremour had gone from her voice.
III
Long before the appointed time Ernest walked up and down in front of the
abode of Reginald Clarke, a stately apartment-house overlooking
Riverside Drive.
Misshapen automobiles were chasing by, carrying to the cool river's
marge the restlessness and the fever of American life. But the bustle
and the noise seemed to the boy only auspicious omens of the future.
Jack, his room-mate and dearest friend, had left him a month ago, and,
for a space, he had felt very lonely. His young and delicate soul found
it difficult to grapple with the vague fears that his nervous brain
engendered, when whispered sounds seemed to float from hidden corners,
and the stairs creaked under mysterious feet.
He needed the voice of loving kindness to call him back from the valley
of haunting shadows, where his poet's soul was wont to linger overlong;
in his hours of weakness the light caress of a comrade renewed his
strength and rekindled in his hand the flaming sword of song.
And at nightfall he would bring the day's harvest to Clarke, as a
worshipper scattering precious stones, incense and tapestries at the
feet of a god.
Surely he would be very happy. And as the heart, at times, leads the
feet to the goal of its desire, while multicoloured dreams, like
dancing-girls, lull the will to sleep, he suddenly found himself
stepping from the elevator-car to Reginald Clarke's apartment.
Already was he raising his hand to strike the electric bell when a sound
from within made him pause half-way.
"No, there's no help!" he heard Clarke say. His voice had a hard,
metallic clangour.
A boyish voice answered plaintively. What the words were Ernest could
not distinctly hear, but the suppressed sob in them almost brought the
tears to his eyes. He instinctively knew that this was the finale of
some tragedy.
He withdrew hastily, so as not to be a witness of an interview that was
not meant for his ears.
Reginald Clarke probably had good reason for parting with his young
friend, whom Ernest surmised to be Abel Felton, a talented boy, whom the
master had taken under his wings.
In the apartment a momentary silence had ensued.
This was interrupted by Clarke: "It will come again, in a month, in a
year, in two years."
"No, no! It is all gone!" sobbed the boy.
"Nonsense. You are merely nervous. But that is just why we must part.
There is no room in one house for two nervous people."
"I was not such a nervous wreck before I met you."
"Am I to blame for it--for your morbid fancies, your extravagance, the
slow tread of a nervous disease, perhaps?"
"Who can tell? But I am all confused. I don't know what I am saying.
Everything is so puzzling--life, friendship, you. I fancied you cared
for my career, and now you end our friendship without a thought!"
"We must all follow the law of our being."
"The laws are within us and in our control."
"They are within us and beyond us. It is the physiological structure of
our brains, our nerve-cells, that makes and mars our lives.
"Our mental companionship was so beautiful. It was meant to last."
"That is the dream of youth. Nothing lasts. Everything flows--panta rei.
We are all but sojourners in an inn. Friendship, as love, is an
illusion. Life has nothing to take from a man who has no illusions."
"It has nothing to give him."
They said good-bye.
At the door Ernest met Abel.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"For a little pleasure trip."
Ernest knew that the boy lied.
He remembered that Abel Felton was at work upon some book, a play or a
novel. It occurred to him to inquire how far he had progressed with it.
Abel smiled sadly. "I am not writing it."
"Not writing it?"
"Reginald is."
"I am afraid I don't understand."
"Never mind. Some day you will."
IV
"I am so happy you came," Reginald Clarke said, as he conducted Ernest
into his studio. It was a large, luxuriously furnished room overlooking
the Hudson and Riverside Drive.
Dazzled and bewildered, the boy's eyes wandered from object to object,
from picture to statue. Despite seemingly incongruous details, the whole
arrangement possessed style and distinction.
A satyr on the mantelpiece whispered obscene secrets into the ears of
Saint Cecilia. The argent limbs of Antinous brushed against the garments
of Mona Lisa. And from a corner a little rococo lady peered coquettishly
at the gray image of an Egyptian sphinx. There was a picture of Napoleon
facing the image of the Crucified. Above all, in the semi-darkness,
artificially produced by heavy draperies, towered two busts.
"Shakespeare and Balzac!" Ernest exclaimed with some surprise.
"Yes," explained Reginald, "they are my gods."
His gods! Surely there was a key to Clarke's character. Our gods are
ourselves raised to the highest power.
Clarke and Shakespeare!
Even to Ernest's admiring mind it seemed almost blasphemous to name a
contemporary, however esteemed, in one breath with the mighty master of
song, whose great gaunt shadow, thrown against the background of the
years has assumed immense, unproportionate, monstrous dimensions.
Yet something might be said for the comparison. Clarke undoubtedly was
universally broad, and undoubtedly concealed, with no less exquisite
taste than the Elizabethan, his own personality under the splendid
raiment of his art. They certainly were affinities. It would not have
been surprising to him to see the clear calm head of Shakespeare rise
from behind his host.
Perhaps--who knows?--the very presence of the bust in his room had, to
some extent, subtly and secretly moulded Reginald Clarke's life. A man's
soul, like the chameleon, takes colour from its environment. Even
comparative trifles, the number of the house in which we live, or the
colour of the wallpaper of a room, may determine a destiny.
The boy's eyes were again surveying the fantastic surroundings in which
he found himself; while, from a corner, Clarke's eyes were watching his
every movement, as if to follow his thoughts into the innermost
labyrinth of the mind. It seemed to Ernest, under the spell of this
passing fancy, as though each vase, each picture, each curio in the
room, was reflected in Clarke's work. In a long-queued, porcelain
Chinese mandarin he distinctly recognised a quaint quatrain in one of
Clarke's most marvellous poems. And he could have sworn that the grin of
the Hindu monkey-god on the writing-table reappeared in the weird rhythm
of two stanzas whose grotesque cadence had haunted him for years.
At last Clarke broke the silence. "You like my studio?" he asked.
The simple question brought Ernest back to reality.
"Like it? Why, it's stunning. It set up in me the queerest train of
thought."
"I, too, have been in a whimsical mood to-night. Fancy, unlike genius,
is an infectious disease."
"What is the peculiar form it assumed in your case?"
"I have been wondering whether all the things that environ us day by day
are, in a measure, fashioning our thought-life. I sometimes think that
even my little mandarin and this monkey-idol which, by the way, I
brought from India, are exerting a mysterious but none the less real
influence upon my work."
"Great God!" Ernest replied, "I have had the identical thought!"
"How very strange!" Clarke exclaimed, with seeming surprise.
"It is said tritely but truly, that great minds travel the same roads,"
Ernest observed, inwardly pleased.
"No," the older man subtly remarked, "but they reach the same
conclusion by a different route."
"And you attach serious importance to our fancy?"
"Why not?"
Clarke was gazing abstractedly at the bust of Balzac.
"A man's genius is commensurate with his ability of absorbing from life
the elements essential to his artistic completion. Balzac possessed this
power in a remarkable degree. But, strange to say, it was evil that
attracted him most. He absorbed it as a sponge absorbs water; perhaps
because there was so little of it in his own make-up. He must have
purified the atmosphere around him for miles, by bringing all the evil
that was floating in the air or slumbering in men's souls to the point
of his pen.
"And he"--his eyes were resting on Shakespeare's features as a man might
look upon the face of a brother--"he, too, was such a nature. In fact,
he was the most perfect type of the artist. Nothing escaped his mind.
From life and from books he drew his material, each time reshaping it
with a master-hand. Creation is a divine prerogative. Re-creation,
infinitely more wonderful than mere calling into existence, is the
prerogative of the poet. Shakespeare took his colours from many
palettes. That is why he is so great, and why his work is incredibly
greater than he. It alone explains his unique achievement. Who was he?
What education did he have, what opportunities? None. And yet we find in
his work the wisdom of Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh's fancies and
discoveries, Marlowe's verbal thunders and the mysterious loveliness of
Mr. W.H."
Ernest listened, entranced by the sound of Clarke's mellifluous voice.
He was, indeed, a master of the spoken word, and possessed a miraculous
power of giving to the wildest fancies an air of vraisemblance.
V
"Yes," said Walkham, the sculptor, "it's a most curious thing."
"What is?" asked Ernest, who had been dreaming over the Sphinx that was
looking at him from its corner with the sarcastic smile of five thousand
years.
"How our dreams of yesterday stare at us like strangers to-day."
"On the contrary," remarked Reginald, "it would be strange if they were
still to know us. In fact, it would be unnatural. The skies above us and
the earth underfoot are in perpetual motion. Each atom of our physical
nature is vibrating with unimaginable rapidity. Change is identical with
life."
"It sometimes seems," said the sculptor, "as if thoughts evaporated like
water."
"Why not, under favorable conditions?"
"But where do they go? Surely they cannot perish utterly?"
"Yes, that is the question. Or, rather, it is not a question. Nothing
is ever lost in the spiritual universe."
"But what," inquired Ernest, "is the particular reason for your
reflection?"
"It is this," the sculptor replied; "I had a striking motive and lost
it."
"Do you remember," he continued, speaking to Reginald, "the Narcissus I
was working on the last time when you called at my studio?"
"Yes; it was a striking thing and impressed me very much, though I
cannot recall it at the moment."
"Well, it was a commission. An eccentric young millionaire had offered
me eight thousand dollars for it. I had an absolutely original
conception. But I cannot execute it. It's as if a breeze had carried it
away."
"That is very regrettable."
"Well, I should say so," replied the sculptor.
Ernest smiled. For everybody knew of Walkham's domestic troubles. Having
twice figured in the divorce court, he was at present defraying the
expenses of three households.
The sculptor had meanwhile seated himself at Reginald's writing-table,
unintentionally scanning a typewritten page that was lying before him.
Like all artists, something of a madman and something of a child, he at
first glanced over its contents distractedly, then with an interest so
intense that he was no longer aware of the impropriety of his action.
"By Jove!" he cried. "What is this?"
"It's an epic of the French Revolution," Reginald replied, not without
surprise.
"But, man, do you know that I have discovered my motive in it?"
"What do you mean?" asked Ernest, looking first at Reginald and then at
Walkham, whose sanity he began to doubt.
"Listen!"
And the sculptor read, trembling with emotion, a long passage whose
measured cadence delighted Ernest's ear, without, however, enlightening
his mind as to the purport of Walkham's cryptic remark.
Reginald said nothing, but the gleam in his eye showed that this time,
at least, his interest was alert.
Walkham saw the hopelessness of making clear his meaning without an
explanation.
"I forget you haven't a sculptor's mind. I am so constituted that, with
me, all impressions are immediately translated into the sense of form. I
do not hear music; I see it rise with domes and spires, with painted
windows and Arabesques. The scent of the rose is to me tangible. I can
almost feel it with my hand. So your prose suggested to me, by its
rhythmic flow, something which, at first indefinite, crystallised
finally into my lost conception of Narcissus."
"It is extraordinary," murmured Reginald. "I had not dreamed of it."
"So you do not think it rather fantastic?" remarked Ernest,
circumscribing his true meaning.
"No, it is quite possible. Perhaps his Narcissus was engaging the
sub-conscious strata of my mind while I was writing this passage. And
surely it would be strange if the undercurrents of our mind were not
reflected in our style."
"Do you mean, then, that a subtle psychologist ought to be able to read
beneath and between our lines, not only what we express, but also what
we leave unexpressed?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Even if, while we are writing, we are unconscious of our state of mind?
That would open a new field to psychology."
"Only to those that have the key, that can read the hidden symbols. It
is to me a matter-of-course that every mind-movement below or above the
threshold of consciousness must, of a necessity, leave its imprint
faintly or clearly, as the case may be, upon our activities."
"This may explain why books that seem intolerably dull to the majority,
delight the hearts of the few," Ernest interjected.
"Yes, to the few that possess the key. I distinctly remember how an
uncle of mine once laid down a discussion on higher mathematics and
blushed fearfully when his innocent wife looked over his shoulder. The
man who had written it was a roue."
"Then the seemingly most harmless books may secretly possess the power
of scattering in young minds the seed of corruption," Walkham remarked.
"If they happen to understand," Clarke observed thoughtfully. "I can
very well conceive of a lecherous text-book of the calculus, or of a
reporter's story of a picnic in which burnt, under the surface,
undiscoverable, save to the initiate, the tragic passion of Tristram and
Iseult."
VI
Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in Reginald Clarke's
studio. The spring was now well advanced and had sprinkled the meadows
with flowers, and the bookshelves of the reviewers with fiction. The
latter Ernest turned to good account, but from the flowers no poem
blossomed forth. In writing about other men's books, he almost forgot
that the springtide had brought to him no bouquet of song. Only now and
then, like a rippling of water, disquietude troubled his soul.
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