Vampire House Read online

  Vampire House

  By

  R.W. Heilig

  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 demeanor nor the deafening noises that responded

  to every movement of his agile body detracted attention from the figure

  of David Gardner 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 David Gardner 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 splendor through the seventy times sevenfold circles of hell.

  David Gardner walked on unconcernedly through the rows of gay diners,

  still smiling, affable, calm. But his companion bethought himself of

  certain rumors he had heard concerning Kelly Parish'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 David

  Gardner 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 David Gardner. 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 Gardner'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 medieval 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.

  Gardner's marvellous conversational power was equalled only by his

  marvellous style. Chance Gavin'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.

  David Gardner 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. Gardner'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. David 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 Chance'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 Gardner drew out a

  watch set with jewels, "I am afraid I must bid you good-bye."

  He held Chance'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 David Gardner,

  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,

  David Gardner 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 Circassia blade cleaves water.

  After walking a block or two, he suddenly halted before a jeweler’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. He
r whole being translated into music, with

  hair disheveled 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 David Gardner 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 Gardner'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,

  David Gardner 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, David Gardner lingered in the

  lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this

  sordid wilderness of décolleté 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. David Gardner, 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, Gardner'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.

  Gardner, 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 Gardner'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 Chance walked up and down in front of the

  abode of David Gardner, 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 Gardner, 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 David Gardner'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 Gardner say. His voice had a hard,

  metallic clangour.

  A boyish voice answered plaintively. What the words were Chance 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.

  David Gardner probably had good reason for parting with his young

  friend, whom Chance 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 Gardner: "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 Chance met Abel.

  "Where are you going?" he asked.

  "For a little pleasure trip."

  Chance 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?"

  "David is."

  "I am afraid I don't understand."

  "Never mind. Some day you will."

  IV

  "I am so happy you came," David Gardner said, as he conducted Chance

  into his studio. It was a large, luxuriously furnished room overlooking

  the Hudson and Riverside Drive.