Vampire House

by R. W. Heilig

  "Hello, Chance! How are you, old man?" the intruder cried, with a laugh

  in his voice. Then, noticing Gardner, he shook hands with the great man

  unceremoniously, with the nonchalance of the healthy young animal bred

  in the atmosphere of an American college.

  His touch seemed to thrill Gardner, who breathed heavily and then stepped

  to the window, as if to conceal the flush of vitality on his cheek.

  It was a breath of springtide that Jack had brought with him. Youth is a

  Prince Charming. To shrivelled veins the pressure of his hand imparts a

  spark of animation, and middle age unfolds its petals in his presence,

  as a sunflower gazing at late noon once more upon its lord.

  "I have come to take Chance away from you," said Jack. "He looks a

  trifle paler than usual, and a day's outing will stir the red corpuscles

  in his blood."

  "I have no doubt that you will take very good care of him," David

  replied.

  "Where shall we go?" Chance asked, absent-mindedly.

  But he did not hear the answer, for David's scepticisms had more

  deeply impressed him than he cared to confess to himself.

  VII

  The two boys had bathed their souls in the sea-breeze, and their eyes in

  light.

  The tide of pleasure-loving humanity jostling against them had carried

  their feet to the "Lion Palace." From there, seated at table and

  quenching their thirst with high-balls, they watched the feverish

  palpitations of the city's life-blood pulsating in the veins of Coney

  Island, to which they had drifted from Brighton Beach.

  Chance blew thoughtful rings of smoke into the air.

  "Do you notice the ferocious look in the mien of the average frequenter

  of this island resort?" he said to Jack, whose eyes, following the

  impulse of his more robust youth, were examining specimens of feminine

  flotsam on the waves of the crowd.

  "It is," he continued, speaking to himself for want of an audience,

  "the American who is in for having a 'good time.' And he is going to get

  it. Like a huntsman, he follows the scent of happiness; but I warrant

  that always it eludes him. Perhaps his mad race is only the epitome of

  humanity's vain pursuit of pleasure, the eternal cry that is never

  answered."

  But Jack was not listening. There are times in the life of every man

  when a petticoat is more attractive to him than all the philosophy of

  the world.

  Chance was a little hurt, and it was not without some silent

  remonstrance that he acquiesced when Jack invited to their table two

  creatures that once were women.

  "Why?"

  "But they are interesting."

  "I cannot find so."

  They both had seen better times--of course. Then money losses came, with

  work in shop or factory, and the voice of the tempter in the commercial

  wilderness.

  One, a frail nervous little creature, who had instinctively chosen a

  seat at Chance's side, kept prattling in his ear, ready to tell the

  story of her life to any one who was willing to treat her to a drink.

  Something in her demeanour interested him.

  "And then I had a stroke of luck. The manager of a vaudeville was my

  friend and decided to give me a trial. He thought I had a voice. They

  called me Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl. At first it seemed as if people

  liked to hear me. But I suppose that was because I was new. After a

  month or two they discharged me."

  "And why?"

  "I suppose I was just used up, that's all."

  "Frightful!"

  "I never had much of a voice--and the tobacco smoke--and the wine--I

  love wine."

  She gulped down her glass.

  "And do you like your present occupation?"

  "Why not? Am I not young? Am I not pretty?"

  This she said not parrotwise, but with a simple coquettishness that was

  all her own.

  On the way to the steamer a few moments later, Chance asked,

  half-reproachfully: "Jack--and you really enjoyed this conversation?"

  "Didn't you?"

  "Do you mean this?"

  "Why, yes; she was--very agreeable."

  Chance frowned.

  "We're twenty, Chance. And then, you see, it's like a course in

  sociology. Susie--"

  "Susie, was that her name?"

  "Yes."

  "So she had a name?"

  "Of course."

  "She shouldn't. It should be a number."

  "They may not be pillars of society; still, they're human."

  "Yes," said Chance, "that is the most horrible part of it."

  VIII

  The moon was shining brightly.

  Swift and sure the prow of the night-boat parted the silvery foam.

  The smell of young flesh. Peals of laughter. A breathless pianola. The

  tripping of dancing-feet. Voices husked with drink and voices soft with

  love. The shrill accents of vulgarity. Hustling waiters. Shop-girls.

  Bourgeois couples. Tired families of four and upward. Sleeping children.

  A boy selling candy. The crying of babies.

  The two friends were sitting on the upper deck, muffled in their long

  rain-coats.

  In the distance the Empire City rose radiant from the mist.

  "Say, Chance, you should spout some poetry as of old. Are your lips

  stricken mute, or are you still thinking of Coney Island?"

  "Oh, no, the swift wind has taken it away. I am clean, I am pure. Life

  has passed me. It has kissed me, but it has left no trace."

  He looked upon the face of his friend. Their hands met. They felt, with

  keen enjoyment, the beauty of the night, of their friendship, and of the

  city beyond.

  Then Chance's lips moved softly, musically, twitching with a strange

  ascetic passion that trembled in his voice as he began:

  _"Huge steel-ribbed monsters rise into the air

  Her Babylonian towers, while on high,

  Like gilt-scaled serpents, glide the swift trains by,

  Or, underfoot, creep to their secret lair.

  A thousand lights are jewels in her hair,

  The sea her girdle, and her crown the sky;

  Her life-blood throbs, the fevered pulses fly.

  Immense, defiant, breathless she stands there.

  "And ever listens in the ceaseless din,

  Waiting for him, her lover, who shall come,

  Whose singing lips shall boldly claim their own,

  And render sonant what in her was dumb,

  The splendour, and the madness, and the sin,

  Her dreams in iron and her thoughts of stone."_

  He paused. The boat glided on. For a long time neither spoke a word.

  After a while Jack broke the silence: "And are you dreaming of becoming

  the lyric mouth of the city, of giving utterance to all its yearnings,

  its 'dreams in iron and its thoughts of stone'?"

  "No," replied Chance, simply, "not yet. It is strange to what

  impressions the brain will respond. In Gardner's house, in the midst of

  inspiring things, inspiration failed me. But while I was with that girl

  an idea came to me--an idea, big, real."

  "Will it deal with her?"

  Chance smiled: "Oh, no. She personally has nothing to do with it. At

  least not directly. It was the commotion of blood and--brain. The

  air--the change. I don't know
what."

  "What will it be?" asked Jack, with interest all alert.

  "A play, a wonderful play. And its heroine will be a princess, a little

  princess, with a yellow veil."

  "What of the plot?"

  "That I shall not tell you to-day. In fact, I shall not breathe a word

  to any one. It will take you all by surprise--and the public by storm."

  "So it will be playable?"

  "If I am not very much mistaken, you will see it on Broadway within a

  year. And," he added graciously, "I will let you have two box-seats for

  the first night."

  They both chuckled at the thought, and their hearts leaped within them.

  "I hope you will finish it soon," Jack observed after a while. "You

  haven't done much of late."

  "A similar reflection was on my mind when you came yesterday. That

  accounts for the low spirits in which you found me."

  "Ah, indeed," Jack replied, measuring Chance with a look of wonder. "But

  now your face is aglow. It seems that the blood rushes to your head

  swifter at the call of an idea than at the kiss of a girl."

  "Thank God!" Chance remarked with a sigh of relief. "Mighty forces

  within me are fashioning the limpid thought. Passion may grip us by the

  throat momentarily; upon our backs we may feel the lashes of desire and

  bathe our souls in flames of many hues; but the joy of activity is the

  ultimate passion."

  IX

  It seemed, indeed, as if work was to Chance what the sting of pleasure

  is to the average human animal. The inter-play of his mental forces gave

  him the sensuous satisfaction of a woman's embrace. His eyes sparkled.

  His muscle tightened. The joy of creation was upon him.

  Often very material reasons, like stone weights tied to the wings of a

  bird, stayed the flight of his imagination. Magazines were waiting for

  his copy, and he was not in the position to let them wait. They supplied

  his bread and butter.

  Between the bread and butter, however, the play was growing scene by

  scene. In the lone hours of the night he spun upon the loom of his fancy

  a brilliant weft of swift desire--heavy, perfumed, Oriental--interwoven

  with bits of gruesome tenderness. The thread of his own life intertwined

  with the thread of the story. All genuine art is autobiography. It is

  not, however, necessarily a revelation of the artist's actual self, but

  of a myriad of potential selves. Ah, our own potential selves! They are

  sometimes beautiful, often horrible, and always fascinating. They loom

  to heavens none too high for our reach; they stray to yawning hells

  beneath our very feet.

  The man who encompasses heaven and hell is a perfect man. But there are

  many heavens and more hells. The artist snatches fire from both. Surely

  the assassin feels no more intensely the lust of murder than the poet

  who depicts it in glowing words. The things he writes are as real to him

  as the things that he lives. But in his realm the poet is supreme. His

  hands may be red with blood or white with leprosy: he still remains

  king. Woe to him, however, if he transcends the limits of his kingdom

  and translates into action the secret of his dreams. The throng that

  before applauded him will stone his quivering body or nail to the cross

  his delicate hands and feet.

  Sometimes days passed before Chance could concentrate his mind upon his

  play. Then the fever seized him again, and he strung pearl on pearl,

  line on line, without entrusting a word to paper. Even to discuss his

  work before it had received the final brush-strokes would have seemed

  indecent to him.

  David, too, seemed to be in a turmoil of work. Chance had little

  chance to speak to him. And to drop even a hint of his plans between the

  courses at breakfast would have been desecration.

  Sunset followed sunset, night followed night. The stripling April had

  made room for the lady May. The play was almost completed in Chance's

  mind, and he thought, with a little shudder, of the physical travail of

  the actual writing. He felt that the transcript from brain to paper

  would demand all his powers. For, of late, his thoughts seemed strangely

  evanescent; they seemed to run away from him whenever he attempted to

  seize them.

  The day was glad with sunshine, and he decided to take a long walk in

  the solitude of the Palisades, to steady hand and nerve for the final

  task.

  He told David of his intention, but met with little response.

  David's face was wan and bore the peculiar pallor of one who had

  worked late at night.

  "You must be frightfully busy?" Chance asked, with genuine concern.

  "So I am," David replied. "I always work in a white heat. I am

  restless, nervous, feverish, and can find no peace until I have given

  utterance to all that clamours after birth."

  "What is it that is so engaging your mind, the epic of the French

  Revolution?"

  "Oh, no. I should never have undertaken that. I haven't done a stroke of

  work on it for several weeks. In fact, ever since Walkham called, I

  simply couldn't. It seemed as if a rough hand had in some way destroyed

  the web of my thought. Poetry in the writing is like red hot glass

  before the master-blower has fashioned it into birds and trees and

  strange fantastic shapes. A draught, caused by the opening of a door may

  distort it. But at present I am engaged upon more important work. I am

  modelling a vessel not of fine-spun glass, but of molten gold."

  "You make me exceedingly anxious to know what you have in store for us.

  It seems to me you have reached a point where even you can no longer

  surpass yourself."

  David smiled. "Your praise is too generous, yet it warms like

  sunshine. I will confess that my conception is unique. It combines with

  the ripeness of my technique the freshness of a second spring."

  Chance was bubbling with anticipated delights. His soul responded to

  David's touch as a harp to the winds. "When," he cried, "shall we be

  privileged to see it?"

  David's eyes were already straying back to his writing table. "If the

  gods are propitious," he remarked, "I shall complete it to-night.

  To-morrow is my reception, and I have half promised to read it then."

  "Perhaps I shall be in the position soon to let you see my play."

  "Let us hope so," David replied absent-mindedly. The egotism of the

  artist had once more chained him to his work.

  X

  That night a brilliant crowd had gathered in David Gardner's house.

  From the studio and the adjoining salon arose a continual murmur of

  well-tuned voices. On bare white throats jewels shone as if in each a

  soul were imprisoned, and voluptuously rustled the silk that clung to

  the fair slim forms of its bearers in an undulating caress. Subtle

  perfumes emanated from the hair and the hands of syren women,

  commingling with the soft plump scent of their flesh. Fragrant tapers,

  burning in precious crystal globules stained with exquisite colours,

  sprinkled their shimmering light over the fashionable assemblage and

  lent a false radiance to the faces of the men, while in the hair and the

 
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