Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 02

by The Black Drama (v1. 1)

Even one so godly gallant, face so many?

  He followed not. I knew that he was slain-"

  At that point, I say, the first surprise comes with the servant's announcement that Ruthven himself has followed his traveling companion from Greece and waits, whole and sound, for permission to present himself.

  No stage directions or other visualization; but immediate dialog defines the title role as courtly and sinister, fascinating and forbidding. Left alone with the maid-servant, Bridget, he makes unashamed and highly successful advances. When he lifts the cap from her head and lets her hair fall down, it reminds one that Byron himself had thus ordered it among the maids on his own estate. Byron had made love to them, too; perhaps some of Ruthven's speeches in this passage, at least, came wholemeal from those youthful conquests.

  Yet the seduction is not a gay one, and smacks of bird and snake. When Ruthven says to Bridget,

  "You move and live but at my will; dost hear?"

  and she answers dully:

  "I hear and do submit," awareness rises of a darkling and menacing power. Again, as Aubrey mentions the fight with the bandits, Ruthven dismisses the subject with the careless,

  "I faced them, and who seeks my face seeks death,"

  one feels that he fears and spares an enemy no more than a fly. And, suddenly, he turns his attentions to Malvina:

  "Yes, I am evil, and my wickedness

  Draws to your glister and your purity.

  Now shall you light no darkness but mine own,

  An orient pearl swathed in a midnight pall-"

  Oscar, husband of the betrayed Bridget, rushes in at this point to denounce Ruthven and draw away his bemused mistress. At a touch from the visitor's finger, Oscar falls dead. Aubrey, arming himself with a club of whitethorn-a sovereign weapon against demons-strikes Ruthven down. Dying, the enchanter persuades Aubrey and Malvina to drag him into the open and so leave him. As the moon rises upon his body, he moves and stands up:

  "Luna, my mother, fountain of my life,

  Once more thy rays restore me with their kiss.

  Grave, I reject thy shelter! Death, stand back!…

  "Curtain," said Varduk suddenly, and smiled around at us.

  "So ends our first act," he continued in his natural voice. "No date-nor yet are we obliged to date it. For purposes of our dramatic production, however, I intend to lay it early in the past century, in the time of Lord Byron himself. Act Two," and he picked up another section of the manuscript, "begins a century later. We shall set it in modern times. No blank verse now-Byron cleverly identifies his two epochs by offering his later dialog in natural prose. That was the newest of new tricks in his day."

  Again he read to us. The setting was the same garden, with Mary Aubrey and her cousin Swithin, descendants of, the Aubrey and Malvina of the first act, alternating between light words of love and attentions to the aged crone Bridget. This survivor of a century and more croaks out the fearsome tale of Ruthven's visit and what followed. Her grandson Oscar, Mary's brother, announces a caller.

  The newcomer explains that he has inherited the estate of Ruthven, ancient foe of the Aubreys, and that he wishes to make peace. But Bridget, left alone with him, recognizes in him her old tempter, surviving ageless and pitiless. Oscar, too, hears the secret, and is told that this is his grandfather. Bit by bit, the significance of a dead man restless after a century grows in the play and upon the servants. They swear slavishly to help him. He seeks a double and sinister goal. Swithin, image of his great-grandfather Aubrey, must die for that ancestor's former triumph over Ruthven. Mary, the later incarnation of Malvina, excites Ruthven's passion as did her ancestress.

  Then the climax. Mary, trapped by Ruthven, defies him, then offers herself as payment for Swithin's life. Swithin, refusing the sacrifice, thrusts Ruthven through with a sword, but to no avail. Oscar overpowers him, and the demoniac lord pronounces the beginning of a terrible curse; but Mary steps forward as if to accept her lover's punishment. Ruthven revokes his words, blesses her. As the Almighty's name issues from his lips, he falls dead and decaying.

  "End of the play," said Varduk. "I daresay you have surmised what roles I plan for you. Miss Holgar and Mr Connatt are my choices for Malvina and Aubrey in the first act, and Mary and Swithin in the second. Miss Vining will create the role of Bridget, and Davidson will undertake the two Oscars."

  "And Ruthven?" I prompted, feeling unaccountably presumptuous in speaking uninvited.

  Varduk smiled and lowered his fringed lids. "The part is not too difficult," he murmured. "Ruthven is off stage more than on, an influence rather than a flesh-and-blood character. I shall honor myself with this title role."

  Switz, sitting near me, produced a watch. We had been listening to the play for full two hours and a half.

  Again a knock sounded at the door. Davidson started to rise, but Varduk's slender hand waved him down.

  "That will be Judge Pursuivant. I shall admit him myself. Keep your seats all."

  He got up and crossed the floor, walking stiffly as though he wore tight boots. I observed with interest that in profile his nose seemed finer and sharper, and that his ears had no lobes.

  "Come in, Judge Pursuivant," he said cordially at the door. "Come in, sir."

  3. Enter Judge Pursuivant

  Keith Hilary Pursuivant, the occultist and antiquary, was as arresting as Varduk himself, though never were two men more different in appearance and manner. Our first impression was of a huge tweed-clad body, a pink face with a heavy tawny mustache, twinkling pale eyes and a shock of golden-brown hair. Under one arm he half crushed a wide black hat, while the other hand trailed a heavy stick of mottled Malacca, banded with silver. There was about him the same atmosphere of mature sturdiness as invests Edward Arnold and Victor McLaglen, and withal a friendly gayety. Without being elegant or dashing, he caught and held the regard. Men like someone like that, and so, I believe, do women who respect something beyond sleek hair and brash repartee.

  Varduk introduced him all around. The judge bowed to Sigrid, smiled at Miss Vining, and shook hands with the rest of us. Then he took a seat at the desk beside Varduk.

  "Pardon my trembling over a chance to see something that may have been written by Lord Byron to lie perdu for generations," he said pleasantly. "He and his works have long been enthusiasms of mine. I have just published a modest note on certain aspects of his-"

  "Yes, I know," nodded Varduk, who was the only man I ever knew who could interrupt without seeming rude. "A Defense of the Wickedest Poet-understanding and sympathetic, and well worth the praise and popularity it is earning. May I also congratulate you on your two volumes of demonology, Vampyricon and The Unknown that Terrifies?"

  "Thank you," responded Pursuivant, with a bow of his shaggy head. "And now, the manuscript of the play-"

  "Is here." Varduk pushed it across the desk toward the. expert.

  Pursuivant bent for a close study. After a moment he drew a floor lamp close to cast a bright light, and donned a pair of pince-nez.

  "The words 'by Lord Byron', set down here under the title, are either genuine or a very good forgery," he said at once. "I call your attention, Mr Varduk, to the open capital B, the unlooped down-stroke of the Y, and the careless scrambling of the O and N." He fumbled in an inside pocket and produced a handful of folded slips. "These are enlarged photostats of several notes by Lord Byron. With your permission, Mr Varduk, I shall use them for comparison."

  He did so, holding the cards to the manuscript, moving them here and there as if to match words. Then he held a sheet of the play close to the light "Again I must say," he announced at last, "that this is either the true handwriting of Byron or else a very remarkable forgery. Yet-"

  Varduk had opened a drawer of the desk and once more he interrupted. "Here is a magnifying glass, Judge Pursuivant. Small, but quite powerful." He handed it over. "Perhaps, with its help, you can decide with more accuracy."

  "Thank you." Pursuivant bent for a closer and more painstaking sc
rutiny. For minutes he turned over page after page, squinting through the glass Varduk had lent him. Finally he looked up again.

  "No forgery here. Every stroke of the pen is a clean one. A forger draws pictures, so to speak, of the handwriting he copies, and with a lens like this one can plainly see the jagged, deliberate sketchwork." He handed back the magnifying glass and doffed his spectacles, then let his thoughtful eyes travel from one of us to the others. "I'll stake my legal and scholastic reputation that Byron himself wrote these pages."

  "Your stakes are entirely safe, sir," Varduk assured him with a smile. "Now that you have agreed-and I trust that you will allow us to inform the newspapers of your opinion-that Ruthven is Byron's work, I am prepared to tell how the play came into my possession. I was bequeathed it-by the author himself."

  We all looked up at that, highly interested. Varduk smiled upon us as if pleased with the sensation he had created.

  "The germ of Ruthven came into being one night at the home of the poet Shelley, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The company was being kept indoors by rain and wind, and had occupied itself with reading German ghost stories, and then tried their own skill at Gothic tales. One of those impromptu stories we know-Mary Godwin's masterpiece, Frankenstein. Lord Byron told the strange adventures of Ruthven, and Polidori appropriated them-that we also know; but later that night, alone in his room, Byron wrote the play we have here."

  "In one sitting?" asked Martha Vining.

  "In one sitting," replied Varduk. "He was a swift and brilliant worker. In his sixteen years of active creative writing, he produced nearly eighty thousand lines of published verse-John Drinkwater reckons an average of fourteen lines, or the equivalent of a complete sonnet, for every day. This prodigious volume of poetry he completed between times of making love, fighting scandal, traveling, quarreling, philosophizing, organizing the Greek revolution. An impressive record of work, both in size and in its proportion of excellence."

  Sigrid leaned forward. "But you said that Lord Byron himself bequeathed the play to you."

  Again Varduk's tight, brief smile. "It sounds fantastic, but it happened. Byron gave the manuscript to Claire Clairmont, his mistress and the mother of two of his children. He wanted it kept a secret-he had been called fiend incarnate too often. So he charged her that she and the children after her keep the play in trust, to be given the world a hundred years from the date of his death."

  Pursuivant cleared his throat. "I was under the impression that Byron had only one child by Claire Clairmont, Mr Varduk. Allegra, who died so tragically at the age of six."

  "He had two," was Varduk's decisive reply. "A son survived, and had issue."

  "Wasn't Claire's son by Shelley?" asked Pursuivant.

  Varduk shook his curly head. "No, by Lord Byron." He paused and drew a gentle breath, as if to give emphasis to what he was going to add. Then: "I am descended from that son, ladies and gentlemen. I am the great-grandson of Lord Byron."

  He sank back into his shadows once more and let his luminous face seem again like a disembodied mask against the dark tapestry. He let us be dazzled by his announcement for some seconds. Then he spoke again.

  "However, to return to our play. Summer is at hand, and the opening will take place at the Lake Jozgid Theater, in July, later to come to town with the autumn. All agreed? Ready to discuss contracts?" He looked around the circle, picking up our affirmative nods with his intensely understanding eyes. "Very good. Call again tomorrow. Mr Davidson, my assistant, will have the documents and all further information."

  Jake Switz was first to leave, hurrying to telephone announcements to all the morning newspapers. Sigrid, rising, smiled at me with real warmth.

  "So nice to see you again, Gib. Do not bother to leave with me-my suite is here in this hotel."

  She bade Varduk good-night, nodded to the others and left quickly. I watched her departure with what must have been very apparent and foolish ruefulness on my face. It was the voice of Judge Pursuivant that recalled me to my surroundings.

  "I've seen and admired your motion pictures, Mr Connatt," he said graciously. "Shall we go out together?

  Perhaps I can persuade you to join me in another of my enthusiasms-late food and drink."

  We made our adieux and departed. In the bar of the hotel we found a quiet table, where my companion scanned the liquor list narrowly and ordered samples of three Scotch whiskies. The waiter brought them. The judge sniffed each experimentally, and finally made his choice.

  "Two of those, and soda-no ice," he directed. "Something to eat, Mr Connatt? No? Waiter, bring me some of the cold tongue with potato salad." Smiling, he turned back to me. "Good living is my greatest pursuit."

  "Greater than scholarship?"

  He nodded readily. "However, I don't mean that tonight's visit with Mr Varduk was not something to rouse any man's interest. It was full of good meat for any antiquary's appetite. By the way, were you surprised when he said that he was descended from Lord Byron?"

  "Now that you mention it, I wasn't," I replied. "He's the most Byronic individual I have ever met."

  "Right. Of course, the physical resemblances might be accidental, the manner a pose. But in any case, he's highly picturesque, and from what little I can learn about him, he's eminently capable as well. You feel lucky in being with him in this venture?"

  I felt like confiding in this friendly, tawny man. "Judge Pursuivant," I said honestly, "any job is a godsend to me just now."

  "Then let me congratulate you, and warn you."

  "Warn me?"

  "Here's your whisky," he said suddenly, and was silent while he himself mixed the spirit with the soda. Handing me a glass, he lifted the other in a silent toasting gesture. We drank, and then I repeated, "Warn me, you were saying, sir?"

  "Yes." He tightened his wide, intelligent mouth under the feline mustache. "It's this play, Ruthven."

  "What about it?"

  His plate of tongue and salad was set before him at this juncture. He lifted a morsel on his fork and tasted it.

  "This is very good, Mr Connatt. You should have tried some. Where were we? Oh, yes, about Ruthven. I was quite unreserved in my opinion, wasn't I?"

  "So it seemed when you offered to stake your reputation on the manuscript being genuine."

  "So I did," he agreed, cutting a slice of tongue into mouthfuls. "And I meant just that. What I saw of the play was Byronic in content, albeit creepy enough to touch even an occultist with a shiver. The handwriting, too, was undoubtedly Byron's. Yet I felt like staking my reputation on something else."

  He paused and we each had a sip of whisky. His recourse to the liquor seemed to give him words for what he wished to say.

  "It's a paradox, Mr Connatt, and I am by no means so fond of paradoxes as was my friend, the late Gilbert Chesterton; but, while Byron most certainly wrote Ruthven, he wrote it on paper that was watermarked less than ten years ago."

  4. Into the Country

  THE JUDGE WOULD not enlarge upon his perplexing statement, but he would and did play the most genial host I had ever known since the extravagant days of Hollywood. We had a number of drinks, and he complimented me on my steadiness of hand and head. When we parted I slept well in my little room that already seemed more cheerful.

  Before noon the following day I returned to Varduk's hotel. Only Davidson was there, and he was far more crisp and to the point than he had been when his chief was present. I accepted the salary figure already set down on my contract form, signed my name, received a copy of the play and left.

  After my frugal lunch-I was still living on the money Jake Switz had lent me-I walked to the library and searched out a copy of Contemporary Americans. Varduk's name I did not find, and wondered at that until the thought occurred that he, a descendant of Byron, was undoubtedly a British subject. Before giving up the volume I turned to the P's. This time my search bore fruit:

  PURSUIVANT, Keith Hilary; b. 1891, Richmond, Va., only son of Hilary Pursuivant (b. 1840, Pursuivant Land
ing, Ky.; Col. and Maj.-Gen., Va. Volunteer Infantry, 1861-65; attorney and journalist; d. 1891) and Anne Elizabeth (Keith) Pursuivant (b. 1864, Edinburgh; d. 1891).

  Educ. Richmond pub. sch., Lawrenceville and Yale. A. B., male, 1908. Phi Beta Kappa, Skulls and Bones, football, forensics. LL. B., Columbia, 1911. Ph.D., Oxford, 1922. Admitted to Virginia bar, 1912. Elected 1914, Judge district court, Richmond. Resigned, 1917, to enter army. Major, Intelligence Div., U.S.A., 1917-19. D.S.C., Cong. Medal of Honor, Legion d'Honneur (Fr.). Ret. legal practice, 1919.

  Author: The Unknown That Terrifies, Cannibalism in America, Vampyricon, An Indictment of Logic, etc.

  Clubs: Lambs, Inkhorn, Gastronomics, Saber.

  Hobbies: Food, antiquaries, demonology, fencing.

  Protestant. Independent. Unmarried.

  Address: Low Haven, RFD No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.

  Thus the clean-picked skeleton of a life history; yet it was no hard task to restore some of its tissues, even coax it to life. Son of a Southern aristocrat who was a soldier while young and a lawyer and writer when mature, orphaned of his Scotch mother in the first year of his existence-had she died in giving him life?-Keith Pursuivant was born, it seemed, to distinction. To graduate from Yale in 1908 he must have been one of the youngest men in his class, if not the youngest; yet, at seventeen, he was an honor student, an athlete, member of an exclusive senior society and an orator. After that, law school, practise and election to the bench of his native community at the unheard-of age of twenty-three.

  Then the World War, that sunderer of career-chains and remolder of men. The elder Pursuivant had been a colonel at twenty-one, a major-general before twenty-five; Keith, his son, deserting his brilliant legal career, was a major at twenty-six, but in the corps of brain-soldiers that matched wits with an empire. That he came off well in the contest was witnessed by his decorations, earnest of valor and resource.