Fingers of Fear

by J. U. Nicolson

  Muriel Piercy had been my wife. We had had two years of what, in retrospect, I could call happiness, before the crash in common stocks reduced me from a position of ease and indolence to one of wretchedness and to the necessity of working for my bread. When that happened she sought her old place on the stage, first, however, demanding a divorce.

  “It isn’t,” she said, “that I want to divorce you, Selden, because of any other man, or because I’m tired of being your wife. But I feel that it’s the best thing to do. I must be free. When things pick up . . . in two or three years, perhaps . . . we’ll still be friends, I hope, and then we’ll consider marrying again—if you still want me.”

  “Of course I’ll want you!” I cried.

  Muriel smiled.

  Nevertheless I continued, for some time, arguing against this step, and I had at the first refused to consider it. Muriel, however, was firm. She did not point out to me, in brutal words, that I had no longer a right to claim her allegiance. I was not so great a fool as to be unable to see that without having to be told. And so at last I wavered. Under the circumstances I could not very well continue to insist that she remain tied to me. What if she were offered marriage by some wealthy man? She was still handsome enough to command that much of any admirer. The upshot of it was that she went to a western state, resided there the necessary brief while, made her application, and was awarded an absolute divorce. Then she returned to New York and secured a small part in a new play. During the long period of rehearsals we continued to meet occasionally, since we remained good friends. But in the several weeks past I had noticed a growing coldness in her attitude toward me. She denied having on hand any love affair more “serious” than usual. Yet it was more difficult for me to find her unoccupied and ready for a supper or a quiet dinner at some inexpensive restaurant. And that, at the first, had hurt a little. I think it would have hurt a little even had things been well with me in the world of money. But now, setting forth upon the adventure of this new job, when I considered that I ought to feel a pang for what promised to be a long separation from Muriel—I had, as I said, telephoned her repeatedly that afternoon, but had been quite unable to find her—I realized to my own mild astonishment that there was no pang at all, nor more than a ghost of any pain.

  And I found, also, that I was forming and re-forming mental pictures of Ormes’s sister Gray, the girl who might be beautiful, or who might not be—for her brother did not seem to know—but who preferred the quiet of Ormesby to the gay life of town, and who could remain alone in a country house among the hills, unterrified of goblins and unacquainted with such gamins as rule the modern world. And I wondered less then, thinking of that, at the foolishness of my friend Ormes in being willing to trust me in his house with such a girl. Of course she and I would not be quite alone; there must be someone else in the place, if it were no more than a servant or two. All that, however, did not trouble my dull brain during our drive into the Berkshire Hills. I had gone with the current and it had washed me here. Let it do further whatever it wished. And so far as his sister’s reputation was concerned, I certainly felt no call to worry over what apparently worried her brother not at all.

  We entered Pittsfield about half past eleven. The streets were awake and echoing with the laughter of young people, though it was after theatre time. But on such a night the youth of Pittsfield and of that beautiful country surrounding the town still strolled and chattered and made love; and Ormes drove very slowly through the city, his eyes turned, like my own, upon those happy walkers in the moonlight, and probably a bit wistful, even as I was, remembering the ten years which separated him from that time of carefree beauty and romance. Let the broken fabric of the country’s economic life crumble into nothingness if it would. What should those boys and girls have cared for such a thing as that?

  Then we came to the eastern edge of the town and took the road to Ormesby, which lay at a distance of nine miles into the hills, being also a mile and a half beyond the little village of Tiltown. The latter place straddled a narrow gravel road, unmolested by the constant automobile traffic which thrummed and rumbled along the great highways through Pittsfield.

  Ormesby itself stood upon a hill some hundred feet above the road and well back from it. Below the road fumbled a noisy brook, tributary to the Housatonic. This hill had been formed of wash from the peaks surrounding it, so that it lay hemmed in by them on three sides, like a delta, its nearly flat top covering an area of twenty or more acres. Great old trees stood about the house. They were maples and elms, for the most part, and they increased in density as one left the immediate neighborhood of the residence and walked toward the hills rising steeply behind it. All this, however, I was to see clearly only in daylight of the next morning. As we approached the place I was aware merely of a huge bulk towering gloomily up through heavy shadows, a bulk dark and mysterious save for a single lamp that burned above the lintel of the wide double doors in front.

  As we had left the road, and before we had come in sight of the burning lamp, Ormes stopped the car and, alighting from it, opened a great iron gate. I drove the car through it, wondering, as I stopped and shifted my body from under the wheel, at the haste made by the usually lethargic Ormes in closing the gate and regaining his seat beside me. But I did not long wonder on that. Suddenly the night was made hideous by the angry voices of dogs. They came rushing toward us from all directions, and it seemed to my startled nerves that there must have been scores of them. Large dogs they were, judging from the tones of their barking and baying, which quivered with a ferocity quite out of keeping with one’s usual notion of animals tamed and become the companions of mankind. In an instant there were monstrous gray forms leaping about the moving car on all sides, and more of them shot from beneath the trees, snarling in savage rage. Their fierce eyes burned in the darkness like the red and terrifying eyes of circling wolves.

  “Wait!” Ormes commanded, bringing the car to a stop before the doors. “Don’t get out yet. I’m not at all sure those brutes will recognize me.”

  He spoke to the dogs through the lowered window of the car, calling several by name. But they continued to snarl and dash themselves against the door beside him, oblivious to his efforts at conciliation.

  “You don’t need to fear burglars here, at least,” I remarked, thinking that Gray must stand in deep fear of them, nevertheless, to keep so fierce a pack to roam the grounds by night.

  Then I saw that the house door had opened, and that a woman stood within the portal, wrapped in a red robe of a thin and clinging silk, and I heard her voice raised in one word of deep command. But that one word was enough. The dogs dropped to the ground and were silent, save for low growls and protesting whines. Some of them slunk from sight around a corner of the house, others disappeared beneath the trees. A few fawned at the woman’s feet, which were thrust bare into high-heeled slippers, her slender ankles and gleaming calves bright in the kissing moonlight.

  “Oh, hello, Gray!” greeted Ormes. “Good thing you heard us and came down. The damned dogs . . .”

  His voice trailed away. I marveled that he did not open the door and descend from the car, since the pack had been cowed and brought under control. But he sat there during the length of almost half a minute, staring at the silent form of his sister, whose face and shoulders were in deep shadow. At last she spoke again.

  “Is it about the history?”

  I cannot describe the voice I heard coming from that slender woman’s lips. It was a deep contralto. So much is easily said. And such a voice is common enough to arouse no great wonder in those who hear it. But how shall I turn into words the vibrant feeling I recognized, in this case, within it? It was a woman’s voice, unmistakably, and yet it was like the voice of no other woman that I have ever met. Deep and commanding, it yet held a tenseness as of some strong emotion very near to utterance. A shallow girl said of it, afterwards, that it was a “gorgeous voic
e.” But it was not gorgeous, if by that the girl meant that it was colourful. On the contrary, it was flat, dull, opaque, and yet it was, as I said, arresting. I think that no man, hearing it for the first time, could fail to be stirred somehow deep within himself.

  “Yes,” Ormes replied, “I’ve a friend with me—Mr. Seaverns. We were at school together. He will do the work.”

  “Come in, Ormond. Agnes is asleep. She complained of a headache. Barbara’s in bed also, of course.”

  So there were other female inhabitants of Ormesby! No doubt my friend had told me of them. I vaguely remembered hearing the name of Agnes, during the first part of that recital at the club, to which I had given so little attention. But I had come here thinking, like a fool, that I was to be alone in the house with my employer’s sister. I remember suffering a momentary pang of disappointment, unrelieved by knowledge that my expectation had been but a vain and childish thing. I did not, however, find it necessary to regret having deliberately put Muriel out of mind during my late journey. Whatever other persons might surround me here, the voice I had heard and the slim figure of the girl in red were quite enough to solace me for Muriel’s desertion, for the present, at any rate. Yet I do not think that I proposed, even then, never to dream of Muriel again.

  We left the car and entered the silent house. And several snarling dogs lunged toward our heels just as Ormes closed the heavy door behind us. I wondered whether I should have difficulty in making the acquaintance of those brutes.

  Inside, the hallway was in darkness. I stood waiting for light during the few seconds Ormes needed to shut the door and make it fast. And though I am not certain of it to this day, I could have sworn, then, that as I stood there something touched my throat, something cool and seemingly sharp, as of thin metal or of delicate, polished claws. It might have been mere imagination; it might have been a bat; but it was no such touch, if touch it was, as one could expect a woman to make. Still I had reason to think that a woman stood near me in that darkness. Then Ormes groped past, muttering something under his breath, and found a button and pressed it.

  His sister had disappeared. I had not heard her move away, but now she was gone. I threw a glance over every corner and surface, but I could see nothing of an intruded bat or night bird. Perhaps I had imagined that sensation of being touched.

  “Come, let’s get a drink,” said Ormes, preceding me along the hallway toward a closed door at the end of it.

  Passing through that door, we found ourselves at once in the dining room. Ormes went to the sideboard, an ancient thing, beautifully carved and appointed. He turned back toward me, placing a decanter and glasses on the table. We poured and drank good whiskey, saying little until after we had lighted cigarettes. Then——

  “I’ll show you where the library is,” he said, speaking in low tones, for all the world as if he were somehow afraid, here in his own house, of letting his voice be heard beyond that room. “I’ll probably be up and off before you wake in the morning. But you won’t need me. The thing’s going to be entirely up to you. Do you want anything? If you do, tell Gray; she’ll see that you get it.”

  “It was your sister who opened the door for us?”

  In an instant I had remembered that it must have been his sister, since I had heard him call her Gray. He did not answer me directly, but asked a question in his turn.

  “What did you think of her?”

  He asked his question swiftly and furtively, with a sidelong glance at me, as if the words had tumbled from his lips in spite of a wish to refrain from uttering them. And as he spoke he glanced here and there about the room and then toward the door by which we had entered, for all the world like a man who fears that he may be overheard and does not wish to be.

  “I think,” I said, “that she must be rather an uncommon woman. But I couldn’t see her face. You didn’t seem to be sure whether she’s handsome, when you spoke of her at the club in town.”

  “No. However, I do know. She’s good-lookin’, all right. You’ll find out in the morning.”

  “Who,” I asked, “is Barbara?”

  “My aunt. Didn’t I tell you? Thought I explained all that. A kind of invalid, you know. That is, she’s had a nervous shock and gets about very little, though she’s not actually ill. You won’t see much of her, it’s likely. But I’m sure I told you about my wife.”

  “I remember you mentioned Agnes,” I said, “and I thought at the time that she was your wife”—as a matter of fact, I had not known the man was married—“but you didn’t say enough to——”

  “Well, you’ll see her, too, at breakfast, no doubt. Sorry I can’t stay to introduce you to all of ’em. But you’ll get acquainted. You probably won’t want to see very much of Agnes. She’s a kind of hellion. Prefers living here to staying with me in town. It’s Gray you’ll deal with. She’s boss of Ormesby, Seaverns, even when I’m here. Fact is, the property’s been put in her name since the depression. See?”

  I nodded.

  “But come! Have another drink, then we’ll go look at the books, and then to bed.”

  We drank. He led me out of the room through a door standing at right angles to the one we had entered. Thus we came into a long passage which, when my host had pressed a button and flooded it with light, appeared to run the entire length of the house from east to west. Almost at its eastern end we came to a door giving into the library. It was a very large room. Ormes lighted a single lamp that stood on a table near the centre, and I judged that the room was fully sixty feet long by half that distance in width. The ceiling was so far overhead as to be lost in the gloom, though I made shift to see that it, like the walls, was covered with paneling of some dark wood. Cases for books lined the walls, save for a few breaks in their ranks to permit of doors, windows and a great fireplace that rose from the middle of the northern wall. The windows to the east, giving onto the lawn, were doors in reality, being casemented to the polished floor, the kind that are called French windows. I saw that the shelving extended from floor to ceiling, and I made out that the shelves, for the most part, contained books that appeared to have been tossed upon them with no regard for order. Doubtless these were the volumes recently acquired, which had been unpacked and piled there, awaiting the arrival of a librarian and historian. Other cases, indeed, bore heaps of dusty papers which must be the old newspapers and pamphlets of which Ormes had spoken. A glance told me, however, that this room had been a library since long before the birth of its present owners.

  “Some job!” I said.

  “Eh? Yes, maybe so. I’d hate to tackle it. But then you writing fellows like that kind of thing. All these books are just the way I unpacked ’em. Our older ones—I mean, my father’s—are all down at that farther end. Don’t think you’ll need to dip into them. But the new ones will have to be looked over and catalogued, I s’pose. Maybe you’ll have to read right through a lot of ’em. Over there are the magazines and so forth. So there’s your job. You’ve got a year and a half, but maybe you’ll need most of it.”

  For my part, as I stood looking at the thousands of books in that huge room, abruptly and for the first time I realized something of the enormity of the stupendous task before me. Stupendous? It was simply impossible. A decade of reading would be necessary before a book could be compiled that would even approach the exacting demands of a committee of professors from Harvard and Dartmouth. And I had a year and a half! That period of time scarcely allowed for the actual writing and printing of such a work. It would be very fraud to permit Ormes to go on thinking that the task could be accomplished in time to secure his legacy for him. I roused to such honor as poverty and disappointment had left within me.

  “Look here, Ormes,” I said, turning toward him, “I need a job, sure enough, but I can’t take your money for such a thing as this.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because I can’t
write the book in the time we have. What’s more, I don’t believe that anyone else can.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “No, I’m serious. It can’t be done.”

  “Well, Seaverns, if no one else can do it any better, you may as well go ahead and try. Maybe a mere lengthy essay will do. I don’t know. The will says nothing about that.”

  “But even so . . . Tell me, could you read through all those books in——?”

  “Hell! You don’t have to read ’em all. A lot of ’em haven’t got anything to do with your subject. Sort ’em, skim through ’em, do the best you can. I’ll go back to town and come up here next week, after you’ve had a chance to look things over. Then we’ll talk about it. Besides, keeping busy at this job will cheer you up.”

  I saw him smiling in the vague light, though it did not strike me as a pleasant smile. His lips came down at one corner and he shrugged slightly, as a man may who has no belief that the thing he speaks of will come to pass. But I was not thinking of Ormes. I was considering that if I did not make the vain attempt to help him, another man would be procured to do it. I did, for a moment, consider that a real scholar could be hired whose background would have been already established and who might be able to catalogue this library and set forth his thesis in the short space of eighteen months. But I needed the job. Ormes’s last words recalled to mind how badly I needed it, not only for physical maintenance, but also to lift me out of the mental slough into which I had fallen. I decided swiftly that I would at least take advantage of my host’s offer to work for a week and then, if it should be still necessary, “talk about it.”