Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  back, when this is done. That’s why it means so much.

  And in those days we weren’t separate; it was like a big

  jelly, like those blobs that float up on the beach.”

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  Philip K. Dick

  “Float up,” he said, “and are left there to die.”

  “Could you get me a towel?” Tanya asked. “Or a

  washcloth? 1 need it.”

  He padded into the bathroom for a towel. There— he

  was naked, now— he once more saw his shoulder, saw

  where it had seized hold of him and held on, dragged

  him back, possibly to toy with him a little more.

  The marks, unaccountably, were bleeding.

  He sponged the blood away. More oozed forth at once

  and seeing that, he wondered how much time he had left.

  Probably only hours.

  Returning to bed, he said, “Could you continue?”

  “Sure. If you have any energy left; it’s up to you.” She

  lay gazing up at him unwinkingly, barely visible in the

  dim nocturnal light.

  “I have,” he said. And hugged her to him.

  Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948)

  The B ell in the Tog

  Gertrude Atherton dedicated her first and best collection of

  ghost stories, The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories

  (1905), "To the Master, Henry Jam es." The title story of

  the collection is both an homage to James and an extraordinary critique. Ralph, the central character who becomes obsessed with a painting, is a portrait of the Jam es whom

  Atherton knew, and the stamp of emulation is everywhere

  in the piece. But in the end, the portrayal is not entirely

  sympathetic. O ne wonders what James made of this piece.

  An intriguing fact is that Henry James began writing in

  1900 upon the request of William Dean Howells a long

  story about an "international ghost,” that he wrote in part

  and then abandoned when he had difficulty with the plot. In

  1915, he took it up again but died before completing The

  Sense of the Past, which was published as a fragment

  posthumously (1917). Ralph, the central character, becomes obsessed with a century-old painting, and travels back to the past as a "ghost" from the future, who sits for

  that very portrait. W hatever the case, “The Bell in the Fog"

  is an effective supernatural piece by a feminist writer who

  later became James' literary enemy.

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  Gertrude Atherton

  I

  The great author had realized one of the dreams of his

  ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in

  England. It was not so much the good American’s

  reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to

  consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic

  appreciation of the mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic aloofness of walls that have sheltered, and furniture that has embraced, generations and generations of the dead. To mere wealth, only his astute and incomparably modem brain yielded respect; his ego raised its goose-flesh at the sight of rooms furnished with a single

  check, conciliatory as the taste might be. The dumping

  of the old interiors of Europe into the glistening shells of

  the United States not only roused him almost to passionate protest, but offended his patriotism— which he classified among his unworked ideals. The average American was not an artist, therefore he had no excuse for even the

  affectation of cosmopolitanism. Heaven knew he was

  national enough in everything else, from his accent to his

  lack of repose; let his surroundings be in keeping.

  Orth had left the United States soon after his first

  successes, and, his art being too great to be confounded

  with locality, he had long since ceased to be spoken of as

  an American author. All civilized Europe furnished

  stages for his puppets, and, if never picturesque nor

  impassioned, his originality was as overwhelming as his

  style. His subtleties might not always be understood—

  indeed, as a rule, they were not—but the musical

  mystery of his language and the penetrating charm of his

  lofty and cultivated mind induced raptures in the initiated, forever denied to those who failed to appreciate him.

  His following was not a large one, but it was very

  distinguished. The aristocracies of the earth gave to it;

  and not to understand and admire Ralph Orth was

  The Bell in the Fog

  103

  deliberately to relegate one’s self to the ranks. But the

  elect are few, and they frequently subscribe to the circulating libraries; on the Continent, they buy the Tauch-nitz edition; and had not Mr. Orth inherited a sufficiency

  of ancestral dollars to enable him to keep rooms in

  Jermyn Street, and the wardrobe of an Englishman of

  leisure, he might have been forced to consider the tastes

  of the middle-class at a desk in Hampstead. But, as it

  mercifully was, the fashionable and exclusive sets of

  London knew and sought him. He was too wary to

  become a fad, and too sophisticated to grate or bore;

  consequently, his popularity continued evenly from year

  to year, and long since he had come to be regarded as one

  of them. He was not keenly addicted to sport, but he

  could handle a gun, and all men respected his dignity

  and breeding. They cared less for his books than women

  did, perhaps because patience is not a characteristic of

  their sex. I am alluding, however, in this instance, to

  men-of-the-world. A group of young literary men— and

  one or two women— put him on a pedestal and kissed

  the earth before it. Naturally, they imitated him, and as

  this flattered him, and he had a kindly heart deep among

  the cere-cloths of his formalities, he sooner or later wrote

  “appreciations” of them all, which nobody living could

  understand, but which owing to the subtitle and signature answered every purpose.

  With all this, however, he was not utterly content.

  From the 12th of August until late in the winter— when

  he did not go to Homburg and the Riviera— he visited

  the best houses in England, slept in state chambers, and

  meditated in historic parks; but the country was his one

  passion, and he longed for his own acres.

  He was turning fifty when his great-aunt died and

  made him her heir: “as a poor reward for his immortal

  services to literature,” read the will of this phenomenally

  appreciative relative. The estate was a large one. There

  was a rush for his books; new editions were announced.

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  Gertrude Atherton

  He smiled with cynicism, not unmixed with sadness; but

  he was very grateful for the money, and as soon as his

  fastidious taste would permit he bought him a country-

  seat.

  The place gratified all his ideals and dreams— for he

  had romanced about his sometime English possession as

  he had never dreamed of woman. It had once been the

  property of the Church, and the ruin of cloister and

  chapel above the ancient wood was sharp against the low

  pale sky. Even the house itself was Tudor, but wealth

  from generation to generation had kept it in repair; and

  the lawns were as velvety, the hedges as rigid, the trees as
/>
  aged as any in his own works. It was not a castle nor a

  great property, but it was quite perfect; and for a long

  while he felt like a bridegroom on a succession of

  honeymoons. He often laid his hand against the rough

  ivied walls in a lingering caress.

  After a time, he returned the hospitalities of his

  friends, and his invitations, given with the exclusiveness

  of his great distinction, were never refused. Americans

  visiting England eagerly sought for letters to him; and if

  they were sometimes benumbed by that cold and formal

  presence, and awed by the silences of Chillingsworth—

  the few who entered there— they thrilled in anticipation

  of verbal triumphs, and forthwith bought an entire set of

  his books. It was characteristic that they dared not ask

  him for his autograph.

  Although women invariably described him as “brilliant,’' a few men affirmed that he was gentle and lovable, and any one of them was well content to spend weeks at

  Chillingsworth with no other companion. But, on the

  whole, he was rather a lonely man.

  It occurred to him how lonely he was one gay June

  morning when the sunlight was streaming through his

  narrow windows, illuminating tapestries and armor, the

  family portraits of the young profligate from whom he

  had made this splendid purchase, dusting its gold on

  The Bell in the Fog

  105

  the black wood of wainscot and floor. He was in the

  gallery at the moment, studying one of his two favorite

  portraits, a gallant little lad in the green costume of

  Robin Hood. The boy’s expression was imperious apd

  radiant, and he had that perfect beauty which in any

  disposition appealed so powerfully to the author. But as

  Orth stared today at the brilliant youth, of whose life he

  knew nothing, he suddenly became aware of a human

  stirring at the foundations of his aesthetic pleasure.

  “I wish he were alive and here,” he thought, with a

  sigh. “What a jolly little companion he would be! And

  this fine old mansion would make a far more complementary setting for him than for me.”

  He turned away abruptly, only to find himself face to

  face with the portrait of a little girl who was quite unlike

  the boy, yet so perfect in her own way, and so unmistakably painted by the same hand, that he had long since concluded they had been brother and sister. She was

  angelically fair, and, young as she was— she could not

  have been more than six years old— her dark-blue eyes

  had a beauty of mind which must have been remarkable

  twenty years later. Her pouting mouth was like a little

  scarlet serpent, her skin almost transparent, her pale hair

  fell waving— not curled with the orthodoxy of childhood

  — about her tender bare shoulders. She wore a long

  white frock, and clasped tightly against her breast a doll

  far more gorgeously arrayed than herself. Behind her

  were the ruins and the woods of Chillingsworth.

  Orth had studied this portrait many times, for the sake

  of an art which he understood almost as well as his own;

  but today he saw only the lovely child. He forgot even the

  boy in the intensity of this new and personal absorption.

  “Did she live to grow up, I wonder?”„he thought. “She

  should have made a remarkable, even a famous woman,

  with those eyes and that brow, but—could the spirit

  within that ethereal frame stand the enlightenments of

  maturity? Would not that mind— purged, perhaps, in a

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  Gertrude Atherton

  long probation from the dross of other existences— flee

  in disgust from the commonplace problems of a

  woman’s life? Such perfect beings should die while they

  are still perfect. Still, it is possible that this little girl,

  whoever she was, was idealized by the artist, who

  painted into her his own dream of exquisite childhood.”

  Again he turned away impatiently. “I believe 1 am

  rather fond of children,” he admitted. “I catch myself

  watching them on the street when they are pretty

  enough. Well, who does not like them?” he added, with

  some defiance.

  He went back to his work; he was chiselling a story

  which was to be the foremost excuse of a magazine as yet

  unborn. At the end of half an hour he threw down his

  wondrous instrument— which looked not unlike an ordinary pen— and making no attempt to disobey the desire that possessed him, went back to the gallery.

  The dark splendid boy, the angelic little girl were all he

  saw— even of the several children in that roll call of

  the past— and they seemed to look straight down his

  eyes into depths where the fragmentary ghosts of unrecorded ancestors gave faint musical response.

  “The dead’s kindly recognition of the dead,” he

  thought. “But I wish these children were alive.”

  For a week he haunted the gallery, and the children

  haunted him. Then he became impatient and angry. “I

  am mooning like a barren woman,” he exclaimed. “I

  must take the briefest way of getting those youngsters off

  my mind.”

  With the help of his secretary, he ransacked the

  library, and finally brought to light the gallery catalogue

  which had been named in the inventory. He discovered

  that his children were the Viscount Tancred and the

  Lady Blanche Mortlake, son and daughter of the second

  Earl of Teignmouth. Little wiser than before, he sat down

  at once and wrote to the present earl, asking for some

  account of the lives of the children. He awaited the

  answer with more restlessness than he usually permitted

  The Bell in the Fog

  107

  himself, and took long walks, ostentatiously avoiding the

  gallery.

  “I believe those youngsters have obsessed me,” he

  thought, more than once. “They certainly are beautiful

  enough, and the last time I looked at them in that waning

  light they were fairly alive. Would that they were, and

  scampering about this park.”

  Lord Teignmouth, who was intensely grateful to him,

  answered promptly.

  “I am afraid,” he wrote, “that I don’t know much

  about my ancestors— those who didn’t do something or

  other; but I have a vague rememberance of having been

  told by an aunt of mine, who lives on the family

  traditions— she isn’t married— that the little chap was

  drowned in the river, and that the little girl died too— I

  mean when she was a little girl— wasted away, or

  something— I’m such a beastly idiot about expressing

  myself, that I wouldn’t dare to write to you at all if you

  weren’t really great. That is actually all I can tell you, and

  I am afraid the painter was their only biographer.”

  The author was gratified that the girl had died young,

  but grieved for the boy. Although he had avoided the

  gallery of late, his practised imagination had evoked

  from the throngs of history the high-handed and brilliant, surely adventurous career of the third Earl of Teignmouth. He
had pondered upon the deep delights of

  directing such a mind and character, and had caught

  himself envying the dust that was older still. When he

  read of the lad’s early death, in spite of his regret that

  such promise should have come to naught, he admitted

  to a secret thrill of satisfaction that the boy had so soon

  ceased to belong to anyone. Then he smiled with both

  sadness and humor.

  “What an old fool I am!” he admitted. “I believe I not

  only wish those children were alive, but that they were

  my own.”

  The frank admission proved fatal. He made straight

  for the gallery. The boy, after the interval of separation,

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  Gertrude Atherton

  seemed more spiritedly alive than ever, the little girl to

  suggest, with her faint appealing smile, that she would

  like to be taken up and cuddled.

  “I must try another way,” he thought, desperately,

  after that long communion. “I must write them out of

  ID6>

  He went back to the library and locked up the tour de

  force which had ceased to command his classic faculty.

  At once, he began to write the story of the brief lives of

  the children, much to the amazement of that faculty,

  which was little accustomed to the simplicities. Nevertheless, before he had written three chapters, he knew that he was at work upon a masterpiece— and more: he

  was experiencing a pleasure so keen that once and again

  his hand trembled, and he saw the page through a mist.

  Although his characters had always been objective to

  himself and his more patient readers, none knew better

  than he— a man of no delusions—that they were so

  remote and exclusive as barely to escape being mere

  mentalities; they were never the pulsing living creations

  of the more full-blooded genius. But he had been content

  to have it so. His creations might find and leave him

  cold, but he had known his highest satisfaction in

  chiselling the statuettes, extracting subtle and elevating

  harmonies, while combining words as no man of his

  tongue had combined them before.

  But the children were not statuettes. He had loved and

  brooded over them long ere he had thought to tuck them

  into his pen, and on its first stroke they danced out alive.