by Craig Rice
David had come there, after his solitary wandering along the shore, aching with loneliness, longing for the sound of a voice, yet knowing nowhere in all Telefair that he might go but to the sequestered study of the doctor. There had been a few moments of casual talk in the small parlor after the two had returned from their stroll; then Philip Telefair had wished them good night and vanished into the library, Edmund had muttered something about a book he wished to read and had gone away, and Edris had not been there at all. David, oppressed suddenly by the weight of the house over his head, had fled from it, across the gardens, down to the shore. Now he had returned, longing for the cold bare walls of Doctor von Berger’s study.
He pushed aside the heavy curtains at the window and looked out. Night came down quietly, on tender enfolding winds, over the trees. In the space between the terrace and the grove, the shadows gathered together into a sea of darkness, purple and gray and blue. Over the tallest trees the sky was empty and hollow, save at its very rim, where white cloud horses rode into mist; in the distant darkness the first stars shone, faint and pale, motionless, cold, and clear. The great moon was as brightly yellow as the sapphire old Philip Telefair always wore.
“It may be that there are hauntings in the trees,” the little doctor said quietly, “or it may be that it is we who haunt the Island. Who can tell where the one begins, and the other ends?”
David let the curtain fall suddenly. “We are real,” he said almost harshly, and yet still a trifle diffidently, pulling the curtains together to hide the sky.
“Do you know which is the real, and which is the unreal?” asked Doctor von Berger. He sipped slowly at a tall glass filled with the cooling drink from the pitcher old Jonas had brought, fragrant with bruised mint and twisted orange peel. “We dream and the dreams are real; we wake, and the waking life seems real.” For a second time it seemed to David that the doctor’s protuberant blue eyes were without pupils, hidden as they were behind the thick lenses that reflected the light from the lamp like two round moons. “Reality is of the mind, yet the life of the mind is as a flowing river, of ever the same fluid substance, ever changing in its material as new waters are poured in and others move on, and ever changing in its motion as new currents come into being and are lost again, as whirlpools and eddies form and disappear, as it rests in quiet pools and then flows on. And always it moves between changing banks, past fields and forests, past mountains, past cities and under bridges; it rushes through foaming rapids and dashes down precipices in spray and mist, it broadens into a quiet stream and narrows again into a torrent, and forever it changes and moves, never pausing, and never retracing its course. It is a stream that knows not of its origin and nothing of its destination, but only of its continual flow and motion.”
He rose, and fastened together the curtains, that the moonlight might not enter. For a moment the silence seemed to come in with the darkness.
“Telefair is real,” Doctor von Berger said quietly, “and we are not. Or is it that Telefair is the illusion we have cast up in our minds?” He gazed at the closed curtains as though he saw an enshadowed garden. “I have dreamed of houses that were as real as this, and so have you.”
“But I know what I see,” cried David Telefair unhappily. “I know what happens around me. I know what I do.” He caught his breath sharply.
“My dear young man,” said the little doctor, “you do not even know what you are. Our deeds have even less substance than we ourselves. Do you know that it is possible to wish so greatly for the unattained that in time you believe it has been won—indeed, you can even remember the winning of it? There are those who hate so deeply that they come to believe they have slain the object of their hate. They can remember the faint quiver of the knife handle as the sharp blade struck an artery. The color of the bloodstains is forever imprisoned in their eyes.” His voice had momentarily grown cold, almost hard; now it became gentle once more. “It is less difficult to look beyond, my young friend, and foretell the future, than to look back and remember what has already gone before.”
He sat down beside the table again, this time so that the light from the lamp did not shine in his face, and David could see his eyes through the round glasses, not peering and inquisitive now, but friendly, almost welcoming, and dark with an unspoken sympathy.
“That is why,” Doctor von Berger said with sudden briskness, “I shall not, my beloved young friend, however much you may ask, tell you anything of what has taken place at Telefair in my lifetime, not only because I may not, but because, and I say it with all my heart, I do not know what was the truth of it.”
David had carried his glass back to his room with him. Now he sipped slowly as he watched the Island from his window. Above, the night sky, without interest, watched the coming and going of men over the earth. Underneath the trees the very darkness was restless, uneasy, ominous, in the hush of the night.
Somewhere in the great silent house, Edris slept. Had he truly watched her in her sleep, David wondered? Had he gone quietly down the corridors in the dark and slipped into that room where the moon entered by the window? Had he truly held her fragile slight body within his arms for hours during the storm that might have wakened and frightened her?
He could not tell. There was the unreality of the irrevocable past, and the reality of the unknown and unforeseen; the tomorrow waited as though some one star, beautiful, and incomparable, was hid behind some far and ultimate horizon, forever covered by the turning of the earth. There was the time past and the time to come, and the past day was hidden like the star that had already set at nightfall. It might be that the secret visits to Edris’ room were not things he had done, but things he had dreamed, and that he had still to do. Or it might be that he had done them, and remembered them now.
Which it might be, he could no longer tell. The great house had ceased to be Telefair and become a patch of light in the dark woods, an illusion, a phantasm. Sounds and images and thoughts seemed to blend into one another, without beginning or ending.
It seemed to David that he could see Philip Telefair everywhere he turned, fantastically tall, slender and graceful, the yellow sapphire glowing on his pale, delicate hand, old Philip Telefair, who had been so kind to him.
He seemed no longer to move of his own volition. It did not surprise him to discover that he was out in the dim, cavernous shadows of the corridor, though he had no idea of how he came there.
Indeed, it might be that he had never watched Edris while she slept, though surely he seemed to remember. Or did he remember?
In her room there would be the small blue night light flickering feebly on the table by her side; there would be the great, white canopy above her bed; there would be a little statuette of a dancing naiad on the carved mantel; there would be this chair close to the bed and that chair against the window; there would be a tall, slanted mirror, pallid against the darkness of the wall. If those things were truly there, then he would know that he had seen the room before; if Edris’ sleeping face was milky white in the shadows, and if her pale, delicate hands lay crossed upon the muslin coverlet. Then he would know. If these things were as he remembered them, then it was the reality that he remembered, and not a dream.
He had opened the door to her room before he realized that he had reached it, before he realized the impulse that had brought him to its threshold. He closed it behind him softly.
Was it the little fountain that he heard now, a sound like the spangled spray falling through a mist, or was it a voice heard above other voices in a room, a gentle, continuous, tinkling little sound that might have been some strange phenomenon of rainfall on the clouds themselves? The translucent spray of the fountain drifted down into the pool … or was it that Edris’ pale hair flowed down into the shadows beside her bed? A silvery sound, no more than the faintest and softest of whisperings, singing an endless little song it had taken nearly two hundred years to learn; it seemed to him that the great old house was veiled by the spray so that it seemed to be subme
rging beneath the cloudy water; her delicate hands were almost evaporating into the mist and the edges of trees were blurred and wavering; a pool of light appeared on the pool of water, like quicksilver.
But now he knew. He had seen the room before, the chair, the canopy, the dancing naiad and the slanted mirror; if he were truly here now, then he had been here before. The silver-gold hair flowed and rippled over the curve of her breast; the agitated murmuring of the fountain, as the wind swept its falling waters this way and the other, was almost drowned in the ominous moan of the thunder; the wind on his face was icy cold; her fine hair was like a spray of moisture, cool as only falling water is cool. “Is it that Telefair is the illusion we have cast up in our minds?”
How softly pale was her face, in the tender dark of the night, like grapes that are touched with silver in the wavering light of the moon. It was a veil of mist, the fine muslin night robe that covered her delicate body. “It may be that there are hauntings in the trees.” Was it the voice of the fountain, the tinkling voice of the little fountain, or was it the glinting of light in her soft hair? Was it the opalescent spray feathering into the wind, or the faint sound of her breathing carried out into the silence? He felt the cold on his face, and her skin was cold and silky, a living, fluid cold; the reflected light of the stars in the quiet pool made little fires, white and trembling; his hand struck the surface of the water and shattered its silver into a thousand sparkles that fled away from him over the shadow-colored depths.
David flung himself down on the ledge that surrounded the little fountain and plunged his hands and his face into the water, bruising himself on the sharp stones along the edge, feeling the calming, cooling touch on his taut, dry, burning skin, breathing the moisture in the air as he lifted his hot face above the surface of the pool. He longed to drown himself in those shadowy depths, to plunge himself into them, to open his veins and let his blood pour into the waters, merging with them, to drink of them until the ache was gone from his parched, contracted throat, and all the while to hear the whispering, continual sound of the little fountain, faint, melodious, murmuring, and marvelously pale.
When David rose at last from the ledge, the moon had already set behind the old grove. His stiff, cramped muscles responded slowly and with difficulty to his orders. He stood for a moment stretching himself, trying to clear away a little of the confusion from his mind. Then he walked slowly and wearily across the terrace, hardly aware of the shadows that were gathering behind him, scarcely hearing the rustling of the grass and the agitated whispering of the leaves in the night wind.
He opened the heavy door quietly and entered the great hall of the house. The sudden change from the cool air of the gardens to the enclosed atmosphere of the ancient building struck at his sharpened senses like an unexpected blow, and for a moment he stood still, just within the door, aware for the first time of the mingled odors of wood and paper and silks, the clinging warmth, almost as though he could feel the house breathe.
Suddenly he turned for one last look at the gardens, reluctant to leave them even till morning. They were swimming in darkness, now that the moon had set. Flower bed, bush, hedge and path, even the little fountain seemed to be no more than some curiously visible movement of the air. It was so dark, indeed, that David did not see the figure that had emerged from the grove until it was halfway to the house.
He recognized old Philip Telefair at once; he was walking slowly, but very carefully and gracefully, and standing extremely straight and tall. At the very edge of the terrace he paused a moment, looking up at the house. He was wrapped in a long, black cape, and against it David could see his slender hands, pallid and delicate, the great sapphire only a faint reflected flicker of light in the darkness.
The young man shrank back into the shadows of the hall as Philip Telefair approached the door, intending to wait there until his great-uncle had gone upstairs to his room. He stood there, still as a statue, while the door opened and closed again, while old Philip Telefair passed him, going slowly down the hall; he almost imagined that he could feel the old man’s breath on his face as he went by. Without moving, he watched while Philip Telefair picked up a candle from the table at the foot of the stairs, lighted it, and opened the door to the library.
The faint yellow glow from the candle lingered in the great hall for a moment, growing slowly more dim, and finally disappearing altogether. David stood there for a moment, wondering. The door to the library remained open, yet no light came from the room. Cautiously, not making a sound, he went to the door and saw that the library was empty, and that the door leading to the unused halls and rooms beyond stood open.
David could not resist the impulse to follow. He felt his way carefully through the inky darkness of the library that was only made more perilous by the half-light reflected from the lamp kept burning always in the hall. He now knew the room so well, from many hours spent there, that he made his way easily around chairs and tables, avoiding the treacherous edges of carpets. At the far door, he paused again.
In the shadows of the wide hall that lay beyond the library, he could see Philip Telefair, a tall and shadowy figure, the light from the candle in his graceful hand illumining his white face. As David watched, the old man turned the corner in the hall that led to the underground chapel, leaving only the rapidly receding glow from the candle to mark where he had been. David followed, silently, waiting for a moment at the turn in the hall until he saw the light ahead of him vanishing into the well of darkness that was the flight of stone stairs leading down to the ancient Telefair chapel.
Then he crept slowly down the stairs, a short distance behind Philip Telefair, one careful step after another, as though he followed some curious, winding passage down into the secret places of the earth, until he came to the curve in the staircase. Through the dark, cavernous entrance to the ancient chapel, he could see the faint, wavering light of the candle Philip Telefair held, shining on the old man’s beautiful face, outlining his slender hand. The underground chapel was a pit of gloom, deep shadows that became impenetrable and black in the corners, but David, from his place on the stair, could dimly make out the carved pews, the shape of the shrouded altar, and the delicate silverwork on the walls. The dust, the spiders and the fungus growth had begun their work again; already a thin gray veil hung over the entrance, and the fine luster of the wood was once more becoming dulled.
David stood there for a long time, listening intently, and yet hearing no sound. Lest Philip Telefair might turn suddenly and discover him, he drew back into a corner of the underground passage, out of sight, and waited there. The air was damp and very cold, heavy with the odors of ancient wood and buried stone, dust, and decaying moss. He suddenly felt indescribably tired, resting his back against the cool, smooth stone, breathing heavily, and with effort.
Old Philip Telefair stood motionless, looking, as near as David could tell, at nothing but the shadows. His pallid, waxy face was expressionless; his hand that held the candle was perfectly still.
He seemed very tall indeed, the black woolen cloak merging into the darkness about his feet, so that he seemed to be sprung from it, a part of it.
As he stood there, David lost all sense of time. It might have been only a moment, or it might have been an hour that he stood there, his muscles aching with the effort required to maintain absolute silence and immobility, his throat tight and painful with the necessity to muffle his breath. He could feel his skin tingling faintly as though a sudden ice-cold wind had brushed past him; the drumming in his ears became almost a pain. Then at last Philip Telefair turned slowly and walked down the aisle of the little chapel, the candlelight advancing ahead of him, his beautiful face like a carved mask.
For the second time Philip Telefair passed so close that David fancied he could almost feel his breath, warm on his cheek. Secure in the shadows, the young man tensed his muscles and managed not to breathe. There was a momentary flutter in the air, almost a chill, then the flickering candlelight began to recede
up the staircase, grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally disappeared altogether as the old man turned the corner into the hall.
Alone in the dark, David closed his eyes, leaning against the cold stone wall behind him. It seemed to him that the floor between him and the chapel was not solid, but that an opening appeared in it, a black and possibly bottomless pit, and a narrow, continually curving stair. The entrance to the chapel had disappeared now; only the stone steps leading down to the secret recesses of the earth remained before him, and David began descending them slowly while the darkness closed above his head like a trap.
He knew not what he sought at the end of the perilous descent; he only knew that it awaited him. Somewhere ahead the narrow and desperately steep passage would suddenly widen into a vast enclosure. In the center of it there would be a great, tall man seated upon a marvelously carved and ornamented chair, but he would see none of it because of the darkness that filled the enormous cave as water might fill a deep pool, an undulating, flowing, suffocating darkness that strangled and destroyed, a darkness into which he would be submerged without hope of rising again at dawn as the Island rose from the depths of the sea; the wonderful white horses around the decorated throne swayed and wavered, seen through the dark water, and feathered away into foam, and it was from the fear of drowning that he fled when he found himself ascending the steps again, slowly and agonizingly.
He crept up them on all fours like an animal, catching the stone edge of each step with his hands and pulling his body up slowly. It did not seem strange to him then that despite the smothering darkness he could see clearly; could see his own hands as they reached out to grasp the step ahead of him, strangely swollen, and hideously pale, bruised and broken from their contact with the stone, discolored like the hands of a drowned man swept up by the tides at daybreak from the bottom of the sea.
