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House of the Vampire, The

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<h3>V</h3> "Yes," said Walkham, the sculptor, "it's a most curious thing." "What is?" asked Ernest, who had been dreaming over the Sphinx that was looking at him from its corner with the sarcastic smile of five thousand years. "How our dreams of yesterday stare at us like strangers to-day." "On the contrary," remarked Reginald, "it would be strange if they were still to know us. In fact, it would be unnatural. The skies above us and the earth underfoot are in perpetual motion. Each atom of our physical nature is vibrating with unimaginable rapidity. Change is identical with life." "It sometimes seems," said the sculptor, "as if thoughts evaporated like water." "Why not, under favorable conditions?" "But where do they go? Surely they cannot perish utterly?" "Yes, that is the question. Or, rather, it is not a question. Nothing is ever lost in the spiritual universe." "But what," inquired Ernest, "is the particular reason for your reflection?" "It is this," the sculptor replied; "I had a striking motive and lost it." "Do you remember," he continued, speaking to Reginald, "the Narcissus I was working on the last time when you called at my studio?" "Yes; it was a striking thing and impressed me very much, though I cannot recall it at the moment." "Well, it was a commission. An eccentric young millionaire had offered me eight thousand dollars for it. I had an absolutely original conception. But I cannot execute it. It's as if a breeze had carried it away." "That is very regrettable." "Well, I should say so," replied the sculptor. Ernest smiled. For everybody knew of Walkham's domestic troubles. Having twice figured in the divorce court, he was at present defraying the expenses of three households. The sculptor had meanwhile seated himself at Reginald's writing-table, unintentionally scanning a typewritten page that was lying before him. Like all artists, something of a madman and something of a child, he at first glanced over its contents distractedly, then with an interest so intense that he was no longer aware of the impropriety of his action. "By Jove!" he cried. "What is this?" "It's an epic of the French Revolution," Reginald replied, not without surprise. "But, man, do you know that I have discovered my motive in it?" "What do you mean?" asked Ernest, looking first at Reginald and then at Walkham, whose sanity he began to doubt. "Listen!" And the sculptor read, trembling with emotion, a long passage whose measured cadence delighted Ernest's ear, without, however, enlightening his mind as to the purport of Walkham's cryptic remark. Reginald said nothing, but the gleam in his eye showed that this time, at least, his interest was alert. Walkham saw the hopelessness of making clear his meaning without an explanation. "I forget you haven't a sculptor's mind. I am so constituted that, with me, all impressions are immediately translated into the sense of form. I do not hear music; I see it rise with domes and spires, with painted windows and Arabesques. The scent of the rose is to me tangible. I can almost feel it with my hand. So your prose suggested to me, by its rhythmic flow, something which, at first indefinite, crystallised finally into my lost conception of Narcissus." "It is extraordinary," murmured Reginald. "I had not dreamed of it." "So you do not think it rather fantastic?" remarked Ernest, circumscribing his true meaning. "No, it is quite possible. Perhaps his Narcissus was engaging the sub-conscious strata of my mind while I was writing this passage. And surely it would be strange if the undercurrents of our mind were not reflected in our style." "Do you mean, then, that a subtle psychologist ought to be able to read beneath and between our lines, not only what we express, but also what we leave unexpressed?" "Undoubtedly." "Even if, while we are writing, we are unconscious of our state of mind? That would open a new field to psychology." "Only to those that have the key, that can read the hidden symbols. It is to me a matter-of-course that every mind-movement below or above the threshold of consciousness must, of a necessity, leave its imprint faintly or clearly, as the case may be, upon our activities." "This may explain why books that seem intolerably dull to the majority, delight the hearts of the few," Ernest interjected. "Yes, to the few that possess the key. I distinctly remember how an uncle of mine once laid down a discussion on higher mathematics and blushed fearfully when his innocent wife looked over his shoulder. The man who had written it was a roué." "Then the seemingly most harmless books may secretly possess the power of scattering in young minds the seed of corruption," Walkham remarked. "If they happen to understand," Clarke observed thoughtfully. "I can very well conceive of a lecherous text-book of the calculus, or of a reporter's story of a picnic in which burnt, under the surface, undiscoverable, save to the initiate, the tragic passion of Tristram and Iseult." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h3>VI</h3> Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in Reginald Clarke's studio. The spring was now well advanced and had sprinkled the meadows with flowers, and the bookshelves of the reviewers with fiction. The latter Ernest turned to good account, but from the flowers no poem blossomed forth. In writing about other men's books, he almost forgot that the springtide had brought to him no bouquet of song. Only now and then, like a rippling of water, disquietude troubled his soul. The strange personality of the master of the house had enveloped the lad's thoughts with an impenetrable maze. The day before Jack had come on a flying visit from Harvard, but even he was unable to free Ernest's soul from the obsession of Reginald Clarke. Ernest was lazily stretching himself on a couch, waving the smoke of his cigarette to Reginald, who was writing at his desk. "Your friend Jack is delightful," Reginald remarked, looking up from his papers. "And his ebon-coloured hair contrasts prettily with the gold in yours. I should imagine that you are temperamental antipodes." "So we are; but friendship bridges the chasm between." "How long have you known him?" "We have been chums ever since our sophomore year." "What attracted you in him?" "It is no simple matter to define exactly one's likes and dislikes. Even a tiny protoplasmic animal appears to be highly complex under the microscope. How can we hope to analyse, with any degree of certitude, our souls, especially when, under the influence of feeling, we see as through a glass darkly." "It is true that personal feeling colours our spectacles and distorts the perspective. Still, we should not shrink from self-analysis. We must learn to see clearly into our own hearts if we would give vitality to our work. Indiscretion is the better part of literature, and it behooves us to hound down each delicate elusive shadow of emotion, and convert it into copy." "It is because I am so self-analytical that I realise the complexity of my nature, and am at a loss to define my emotions. Conflicting forces sway us hither and thither without neutralising each other. Physicology isn't physics. There were many things to attract me to Jack. He was subtler, more sympathetic, more feminine, perhaps, than the rest of my college-mates." "That I have noticed. In fact, his lashes are those of a girl. You still care for him very much?" "It isn't a matter of caring. We are two beings that live one life." "A sort of psychic Siamese twins?" "Almost. Why, the matter is very simple. Our hearts root in the same soil; the same books have nourished us, the same great winds have shaken our being, and the same sunshine called forth the beautiful blossom of friendship." "He struck me, if you will pardon my saying so, as a rather commonplace companion." "There is in him a hidden sweetness, and a depth of feeling which only intimate contact reveals. He is now taking his post-graduate course at Harvard, and for well-nigh two months we have not met; yet so many invisible threads of common experience unite us that we could meet after years and still be near each other." "You are very young," Reginald replied. "What do you mean?" "Ah—never mind." "So you do not believe that two hearts may ever beat as one?" "No, that is an auditory delusion. Not even two clocks beat in unison. There is always a discrepancy, infinitesimal, perhaps, but a discrepancy nevertheless." A sharp ring of the bell interrupted the conversation. A moment later a curly head peeped through the door. "Hello, Ernest! How are you, old man?" the intruder cried, with a laugh in his voice. Then, noticing Clarke, 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 Clarke, 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 Ernest 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," Reginald replied. "Where shall we go?" Ernest asked, absent-mindedly. But he did not hear the answer, for Reginald's scepticisms had more deeply impressed him than he cared to confess to himself. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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