August 21, 2025 • 22 mins
Dive into the haunting world of Everil Worrell, one of the pioneering female voices in weird fiction during the early days of Weird Tales magazine. The year 1927 was particularly significant for Worrell, as she graced both the January and December issues with her chilling undead tales, Leonora and The Canal. Notably, The Canal was cherished by none other than H. P. Lovecraft, who frequently named it among his top six stories published in Weird Tales. This gripping narrative weaves a striking atmosphere of love and dread that will linger long after the last word, while Leonora perfectly complements it, exploring the irresistible allure of a mysterious entity from beyond. (Summary by Ben Tucker)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section one of The Canal and Leonora by Everill Warrel.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker. The Canal
and Leonora by Everill Warrel. Section one the Canal, Part one,
(00:27):
past the sleeping city, the river sweeps along its left bank,
the old canal creeps. I did not intend that to
be poetry, although the scene is poetic, somberly, gruesomely poetic,
like the poems of Poe. Too well, I know it
too often have I walked over the grass grown path,
beside the reflections of black trees and tumble down shacks
(00:50):
and distant factory chimneys, and the sluggish waters that move
so slowly and cease to move at all. I shall
be called mad, and I shall be a suicide. I
shall take no pains to cover up my trail or
to hide the thing that I shall do. What will
it matter afterward what they say of me, if they
(01:11):
knew the truth, if they could vision even dimly, the
beings with whom I have consorted, if the faintest realization
might be theirs of the thing I am becoming, and
of the fate from which I am saving their city.
Then they would call me a great hero. But it
does not matter what they call me. As I have
said before, let me write down the things I am
(01:34):
about to write down, and let them be taken as
they will be taken, the last ravings of a madman.
The city will be in mourning for the thing I
shall have done, but its mourning will be of no
consequence besides that other fate from which I shall have
saved it. I have always had a taste for nocturnal prowling.
We as a race have grown too intelligent to take
(01:56):
seriously any of the old instinctive fears that preserved us
through preceding generations. Our soul remaining salvation, then, has come
to be our tendency to travel in herds. We wander
at night, but our objective is somewhere on the brightly
lighted streets, or still somewhere where men do not go alone.
(02:17):
When we travel far afield, it is in company few
of my acquaintance. Few in the whole city here would
care to ramble at midnight over the grass grown path
I have spoken of, not because they would fear to
do so. But because such things are not being done well.
It is dangerous to differ individually from one's fellows. It
(02:41):
is dangerous to wander from the beaten road. And the
fears that guarded the race and the dawn of time
and through the centuries were real. Fears found it on reality.
A month ago, I was a stranger here. I had
just taken my first position. I was graduated from college
only three months before. In the spring. I was lonely,
(03:02):
and likely to remain so for some time, for I
have always been of a solitary nature, making friends slowly.
I had received one invitation out to visit the camp
of a fellow employee in the firm for which I worked,
a camp which was located on the farther side of
the wide river, the side across from the city and
the canal, where the bank was high and steep and
(03:25):
heavily wooded, and little tents blossomed all around the water's edge.
At night, these camps were a string of sparkling lights
and tiny, leaping camp fires, and the tinkle of music
carried faintly far across the calmly flowing river. That far
bank of the river was no place for an eccentric,
solitary man to love, but the near bank, which would
(03:47):
have been an i sore to the campers had not
the river been so wide. The near bank attracted me
from my first glimpse of it. We embarked in a
motor boat at some distance down stream, and swept up
along the near bank, and then out and across the current.
I turned my eyes backward, the murk of stagnant water
(04:07):
that was the canal, the jumble of low buildings beyond it,
the lonely, low lying waste of the narrow strip of
land between canal and river, the dark, scattered trees growing there.
I intended to see more of these things. That week
end bored me, but I repaid myself no later than
Monday evening. The first evening, when I was back in
(04:30):
the city, alone and free, I ate a solitary dinner.
Immediately after leaving the office, I went to my room
and slept from seven until nearly midnight. I wakened naturally then,
for my whole heart was set on exploring the alluring
solitude I had discovered. I dressed, slipped out of the
house and into the street, started the motor in my roadster,
(04:52):
which I had left parked at the kerb, and drove
through the lighted streets. I left behind that part of town,
which was thick with vehicles carrying people home from their
evening engagements, and began to thread my way through darker
and narrower streets. Once I had to back out of
a cul de sac, and once I had to detour
around a closed block. This part of town was not alluring,
(05:16):
even to me. It was dismal without being solitary. But
when I had parked my car on a rough, cobbled
street that ran directly down into the inky waters of
the canal and crossed a narrow bridge, I was repaid.
A few minutes set my feet on the old tow path,
where mules had drawn river boats up and down only
(05:36):
a year or so ago, across the canal. Now, as
I walked up stream at a swinging pace, the miserable
shacks where miserable people lived, seemed to march with me
and then fell behind. They looked like places in which
murders might be committed, every one of them. The bridge
I had crossed was near the end of the city,
(05:57):
going north, as the canal marked its western extremity. Ten
minutes of walking, and the dismal shacks were quite a
distance behind. The river was farther away in the strip
of waste land, much wider and more wooded, and tall
trees across the canal marched with me, as the evil
looking houses had done before. Far and faint, the sound
(06:18):
of a bell in the city reached my ears. It
was midnight. I stopped, enjoying the desolation around me. It
had the savor I had expected and hoped for. I
stood for some time looking up at the sky, watching
the low drift of heavy clouds, which were visible in
the dull, reflected glow from distant lights in the heart
(06:39):
of the city, so that they appeared to have a
lurid phosphorescence of their own. The ground under my feet,
on the contrary, was utterly devoid of light. I had
felt my way carefully, knowing the edge of the canal,
partly by instinct, partly by the even more perfect blackness
of the water in it, and even holding pretty well
to the path because it was perceptibly sunken below the
(07:02):
ground beside it. Now, as I stood motionless in the spot,
my eyes upcast, my mind adrift with strange fancies. Suddenly
my feelings of satisfaction and well being gave way to
something different. Fear was an emotion unknown to me, for
those things which make men fear, I had always loved.
(07:26):
The graveyard at night was to me a charming place
for stroll and meditation. But now the roots of my
hair seemed to move upright on my head and along
all the length of my spine. I was conscious of
a prickling, tingling sensation, such as my forefathers may have
felt in the jungle when the hair on their backs
(07:46):
stood up, as the hair of my head was doing now. Also,
I was afraid to move, And I knew that there
were eyes upon me, and that that was why I
was afraid to move. I was afraid of those eyes,
afraid to see them, to look into them. All this
while I stood perfectly still, my face up tilted toward
(08:09):
the sky. But after a terrible mental effort, I mastered
myself slowly, slowly, with an attempt to propitiate the owner
of the unseen eyes. By my casual manner, I lowered
my own I looked straight ahead at the softly swaying
silhouette of the tree tops across the canal as they
(08:29):
moved gently in the cool night wind. At the mass
of blackness that was those trees, and the opposite shore,
at the shining blackness, where the reflections of the clouds
glinted vaguely and disappeared, that was the canal. And again
I raised my eyes a little, for just across the canal,
(08:51):
where the shadows massed most heavily, there was that at
which I must look more closely. And now, as I
grew accustomed to the greater blackness and my pure expanded,
I dimly discerned the contours of an old boat or barge,
half sunken in the water, an old, abandoned canal boat.
But was I dreaming? Or was there a white clad
(09:14):
figure seated on the roof of the low cabin aft,
a pale heart shaped face gleaming strangely at me from
the darkness, the glow of two eyes seeming to light
up the face and to detach it from the darkness.
Surely there could be no doubt as to the eyes.
They shone as the eyes of animals shine in the dark,
with a phosphorescent gleam and a glimmer of red. Well,
(09:39):
I had heard that some human eyes have that quality
at night. But what a place for a human being
to be a girl too. I was sure that daintily
heart shaped face was the face of a girl. Surely
I was seeing it clearer and clearer, either because my
eyes were growing more accustomed to peering into the deeper shadows,
(10:03):
or because of that phosphorescence in the eyes that stared
back at me. I raised my voice softly, not to
break too much the stillness of the night. Hello, who's there?
Are you lost or marooned? And can I help? There
was a little pause. I was conscious of a soft
lapping at my feet. A stronger night wind had sprung up,
(10:26):
was ruffling the dark waters. I had been overwarm, and
where it struck me the perspiration turned cold on my body,
so that I shivered uncontrollably. You can stay and talk
awhile if you will. I am lonely but not lost.
I I live here. I could hardly believe my ears.
(10:52):
The voice was little more than a whisper, but it
had carried clearly a girl's voice, sure enough, and she
lived there in an old, abandoned canal boat, half submerged
in the stagnant water. You are not alone there no,
not alone. My father lives here with me, but he
(11:13):
is deaf, and he sleeps soundly. Did the night wind
blow still colder, as though it came to us from
some unseen frozen sea. Or was there something in her
tone that chilled me? Even as a strange attraction drew
me toward her. I wanted to draw near to her,
to see closely the pale, heart shaped face, to lose
(11:35):
myself in the bright eyes that I had seen shining
in the darkness. I wanted. I wanted to hold her
in my arms, to find her mouth with mine, to
kiss it. With a start, I realized the nature of
my thoughts, and for an instant lost all thought and surprise.
(11:55):
Never in my twenty two years had I felt love
before my fancies had been otherwise directed. A moss groan
fallen gravestone was a dearer thing to me to contemplate
than the fairest face in all the world. Yet surely
what I felt now was love. I took a reckless
step nearer the edge of the bank. Could I come
(12:18):
over to you, I begged. It's warm, and I don't
mind a wedding. It's late, I know, but I would
give a great deal to sit beside you and talk,
if only for a few minutes before I go back
to town. It's a lonely place here for a girl
like you to live. Your father should not mind if
you exchange a few words with some one occasionally. Was
(12:39):
it the unconventionality of my request that made her next
words sound like a long drawn shudder of protest. There
was a strangeness in the tones of her voice that
held me wondering. Every time she spoke no, no, oh, no,
you must not swim across. Then Could I come tomorrow
(13:00):
or some day soon in the daytime? And would you
let me come on board then? Or would you come
on shore and talk to me? Perhaps not in the daytime,
never in the daytime. Again, the intensity of her low
toned negation held me spell bound. It was not her
(13:20):
sense of the impropriety of the hour, then, that had
dictated her manner. For surely any girl with the slightest
sense of the fitness of things would rather have a
tryst by daytime than after midnight. Yet there was an
interference in her last words that if I came again,
it should be again at night. Still feeling the spell
(13:40):
that had enthralled me, as one does not forget the
presence of a drug in the air that is stealing
one's senses, even when those senses begin to wander and
to busy themselves with other things. I yet spoke shortly.
Why do you say never in the daytime? Do you
mean that I may more than this once at night? Though?
(14:02):
Now you won't let me cross the canal to you
at the expense of my own clothes, And you won't
put down your plank or drawbridge or whatever you come
on shore with and talk to me here for only
a moment. I'll come again if you'll let me talk
to you instead of calling across the water. I'll come
again any time you will let me, day or night.
I don't care. I want to come to you, But
(14:24):
I only ask you to explain. If I came in
the daytime and met your father, wouldn't that be the
best thing to do. Then we would be really acquainted.
We could be friends. In the night time. My father sleeps.
In the daytime I sleep. How could I talk to
you or introduce you to my father? Then if you
came on board this boat in the daytime, you would
(14:46):
find my father and you would be sorry. As for me,
I would be sleeping. I could never introduce you to
my father. Do you see you sleep soundly? You and
your father? Again, there was pique in my voice. Yes,
we sleep soundly, and always at different times, always at
(15:10):
different times. We are on guard. One of us is
always on guard. We have been hardly used down there
in your city, and we have taken refuge here, and
we are always always on guard. The resentment vanished from
my breast, and I felt my heart go out to
her anew. She was so pale, so pitiful in the night.
(15:33):
My eyes were learning better and better how to pierce
the darkness. They were giving me a more definite picture
of my companion. If I could think of her as
a companion between myself and whom stretched the black water,
the sadness of the lonely scene, the perfection of the
solitude itself, these things contributed to her pitifulness. Then there
(15:56):
was that strangeness of atmosphere, of which even and yet
I had only partly taken note. There was the strange
shivering chill, which yet did not seem like the healthful
chill of a cool evening. In fact, it did not
prevent me from feeling the oppression of the night, which
was unusually sultry. It was like a little breath of
(16:17):
deadly cold that came and went, and yet did not
alter the temperature of the air itself, as the small
ripples on the surface of water did not concern the
water even a foot down. And even that was not all.
There was an unwholesome smell about the night, a dank,
moldy smell. It might have been the very breath of
(16:37):
death and decay. Even I, the connoisseur in all things
dismal and unwholesome, tried to keep my mind from dwelling
over much upon that smell. What it must be to
live breathing a constantly inn, I could not think. But
no doubt the girl and her father were used to it,
and no doubt it came from the stagnant water of
(16:59):
the canal, and from the rotting wood of the old,
half sunken boat that was their refuge. My heart thropped
with pity again, their refuge. What a place. And my
clearer vision of the girl showed me that she was
pitifully thin, even though possessed of the strange face that
drew me to her. Her clothes hung around her like
(17:21):
old rags, but hers was no scarecrow aspect. Although little
flesh closed her bones, her bones were beautiful. I was
sure the little pale, heart shaped face would be more
beautiful still if I could only see it closely. I
must see it closely. I must establish some claim to
(17:41):
consideration as a friend of the strange, lonely crew of
the half sunken wreck. This is a poor place to
call a refuge, I said. Finally, one might have very
little money and yet do somewhat better. Perhaps I might
help you. I am sure I could. If your ill
treatment in the city was because of poverty. I am
(18:01):
not rich, but I could help that. I could help
you a little with money, if you would let me,
Or in any case, I could find a position for you.
I'm sure I could do that. The eyes that shone
fitfully toward me, like two small pools of water intermittently
lit by a cloud swept sky, seemed to glow more brightly.
(18:22):
She had been half crouching, half sitting on top of
the cabin. Now she leaped to her feet with one quick, sinuous,
abrupt motion, and took a few rapid, restless steps to
and fro before she answered. When she spoke. Her voice
was little more than a whisper, yet surely rage was
in its shrill sibilance. Fool, do you think you would
(18:42):
be helping me to tie me to a desk, to
shut me behind doors, away from freedom, away from the
delight of doing my own will, of seeking my own way. Never,
never would I let you do that. Rather, this old boat,
rather a deserted grave under the stars for my home,
a boundless swept over me, and a positive feeling of
kinship with this strange being whose face I had hardly seen,
(19:06):
possessed me. So I myself might have spoken, so I
had often felt, though I had never dreamed of putting
my thoughts so definitely, so forcefully. My regularized daytime life
was a thing, I thought little love. I really lived
only in my nocturnal prowlings. Why this girl was right.
(19:28):
All of life should be free and spent in places
that interested and attracted. How little, how little I knew
that night that dread forces were tugging at my soul,
were finding entrance to it, an easy access through the
morbid weakness of my nature. How little I knew at
what a cost I deviated so radically from my kind
(19:51):
who heard in cities and love well lit ways, and
the sight of man, and sweet and wholesome places to
be solitary in when the desire for solitude comes over them.
That night it seemed to me that there was but
one important thing in life to allay the angry passion
my unfortunate words had aroused in the breast of my beloved,
(20:14):
and to win from her some answering feeling. I understand
much better than you think, I whispered tremulously. What I
want is to see you again, to come to know you,
and to serve you in any way that I may.
Surely there must be something in which I can be
(20:36):
of use to you. All you have to do, from
to night on forever is to command me. I swear it.
You swear that you do, swear it. Delighted at the
eagerness of her words, I lifted my hand toward the
dark heavens. I swear it. From this night on forever,
I swear it. Then listen to night. You may not
(21:01):
come to me, nor I to you. I do not
want you to board this boat, not to night, not
any night, and most of all, not any day. But
do not look so sad. I will come to you. No,
not to night, perhaps not for many nights. Yet before
very long, I will come to you there on the
bank of the canal, when the water in the canal
(21:22):
ceases to flow. I must have made a gesture of
impatience or of despair. It sounded like a way of
saying never. For why should the water in the canal
cease to flow? She read my thoughts in some way,
for she answered them, you do not understand I am
speaking seriously. I am promising to meet you there on
(21:43):
the bank, and soon, For the water within these banks
is moving slower, always slower. Higher up, I have heard
that the canal has been drained. Between these lower locks.
The water still seeps in and drops slowly, slowly down stream.
But there will come a night when it will be
quite quite stagnant. And on that night I will come
(22:06):
to you. And when I come, I will ask you
a favor, and you will keep your oath. End of
Section one The Canal, Part one
Section one of The Canal and Leonora by Everill Warrel.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker. The Canal
and Leonora by Everill Warrel. Section one the Canal, Part one,
(00:27):
past the sleeping city, the river sweeps along its left bank,
the old canal creeps. I did not intend that to
be poetry, although the scene is poetic, somberly, gruesomely poetic,
like the poems of Poe. Too well, I know it
too often have I walked over the grass grown path,
beside the reflections of black trees and tumble down shacks
(00:50):
and distant factory chimneys, and the sluggish waters that move
so slowly and cease to move at all. I shall
be called mad, and I shall be a suicide. I
shall take no pains to cover up my trail or
to hide the thing that I shall do. What will
it matter afterward what they say of me, if they
(01:11):
knew the truth, if they could vision even dimly, the
beings with whom I have consorted, if the faintest realization
might be theirs of the thing I am becoming, and
of the fate from which I am saving their city.
Then they would call me a great hero. But it
does not matter what they call me. As I have
said before, let me write down the things I am
(01:34):
about to write down, and let them be taken as
they will be taken, the last ravings of a madman.
The city will be in mourning for the thing I
shall have done, but its mourning will be of no
consequence besides that other fate from which I shall have
saved it. I have always had a taste for nocturnal prowling.
We as a race have grown too intelligent to take
(01:56):
seriously any of the old instinctive fears that preserved us
through preceding generations. Our soul remaining salvation, then, has come
to be our tendency to travel in herds. We wander
at night, but our objective is somewhere on the brightly
lighted streets, or still somewhere where men do not go alone.
(02:17):
When we travel far afield, it is in company few
of my acquaintance. Few in the whole city here would
care to ramble at midnight over the grass grown path
I have spoken of, not because they would fear to
do so. But because such things are not being done well.
It is dangerous to differ individually from one's fellows. It
(02:41):
is dangerous to wander from the beaten road. And the
fears that guarded the race and the dawn of time
and through the centuries were real. Fears found it on reality.
A month ago, I was a stranger here. I had
just taken my first position. I was graduated from college
only three months before. In the spring. I was lonely,
(03:02):
and likely to remain so for some time, for I
have always been of a solitary nature, making friends slowly.
I had received one invitation out to visit the camp
of a fellow employee in the firm for which I worked,
a camp which was located on the farther side of
the wide river, the side across from the city and
the canal, where the bank was high and steep and
(03:25):
heavily wooded, and little tents blossomed all around the water's edge.
At night, these camps were a string of sparkling lights
and tiny, leaping camp fires, and the tinkle of music
carried faintly far across the calmly flowing river. That far
bank of the river was no place for an eccentric,
solitary man to love, but the near bank, which would
(03:47):
have been an i sore to the campers had not
the river been so wide. The near bank attracted me
from my first glimpse of it. We embarked in a
motor boat at some distance down stream, and swept up
along the near bank, and then out and across the current.
I turned my eyes backward, the murk of stagnant water
(04:07):
that was the canal, the jumble of low buildings beyond it,
the lonely, low lying waste of the narrow strip of
land between canal and river, the dark, scattered trees growing there.
I intended to see more of these things. That week
end bored me, but I repaid myself no later than
Monday evening. The first evening, when I was back in
(04:30):
the city, alone and free, I ate a solitary dinner.
Immediately after leaving the office, I went to my room
and slept from seven until nearly midnight. I wakened naturally then,
for my whole heart was set on exploring the alluring
solitude I had discovered. I dressed, slipped out of the
house and into the street, started the motor in my roadster,
(04:52):
which I had left parked at the kerb, and drove
through the lighted streets. I left behind that part of town,
which was thick with vehicles carrying people home from their
evening engagements, and began to thread my way through darker
and narrower streets. Once I had to back out of
a cul de sac, and once I had to detour
around a closed block. This part of town was not alluring,
(05:16):
even to me. It was dismal without being solitary. But
when I had parked my car on a rough, cobbled
street that ran directly down into the inky waters of
the canal and crossed a narrow bridge, I was repaid.
A few minutes set my feet on the old tow path,
where mules had drawn river boats up and down only
(05:36):
a year or so ago, across the canal. Now, as
I walked up stream at a swinging pace, the miserable
shacks where miserable people lived, seemed to march with me
and then fell behind. They looked like places in which
murders might be committed, every one of them. The bridge
I had crossed was near the end of the city,
(05:57):
going north, as the canal marked its western extremity. Ten
minutes of walking, and the dismal shacks were quite a
distance behind. The river was farther away in the strip
of waste land, much wider and more wooded, and tall
trees across the canal marched with me, as the evil
looking houses had done before. Far and faint, the sound
(06:18):
of a bell in the city reached my ears. It
was midnight. I stopped, enjoying the desolation around me. It
had the savor I had expected and hoped for. I
stood for some time looking up at the sky, watching
the low drift of heavy clouds, which were visible in
the dull, reflected glow from distant lights in the heart
(06:39):
of the city, so that they appeared to have a
lurid phosphorescence of their own. The ground under my feet,
on the contrary, was utterly devoid of light. I had
felt my way carefully, knowing the edge of the canal,
partly by instinct, partly by the even more perfect blackness
of the water in it, and even holding pretty well
to the path because it was perceptibly sunken below the
(07:02):
ground beside it. Now, as I stood motionless in the spot,
my eyes upcast, my mind adrift with strange fancies. Suddenly
my feelings of satisfaction and well being gave way to
something different. Fear was an emotion unknown to me, for
those things which make men fear, I had always loved.
(07:26):
The graveyard at night was to me a charming place
for stroll and meditation. But now the roots of my
hair seemed to move upright on my head and along
all the length of my spine. I was conscious of
a prickling, tingling sensation, such as my forefathers may have
felt in the jungle when the hair on their backs
(07:46):
stood up, as the hair of my head was doing now. Also,
I was afraid to move, And I knew that there
were eyes upon me, and that that was why I
was afraid to move. I was afraid of those eyes,
afraid to see them, to look into them. All this
while I stood perfectly still, my face up tilted toward
(08:09):
the sky. But after a terrible mental effort, I mastered
myself slowly, slowly, with an attempt to propitiate the owner
of the unseen eyes. By my casual manner, I lowered
my own I looked straight ahead at the softly swaying
silhouette of the tree tops across the canal as they
(08:29):
moved gently in the cool night wind. At the mass
of blackness that was those trees, and the opposite shore,
at the shining blackness, where the reflections of the clouds
glinted vaguely and disappeared, that was the canal. And again
I raised my eyes a little, for just across the canal,
(08:51):
where the shadows massed most heavily, there was that at
which I must look more closely. And now, as I
grew accustomed to the greater blackness and my pure expanded,
I dimly discerned the contours of an old boat or barge,
half sunken in the water, an old, abandoned canal boat.
But was I dreaming? Or was there a white clad
(09:14):
figure seated on the roof of the low cabin aft,
a pale heart shaped face gleaming strangely at me from
the darkness, the glow of two eyes seeming to light
up the face and to detach it from the darkness.
Surely there could be no doubt as to the eyes.
They shone as the eyes of animals shine in the dark,
with a phosphorescent gleam and a glimmer of red. Well,
(09:39):
I had heard that some human eyes have that quality
at night. But what a place for a human being
to be a girl too. I was sure that daintily
heart shaped face was the face of a girl. Surely
I was seeing it clearer and clearer, either because my
eyes were growing more accustomed to peering into the deeper shadows,
(10:03):
or because of that phosphorescence in the eyes that stared
back at me. I raised my voice softly, not to
break too much the stillness of the night. Hello, who's there?
Are you lost or marooned? And can I help? There
was a little pause. I was conscious of a soft
lapping at my feet. A stronger night wind had sprung up,
(10:26):
was ruffling the dark waters. I had been overwarm, and
where it struck me the perspiration turned cold on my body,
so that I shivered uncontrollably. You can stay and talk
awhile if you will. I am lonely but not lost.
I I live here. I could hardly believe my ears.
(10:52):
The voice was little more than a whisper, but it
had carried clearly a girl's voice, sure enough, and she
lived there in an old, abandoned canal boat, half submerged
in the stagnant water. You are not alone there no,
not alone. My father lives here with me, but he
(11:13):
is deaf, and he sleeps soundly. Did the night wind
blow still colder, as though it came to us from
some unseen frozen sea. Or was there something in her
tone that chilled me? Even as a strange attraction drew
me toward her. I wanted to draw near to her,
to see closely the pale, heart shaped face, to lose
(11:35):
myself in the bright eyes that I had seen shining
in the darkness. I wanted. I wanted to hold her
in my arms, to find her mouth with mine, to
kiss it. With a start, I realized the nature of
my thoughts, and for an instant lost all thought and surprise.
(11:55):
Never in my twenty two years had I felt love
before my fancies had been otherwise directed. A moss groan
fallen gravestone was a dearer thing to me to contemplate
than the fairest face in all the world. Yet surely
what I felt now was love. I took a reckless
step nearer the edge of the bank. Could I come
(12:18):
over to you, I begged. It's warm, and I don't
mind a wedding. It's late, I know, but I would
give a great deal to sit beside you and talk,
if only for a few minutes before I go back
to town. It's a lonely place here for a girl
like you to live. Your father should not mind if
you exchange a few words with some one occasionally. Was
(12:39):
it the unconventionality of my request that made her next
words sound like a long drawn shudder of protest. There
was a strangeness in the tones of her voice that
held me wondering. Every time she spoke no, no, oh, no,
you must not swim across. Then Could I come tomorrow
(13:00):
or some day soon in the daytime? And would you
let me come on board then? Or would you come
on shore and talk to me? Perhaps not in the daytime,
never in the daytime. Again, the intensity of her low
toned negation held me spell bound. It was not her
(13:20):
sense of the impropriety of the hour, then, that had
dictated her manner. For surely any girl with the slightest
sense of the fitness of things would rather have a
tryst by daytime than after midnight. Yet there was an
interference in her last words that if I came again,
it should be again at night. Still feeling the spell
(13:40):
that had enthralled me, as one does not forget the
presence of a drug in the air that is stealing
one's senses, even when those senses begin to wander and
to busy themselves with other things. I yet spoke shortly.
Why do you say never in the daytime? Do you
mean that I may more than this once at night? Though?
(14:02):
Now you won't let me cross the canal to you
at the expense of my own clothes, And you won't
put down your plank or drawbridge or whatever you come
on shore with and talk to me here for only
a moment. I'll come again if you'll let me talk
to you instead of calling across the water. I'll come
again any time you will let me, day or night.
I don't care. I want to come to you, But
(14:24):
I only ask you to explain. If I came in
the daytime and met your father, wouldn't that be the
best thing to do. Then we would be really acquainted.
We could be friends. In the night time. My father sleeps.
In the daytime I sleep. How could I talk to
you or introduce you to my father? Then if you
came on board this boat in the daytime, you would
(14:46):
find my father and you would be sorry. As for me,
I would be sleeping. I could never introduce you to
my father. Do you see you sleep soundly? You and
your father? Again, there was pique in my voice. Yes,
we sleep soundly, and always at different times, always at
(15:10):
different times. We are on guard. One of us is
always on guard. We have been hardly used down there
in your city, and we have taken refuge here, and
we are always always on guard. The resentment vanished from
my breast, and I felt my heart go out to
her anew. She was so pale, so pitiful in the night.
(15:33):
My eyes were learning better and better how to pierce
the darkness. They were giving me a more definite picture
of my companion. If I could think of her as
a companion between myself and whom stretched the black water,
the sadness of the lonely scene, the perfection of the
solitude itself, these things contributed to her pitifulness. Then there
(15:56):
was that strangeness of atmosphere, of which even and yet
I had only partly taken note. There was the strange
shivering chill, which yet did not seem like the healthful
chill of a cool evening. In fact, it did not
prevent me from feeling the oppression of the night, which
was unusually sultry. It was like a little breath of
(16:17):
deadly cold that came and went, and yet did not
alter the temperature of the air itself, as the small
ripples on the surface of water did not concern the
water even a foot down. And even that was not all.
There was an unwholesome smell about the night, a dank,
moldy smell. It might have been the very breath of
(16:37):
death and decay. Even I, the connoisseur in all things
dismal and unwholesome, tried to keep my mind from dwelling
over much upon that smell. What it must be to
live breathing a constantly inn, I could not think. But
no doubt the girl and her father were used to it,
and no doubt it came from the stagnant water of
(16:59):
the canal, and from the rotting wood of the old,
half sunken boat that was their refuge. My heart thropped
with pity again, their refuge. What a place. And my
clearer vision of the girl showed me that she was
pitifully thin, even though possessed of the strange face that
drew me to her. Her clothes hung around her like
(17:21):
old rags, but hers was no scarecrow aspect. Although little
flesh closed her bones, her bones were beautiful. I was
sure the little pale, heart shaped face would be more
beautiful still if I could only see it closely. I
must see it closely. I must establish some claim to
(17:41):
consideration as a friend of the strange, lonely crew of
the half sunken wreck. This is a poor place to
call a refuge, I said. Finally, one might have very
little money and yet do somewhat better. Perhaps I might
help you. I am sure I could. If your ill
treatment in the city was because of poverty. I am
(18:01):
not rich, but I could help that. I could help
you a little with money, if you would let me,
Or in any case, I could find a position for you.
I'm sure I could do that. The eyes that shone
fitfully toward me, like two small pools of water intermittently
lit by a cloud swept sky, seemed to glow more brightly.
(18:22):
She had been half crouching, half sitting on top of
the cabin. Now she leaped to her feet with one quick, sinuous,
abrupt motion, and took a few rapid, restless steps to
and fro before she answered. When she spoke. Her voice
was little more than a whisper, yet surely rage was
in its shrill sibilance. Fool, do you think you would
(18:42):
be helping me to tie me to a desk, to
shut me behind doors, away from freedom, away from the
delight of doing my own will, of seeking my own way. Never,
never would I let you do that. Rather, this old boat,
rather a deserted grave under the stars for my home,
a boundless swept over me, and a positive feeling of
kinship with this strange being whose face I had hardly seen,
(19:06):
possessed me. So I myself might have spoken, so I
had often felt, though I had never dreamed of putting
my thoughts so definitely, so forcefully. My regularized daytime life
was a thing, I thought little love. I really lived
only in my nocturnal prowlings. Why this girl was right.
(19:28):
All of life should be free and spent in places
that interested and attracted. How little, how little I knew
that night that dread forces were tugging at my soul,
were finding entrance to it, an easy access through the
morbid weakness of my nature. How little I knew at
what a cost I deviated so radically from my kind
(19:51):
who heard in cities and love well lit ways, and
the sight of man, and sweet and wholesome places to
be solitary in when the desire for solitude comes over them.
That night it seemed to me that there was but
one important thing in life to allay the angry passion
my unfortunate words had aroused in the breast of my beloved,
(20:14):
and to win from her some answering feeling. I understand
much better than you think, I whispered tremulously. What I
want is to see you again, to come to know you,
and to serve you in any way that I may.
Surely there must be something in which I can be
(20:36):
of use to you. All you have to do, from
to night on forever is to command me. I swear it.
You swear that you do, swear it. Delighted at the
eagerness of her words, I lifted my hand toward the
dark heavens. I swear it. From this night on forever,
I swear it. Then listen to night. You may not
(21:01):
come to me, nor I to you. I do not
want you to board this boat, not to night, not
any night, and most of all, not any day. But
do not look so sad. I will come to you. No,
not to night, perhaps not for many nights. Yet before
very long, I will come to you there on the
bank of the canal, when the water in the canal
(21:22):
ceases to flow. I must have made a gesture of
impatience or of despair. It sounded like a way of
saying never. For why should the water in the canal
cease to flow? She read my thoughts in some way,
for she answered them, you do not understand I am
speaking seriously. I am promising to meet you there on
(21:43):
the bank, and soon, For the water within these banks
is moving slower, always slower. Higher up, I have heard
that the canal has been drained. Between these lower locks.
The water still seeps in and drops slowly, slowly down stream.
But there will come a night when it will be
quite quite stagnant. And on that night I will come
(22:06):
to you. And when I come, I will ask you
a favor, and you will keep your oath. End of
Section one The Canal, Part one
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