The House of the Vampire - 09 - Chapters 17, 18, and 19

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester Viereck, chapter seventeen.
The next day, Ernest wrote a letter of more or
less superficial tenderness to Ethel. She had wounded his pride
by proving victorious in the end over his passion and hers. Besides,
he was in the throes of work. When after the

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third day no answer came. He was inclined to feel aggrieved.
It was plain now that she had not cared for
him in the least, but had simply played with him
for lack of another toy. A flush of shame rose
to his cheeks at the thought. He began to analyze
his own emotions and stunned, if not stabbed, his passions.
Step by step, work was calling to him. It was

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that which gave life its meaning, not the love of
a season. How far away, how unreal, she now seemed
to him. Yes, she was right, He had not cared deeply,
and his novel, too, would be written only at her.
It was the heroine of his story that absorbed his interest,
not the living prototype. Once in a conversation with Reginald,

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he touched upon the subject. Reginald held that modern taste
no longer permitted even the photographer to portray life as
it is, but insisted upon an individual visualization. No man,
he remarked, was ever translated bodily into fiction. In contradiction
to life, art is a process of artificial selection. Bearing

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in mind this motive, Ernest went to work to mold
from the material in hand a new ethel more real
than life. Unfortunately, he found little time to devote to
his novel. It was only when, after a good day's work,
a pile of copy for a magazine lay on his
desk that he could think of concentrating his mind upon Laantina.

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The result was that when he went to bed, his
imagination was busy with the plan of his book, and
the creatures of his own brain laid their fingers on
his eyelid, so that he could not sleep. When and
at last, sheer weariness overcame him, his mind was still
at work, not in orderly sequence, but along trails. Monstrous
and grotesque hobgoblins seemed to steal through the hall, and

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leering incubi oppressed his soul with terrible burdens. In the morning,
he awoke unrested. The tan vanished from his face, and
little lines appeared in the corners of his mouth. It
was as if his nervous vitality were sapped from him
in some unaccountable way. He became excited, hysterical, often at
night when he wrote his pot boilers for the magazines.

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Fear stood behind his seat, and only the buzzing of
the elevator outside brought him back to himself. In one
of his morbid moods, he wrote a sonnet, which he
showed to Reginald after the latter's returned from a short
trip out of town. Reginald read it, looking at the
boy with a curious, lurking expression. Oh, gentle sleep, turn
not thy face away, but place thy finger on my brow,

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and take all burdens from me, and all dreams that
ate upon mine eyes. A cooling balsam lay seeing I
am a weary of the day. But lo, thy lips
are ashen, and they quake. What spectral vision sees thou
that can shake thy sweet composure and thy heart dismay?
Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye a gleam is fixed upon me,

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or some monstrous dream might bring such fearful guilt upon
the head of my unvigilant soul, as would arouse the
Borgian snake from her envenomed bed or startle Nero in
his golden house, good stuff, Reginald remarked, laying down the manuscript,
When did you write it the night when you are

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out of town? Ernest rejoined, I see, Reginald replied. There
was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused
Earnest's attention. What do you see, he asked, quickly, nothing,
Reginald replied, with immovable calm, only that your state of
nerves is still far from satisfactory. Chapter eighteen. After Ernest's departure,

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Ethel Brandenburgh's heart was swaying hither and thither in a
hurricane of conflicting feelings. Before she had time to gain
an emotional equilibrium, his letter had hurled her back into chaos.
A false ring somewhere in Ernest's words, re echoing with
an ever increasing volume of sound, stifled the voice of love.
His jeweled sentences glittered but left her cold. They lacked

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that spontaneity which renders even simple and hackneyed phrases wonderful
and unique. Ethel clearly realized that her hold upon the
boy's imagination had been a fleeting midsummer night's charm, and
that a word from Reginald's lips had broken the potency
of her spell. She almost saw the shadow of Reginald's
visage hovering over Ernest's letter and leering at her from

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between the lines and sinister triumph. Finally, reason came and
whispered to her that it was extremely unwise to give
her heart into the keeping of the boy. His love,
she knew, would have been exacting, irritating at times. He
would have asked her to sympathize with every phase of
his life, and would have expected active interest on her part,
and much that she had done with long ago. Thus,

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untruth would have stolen into her life and embittered it.
When mates are unequal, love must paint its cheeks, and,
in certain moods at least hide its face under a mask.
Its lips may be honeyed, but it brings fret and
sorrow in its train. These things she told herself over
and over again. While she penned a cool and calculating
answer to Ernest's letter. She rewrote it many times, and

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every time it became more difficult to reply. At last,
she put her letter aside for a few days, and
when it fell again into her hand, it seemed so
unnatural and strained that she destroyed it. Thus several weeks
had passed, and Ernest no longer exclusively occupied her mind,
when one day in early September, while glancing over a magazine,

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she came upon his name in the table of contents.
Once more, she saw the boy's wistful face before her,
and a trembling something so in her heart. Her hand
shook as she cut the pages, and a mist of
tears clouded her vision as she attempted to read his poem.
It was a piece of somber brilliance, like black draped monks,
half crazed with mystic devotion. The poet's thoughts flitted across

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the page. It was the wail of a soul that
feels reason slipping from it and beholds madness rise over
its life like a great pale moon. A strange unrest
emanated from it and took possession of her. And again,
with an insight that was prophetic, she distinctly recognized, behind
the vague fear that had haunted the poet, the figure
of Reginald Clark, a half forgotten dream struggling to consciousness,

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staggered her by its vividness, She saw Clark as she
had seen him in days gone by, grotesquely transformed into
a slimy sea thing, whose hungry mouths shut sucking upon her,
and whose thousand tentacles encircled her form. She closed her
eyes in horror at the reminiscence, and in that moment
it became clear to her that she must take into
her hands the salvation of Earnest Fielding from the clutches

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of them malign power that had mysteriously enveloped his life.
Chapter nineteen. The summer was brief, and already by the
middle of September, many had returned to the pleasures of
urban life. Ethel was among the first comers, for after
her resolve to enter the life of the young poet
once more, it would have been impossible for her to

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stay away from the city much longer. Her plan was
already before attempting to see Ernest. She would go to
meet Reginald and implore him to free the boy from
his hideous spell. An element of curiosity unconsciously entered her determination.
When years ago she and Clark had parted, the man
had seemed for once greatly disturbed, and had promised in

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his agitation that some day he would communicate to her
what would exonerate him in her eyes. She had answered
that all words between them were purposeless, and that she
hoped never to see his face again. The experience that
the years had brought to her, instead of elucidating the
mystery of Reginald's personality, had, on the contrary, made his
behavior appear more and more unaccountable. She had more than

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once caught herself wishing to meet him again and to
analyze dispassionately the puzzling influences he had exerted upon her,
and she could at last view him dispassionately. There was
triumph in that she was dimly aware that something had
passed from her, something by which he had held her,
and without which his magnetism was unable to play upon her. So,
when Walcom sent her an invitation to one of his

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artistic at homes, she accepted in the hope of meeting Reginald.
It was his frequentation of Walcum's house that had for
several years effectively barred her foot from crossing the threshold.
It was with a very strange feeling that she greeted
the many familiar faces at Walcam's now and when toward
ten o'clock Reginald entered politely, bowing in answer to the
welcome from all sides. Her heart beat in her like

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a drum, but she calmed herself, and, catching his eye,
so arranged it that early in the evening they met
in an alcove of the drawing room. It was inevitable.
Reginald said, I expected it. Yes, she replied, we were
bound to meet. Like a great rush of water. Memory
came back to her. He was still horribly fascinating as

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of old, only she was no longer susceptible to his fascination.
He had changed somewhat in those ears. The lines about
his mouth had grown harder, and a steel like look
had come into his eyes. Only for a moment as
he looked at her, a flash of tenderness seemed to
come back to them. Then he said, with a touch
of sadness, why should the first word between us be

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a lie? Ethel made no answer. Reginald looked at her,
half in wonder, and said, and is your love for
the boy so great that it overcame your hate of me? Ah?
He knew she winced, he has told you not a word.
There was something superhuman in his power of penetration. Why

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should she wear a mask before him when his eyes,
like the eyes of God, peered to the core of
her being? No, she replied, it is not love, but
compassion for him. Compassion, yes, compassion for your victim, you mean, Reginald,
I am all ere, I implore you speak. You have

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ruined one life. He raised his eyebrows derogatively. Yes, she continued,
fiercely ruined. It is not that enough. I have never
wilfully ruined any one's life. You have ruined mine wilfully.
How else shall I explain your conduct? I warned you, warning,

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indeed the warning that the snake gives to the sparrow
helpless under its gaze. Ah, But who tells you that
the snake is to blame? Is it not? Rather the
occult power that prescribes with blood on brazen scroll, the
law of our being. This is no solace to the sparrow.
But whatever may be said, let us drop the past,
let us consider the present. I beg of you. Leave

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this boy, let him develop without your attempting to stifle
the life in him or impressing upon it the stamp
of your alien mind ethel He protested, you are unjust.
If you knew, then an idea seemed to take hold
of him. He looked at her curiously. What if I knew?
She asked, You shall know? He said, simply? Are you strong?

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Strong to withstand anything at your hand? There is nothing
that you can give me, nothing that you can take away. No,
he remarked, nothing. Yes, you have changed. Still when I
look upon you, the ghosts of the past seem to
rise like live things. We both have changed. We now
meet upon equal grounds. You are no longer the idol

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I made of you. Don't you think that? To the
idol this might be a relief, not a humiliation. It
is a terrible to sit in state with lips eternally shut.
Sometimes there comes over the most reticent of us, a
desire to break through the eternal loneliness that surrounds the soul.
It is this feeling that prompts madmen to tear off

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their clothes and exhibit their nakedness in the market place.
It's madness on my part, or a whim, or I
don't know what, But it pleases me that you should
know the truth. You promised me long ago that I should.
To day, I will redeem my promise, and I will
tell you another thing that you will find hard to believe,
and that is that I loved you. Ethel smiled a

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little skeptically. You have loved often, No, he replied, loved seriously,
loved I have only once. End of Section nine