The House of the Vampire - 12 - Chapters 23 and 24

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester Viereck, Chapter
twenty three. Ernest conducted ethel Brandenburg to his room and
helped her to remove her cloak. While he was placing
the garment upon the back of a chair, she slipped
a little key into her hand bag. He looked at
her with a question in his eyes. Yes, she replied,

(00:21):
I kept the key. But I had not dreamed that
I would ever again cross this threshold. Meanwhile, it had
grown quite dark. The reflection of the street lanterns without
dimly lit the room, and through the twilight, fantastic shadows
seemed to dance. The perfume of her hair pervaded the
room and filled the boy's heart with romance. Tenderness, long suppressed,

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called with a thousand voices the hour. The strangeness and
unexpectedness of her visit, perhaps even a boy's pardonable vanity,
roused passion from its slumbers, and once again wrought in
earnest soul the miracle of love. His arm encircled her neck,
and his lips stammered blind, sweet, crazy and caressing things.

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Turn on the light, she pleaded, you are not always
so cruel, No matter I have not come to speak
of love? Why then have you come? Ernest felt a
little awkward disappointed as he uttered these words. What could
have induced her to come to his rooms? He loosened
his hold on her and did as she asked. How
pale she looked in the light, How beautiful? Surely she

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had sorrowed for him. But why had she not answered
his letter? Yes? Why your letter? She smiled a little sadly.
Surely you did not expect me to answer that. Why not?
He had again approached her, and his lips were close
to hers. Why not I have yearned for you. I
love you. His breath intoxicated her. It was like a

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subtle perfume. Still she did not yield. You love me?
Now you did not love me? Then? The music of
your words was cold, machine made, strained and superficial. I
shall not answer, I told myself in his heart. He
has forgotten you. I did not then realize that a
dangerous force had possessed your life and crushed in your
mind every image but its own. I don't understand. Do

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you think I would have come here if it were
a mere like matter? No, I tell you it is
a matter of life and death. To you at least
as an artist. What do you mean by that? Have
you done a stroke of work since I last saw you? Yes,
let me see, surely magazine articles and a poem. That
is not what I want to know. Have you accomplished

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anything big? Have you grown since this summer? How about
your novel? I? I have almost finished it in my mind,
but I have found no chance to begin with the
actual writing. I was sick of late, very sick, no
doubt of it. His face was pinched and pale, and
the lines about the mouth were curiously contorted, like those
of a man suffering from a painful internal disease. Tell me,

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she ventured, Do you ever miss anything? Do you mean
are there thieves? Thieves? Against thieves? One can protect one's self.
He stared at her wildly, half frightened, in anticipation of
some dreadful revelation. His dream, his dream, that hand, could
it be more than a dream? God? His lips quivered.

(03:21):
Ethel observed his agitation and continued more quietly, but with
the same insistence. Have you ever had ideas, plans that
you began without having strength to complete them? Have you
had glimpses of vocal visions that seemed to vanish no
sooner than seen. Did it ever seem to you as
if some mysterious and superior will brutally interfered with the
workings of your brain? Did it seem so to him?

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He himself could not have stated more plainly the experience
of the last few months. Each word fell from her
lips like the blow of a hammer. Shivering. He put
his arm around her, seeking solace, not love. This time
she did not repulse him, and trustingly, as a child
confides to his mother, he depicted to her the suffering
that harrowed his life and made it a hell. As

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she listened, indignation clouded her forehead, while rising tears of
anger and of love weighed down her lashes. She could
bear the pitiful sight. No longer child, she cried, do
you know who your tormentor is? And like a flash,
the truth passed from her to him. A sudden intimation
told him what her words had still concealed. Don't, for

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Christ's sake, do not pronounce his name, he sobbed. Do
not breathe it. I could not endure it. I should
go mad. Chapter twenty four. Very quietly, with difficulty restraining
her own emotions. So as not to excite him further,
Ethel had related to Ernest the story of her remarkable
interview with Reginald Clarke. In the long silence that ensued,

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the wings of his soul brushed against hers for the
first time, and love, by a thousand tender chains of
common suffering welded their beings into one. Caressingly the eye
her fingers passed the gold of his hair and over
his brow, as if to banish the demon eyes that
stared at him across the hideous spaces of the past.
In a rush, a thousand incidents came back to him,

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mute witnesses of a damning truth, his play, the dreams
that tormented him, his own inability to concentrate his mind
upon his novel, which hitherto he had ascribed to a
nervous disease. All piling fact on fact became one monstrous
monument of Reginald Clark's crime. At last, Ernest understood the
parting words of Abel Felton and the look in Ethel's

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eye on the night when he had first linked his
fate with the other man's. Walcom's experience too, and Reginald's
remarks on the busts of Shakespeare and Balzac unmistakably pointed
toward the new and horrible specter that Ethel's revelation had
raised in place of his host. And then again the
other Reginald appeared, crowned with the lyric wreath. From his lips,

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golden cadences fell sweeter than the smell of many flowers
or the sound of a silver bell. Well, he was
once more the divine master, whose godlike features bore no
trace of malice, and who had raised him to a
place very near his heart. No, he cried, it is impossible.
It's all a dream, a horrible nightmare. But he has
himself confessed it, she interjected, Perhaps he has spoken in symbols.

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We all absorbed, to some extent other men's ideas without
robbing them and wrecking their thought life. Reginald may be
unscrupulous in the use of his power of impressing upon
others the stamp of his master mind. So was Shakespeare. No, no, no,
you are mistaken. We were both deluded for the moment
by his picturesque account of a common not even a
discreditable fact. He may himself have played with the idea,

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but surely he cannot have been serious, and your own
experience and able feltons and mine can they too be
dismissed with a shrug of the shoulder. But come to
think of it, the whole theory seems absurd. It is unscientific.
It is not even a case of mesmerism. If he
had said that he hypnotized his victims, the matter would
assume a totally different aspect. I admit that something is

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wrong somewhere, and that the home of Reginald Clarke is
no healthful abode for me. But you must also remember
that probably we are both unstrung to the point of hysteria.
But to Ethel his words carried no conviction. You are
still under his spell, she cried anxiously, A little shaken
in his confidence, Ernest resumed, Reginald is utterly incapable of

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such an action, even granting that he possessed the terrible
power of which you speak. A man of his splendid resources,
a literary midas at whose touch every word turns into gold,
is under no necessity to prey on the thoughts of others. Circumstances,
I admit, are suspicious. But in the light of common day,
this fanciful theory shrivels into nothing. Any court of law

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would reject our evidence as madness. It is too utterly fantastic,
utterly alien to any human experience, is it, though Ethel
replied with peculiar intonation, Why what do you mean? Surely,
she answered, you must know that in the legends of
every nation we read of men and women who were

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called vampires. They are beings, not always wholly evil, whom
every night, some mysterious impulse leads to steal into unguarded
bed chambers, to suck the blood of the sleepers, and then,
having waxed strong on the life of their victims, cautiously
to retreat. Thence comes it that their lips are very red.
It is even said that they can find no rest

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in the grave, but return to their former haunts long
after they are believed to be dead. Those whom they visit, however,
pine a way for no apparent reason. The physicians shake
their wise heads and speak of consumption. But sometimes ancient
chronicles assure us the people's suspicions were aroused, and under
the leadership of good priests, they went in solemn procession

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to the graves of the person suspected, and on opening
the tombs, it was found that their coffins had rotted away,
and the flowers in their hair were black, but their
bodies were white and whole. Through no empty sockets crept
the vermin, and their sucking lips were still moist with
a little blood. Ernest was carried away in spite of
himself by her account, which vividly resembled his own experience.

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Still he would not give in all. This is impressive,
I admit it is very impressive. But you yourself speak
of such stories as legends. They are unfounded upon any
tangible fact, and you cannot expect a man schooled in
modern sciences to admit as having any possible bearing upon
his life, the crude belief of the Middle Ages. Why not,

(09:34):
she responded, Our scientists have proved true the wildest theories
of medieval scholars. The transmutation of metals seems to day
no longer in idle speculation, and radium has transformed into
potential reality, the dream of perpetual motion. The fundamental notions
of mathematics are being undermined. One school of philosophers claims
that the number of angles in a triangle is equal

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to more than two right angles. Another propounds that it
is less. Even great scientists who have studied the soul
of nature are turning to spiritualism. The world is overcoming
the shallow skepticism of the nineteenth century. Life has become
once more wonderful and very mysterious. But it also seems
that with the miracles of the old days, their terrors,

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their nightmares, and their monsters have come back in a
modern guise. Ernest became even more thoughtful. Yes, he observed,
there is something in what you say. Then, pacing the
room nervously, he exclaimed, and still I find it impossible
to believe your explanation, Reginald a vampire. It seems so ludicrous.

(10:36):
If you had told me that such creatures exist somewhere
far away, I might have discussed the matter. But in
this great city, in the shadow of the flat iron building, no,
she replied with warmth. Yet they exist, have always existed,
not only in the Middle Ages, but at all times
and in all regions. There is no nation but has

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some record of them, in one form or another. And
don't you think if we kind a thought, no matter
how absurd it may seem to us, that has ever
occupied the minds of men. If we find, I say,
such a perennially recurrent thought, are we not justified in
assuming that it must have some basis in the actual
experience of mankind. Ernest's brow became very clouded, and infinite

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numbers of hidden, premature wrinkles began to show how wan
he looked and how frail he was, as one lost
in a labyrinth in which he saw no light. Convinced
against his will, or rather against his scientific conviction, that
she was not wholly mistaken, still he observed triumphantly, Your
vampires suck blood, but Reginald, if vampire he be praise

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upon the soul. How can a man suck from another
man's brain a thing as intangible as quintessential as thought. Ah,
she replied, you forget thought is more real than blood.
End of Section twelve.