GETTING ALONG
[For a year before going to England my wife and I lived in an elaborately decorated Brooklyn brownstone which we suspected of having been a fin du siecle bordello. In the master bedroom was a combination wallsafe which nobody, including the landlady, knew how to open. Curiosity and avarice finally got the better of us and we hired a professional cracksman to do the job.
[Inside we found no jewels, deeds to eighty-four square feet of Wall Street, or gold eagles, but only a packet of yellowed, flaking-edged letters in a feminine hand. We do not know how much credence to place in the story they tell, but we are certain we have never before seen one quite like it.—J. B.]
letter the first
Dear Madam,
In view of your many past kindnesses to me in a time of tribulation more than ordinary even for my misfortunate self, I respond, albeit not without reluctance to intrude further upon your ready sympathies, to your request for further particulars of my handkerchiefly history.
Know then, dear Madam, that I first saw the light of day in Winnetka, Illinois in the year of Our Lord 18—. I was four years old at the time of which I speak, my dear mama having been cruelly cast into debtors’ prison four years, eight months and two weeks earlier. We crept out of the gate in the chill dawn that day and the turnkey bade us all a fond farewell. He kissed my dear mama and the three younger children decorously, and pressed half a dollar into my dear mama’s hand.
Now, Madam, my dear mama had been trained in a famous School of Needlework in a small Thamesside town, where she helped to make part of the trousseau for Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter; but in the far West of that day, inhabited as it was preponderantly by buffalo, Red Indians and boisterous bullfighters and roadrunners, there was but little call for services so gentle, and her health had been much weakened by long privation and insomnia. Hence it fell out that, after a lingering struggle with the pthisis, she was called to her long reward when I was but ten ae; leaving me, as I need hardly add, even less prepared than she for the nurturing and education of my brother and sisters, in view of the sheltered nature of my earliest years.
Happily I was mature for my age and soon came under the protection of a landed gentleman, wealthy in the corn and kine of the country. Though he was rude and choleric in many of his ways, I shall never forget his generosity. He was not, of course, prepared to adopt a veritable family of small children for the sake of a congenial companion, but instead arranged for their acceptance into a sort of asylum where, I was assured, they would be well cared for, and trained to do useful work.
Though I was sorry to be deprived of the sight of their dear faces, my indebtedness to my patron was such that I could not but acquiesce; for, Madam, you will readily appreciate that at that time I was wholly ignorant of the social arts attendant upon ministering to a protector, not to speak of those refinements which were eventually to make me worthy in some small measure, dear Madam, of your elegant Eastern establishment: and it can well be imagined with what a combination of eagerness, shyness, timidity and apprehension I was entered upon these new duties; but I found my master tolerant and even, perhaps, oddly pleased at my inexperience.
I was later to learn that such tolerance is far from uncommon among men of the world, but this in no way diminishes my gratitude; moreover, I found those offices which I was called upon to exercise so congenial that I was soon seeking out pretexts to re-discharge affairs which had been thoroughly discharged but little earlier, and although my protector at first was amused by my enthusiasm, he at length found it necessary to rebuke me, howsoever gently, for such excess of zeal.
Thus I seemed to have found my haven, but alas, in due course this gentleman was afflicted with financial reverses, quite beyond my poor comprehension, having to do with a mysterious operation called selling crops short (for his, indeed, seemed to my naïve eye to be quite long enough for any purpose). In this extremity he soon found his holdings much reduced, and as if to compensate for having brought me into deprivation (for which, however, sad experience had now taught me the saving grace of drawing upon my own inner resources), he further neglected his business enterprises in favor of my company. In our joint interest I made bold to protest that indeed he did not need to concern himself so strenuously in my behalf, and to lend conviction to my protestation, made shew of my ability to pursue the pleasures of solitude if needs be; but this had no effect but to spur him into redoubling his exertions; and in the aftermath of a particularly strenuous such confrontation, during which both sides became indecorously inflamed, my dear master incontinently died.
He had, I found, provided for me in his will, but of course everything that he had had to give me had since been spent. Thus it was that I found myself—though not, praise Fortune, my little former charges—once more cast forth upon the unfeeling bosom of the world.
At this desperate juncture, a higher power than ours reminded me that, although my dear departed mama had no relatives alive elsewhere but in Buckinghamshire and London, the turnkey of whom I spoke above had local brothers and sisters, of whom he had spoken often. It therefore occurred to me that although he was not my father, some one of these relatives might be moved to take pity upon me who was sister to their nieces and nephew.
Deeming this venture, though mischancy, less unpromising than any other prospect before me, I sold the only jewel my late protector had left me in order to purchase a coach ticket to Niles, Michigan, where dwelt, by latest report, the turnkey’s eldest sister; and how I fared there you shall hear in my next epistle, dear Madam, if I have not already too grievously abused your patience. In the meantime, I remain, believe me,
Faithfully yours, &c.,
[signature illegible]
[In the letters that follow, I have deleted the salutations and complimentary closes, which are all alike.—J.B.]
letter the second
There were several others in the diligence, all peasants, who were bound for the same destination as I, and for the first part of our journey we all chatted pleasantly. When, however, I artlessly inquired whether anyone could direct me to the home of Mrs. Vrolok (this being my aunt-in-lieu’s name, though I had been given to understand that her husband was dead), they all became reticent and pretended not to understand my vestigial English accent, though they had understood it well enough before. When I pressed for details, they all made a peculiar sign, clenching their fists and thrusting their middle fingers into the air, and simply refusing to speak any further. I found this somewhat disquietening.
But apparently the coach driver had somehow been appraised of my destination, for in the middle of the night the vehicle stopped with a lurch and a clatter of harness, and springing down from his box, he jerked open the door and silently motioned me out. When I complied—he had already thrown my poor traps to the ground—and asked where I was to go now, he as silently pointed up a hill, and then sprang back to his position with a single bound from the whiffletree.
While I still hesitated, one of my erstwhile travelling companions, a man older than the rest, leaned out of a window, and putting one finger to his lips, reached down and pressed some small, hard, dry object into my hand. Then a whip cracked and the coach was off, at a reckless speed. Bewildered, I looked down at the object the elderly gentleman had given me. In my palm was a bulb of garlic.
As the daughter of an English gentlewoman I had of course never even considered allowing such a vegetable into my kitchen, but now I was sufficiently uneasy to drop it in my reticule while I took stock of my surroundings. I was quite alone in the bright moonlight, though in the distance I could hear the uncanny crying of a loon. Behind me, across the road which the diligence had just quitted so hastily, was the deep gorge through which flowed the St. Joseph River; farther upstream was a sound of turbulence, as though of waters falling over a weir, but here they flowed with an oily silence. Ahead was the hill the driver had pointed out, a surprisingly long and steep one; the countryside through which we had passed to come here was mostly level, though it had become increasingly forested.
At the summit of this hill, the silhouetted chimneys, gables and cupolas of a large house jaggedly broke the sky. Though I had written to Mrs. Vrolok through General Delivery, I seemed not to be expected, for no ray of light shone from this edifice.
But when I wearily climbed the creaking porch steps and knocked at the old door, the latter opened at once with a protest of hinges. Standing in the entrance, bearing a hurricane lamp, was a square-jawed woman with fiery eyes, iron-gray hair and what seemed to be a faint moustache. Though she was wearing a housecoat which enveloped her completely, she somehow gave me the impression of great physical strength.
“I am Felicity Coupling,” I said hesitantly.
“Ah, yes, my dear,” she said. “Enter and be welcome, of your own free will.”
When I hesitated, she uttered this odd greeting twice more, and at last I stepped over the threshold. Taking my bags—she was indeed strong—she led me to a large sitting room, where despite the lateness of the hour a handsome supper was laid out, and a fire was burning brightly. Candles too were lit, although I had been prevented from seeing the light from outside by drawn drapes of heavy chintz. Over the fireplace was painted the motto, “Frae ghoulies an’ ghiesties an’ lang-legged beasties and things that gae bump i’ the night, Good Laird deliver us,” and the quaintness of this inscription and the cheerfulness of the scene helped considerably to revive my failing spirits.
Bidding me seat myself, Mrs. Vrolok asked after her brother, though not, I thought, with much appearance of real interest or affection, and inquired if my journey had been comfortable. On hearing that it had gone as well as anyone could expect—for I deemed it impolitic to describe the mysterious behavior of my companions upon the mention of her name—she pressed me to tell what had impelled me to make the trip, and gradually drew out of me my entire life’s story (though again, modesty prevented me from describing the full extent of the tenderness which had been shown me by my lamented protector).
During my recital, she insisted upon serving me the supper with her own hands, and when I protested, said with flashing eyes: “But I must insist. You are my dear relative and guest, and in any event I no longer keep servants of nights. Our family is a proud one, but fallen upon evil times. My father was an Ambassador, his father before him a state Senator, and his father before him the Captain of a clipper ship—by day you will see that this house, fallen into disrepair and far from the sea though it is, has a widow’s walk,” and here she revealed brilliantly white teeth in a sudden grim smile, although I was at a loss to fathom the nature of the jest.
The fire had now almost burnt down, and involuntarily I shivered. Instantly she said, “But you are chilled and tired. I have been thoughtless. Come, I will show you to your room, and see to it that you are warm and comfortable.”
I was by now more than willing. So fulsome indeed was her hospitality that in order to be quite certain that I was warm enough, she joined me in the spacious four-poster bed, where for the first time in my life I experienced those attentions which a woman of ardent nature can bestow only upon another woman. I found these more than pleasant, though I believe Mrs. Vrolok was somehow disappointed with me, for she soon said in a muffled voice, “You were not quite candid with me, my dear, about your protector.” But such was my exhaustion, compounded of repeated emotions, that I was half-guiltily pleased when she arose silently and departed, just as a cock crowed in the back yard.
I arose very late, to find a luncheon laid out for me in my room. After freshening myself and partaking of this, I went in search of my hostess, but the house was silent and empty. Just after sundown, however, she returned, bringing with her a blonde peasant girl of what seemed to be just my own age, although she was insufficiently clean to make this judgment easy, and never spoke; she seemed either sullen or terrified, and perhaps both. Both my aunt and I attempted to draw her out over dinner, but without success; and in due course my aunt showed the girl to her own room drawing her by the wrist in a grip whose strength I now knew well indeed. I was not sorry to have the evening to myself, for I had many matters of moment to mull over, and indeed sleepiness overcame me before I had more than begun to put my experiences in order.
By morning I felt quite refreshed, and somewhat inclined to smile at my earlier forebodings; surely my aunt, peculiar though she was in some ways, had shown me nothing but kindness; and which of us is not without his harmless crotchets? But this mood was dispersed by the sight of the peasant girl, who hurried past me down the stairs as I was finishing my breakfast. In contrast to her appearance of the previous day, she was not only clean but as wan as fine linen, and looked not only exhausted but somehow drained. I do not believe she had seen me at first—for I was still sitting at my repast in my room—for when I called to her through the door she started like a wild thing and fled the house entirely.
Once more I was all in a state of amazing wonder, and sought Mrs. Vrolok—somehow I was unable any longer to think of her as my aunt—in hope of reassurance. But as before, she had vanished, and I began to suspect that there was no other living being in this house but myself. Yet how then were these elaborate meals prepared? The thought reminded me that I had yet to observe Mrs. Vrolok eat or drink anything, despite her iron strength. What manner of being was this? The question emboldened me even to invade the kitchen, which I found sunny, neat and well-stocked, but again quite uninhabited.
I was about to quit it when I noticed, almost obscured behind two barrels, a low door which proved to lead into an unheated woodshed, the walls of which were lined with shelves of preserves in Mason jars thickly coated with dust. At the very back of this rather narrow enclosure was a completely incongruous object: A teakwood case much like a hope chest, but longer and narrower. When I approached this more closely, I saw to my astonishment that several holes had been bored in its lid, a circumstance which to a woman could not but seem to defeat the whole purpose of such a chest.
It was not locked, and not without an awareness of my violation of hospitality in such an action, I raised the lid, and there—of my horror I may not and cannot speak—lay the creature I had in my awful ignorance claimed as a kinswoman! She rested upon a bed of fresh mothballs, and appeared asleep—except that her eyes were open, though without their wonted fire. She looked younger, for her iron-gray hair had changed to glossy black, and even her moustache had darkened; her jaw had softened; her lips, normally so thin, were full and red; and around them, and upon that chin, were smears of scarcely darkened blood!
All too well I knew the source of that repast . . . and why the gentleman in the coach had given me the bulb of garlic. Casting it in among the mothballs—little though I dare to think it will discommode that devil’s daughter!—I fled that cursed house upon the instant.
letter the third
To anyone who would ask me how I, still a very young girl, could then consider seeking out another of my stepfather’s relations—not only possibly to endure, but even to dilate upon, another such hideous experience—I can only reply that I have always been of a sanguine temperament, and readily responsive to the beauties of nature, which refresh me, to speak in Sanchean phrase, as if from a fountain of forgetfulness and joy. Of such beauties I saw a plethora in the course of my flight from that house of tragedy, for I was on my way to the famous University of Gh— in the fortunate country of Ohio, where the turnkey’s eldest brother, Prof. Turnkistan, had won at a very early age a chair in the science of natural philosophy.
Yet I was but ill-prepared for what I was to find, for on applying to the first learned man of the university as to where I might find him whom I sought, I was greeted with a darkened countenance. Upon my showing myself taken aback at this discourtesy, the professor—for such he was—apologized, and hastened to explain that until recently Prof. Turnkistan had been adjudged the most promising of all those who labored in that center of learning in natural philosophy, having indeed nearly perfected, even before earning his degree, an engine which would reproduce upon paper the perfect image of a person or object, including the illusion of living motion. I could not repress an exclamation of wonder at this remarkable achievement, whereupon my informant, who had been in fact the earliest mentor of him whom I sought, informed me that Prof. Turnkistan had since abandoned his studies in this field and had withdrawn himself from the society of his fellows, and now, a recluse, labored in the utmost secrecy upon some work the nature of which was unknown to all, save that it required the constant consultation of the volumes in the university’s library of Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, and other works of even more unsavory fame.
I nevertheless persisted in my desire to see this most unusual man, forbearing in common prudence to add that I must needs cast myself directly upon his mercy; and was directed to an ill-favored lodging-house near the river which bounded the city of Gh—. Inquiring here, I was shortly greeted by a pale, sickly creature whom I could hardly credit to be the eminent scholar whose story I had heard. Was it upon this most miserable of mortals that my fate must henceforth depend? For melancholy and despairing he seemed in the extreme, languishing as though his cup of life had been poisoned forever by his unhallowed arts.
And yet, when I had identified myself, his ravaged countenance was lightened by a momentary beam of benevolence and sweetness, like that of a child. “Oh! but you have arrived in the nick of time!” exclaimed he. “For I am on the brink of completion of the work of a lifetime, and there is none that I can trust to understand or help me at my moment of greatest need!”
He led me up many dark flights of stairs to his quarters, which were in a garret in the utmost squalor and disarray. Books and chemical instruments lay scattered about, and in the center of the narrow cell was a long table upon which—Great God!—there lay what I took to be the partially dismembered corpse of a beautiful woman, some of whose parts rested on a smaller table nearby in apparent carelessness.
My horror at this charnel scene was such that I did not at first perceive the presence of another person, who stood motionless in the darkest part of the garret. He was a veritable giant, fit to have worn that monstrous helmet which dashed out the life of the young heir in the opening pages of The Castle of Otranto. Fully eight feet tall he was, with long, gleaming black hair, white teeth, and magnificent musculature; but his watery eyes were a dull yellow, his lips straight and black, his complexion shriveled, so that the effect was one of mingled beauty and monstrosity.
Noticing the direction of my startled gaze, Prof. Turnkistan continued feverishly, “This is Doll, an homunculus of my own creation, of whom I would once have said that he merits every shudder of your delicate frame—and yes! of all of humanity’s, for he has been guilty of fiendish murders. Yet the guilt for these inheres ultimately in me, for though I made him gentle by nature, I turned from him in loathing, and the hands of all men were turned against him, leaving him no emotion but that of horrid vengeance. All this I could have prevented had I acceded to his wish, which was to make him a mate like unto himself, with whom he could retreat to South America among the apes and others who would not think them unusual. Once I so promised him, but—wretch that I am!—I broke that promise. But now I have repented, and you see before you his almost finished bride.”
“Was it, then, but pity for his deformities that moved you?” inquired I. “Or fear of further depredations on his part?”
“Neither were capable of moving me,” said the Professor, “until my discovery of the active principle of the kinematographotype, by which it is possible to capture images in a semblance of living motion. It was then revealed to me, as if by a guardian angel, that it was for this that I had created life: to study the natural affections, attractions and interactions between the sexes without impinging upon the privacy or the sensibilities of my God-created fellow-creatures. I resumed the great work forthwith, but there are still several steps to be taken, in which only you—only you, my dear cousin!—can be of assistance!”
His fervor was contagious, and I at once inquired how I, a mere unlettered girl, might contribute anything to so deep an enterprise.
“My studies,” explained he, “have left me little time for the normal pursuits of youth, and indeed I fear that despite my sufferings I am somewhat unworldly. Hence, although as you may see I have made my female Doll of an appropriate stature, I lack experience to tell me whether her more intimate arrangements—which await her, over there—will suffice to keep my monster happy among the cyanocephali and mamaluchi of South America. Were the outcome to be otherwise, the consequences for all mankind would be hideous, to say nothing of the loss of opportunity to make—shall I vulgarly call them ‘moving pictures’?—of congresses so pregnant with possibilities for the understanding of our own passional natures. Should you therefore be willing to determine whether or not these organs, as God more usually fashions them, are suitable to the purpose, we shall be sensibly advanced along our way.”
So structured is the mind that the different accidents of life are not so mutable as the feelings of human nature; and although I had been well treated for a brief interval by my aunt, whose crimes I now saw in a less lurid light, my natural frailty had again begun to yearn toward that rock and refuge which man must ever represent to the female species. Moreover, it was clear that the illness and torments of Prof. Turnkistan had unfitted him, poor wretch, for such a rôle. It is true that the monster Doll was hideous, and yet I have already noted that in him also were some elements of beauty, and for a woman the slightest sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, can always interest her heart, and communicate elasticity to her spirits. Besides, it was exceedingly dark in the garret.
I therefore delighted my uncle by agreeing to his proposal: and this experiment being concluded to the satisfaction of all concerned, the Professor next turned to the main enterprise. On a dreary night in November, the pale student of unhallowed arts collected about him the instruments of life, and knelt beside the hideous phantasm of a woman stretched out at his feet, that he might infuse a spark of being into his unnatural progeny. The rain beat dismally against the panes, and the candle was already guttered before the assembled corpse stirred convulsively with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Then the yellow eyes opened, and the living woman arose, and saw Doll!
Oh! how deeply affecting was that union of these two Promethean beings, who had been so uniquely “made for each other!” How exhibitory of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue! Nor is its potential power to move suffering humanity to new understanding of itself confined to the productions of my feeble pen, for Prof. Turnkistan captured virtually its every moment upon the magical paper of his marvelous engine; and some few of these kinematographotypes, along with many others that were recorded in succeeding weeks, survived the later catastrophe and may be viewed at the library of the University of Gh— to this day by qualified scholars and physicians.
Little thought we then of catastrophe, for we were heedless of the possible effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. Indeed, so salubrious was Prof. Turnkistan’s success to his own health and spirits that he was shortly enabled to essay with his new creation the same experiment that Doll and I had performed, while I operated the recording engine; and subsequently was able to confirm my finding that her interior design, whatever the repellancies of her outward appearance, was flawless. Thus again was affirmed that saying of the divine Shakespeare that all is not gold that glitters, and that a leaden exterior may conceal the greatest treasures.
Of the crasser treasures of this world, however, we were in short supply, for the experiments were costly, and you may well conceive that two such huge beings as the Dolls required extraordinary amounts of sustenance, especially while demonstrating for the enrichment of natural and moral philosophy their abilities and capacities. Prof. Turnkistan therefore proposed that we should offer for sale some copies of his less bizarre recordings; and the actual performance of this task fell upon me, since he felt that my youth, sex and natural demureness of manner would be less likely to excite suspicion among baser minds.
Some of these recordings, however, came to the attention of the police, who were alike as incapable of appreciating their wonder as of comprehending their maker’s disinterestedness; and since I myself am utterly incapable of dissembling, their place of origin was soon also ferreted out. I believe (although I shall never know) that Prof. Turnkistan, seeing these officials approaching in a menacing manner, may have attempted to put to the torch the more difficult to explain of these documents; for one afternoon, as I was returning through the snow with the proceeds of my latest expedition, I beheld with horror that the entire lodging-house was aflame, with such fervor that it could not fail to be the funeral pyre of my uncle, his miraculous Dolls, his marvelous engine, and my hopes of a happy home. Its fury gave the very police officers pause. With sad solemnity I watched until the light of that conflagration had faded away, and its ashes had been swept by the wind far over the plains of Ohio and on toward the awful grandeur of the Alleghenies. May they rest in peace!
letter the fourth
It was at the beginning of the year that, my coffers somewhat relined by the proceeds of the Affair of the Moving Picture, I was able to quit my practices in Gh— and join forces with Mr. and Mrs. Pullover in Orange Park, Pa. Mrs. Pullover, a good, earnest soul of the sort upon which the best societies are based everywhere in the Colonies, was my second oldest aunt, and her husband a similar sort but a man of markedly less practicality. I was readily accepted into their lodgings, not only because of my rather remote ties of blood, but because the modest sum I had brought with me was most welcome to them and their cause.
I record these personal particulars not, of course, because they are of any interest in themselves, but because they form an interesting contrast to what may be the least interesting case in my files, as well as being essential to the reader’s understanding of it. Indeed, Buddworth Maracot, to whom I served as friend and amanuensis during this period, raised his eyebrows scornfully over his bagpipe at the very notion of my taking notes on it.
“My dear Coupling,” he said, “I am sure that with so little of substance upon which to expatiate, you will succeed only in sensationalizing my methods even further beyond recognition.”
But I digress. First I must further note that Mr. and Mrs. Pullover were at this time the prime movers of an organization called the First Church of the Unreal Absence, which was a gathering-place for spiritualists from all over the Colonies. These people maintained that the dead are not extinguished forever, but instead simply wander, discorporate, in some misty other land from which they may graduate only as they attain to superior understanding of their condition. In the meantime, they may be spoken to by means of seances conducted by psychic mediums, of which latter group my aunt was considered preeminent.
“The First Church,” my aunt was fond of saying, “is a great leveler of classes. Here the charwoman with psychic force is the superior of the millionaire who lacks it.”
I was prepared to grant this sentiment some nobility, but when I reported it to Buddworth Maracot, he said drily: “How many millionaires have you seen there lately?”
Nevertheless, Maracot’s position was somewhat compromised by the fact that his daughter Deepily was a member of the First Church. I am unable to account for my friend’s having had a daughter at all, for I never had any success in interesting him in the opposite sex—“To me, Coupling,” he said often, “the BVM will always be the only woman”—but what is important here is that Deepily had challenged him to attend a seance at the First Church and bring to bear the fullest powers of his formidable scepticism to expose it, if he could.
Maracot brought to the session not only his scepticism, but a veritable brute of a man, bulging with old hockey muscles, whom he had recruited during one of his trips in disguise to the docks along the banks of the Monongohela (which in those days, as the name indicates, was much haunted by Mongols). This creature was made as welcome to the seance by Deepily and the Pullovers as was everyone else, and Maracot was then invited to search both Mrs. Pullover and her cabinet. Insofar as I could see, he did both with equal impartiality, including all the drawers of both.
Then we all sat down, the lights were turned to a ghostly dimness, and Mrs. Pullover called upon her “contact,” a childish spirit named Sam.
“Me wee pee lamb top hole allee samee sensa wonda byembye seeka tomollah, you bet,” piped the little voice.
“Tell me, Sam, dear, is there anyone in the land of mist who wishes to speak to anyone here?” Mrs. Pullover intoned.
“Here ee weary topside bigfella past competent journalist Bergen Record,” Sam squeaked through the trumpet. “Callself allsame J. R. Transistor, wantee mohtal gaslight explohah infinite storm.”
But no, no one would own to a friend named J. R. Transistor, or even a relative of that name. But at the same moment there emerged from the cabinet an astonishing vision, wrapped from moorcock to gernsback in a coating of ectoplasm.
“Grab him!” cried the voice of my friend, and the soccer player lunged in a full football tackle for the anxious ankles of the spirit. Since he failed to release my hand as he did so, we soon found ourselves rather more entangled with each other than with the Problem of the White Sheet, but in the confusion managed to make the best resolution of it that presented itself.
* * *
It was sometime later that I asked my friend how he had known that Mrs. Pullover had been generating the voices in the tube by vibrating her diaphragm. “My dear Felicity,” he said, stuffing his Persian slipper into a pot, “can you really have missed the clue of the Third Fundamentalism? Then I fear that you are too inattentive to serve any longer as my liaison officer.”
And with this, alas, I was waved away anew, and never again saw the best and wisest and most unsatisfactory man that I have ever known.
letter the fifth
All apelike young Irishmen named George, as is well known, eat nothing less good than tournedos Rossini. Thus it was no surprise to me to find that he was a mushroom cultivator. He was the turnkey’s second oldest brother, and despite his ugliness I believe he had the heart of a poet. I found him very engaging, though somewhat gullible.
I cannot say the same for his wife, who struck me as the most stupid, blind, perverse, and ill-natured witch who ever infested the earth. I do not know why such men always marry such women, unless it is because they think they can get no other kind.
I disabused him of this notion, if he had it, rather quickly. Finding me friendly, he took me to the cellar to show me his beds of rare mushrooms, and behind the boiler I raised another specimen which afterwards we cultivated assiduously in my own bed. If he was taken aback to find me more expert at fungiculture than he, he was too gentlemanly to say so. For my part, I found that like all true amateurs, what he lacked in technical polish he more than made up for in energy.
Since we now shared one secret which had to be kept from his demon of a wife, he showed me another one: a species of morel which, when dried, broken up and chewed, released a remarkable drug. I found that it tasted like a mouthful of elastic bands, but after only a few moments made one feel like a bird of paradise that had just been released from a cage.
In particular, if taken just before bedtime, the dried morel heightened the pleasures of entertaining a friend to the shimmering verge of delirium. I said as much; and George then confessed that for years it had been the only thing that had made his wife’s company at all tolerable to him.
This remark set me to thinking with some speed. George was charming, his house was cozy, he had money and an unusual hobby to keep him occupied while either of us was temporarily bored or otherwise out of touch with the other; the only serpent in this Eden was the legal female demon. One night after he had been stifling a particularly deep resentment of her, I asked him casually if some of his pets were poisonous.
This leaven—these mycelial metaphors are getting away from me—produced a fine brew in a remarkably short time. George’s proposal was for tournedos Rossini with broiled mushrooms, at which the demon should receive the deadly Amanitopsis vaginata, and George and I the morel as a prelude to a night of celebration. As for the police, George said, shrugging, doubtless they would be sticky for a while, but a mistake is a mistake: Everyone knows that amateurs should not cook with noncommercial mushrooms.
And so they shouldn’t. As the meal progressed, the demon and I were seized with a progressive fit of the giggles, while George slowly turned an unbecoming black.
letter the sixth
It was hushed and silent spring by the time I had beaten my way, through the inhuman malice of the jungle and the savagery of the natives, to the fabled lost valley of Hidden, Del. For a part of the expedition I had been accompanied by three gallant soldiers of fortune, veterans of the Boxer Rebellion, whom I had recruited under a boxcar, but alas, the last of these had perished after 72 pages in small type of terrible privations. Now only I stood looking down into the valley upon the stately mansion in which, if the turnkey’s frightened whispers could be trusted, there dwelt that creature of legend and dream, my aunt Messalina.
I say it was silent; but the hush was the absence only of the usual rustling of pine fronds, the blood-curdling distant roar of squirrels, the indignant chattering of deer, even the trilling of robins. Instead, the air seemed filled, as if with exotic perfume, with a far-off bungling, as of the blowing of faëry flutes. What sort of creature could make so magical a sound? (Later, I was privileged to see an entire flock of them: scaly and winged, in some parts of the valley they dangled from every participle.)
As I mounted the steps of the mansion, this elfin music was joined by the sound of gongs, hollow, awful, empty, one to each step. What did this gongorism portend? But I was given no time to ponder the puzzle, for the great door swung open, and before me in the aperture stood—the White Goddess, my aunt Messalina herself!
How to describe such beauty? Her eyes were blue, wondrous, though not without a taint of fiendishness in them; an almost invisible veil slipped down from the neck, the shoulders, half-revealing, hoo boy, the gleaming breasts. And eldritch, eldritch beyond all song was that exquisite head and bust floating above me—and beautiful, dextrously beautiful beyond all singing, too. So might even Potiphar’s wife, that ever-normal granary of fruitfulness, have shown herself tempting Joseph!
“Ah, Felici-tee!” she cried in a mocking voice. “My winged messengers have foretold your coming! Enter my temple, and be glad!”
Within, the mansion revealed itself to be indeed a temple, but a temple of sensuousness, a palace of indulgence. I paused, awe-struck, and behind me sounded Messalina’s tinkling laughter. Before me on divans, languidly sipping some nectar from golden goblets, lay a motley company, consisting at the moment of three men and a girl (though I found later that there were many others among the worshipers of the Goddess). The men present were a fey Irish-American, a huge Scandinavian who in his speech constantly invoked a mixture of Norse and German gods, and a dirty spy (whether German or Russian I was never able to determine). The innocent-appearing girl was named, appropriately enough, Magda.
At the back of the great chamber was the Goddess’ throne, and above the dais on which it rested there hung on the wall, suspended from two golden thumbtacks, a Satanic mask which constantly wept, drooled and sweated typewriter-ribbon ink. This ran down into a golden bowl, which was periodically borne away and replaced, by squattering, froglike creatures.
One of these brought me a beaker of the lambent ichor, which I drank gratefully; as I raised it to my lips, there was a clamor of flutings from the invisible creatures, as though in warning, but I was too hot and sticky from the jungle to heed it, and quaffed deeply. At once my senses reeled, and I can give no coherent account of what followed, except that it somehow involved Magda, myself and the Goddess with the three men in a sort of drugged garland, and that toward its end I was a good deal stickier than before but not quite so hot.
How long this might have gone on is impossible to guess, for as we were drowsily rearranging ourselves upon the floor and divans, there entered a tall, burly man in the robes of a pagan priest, whose harsh countenance was almost a duplicate of that of the drooling mask.
“Ha, Messalina!” he thundered. “Once again I find you in the toils of self-indulgence, to the neglect of all those intrigues which imperil your kingdom! Fie, witch-woman, and for shame!”
“Be not so harsh, O Abram,” the White Goddess whispered in her cadent voice. “Call me instead by those sweet names you called me of old—Queen of Spayeds, Egg of the Wild Pigeons-s-s-s—”
But he interrupted her brutally, drawing his singing sword. “Enough!” he tromboned. “You have betrayed your ministry! You must pay!”
Since all the rest of this company seemed too drugged with the elixir to act, I arose and walked toward him, removing my tattered marching clothes (an easy task, for by then I was wearing only the shirt, and that open) in preparation for combat. The evil priest’s eyes widened as he realized that he still had a capable antagonist.
“Felici-tee!” my aunt trilled. “Do not oppose him! It is sacrilege!”
But I did not heed her; to do so would have been the death of us all. I stared boldly into the eyes of the villain.
“Do you dare,” I said, “risk single combat with one not of your world, who sneers at your base superstitions?”
His eyes narrowed calculatingly, but he did not hesitate; he had courage, this evil priest, I must allow him that. We closed in furious engagement. For a while, I thought I had met my master, for he was fresh, and I both tired and wine-benumbed; but at last he lay exhausted beneath me.
Pulling his weapon from my flesh—no difficult task, now—I arose; but my triumph was short-lived. The squattering creatures were back in the room, hordes of them, in panic flight.
“Deadloin!” they croaked in terrified batrachian voices. “The deadloin is coming!”
Turning in bewilderment, I beheld again the mask on the wall. Its expression was now truly malignant, and from it was coming such torrents of ink that paper to carry it would have deforested all of Canada. The black tide rolled across the tesselated floor toward us. There was nothing to do but flee—but my erstwhile companions had neither will nor strength left to do so. As I paused at the door, I saw it overwhelm them.
My last memory of that enchanted realm is of the despairing music of the invisible creatures. I shall carry it in my heart well into the next 253 pages.
letter the seventh
In order to protect himself and his researches from the fear and malice of the ignorant, and the prying of journalists, my third uncle had changed his name to Philip H. Essex and removed his laboratory to a remote island off the Jersey coast. There is no traffic with the island from the mainland, and to reach it I had to take a small launch sent for me by the doctor.
The Charon of this ferry was a sinister and taciturn creature of great strength—though I discovered when we disembarked that he limped—and shagginess, rather resembling a Lord Byron who had somehow tried to turn himself into an ape. He was so surly that I wondered why my uncle tolerated him, although he did certainly seem able to keep his own counsel, and his attitude toward the doctor was outright servile.
This question, however, vanished from my mind when I saw Dr. Essex’s residence, which looked not so much like a laboratory as a stockade. Once he had made me comfortable in his study, however, he explained this very readily.
“There are wild beasts on this island,” he said. “Yes, wild. Lots of them. Wouldn’t do to venture outside. Wouldn’t do at all.”
He fell to ruminating. I prompted him.
“How did it happen? Oh, well . . . easily enough. These are dangerous waters, around the island. Rocks. Shoals. Some years ago, a supply ship for a zoo, bound for Florida, got caught in a storm and was beached. None of the crew survived, but many of the animals got ashore.
“And bred. Oh, yes, they breed.
“Incredible, eh? But come along and I’ll show you.”
He arose and led me to his surgery, a huge place, almost like a dynamo shed. Here, in a cage against one wall, was a tawny young lioness, pacing and pacing.
“Rather a windfall for me,” my uncle said. “Experimental animals, free of charge. And extraordinary ones. None of your commonplace white rats or guinea-pigs for me.”
The lioness glared at him as though she had half-understood the import of his remark in some dim, savage corner of her mind. I felt quite sorry for her, though indeed she seemed quite as dangerous as he had suggested.
The suggestion preyed upon me later that night, nor was sleep sped by what seemed to be a remote throbbing of drums. Were there other people on this island as well, besides my uncle, his sinister boatman and myself? He had not said so; nor could I imagine how there could come to be drum-thumping savages this close to a great center of civilization like Long Branch, N. J. Perhaps it was only some trick of the waves.
Then I became aware of a truly terrifying animal sound, a sort of muffled screaming—yet unlike the cry of an animal too, in that it seemed to come with almost mechanical regularity. It was all the more frightening in that its source seemed to be somewhere inside the stockade—perhaps inside the house itself!
Putting on a wrapper, I opened my bedroom door. Yes, the sound was indeed inside the house, and it was not hard to track down; it was coming from my uncle’s surgery, under the door of which an eerie greenish light streamed. I knelt and peered through the keyhole, and beheld an astonishing sight.
The lioness had been removed from her cage and was now pinioned to the far wall of the shed, as if crucified. In this position she looked rather like some misshapen human creature in golden furs. My uncle, his face impassive and yet somehow Satanic in the green light, was systematically and intimately tickling her with a long white feather.
As I watched, paralyzed, the mechanical screaming began gradually to take on a human quality, like the voice of a woman, and to be interspersed with panting, gasps and groans. When at last the poor tormented creature also began to giggle, I could bear it no more, and fled.
It took me most of the next day to nerve myself up to asking my uncle the meaning of this scene, and when I did, his face darkened menacingly.
“Still I suppose you can do no harm,” he said after a moment. “And the work I am prosecuting here is the culmination of the work of thousands of men—this man a suggestion and that an experiment, until at last only one vigorous experimental and intellectual effort is needed—mine—to finish the great work.
“Very few laymen can possibly understand the power that the nervous system has over the very shape of the total living organism. Here and there you will find a few people who say glibly that their illness of the moment may be psychosomatic, by which they mean no more than that their footling emotions have made them sick . . . which happens more often than either they or that charlatan Freud ever dreamed. But very few indeed realize that the energy which drives the nervous system itself, which I have called orgroan energy, could under proper control reorganize their whole physical being.
“But the control must be very precise. Specifically, the stimuli involved must be applied delicately to those organs of the mature corpus which are most richly supplied with nerve-ends.
“These are, of course, the sense-organs, as any first-form student of anatomy knows. But while most of the senses are localized in the tongue, the ear and so on, there are no specific organs of touch. This is why all my predecessors missed the essential clue, which in fact must be found in moral philosophy, not in science. Almost every philosopher has spoken—at one time or another—of the human rites of mating as a form of animalism, or, at the very least, a kind of animality. Very well. Suppose we should turn the equation upside down? The key for turning an animal into a man must lie through the sense of touch in what is called the erogenous zones.
“And in fact I have succeeded—or almost succeeded—in transforming animals into men by this route. A complete transformation still eludes me, but all my results show that I am on the right track . . . It is perhaps unfortunate that the sensory areas involved are also the ones most richly supplied with pain axons, but one can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”
“But,” I said, “aren’t there laws against . . . vivisection?”
“Pah! I’m not cutting animals up. Quite the contrary. I’m giving them the chance to use their own misdirected nervous energy to make themselves into something finer than their Creator did . . . their Creator, and all the forces of evolution.
“Of course . . .” he paused, and put the tips of his fingers together. “Of course, they don’t see it in quite that light. Not yet. They don’t understand. They fear me. Indeed I think many of them hate me; that is why I must have the stockade. But they’ll come around.
“You’ve met my boatman. He’s come around. He was a baboon to begin with; closer to the human than the bears and tigers and so on that I’ve worked with since. And the breeding is a problem. You see, my work doesn’t affect the genes, so the cubs of these creatures revert to type. But there again, that’s only a hurdle, not an impassable wall. I shall conquer it. I shall conquer it!”
“Perhaps you will,” I said. “In fact I can hardly doubt it. But if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to see it happen. I shall be going back to the mainland in the morning.”
“No,” he said. “No, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. I already have good reason to mistrust your discretion . . . and people might misunderstand, and come to interfere. You’ll have to remain here. But there’s nothing to fear, as long as you stay inside the stockade. I can’t guarantee your safety otherwise.”
The threat was clear, but after what I had seen, and the revelation of the true nature of the ferryman—who was inside the stockade—I resolved not to stay in that House of Orgroan another moment longer than I could possibly help. And indeed, I stole out of it late that night—while my uncle was occupied in his horrible theatre of green light—and, as I thought, forever.
The jungle was very dark but the beating of the drums guided me to the rude village which had been built by Dr. Essex’s creatures. After a few ticklish moments of suspicion, I was welcomed. The males among them were sufficiently human to be conscious of the fact that they had never seen a white, hairless woman before, and to be consumed with the hope of fathering cubs more human—rather than less, as was, as my uncle had told me, the rule—than their parents; and yet they were also sufficiently animal to make their attempts at such parenthood remarkably more emphatic than any I had ever encountered before.
It was several days before I was able to get them off this subject for more than a few hours at a time, nor did I make any real attempt to change it until I felt that it had been completely exhausted, and perhaps even become somewhat of a sore one. But then I soon found other ways in which their longing to be human expressed itself.
Obviously, once cast out of the stockade as unsuccessful experiments, they had to adapt to the new conditions in which they found themselves, and gradually managed to do so, though of course with many failures. These methods and expedients they called the New Ways. But there was among them a very vocal group which still longed for the Old Ways of life within the enclosure, and this expressed itself in a pathetic attempt to talk like P. H. Essex, Ph.D. Strange it was to hear, issuing from these furry faces, this gabble of “thought-variants,” “sixth-order forces,” “inertialess drives,” “second foundations,” “rational nobility” and other such terms which had no bearing at all upon the kind of life they were now leading.
This might have been merely pitiable or merely comic, or a mixture of both, depending upon one’s temperament, had I not discovered that this longing for the Old Ways was no longer limited to mere talk. A substantial number of the creatures were planning a return to the enclosure, by force if necessary. The consequences of this course could well be serious for all concerned, for brutish though they were, these creations of Dr. Essex had fire.
In the dead of the night before the storm broke, therefore, I persuaded (or rather bribed) one of the youngest of them to help me steal the boat, and with a sigh of relief found myself on the way back to the mainland. Even today, however, when I hear the piercing voices of the yahoos in the streets, I sometimes shudder and long for the rational nobility of the horse, though I can’t figure out how he gets into the story at all.
letter the eighth
“Why, bless my pushbuttons!” my fourth uncle chuckled chinnily. “If it isn’t my niece, Felicity!”
The young inventor looked up from his giant hydraulic microscope as I entered, a trace of a twinkle in his serious blue eyes. Under the microscope, he had been puzzledly studying his own thumb, but now, rising, he thrust it into his mouth and made me welcome.
“Tell me, Uncle Tom (for that was his name),” I responded antiphonally, “why were you studying your thumb?”
He looked carefully under his workbench, behind the doors, out the window and up the flue before replying.
“I am surrounded by scientific crooks and international spies,” he gritted flintily. “I must take the utmost precautions against theft.”
I could well understand this. Arranged around the eighteen-year-old genius’ workbench were cabinets containing models of some of his previous marvelous inventions: the clockwork nightingale, the rocket calliope, the Steam Drive, the Earth-Moon ladder, the psionic stamplicker, the British telephone system and the marine dowser. Most of these had been cast in bronze, but even those made of Tomasite, the young inventor’s wonder plastic, were scratched, dented and chipped from having been stolen at least once per book since about 1897.
At last, however, he seemed satisfied, and resumed his seat. “Now, here’s my plan,” he declared. “I find that the chases, adventures and mysteries in which I am constantly becoming involved leave me very little time for research. Also, they are constantly disrupting the work and the income of the Enterprises Construction Company, and sometimes the whole town of Workville—”
Abruptly he was interrupted as a stout, stubble-faced man burst into the laboratory. “Brand my lil ole circus sideshow, Tom,” he sighed complainingly, “but yore mother an’ sister will be plumb ornery with me if you don’t make it home for grub agin tonight!”
Tom grinned. “Okay,” he said, and when the chubby man went out, he added, “That was Chow Ping Plonker, the former chuck-wagon cook who tends galley in the laboratory. If I do not eat at home, I have to eat his cooking, and I get rather tired of mashed mongoose fritters. But that is part of the problem. We all need time to eat and sleep, too.”
“Whew!” I exclaimed bewilderedly. “But how do you propose to deal with the problem, Uncle Tom? It seems insoluble.”
“By a division of labor,” he replied. “Hereafter I will leave all the inventing to my father. After all, it was he who made all the basic discoveries of our age, no matter what the history books say—the dirigible, the great searchlight, the war tank, the motorcycle and many more. I shall devote myself entirely to chasing our enemies.”
“But that will not leave you very much more time for eating and sleeping,” I objected.
“I will need less,” he confided confidently. “I shall convert myself into a terrible hunting machine.”
“A robot?” I cried gloomily. “That seems inhuman!”
“No, indeed,” he replied cheerfully. “For my brain, my senses and all my important organs will remain untouched. They will only be reinforced mechanically. I shall become not a robot, but a cyborg!”
The breathtakingness of this idea took my breath away. “I hope you make out all right,” I panted breathlessly. “If I may help you in any way, you have only to ask me!”
“Thank you, Felicity,” he replied judiciously. “But now it is time for us to go to dinner.”
The work on the cyborg progressed rapidly, and soon I was able to give the young inventor substantial help in selecting what parts of his healthy young physique he should retain.
On our first trial, the mechanical parts of the mechanism—which was to be eight feet tall when completely assembled—blew out. But before it did so it behaved very well. Uncle Tom was enthusiastic. So was I. It seemed clear that soon he would achieve his goal of converting himself into an inexhaustible hunter of any sort of quarry.
But then, his enemies struck!
I was studying an anatomical diagram in the laboratory when in burst young Harlan Ames, head of the plant’s security division.
“What ever is the matter?” I cried, pulling up my work trousers hastily.
“The cyborg project!” he yelped furiously. “It is ruined!”
“But why? How?”
“Some fiend has stolen Tom’s thumb!”
letter the ninth
South of Prospect Park the brownstones rise wild, and there are mortgages there no mustard has ever cut. When I first came there, I had already been told that the place was evil, and little did I marvel at such tales after I saw it, for indeed it seemed implicit with the mystery of some primal earth. The very cats were sickly and stunted, and about the tumbled maws and lids of the ancient ashcans many dead Puerto Ricans tottered or lay rotting.
Nevertheless, I was myself shaken and disappointed with the ways of men and their creations, and welcomed my self-exile in that dismal valley. The old people of Red Hook had in particular muttered frightenedly against your establishment, where, they said evasively, strange rites were practiced when the sinister stars looked down; but I found you less aged or wild than I had expected, and those reputedly darksome rites familiar to me from much past experience. Indeed, they brought a certain respite and restfulness to my haunted and frustrated soul. Of course, the screams of the things in the upper two storys of the house were sometimes a little alarming, and in the morning it was more than alarming to find the rank back garden littered with powder-puffs which clearly had been terribly beaten in the course of some nameless quarrel; and sometimes, up there, late at night, one could also hear the mindless whining and pounding of flutes, lutes, cutes and other ancient Greek instruments.
Yet I remained queerly content, in a sort of orgiastic numbness, like an unearthly jewel which had found its rest at last in the clammy slime of some rayless, bottomless ocean. When the creeping smog masked the malicious stars with colors no man could name, I would sometimes steal from the house and wander through the morbid vegetation of the park, looking with queer approval upon the wetly rigid, unplantlike shadows which they threw across the flabby turf. Of my half-waking dreams during such wanderings, I dare not speak.
But the end came at last. On one such night, a gigantic, glowing stone of indescribable shape descended from the murky sky among the tenebrous shadows of the ancient monuments of Grand Army Plaza, preceded by a blast of absolute coldness which made me shiver to my marrow even in my woolies. I was frozen with terror; though I was perilously close to this eldritch visitor from the illimitable inane, I could do naught but watch.
And then—Good God!—what dream-world was this into which I had blundered? Out of that roughly yet inarguably shaped stone, with a feeble mewling and scratching, came—merciful Heaven! How can I go on? Polymorphous, perverse, partly dextrose, partly levulose, oozing a blasphemous ichor, it enfolded me, and for a while—blessed release!—my horror overcame me and I knew no more.
There is little more to tell. Some men of science—God! how little they know of the ultimate depths of noisomeness through which mankind crawls!—have said darkly that there is no square inch of the human body which cannot be, and has not been, exploited for ghastly and unendurable pleasures. They are cruelly right. Iä! Iä! Ow! Slurp-Ofaywrath! The Club with a Thousand Members! . . .
And so it was that I never returned to the fated brownstone. With a choked-off scream, I became wife to the frightful messenger from unformed infinity beyond all Nature as I had known it, and soon thereafter I was carried away into those realms of black, ultra-cosmic gulfs whose mere existence would frenzy the unprepared mind and the untrained body.
But before my whole substance is dissolved into the ichor of unutterable Sensation, I have been allowed to make this record for the warning of mankind. I have to consider that I have been, in my grotesque way, very fortunate in my preparation for the Plot-Skeleton Out of Space. To anyone less fortunate who may meet another, let me add hastily that in getting along with aliens, one rule is paramount:
They are not easily satisfied.
Now, I must come away. ’Ng topuothikl m’kthoqui h’nirl . . . Coming, dear . . . Aggghhhh! . . .
ULP.