Many
years ago, on my way from Hongkong to New York, I passed a week in San
Francisco. A long time had gone by since I had been in that city, during which
my ventures in the Orient had prospered beyond my hope; I was rich and could
afford to revisit my own country to renew my friendship with such of the
companions of my youth as still lived and remembered me with the old affection.
Chief of these, I hoped, was Mohun Dampier, an old schoolmate with whom I had
held a desultory correspondence which had long ceased, as is the way of
correspondence between men. You may have observed that the indisposition to
write a merely social letter is in the ratio of the square of the distance
between you and your correspondent. It is a law.
I
remembered Dampier as a handsome, strong young fellow of scholarly tastes, with
an aversion to work and a marked indifference to many of the things that the
world cares for, including wealth, of which, however, he had inherited enough
to put him beyond the reach of want. In his family, one of the oldest and most
aristocratic in the country, it was, I think, a matter of pride that no member
of it had ever been in trade nor politics, nor suffered any kind of
distinction. Mohun was a trifle sentimental, and had in him a singular element
of superstition, which led him to the study of all manner of occult subjects,
although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilous
faiths. He made daring incursions into the realm of the unreal without
renouncing his residence in the partly surveyed and charted region of what we
are pleased to call certitude.
The
night of my visit to him was stormy. The Californian winter was on, and the
incessant rain plashed in the deserted streets, or, lifted by irregular gusts
of wind, was hurled against the houses with incredible fury. With no small
difficulty my cabman found the right place, away out toward the ocean beach, in
a sparsely populated suburb. The dwelling, a rather ugly one, apparently, stood
in the center of its grounds, which as nearly as I could make out in the gloom
were destitute of either flowers or grass. Three or four trees, writhing and
moaning in the torment of the tempest, appeared to be trying to escape from
their dismal environment and take the chance of finding a better one out at
sea. The house was a two-story brick structure with a tower, a story higher, at
one corner. In a window of that was the only visible light. Something in the
appearance of the place made me shudder, a performance that may have been
assisted by a rill of rain-water down my back as I scuttled to cover in the
doorway.
In
answer to my note apprising him of my wish to call, Dampier had written, “Don’t
ring - open the door and come up.” I did so. The staircase was dimly lighted by
a single gas-jet at the top of the second flight. I managed to reach the
landing without disaster and entered by an open door into the lighted square
room of the tower. Dampier came forward in gown and slippers to receive me,
giving me the greeting that I wished, and if I had held a thought that it might
more fitly have been accorded me at the front door the first look at him
dispelled any sense of his inhospitality.
He
was not the same. Hardly past middle age, he had gone gray and had acquired a
pronounced stoop. His figure was thin and angular, his face deeply lined, his
complexion dead-white, without a touch of color. His eyes, unnaturally large,
glowed with a fire that was almost uncanny.
