Chapter 9
That spring I moved to more spacious quarters, quite close to West’s old rooms on College Street. An increase in my salary permitted an escape from the two shabby rooms I had inhabited since coming to Arkham.
I was fortunate enough to rent the entire second floor of a house quite close to the Miskatonic campus. My landlord was something of a Bohemian, a poet and occasional lecturer in the English Department, by the name of Marcus Desmond. He and his wife entertained a great deal, occasionally including me in their rather casual gatherings. From time to time, Desmond himself would turn up in my quarters, eager to talk about anything and everything, and to drink whatever I had on hand. I found this arrangement generally congenial, despite occasional noise and disruptions. I was independent, yet not altogether isolated, and no one cared if my comings and goings were erratic at times.
West gave me some of his surplus furniture – a rug, some bookshelves, a couple of little tables. I have them still. Alma gave me good advice on decorating without extravagance. She and I made an expedition to Boston, to shops that sold prints and other art works at reasonable prices, as well as more practical items.
Once I was settled, I invited both of them, as well as a few other friends and colleagues, to a small celebration. I was not without trepidation, given the animosity which existed between these two closest friends of mine. However, I need not have worried. The Commencement Day Incident had faded from Arkham’s collective memory. Both West and Alma behaved with exemplary politeness. In fact, I considered the evening a modest success.
Alma was the last to depart, but depart she did. By this time there was no doubt but that our affair was cooling. Strangely enough, our friendship did not seem to be affected, for which I was profoundly grateful. Indeed, the bittersweet quality of these days was a pleasure in itself, as though the slow dissolution of the bonds of passion created beauties of a different order. And every now and then the old ardour flared up anew.
One afternoon, a message from West arrived at my desk. Brain clearing session tonight. Please come. This was unusual; more often it said “Come if you like.” And certainly “please” was most uncharacteristic. Although the prospect of serious drinking did not attract me just then, I resolved to go. The last few times I had seen West he had been rather down in the dumps, which was also uncharacteristic.
These so-called brain clearings of West’s – what other people called debauches or merely drinking-parties – had become quite rare since he had taken up doctoring.
“I’m not thinking as intensely these days – getting old, I suppose,” he said, with one of the sweet smiles that seemed to belie his words. He was only twenty-seven.
When I arrived at West’s that evening I could see at once that it was not to be a typical drinking session. For one thing, I was the only guest. For another, there was only one bottle of Scotch on the table, along with glasses and a jug of water.
“Only the two of us tonight, Herbert?” I asked, pouring my first drink of the evening.
“Yes. As you may have guessed, this isn’t a real brain clearing, only a kind of in memoriam for our younger days. And I have business in Boston tomorrow. But this seemed as good a time as any to… well, to talk.”
“About what, Herbert?” I was mystified. West never had to set up an occasion to talk. He could hold forth on nearly anything any time, if he was so inclined.
“Oh, cabbages and kings,” he said, laughing and reaching for the bottle. “Or cauliflowers and deans, if you prefer. I can’t think what’s come over me lately. Such seriousness! And where does it get me? Life was a good deal more entertaining in my pre-Hippocratic days, when my only patients were already dead.
“Speaking of which, unless we’re blessed with a good subject for revivification soon, my new research direction will be my only one.”
“So will you tell me about it now? You’ve been so secretive about it.”
“With good reason. When something seems impossible, it’s altogether best to keep it secret until it no longer seems that way. And I must admit, it does still seem that way.” He gave me a speculative look. “Well, Charles, you’ve never blabbed to anyone, so I will tell you that the new research concerns not revivification, but… renovation. Yes, it might be called that, certainly.”
“Renovation. What – you mean, of bodies? A fountain of youth? That would be something indeed.”
“Not exactly. Not yet, anyway, although ultimately perhaps. Let’s just say that I think I have found a way to repair or even replace parts. But that’s all I’ll say right now.”
As we talked, I happened to notice that there were some pictures on the wall behind the piano. I had never seen them before, and assumed that they were newly acquired. I went over to look at them more closely. All three were obviously the work of a single artist. The style was vaguely reminiscent of the Symbolist painters of Europe, especially Gustav Klimt and Jan Toorop. The scenes were depthless and abstract, demonstrating a skillful use of dark and light tones. At first I thought the hieratic figures in stylized poses were mythological or literary personages, but on studying them more closely, I perceived that these works depicted scenes of surgery. Each one showed the horizontal shape of a patient being ministered to by a masked form who was surely a surgeon, but of a diabolical sort I hoped sincerely was only a figment of the artist’s imagination.
In one picture this sinister individual was extracting an organ from the patient’s body. In another he appeared to be attaching an appendage of grotesque shape and unknown function to the hapless creature. In the third, he held in his hand a flask containing a brilliant blue liquid, and was in the process of decanting it into the patient’s mouth, which was held open by a shadowy assistant.
The longer I looked at these images, the more disturbing I found them. The relentless deliberation exhibited by the figure of the surgeon, the terrified helplessness of the patient (or victim?) made me think that what I was looking at was a personification of evil.
“Do you like them?” asked West, startling me. I had failed to notice his approach, and did not expect to find him next to me. Something in his voice made me look at him sharply. He was smiling in a way I could think of only as mischievous.
“Not altogether,” I replied. “They’re well executed, certainly, but I find the subjects rather macabre.”
“Well yes, I agree. That describes them rather well. But I think they’re appropriate. I considered hanging them in my office downstairs, but didn’t think my patients would appreciate them.”
“I dare say they wouldn’t!” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “Who is the artist?”
“A student at the Medical School, one Walter Dixon Taylor. I think you met him here once. Former student, I should say. He decided he couldn’t stand the sight of blood and dropped out a few months ago. I imagine he’s happily starving in a garret and painting more things like these. He owed me money, you see, and gave me these paintings instead, a few days before he decamped. The longer I have them the more I think I’ve had the best of the bargain.”
“Do you know what inspired these scenes?” I asked. “Or are they purely imaginary?”
“What a question, Charles! Take another look. The first one is realistic enough – obviously an ectomy of some sort – splenectomy, appendectomy, it’s hard to say which, and doesn’t really matter. But the other two – I can tell you unequivocally that no one I know has ever endeavoured to graft an object of this sort onto a patient. And the third is surely not an advisable way to administer a liquid. No, I think Taylor was exploring his own antipathy to the profession. He was really quite unstable.”
“But why do you suppose he decided to give you these particular pictures?” I thought I remembered Taylor from West’s housewarming dinner, not quite a year before – a dark young man, and rather silent. He hadn’t said much, only gazed intently about him in a manner I had found disconcerting.
“They were his choice. For all I know, he might have painted e
ven more shocking ones. Why should it matter, anyway? Sometimes I think you’re growing too suspicious for your own good.”
He resolutely refused to answer any more questions, but proceeded instead to analyze a recent scandal that had erupted in the School of Engineering. One of the professors there had been denied funding for the development of a portable drilling apparatus that could be used for geological research in remote regions. Instead, money had been awarded to a rival working on an improved kind of machine-gun. It seemed that the first professor was claiming that the award was not objective because one of the members of the granting committee represented a manufacturer of armaments. West saw in the situation some parallel with his old dilemma at the Medical School. I could not quite follow his reasoning, and found myself assuming my old role of devil’s advocate.
By the time we had thrashed over the engineers, the bottle was nearing emptiness and the two of us were pleasantly inebriated. Suddenly West said, “Now, Charles – I have a small confession to make.”
I had never heard anything like this from him. Confessions were definitely not in West’s line, requiring as they did admissions of wrongdoing or error.
“You remember all that stuff I told you – now when was it? – oh yes, over that first dinner we had at Da Vinci’s, after the concert by that young violinist. Castelo-Branco, that was the name. Well, all that stuff about my mother dying, and my twin brother – it wasn’t exactly true, you know.”
“I know. I’ve known for years.” It was West’s turn to look astonished, something else at which he did not get much practice.
“How did you – ?”
“I met an old fellow one day, shortly after that dinner, in fact. He used to work for your father, and your grandfather too. His name was Howard, Philip Howard.”
“Philip Howard,” West said slowly. “Oh yes, I remember him now. A chatty old fellow. So what did he tell you, exactly?”
“Just that your mother didn’t die when you were eight. And that you never had a twin brother.” Knowing West’s enjoyment for adjusting the truth, I didn’t want to make it too easy for him by revealing everything Howard had told me.
“Just that, eh?” West was laughing. “You know me too well, Charles. All right, I’ll tell you what I meant to all along, and you will judge who told you the truth, Philip Howard or I. From what I recall of the fellow, he liked to spin a yarn.
“And he was right, my mother didn’t die – not then, anyway. When I was eight, she left my father and us boys and disappeared. And no, I never had a twin brother. I told you that story, I suppose, because I wanted to convince you of the purity of my motives and the worthiness of my cause. At the time, of course, I underestimated your shrewdness and overdid the pathos.”
“You certainly did. But Herbert, why are you telling me all this now?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I’m not certain. I suppose it’s because we’ve been… associates, and friends too, for so long that it didn’t seem right to keep up that old fiction. But of course I didn’t know you had already been enlightened by Mr. Howard.
“And there’s another thing. It’s rather hard to explain.” He stared off into space for a moment. “It has to do with some of my patients in Bolton. The Italians. You see, I think I might be related to some of them.”
I was astonished until I remembered his explanation for the fact that he spoke a little Italian. It had seemed suspect at the time. “Related?”
“Through my mother’s mother. She was Italian, and had relatives in Bolton. It all goes back to that prizefight we went to. Word got around in Bolton that there was a young doctor there named West who spoke Italian. Since then, a few patients, older people mostly, have been asking me about my grandmother and my mother. And of course, I have nothing to tell them. It’s as though there’s a great hole in my past.” He fell silent, but I said nothing. After a moment he continued.
“My parents’ marriage was not a happy one. Or, I should say, even less happy than most. My mother was the result of an unlikely union between an old Arkham family, the Derbys, and an Italian immigrant’s daughter from Bolton. I’m sure there’s a story there, but I don’t know it. And how she came to marry Hiram West I’ll probably never know either. I’m not sure I want to.
“My grandfather and his brother, Joshua and Henry, were the founders of the funeral business. They were typical Yankee businessmen – hardheaded, hard working, and essentially honest. They stuck to their undertaking, and made a success of it. True, they joined the vulgar rush after the Civil War trade, and some of their advertising methods were in questionable taste, but they were straightforward. But my father… he could never be content with only one business. It wasn’t the fact that it was undertaking that bothered him, just that it didn’t offer him enough scope. Merely to work away at a trade was too dull. He needs to buy and sell, take over, break down and build up. It goes beyond business for him, I think. It’s the control he needs – the more the better, and not necessarily by gentle persuasion. Certainly, he exercised an iron control in his family.
“You’ve met my father, Charles. I’m sure you saw a jovial buffoon, a little loud, a little overbearing, but full of good will. Right?”
On my acknowledgment of this description, he said, “Nothing could be farther from the truth. There is no good in him, only will. Toward those who fall in line behind him he’s benevolent. To those he doesn’t need he’s indifferent. To those who oppose him he’s ruthless.
“I think my mother was rather like yours in some ways, Charles. From what you’ve told me of her I think there were similarities. A love of music, certainly, a romantic nature, perhaps. But all lightness of spirit must have been pretty much bullied out of her by the time I was even half aware of such things. I think she must have survived for years by suppressing her true nature. But then something happened…” There was another long silence. Then he said,
“I think she had a love affair. Or wanted to, at least. Even that would have done it. I’ve asked my brothers about this, carefully, you understand. Jokingly, even. They are five and eight years older than I, so Jeremy would have been nearly fourteen and Hiram Jr. sixteen. My mother was not yet thirty-five. But either they didn’t know much, or they didn’t want to tell me. Hiram just refused to talk. Jeremy brushed me off with an insult. So I had to fall back on my own memories.
“Our coachman at the time was a good-looking fellow called Desmond Robertson. I almost remember something – it seems like a dream and maybe it was one – but there’s a picture in my mind of this Robertson helping my mother out of the carriage. She had been to a luncheon or something, and I was watching for her from my room on the second floor. There was something about the way he took her hand… Nothing improper, you understand, just a subtle thing. And the way she looked at him… I never said anything to her. What could I say? But I’ve never forgotten it.”
It was as though his words broke a seal in my memory, and I had a sudden vivid picture of a sunny clearing in my mother’s garden, with its table and chairs. I was walking toward it, down the shaded allee of clipped yews. I stood in their green darkness and saw my mother and Michael O’Connor as though in a cave of sunlight. In the dazzlement I saw him take her hand and kiss it. I saw her touch his face. I knew that I should not be seeing this, that I must speak of it to no one. They had not seen me. I turned around and went away.
West had begun speaking again by the time I was able to pay attention to him. “Robertson disappeared shortly afterward. I think he was fired, but I don’t know for sure.”
“You mean – he might have been murdered?”
West looked uneasy. “It’s possible. And yes, my father is certainly capable of having done it. Or having it done. But I don’t know.
“And not long after, my mother left. I don’t think he realized she was capable of doing such a thing. She had been so submissive for years, you see. If he had known he would have stopped her. She must have gone to her father, here in Arkham, but not for long. My
father would have known where to find them, after all. I wonder, now, if she might have gone to Bolton for a time. But that doesn’t make sense either. Those elderly patients spoke of her as though she was a distant memory, just a child. They didn’t seem to know anything about her after she disappeared.”
“Philip Howard seemed to think she was in Arkham,” I said, hesitantly. “I remember thinking at the time how strange it was that you and she would be living in the same city, given the circumstances.”
“In Arkham! But how would he know?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe he was guessing. But he said her family had been here for generations. Here, not Bolton. I suppose he was referring to her father’s family.”
“The Derbys. Yes, that may be. We have very little to do with them, actually. The usual bad blood. Well, if that’s true it would be very interesting. But I think I’ll keep this bit of information to myself, Charles. Please don’t tell anyone. And I must speak to Philip Howard too, if I can track him down.”
“But why all this secrecy?”
“Haven’t you heard anything I said? My father is not a forgiving man. Don’t imagine that he would be eager to kiss and make up with his erring wife, even after more than twenty years.”
“What happened to you after your mother left?” I asked.
“I got along as she had, by being quiet and no trouble to anyone. Mostly I stayed out of my father’s way and did as I was told. Strangely enough, I get along with him. My brothers… well, Hiram Jr. is all right, but Jeremy… For some reason he hates me. But it’s a good thing that Father has them to carry on his empire. He’s had few expectations of me, so it was easy for me to go my own way. Still, he rather likes the idea of having a physician in the family.”
“But who brought you up? You know, showed you how to do things, how to behave, that sort of thing?”
“Sometimes I think I brought myself up,” he said with a smile. “After my mother left, the household was in disarray. I remember trying to organize a birthday party for myself when I turned nine, since there was no one else to do it. Things would have been worse without our housekeeper, Mrs. Petrucci. Talking with her helped me retain the Italian I had learned from my mother. That’s how I learned to cook too, by hanging around the kitchen. At least there was order there. The rest of the house was pretty chaotic, what with my father and his cronies coming and going. The library and the kitchen – those were the places I felt most at home. But yes, that was a bad time, those first few months…”
He fell silent for a while, then continued. “Eventually my father hired a tutor to look after me. An Englishman. Father had an idea he would give me the right sort of polish, or something. When I was thirteen, he sent me away to an English-style boarding school. Since then, for all practical purposes, I’ve been on my own.”
Shortly after, the evening came to an end and I went home, full of thoughts. For the first time I saw certain similarities between West and myself. We had both had odd, lonely childhoods, he more so than I. Perhaps this had worked in some subtle way to bring us together, even though the outward reasons for our association were entirely unrelated.
And despite the story of his mother, which I had mostly believed, I could not push away a thought which had recurred several times as he described his father’s personality. In some ways he might have been describing himself.
*******
Part 2
THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER