Part 3

Lake Jozgid, as most rural New Yorkers know, is set rather low among wooded hills and bluffs. The unevenness of the country and the poverty of the soil have discouraged cultivation, so that farms and villages are few. As the party drove, Varduk suggested an advantage in this remoteness, which suggestion Jake later passed on to Judge Pursuivant and me; where a less brilliant or more accessible star might be ignored in such far quarters, Sigrid would find Lake Jozgid to her advantage. The world would beat a path to her box office, and treasure a glimpse of her the more because that glimpse had been difficult of attainment.

The theater building itself had been a great two-story lodge, made of heavy logs and hand-hewn planks. Some sporting-club, now defunct, had owned it, then abandoned it when fish grew scarce in the lake. Varduk had leased it cheaply, knocked out all partitions on the ground floor, and set up a stage, a lobby and pew-like benches. The upper rooms would serve as lodgings for himself and his associate Davidson, while small out-buildings had been fitted up to accommodate the rest of us.

Around this group of structures clung a thick mass of timber. Sigrid, who had spent her girlhood among Sweden's forests, pointed out that it was mostly virgin and inquired why a lumber company had never cut logs here. Varduk replied that the property had been private for many years, then changed the subject by the welcome suggestion that they have dinner. They had brought a supply of provisions, and Jake, who is something of a cook in addition to his many other professions, prepared a meal. Both Sigrid and Jake ate heartily, but Varduk seemed only to take occasional morsels for politeness' sake.

In the evening, a full moon began to rise across the lake. Sitting together in Varduk's upstairs parlor, the three saw the great soaring disk of pale light, and Sigrid cried out joyfully that she wanted to go out and see better.

"Take a lantern if you go out at night," counseled Varduk over his cigar.

"A lantern?" Sigrid repeated. "But that would spoil the effect of the moonlight."

Her new director blew a smooth ring of smoke and stared into its center, as though a message lay there. Then he turned his brilliant eyes to her. "If you are wise, you will do as I say," he made answer.

Men like Varduk are masterful and used to being obeyed. Sometimes they lose sight of the fact that women like Sigrid are not used to being given arbitrary commands without explanation. She fell silent and a little frigid for half an hour--often I had seen her just as Jake was describing her. Then she rose and excused herself, saying that she was tired from the morning's long drive and would go to bed early. Varduk rose and courteously bowed her to the stairs. Since her sleeping-quarters, a cleverly rebuilt wood-shed, were hardly a dozen steps from the rear of the lodge building itself, neither man thought it necessary to accompany her.

Left alone, Varduk and Jake carried on an idle conversation, mostly about publicity plans. Jake, who in the show business had done successfully almost everything but acting, found in his companion a rather penetrating and accurate commentator on this particular aspect of production. Indeed, Varduk debated him into a new attitude--one of restraint and dignity instead of novel and insistent extravagance.

"You're right," Jake announced at length. "I'm going to get the releases that go out in tomorrow's mail. I'll cut out every 'stupendous' and 'colossal' I wrote into them. Good night, Mr. Varduk."

He, too, trotted downstairs and left the main building for his own sleeping-room, which was the loft of an old boathouse. As he turned toward the water, he saw a figure walking slowly and dreamily along its edge--Sigrid, her hands tucked into the pockets of the light belted coat she had donned against possible night chills, her head flung back as though she sought all of the moonlight upon her rapt face.

Although she had wandered out to the brink of the sandy beach and so stood in the open brightness, clumps of bushes and young trees grew out almost to the lake. One tufty belt of scrub willow extended from the denser timber to a point within a dozen feet of Sigrid. It made a screen of gloom between Jake's viewpoint and the moon's spray of silver. Yet, he could see, light was apparently soaking through its close-set leaves, a streak of soft radiance that was so filtered as to look murky, greenish, like the glow from rotting salmon.

* * * * *

Even as Jake noticed this flecky glimmer, it seemed to open up like a fan or a parasol. Instead of a streak, it was a blot. This extended further, lazily but noticeably. Jake scowled. And this moved lakeward, without leaving any of itself at the starting-point.

With its greatening came somewhat of a brightening, which revealed that the phenomenon had some sort of shape--or perhaps the shape was defining itself as it moved. The blot's edges grew unevenly, receding in places to swell in others. Jake saw that these swellings sprouted into pseudopodal extensions (to quote him, they "jellied out"), that stirred as though groping or reaching. And at the top was a squat roundness, like an undeveloped cranium. The lower rays of light became limbs, striking at the ground as though to walk. The thing counterfeited life, motion--and attention. It was moving toward the water, and toward Sigrid.

Jake did not know what it was, and he says that he was suddenly and extremely frightened. Yet he does not seem to have acted like one who is stricken with fear. What he did, and did at once, was to bawl out a warning to Sigrid, then charge at the mystery.

It had stolen into the moonlight, and Jake encountered it there. As he charged, he tried to make out the details; but what little it had had of details in the darkness now went misty, as its glow was conquered in the brighter flood of moonglow. Yet it was there, and moving toward Sigrid. She had turned from looking across the water, and now shrank back with a tremulous cry, stumbling and recovering herself ankle-deep in the shallows.

Jake, meanwhile, had flung himself between her and what was coming out of the thicket. He did not wait or even set himself for conflict, but changed direction to face and spring upon the threatening presence. Though past his first youth, he fancied himself as in fairly tough condition, and more than once he had won such impromptu fist-fights as spring up among the too-temperamental folk of the theater. He attacked as he would against a human adversary, sinking his head between his shoulders and flinging his fists in quick succession.

He got home solidly, against something tangible but sickeningly loose beneath its smooth skin or rind. It was like buffeting a sack half full of meal. Though the substance sank in beneath his knuckles, there was no reeling or retreat. A squashy return slap almost enveloped his face, and his spectacles came away as though by suction. At the same time he felt a cable-like embrace, such as he had imagined a python might exert. He smelled putrescence, was close to being sick, and heard, just behind him, the louder screaming of Sigrid.

The fresh knowledge of her danger and terror made him strong again. One arm was free, and he battered gamely with his fist. He found his mark, twice and maybe three times. Then his sickness became faintness when he realized that his knuckles had become slimy wet.

A new force dragged at him behind. Another enemy ... then a terrible voice of command, the voice of Varduk:

"Let go at once!"

The grasp and the filthy bulk fell away from Jake. He felt his knees waver like shreds of paper. His eyes, blurred without their thick spectacles, could barely discern, not one, but several lumpy forms drawing back. And near him stood Varduk, his facial phosphorescence out-gleaming the rotten light of the creatures, his form drawn up sternly in a posture of command.

"Get out!" cried Varduk again. "By what power do you come for your victim now?"

[Illustration: "Get out!" cried Varduk again. "By what power do you come for your victim now?"]

The uncouth shapes shrank out of sight. Jake could not be sure whether they found shelter behind bushes and trees or not; perhaps they actually faded into invisibility. Sigrid had come close, stepping gingerly in her wet shoes, and stooped to retrieve Jake's fallen glasses.

"We owe you our lives," she said to Varduk. "What were those----"

"Never mind," he cut her off. "They will threaten you no more tonight. Go to your beds, and be more careful in the future."

* * * * *

This was the story that Jake told me as we drove the final miles to the Lake Jozgid Theater.

He admitted that it had all been a desperate and indistinct scramble to him, and that explanation he had offered next morning when Varduk laughed and accused him of dreaming.

"But maybe it wasn't a dream," Jake said as he finished. "Even if it was, I don't want any more dreams like it."

_6. The Theater in the Forest_

Jake's narrative did not give me cheerful expectations of the Lake Jozgid Theater. It was just as well, for my first glimpse of the place convinced me that it was the exact setting for a play of morbid unreality.

The road beyond Pursuivant's cabin was narrow but not too bad. Jake, driving nimbly over its sanded surface, told me that we might thank the public works program for its good condition. In one or two places, as I think I have said already, the way was cut deeply between knolls or bluffs, and here it was gloomy and almost sunless. Too, the woods thickened to right and left, with taller and taller ranks of trees at the roadside. Springtime's leafage made the trees seem vigorous, but not exactly cheerful; I fancied that they were endowed with intelligence and the power of motion, and that they awaited only our passing before they moved out to block the open way behind us.

From this sand-surfaced road there branched eventually a second, and even narrower and darker, that dipped down a thickly timbered slope. We took a rather difficult curve at the bottom and came out almost upon the shore of the lake, with the old lodge and its out-buildings in plain view.

These structures were in the best of repair, but appeared intensely dark and weathered, as though the afternoon sky shed a brownish light upon them. The lodge that was now the theater stood clear in the center of the sizable cleared space, although lush-looking clumps and belts of evergreen scrub grew almost against the sheds and the boathouse. I was enough of an observer to be aware that the deep roofs were of stout ax-cut shingles, and that the heavy timbers of the walls were undoubtedly seasoned for an age. The windows were large but deep-set in their sturdy frames. Those who call windows the eyes of a house would have thought that these eyes were large enough, but well able to conceal the secrets and feelings within.

As we emerged from the car, I felt rather than saw an onlooker. Varduk stood in the wide front door of the lodge building. Neither Jake nor I could agree later whether he had opened the door himself and appeared, whether he had stepped into view with the door already open, or whether he had been standing there all the time. His slender, elegant figure was dressed in dark jacket and trousers, with a black silk scarf draped Ascot fashion at his throat, just as he had worn at his hotel in New York. When he saw that we were aware of him, he lifted a white hand in greeting and descended two steps to meet us coming toward him. I offered him my hand, and he gave it a quick, sharp pressure, as though he were investigating the texture of my flesh and bone.

"I am glad to see you here so soon, Mr. Connatt," he said cordially. "Now we need wait only for Miss Vining, who should arrive before dark. Miss Holgar came yesterday, and Davidson this morning."

"There will be only the six of us, then?" I asked.

He nodded his chestnut curls. "A caretaker will come here each day, to prepare lunch and dinner and to clean. He lives several miles up the road, and will spend his nights at home. But we of the play itself will be in residence, and we alone--a condition fully in character, I feel, with the attitude of mystery and reserve we have assumed toward our interesting production. For breakfasts, Davidson will be able to look after us."

"Huh!" grunted Jake. "That Davidson can act, manage, stage-hand, cook--he does everything."

"Almost everything," said Varduk dryly, and his eyes turned long and expressionlessly upon my friend, who immediately subsided. In the daylight I saw that Varduk's eyes were hazel; on the night I had met him at his hotel they had seemed thunder-dark.

"You, too, are considered useful at many things around the theater, Switz," Varduk continued. "I took that into consideration when Miss Holgar, though she left her maid behind, insisted on including you in the company. I daresay, we can depend on you to help Davidson with the staging and so on."

"Oh, yes, sure," Jake made reply. "Certainly. Miss Holgar, she wants me to do that."

"Very good." Varduk turned on the heel of his well-polished boot. "Suppose," he added over his shoulder, "that you take Mr. Connatt up to the loft of the boathouse. Mr. Connatt, do you mind putting up with Switz?"

"Not in the least," I assured him readily, and took up two of my bags. Jake had already lifted the third and heaviest.

We nodded to Varduk and skirted the side of the lodge, walked down to the water, then entered the boathouse. It was a simple affair of well-chinked logs. Two leaky-looking canoes still occupied the lower part of it, but we picked our way past them and ascended a sturdy staircase to a loft under the peaked roof. This had been finished with wall-board and boasted a window at each end. Two cots, a rug, a wash-stand, a table and several chairs made it an acceptable sleeping-apartment.

"This theater is half-way to the never-never land," I commented as I began to unpack.

"I should live so--I never saw the like of it," Jake said earnestly. "How are people going to find their way here? Yesterday I began to talk about signs by the side of the road. Right off at once, Varduk said no. I begged like a poor relation left out of his uncle's will. Finally he said yes--but the signs must be small and dignified, and put up only a day before the show begins."

I wanted to ask a question about his adventure of the previous night, but Jake shook his head in refusal to discuss it. "Not here," he said. "Gib, who knows who may be listening?" He dropped his voice. "Or even _what_ might be listening?"

I lapsed into silence and got out old canvas sneakers, flannel slacks and a Norfolk jacket, and changed into them. Dressed in this easy manner, I left the boathouse and stood beside the lake. At once a voice hailed me. Sigrid was walking along the water's edge, smiling in apparent delight.

* * * * *

We came face to face; I bent to kiss her hand. As once before, it fluttered under my lips, but when I straightened again I saw nothing of distaste or unsteadiness in her expression.

"Gib, how nice that you're here!" she cried. "Do you like the place?"

"I haven't seen very much of it yet," I told her. "I want to see the inside of the theater."

She took her hand away from me and thrust it into the pocket of the old white sweater she wore. "I think that I love it here," she said, with an air of gay confession. "Not all of the hermit stories about me are lies. I could grow truly fat--God save the mark!--on quiet and serenity."

"Varduk pleases you, too?" I suggested.

"He has more understanding than any other theatrical executive in my experience," she responded emphatically. "He fills me with the wish to work. I'm like a starry-eyed beginner again. What would you say if I told you that I was sweeping my own room and making my own bed?"

"I would say that you were the most charming housemaid in the world."

Her laughter was full of delight. "You sound as if you mean it, Gib. It is nice to know you as a friend again."

It seemed to me that she emphasized the word "friend" a trifle, as though to warn me that our relationship would nevermore become closer than that. Changing the subject, I asked her if she had swum in the lake; she had, and found it cold. How about seeing the theater? Together we walked toward the lodge and entered at a side door.

The auditorium was as Jake had described it to me, and I saw that Varduk liked a dark tone. He had stained the paneling, the benches, and the beams a dark brown. Brown, too, was the heavy curtain that hid the stage.

"We'll be there tonight," said Sigrid, nodding stageward. "Varduk has called the first rehearsal for immediately after dinner. We eat together, of course, in a big room upstairs."

"May I sit next to you when we eat?" I asked, and she laughed yet again. She was being as cheerful as I had ever known her to be.

"You sound like the student-hero in a light opera, Gib. I don't know about the seating-arrangement. Last night I was at the head of the table, and Varduk at the foot. Jake and Mr. Davidson were at either side of me."

"I shall certainly arrive before one or the other of them," I vowed solemnly.

Varduk had drifted in as we talked, and he chuckled at my announcement.

"A gallant note, Mr. Connatt, and one that I hope you can capture as pleasantly for the romantic passages of our _Ruthven_. By the bye, our first rehearsal will take place this evening."

"So Miss Holgar has told me," I nodded. "I have studied the play rather prayerfully since Davidson gave me a copy. I hope I'm not a disappointment in it."

"I am sure that you will not be," he said kindly. "I did not choose disappointing people for my cast."

Davidson entered from the front, to say that Martha Vining had arrived. Varduk moved away, stiff in his walk as I had observed before. Sigrid and I went through the side door and back into the open.

That evening I kept my promise to find a place by Sigrid at the table. Davidson, entering just behind me, looked a trifle chagrined but sat at my other side, with Martha Vining opposite. The dinner was good, with roast mutton, salad and apple tart. I thought of Judge Pursuivant's healthy appetite as I ate.

After the coffee, Varduk nodded to the old man who served as caretaker, cook and waiter, as in dismissal. Then the producer's hazel eyes turned to Sigrid, who took her cue and rose. We did likewise.

"Shall we go down to the stage?" Varduk said to us. "It's time for our first effort with _Ruthven_."

_7. Rehearsal_

We went down a back stairway that brought us to the empty stage. A light was already burning, and I remember well that my first impression was of the stage's narrowness and considerable depth. Its back was of plaster over the outer timbers, but at either side partitions of paneling had been erected to enclose the cell-like dressing-rooms. One of the doors bore a star of white paint, evidently for Sigrid. Against the back wall leaned several open frames of wood, with rolls of canvas lying ready to be tacked on and painted into scenery.

Varduk had led the way down the stairs, and at the foot he paused to call upward to Davidson, who remained at the rear of the procession. "Fetch some chairs," he ordered, and the tall subordinate paused to gather them. He carried down six at once, his long strong arms threaded through their open backs. Varduk showed him with silent gestures where to arrange them, and himself led Sigrid to the midmost of them, upstage center.

"Sit down, all," he said to the rest of us. "Curtain, Davidson." He waited while the heavy pall rolled ponderously upward against the top of the arch. "Have you got your scripts, ladies and gentlemen?"

We all had, but his hands were empty. I started to offer him my copy, but he waved it away with thanks. "I know the thing by heart," he informed me, though with no air of boasting. Remaining still upon his feet, he looked around our seated array, capturing every eye and attention.

"The first part of _Ruthven_ is, as we know already, in iambic pentameter--the 'heroic verse' that was customary and even expected in dramas of Byron's day. However, he employs here his usual trick of breaking the earlier lines up into short, situation-building speeches. No long and involved declamations, as in so many creaky tragedies of his fellows. He wrote the same sort of opening scenes for his plays the world has already seen performed--_Werner_, _The Two Foscari_, _Marino Faliero_ and _The Deformed Transformed_."

Martha Vining cleared her throat. "Doesn't _Manfred_ begin with a long, measured soliloquy by the central character?"

"It does," nodded Varduk. "I am gratified, Miss Vining, to observe that you have been studying something of Byron's work." He paused, and she bridled in satisfaction. "However," he continued, somewhat maliciously, "you would be well advised to study farther, and learn that Byron stated definitely that _Manfred_ was not written for the theater. But, returning to _Ruthven_, with which work we are primarily concerned, the short, lively exchanges at the beginning are Aubrey's and Malvina's." He quoted from memory. "'Scene, Malvina's garden. Time, late afternoon--Aubrey, sitting at Malvina's feet, tells his adventures.' Very good, Mr. Connatt, take your place at Miss Holgar's feet."

I did so, and she smiled in comradely fashion while waiting for the others to drag their chairs away. Glancing at our scripts, we began:

"I'm no Othello, darling."

"Yet I am Your Desdemona. Tell me of your travels."

"Of Anthropophagi?"

"'And men whose heads do grow beneath----'"

"I saw no such, Not in all wildest Greece and Macedon."

"Saw you no spirits?"

"None, Malvina--none."

"Not even the vampire, he who quaffs the blood Of life, that he may live in death?"

"Not I. How do you know that tale?"

"I've read In old romances----"

"Capital, capital," interrupted Varduk pleasantly. "I know that the play is written in a specific meter, yet you need not speak as though it were. If anything, make the lines less rhythmic and more matter-of-fact. Remember, you are young lovers, half bantering as you woo. Let your audience relax with you. Let it feel the verse form without actually hearing."

We continued, to the line where Aubrey tells of his travel-acquaintance Ruthven. Here the speech became definite verse:

"He is a friend who charms, but does not cheer, One who commands, but comforts not, the world. I do not doubt but women find him handsome, Yet hearts must be uneasy at his glance."

Malvina asks:

"His glance? Is it so piercing when it strikes?"

And Aubrey: