man was just taking the bottle away from my mouth (there were two men there, and the porter and the conductor) and I tried to sit up. ‘That’s whiskey in that bottle,’ I said.
“‘Why, sure not, doc,’ the man said. ‘You know I wouldn’t be giving whiskey to a man like you. Anybody could tell by looking at you that you never took a drink in your life. Did you?’ I told him I hadn’t. ‘Sure you haven’t,’ he said. ‘A man could tell by the way it took that curve to throw you down that you belonged to the ladies’ temperance. You sure took a bust on the head, though. How do you feel now? Here, take another little shot of this tonic.’
“‘I think that’s whiskey,’ I said.
“And was it whiskey?”
“I don’t know. I have forgotten. Maybe I knew then. Maybe I knew what it was when I took another dose of it. But that didn’t matter, because it had already started then.”
“The whiskey had already started?”
“No. It. It was stronger than whiskey. Like it was drinking out of the bottle and not me. Because the men held the bottle up and looked at it and said, ‘You sure drink it like it ain’t whiskey, anyway. You’ll sure know soon if it is or not, won’t you?’
“When the train stopped where the ticket said, it was all green, the light was, and the mountains. The wagon was there, and the two men when they helped me down from the train and handed me the portfolio, and I stood there and I said, ‘Let her rip.’ That’s what I said: ‘Let her rip’; and the two men looking at me like you are looking at me.”
“How looking at you?”
“Yes. But you don’t have to believe. And I told them to wait while I got the whistle ”
“Whistle?”
“There was a store there, too. The store and the depot, and then the mountains and the green cold without any sun, and the dust kind of pale looking where the wagon was standing. Then we…”
“But the whistle,” I said.
“I bought it in the store. It was a tin one, with holes in it. I couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. So I threw the portfolio into the wagon and I said, ‘Let her rip.’ That was what I said. One of them took the portfolio out of the wagon and gave it back to me and said, ‘Say, doc, ain’t this valuable?’ and I took it and threw it back into the wagon and I said, ‘Let her rip.’
“We all rode on the seat together, me in the middle. We sung. It was cold, and we went along the river, singing, and came to the mill and stopped. While one of them went inside the mill I began to take off my clothes ”
“Take off your clothes?”
“Yes. My Sunday suit. Taking them off and throwing them right down in the dust, by gummy.”
“Wasn’t it cold?”
“Yes It was cold. Yes. When I took off my clothes I could feel the cold on me. Then the one came back from the mill with a jug and we drank out of the jug…”
“What was in the jug?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. It wasn’t whiskey. I could tell by the way it looked. It was clear like water.”
“Couldn’t you tell by the smell?”
“I don’t smell, you see. I don’t know what they call it. But ever since I was a child, I couldn’t smell some things. They say that’s why I have stayed down here for twenty-five years.
“So we drank and I went to the bridge rail. And just as I jumped I could see myself in the water. And I knew that it had happened then. Because my body was a human man’s body. But my face was the same face that had gone off inside my head back there on the train, the face that had horns and a beard.
“When I got back into the wagon we drank again out of the jug and we sung, only after a while I put on my underclothes and my pants like they wanted me to, and then we went on, singing.
“When we came in sight of the house I got out of the wagon. ‘You don’t want to get out here,’ they said. ‘We are in the pasture where they keep that bull chained up.’ But I got out of the wagon, with my Sunday coat and vest and the portfolio, and the tin flute.”
III
HE CEASED. He looked at me, quite grave, quite quiet.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Then what?”
He watched me. “I never asked you to believe nothing, did I? I will have to say that for you.” His hand was inside his bosom. “Well, you had some pretty hard going, so far. But now I will take the strain off of you.”
From his bosom he drew out a canvas wallet. It was roughly sewn by a clumsy hand and soiled with much usage.
He opened it. But before he drew out the contents he looked at me again. “Do you ever make allowances?”
“Allowances?”
“For folks. For what folks think they see. Because nothing ever looks the same to two different people. Never looks the same to one person, depending on which side of it he looks at it from.”
“Oh,” I said. “Allowances. Yes. Yes.”
From the wallet he drew a folded sheet of newspaper.
The page was yellow with age, the broken seams glued carefully with strips of soiled cloth. He opened it carefully, gingerly, and turned it and laid it on the table before me.
“Don’t try to pick it up,” he said. “It’s kind of old now, and it’s the only copy I have. Read it.”
I looked at it: the fading ink, the blurred page dated twenty-five years ago: MANIAC AT LARGE IN VIRGINIA MOUNTAINS PROMINENT NEW YORK SOCIETY WOMAN ATTACKED IN OWN GARDEN Mrs. Carleton Van Dyming Of New York And Newport Attacked By Half Nude Madman And Maddened Bull In Garden Of Her Summer Lodge. Maniac Escapes. Mrs. Van Dyming Prostrate. It went on from there, with pictures and diagrams, to tell how Mrs. Van Dyming, who was expecting a man from the office of her New York architect, was called from the dinner table to meet, as she supposed, the architect’s man. The story continued in Mrs. Van Dyming’s own words: I went to the library, where I had directed that the architect’s man be brought, but there was no one there.
I was about to ring for the footman when it occurred to me to go to the front door, since it is a local custom among these country people to come to the front and refuse to advance further or to retreat until the master or the mistress of the house appears. I went to the door.
There was no one there.
I stepped out onto the porch. The light was on, but at first I could see no one. I started to re-enter the house but the footman had told me distinctly that the wagon had returned from the village, and I thought that the man had perhaps gone on to the edge of the lawn where he could see the theatre site, where the workmen had that day begun to prepare the ground by digging up the old grape vines. So I went in that direction. I had almost reached the end of the lawn when something caused me to turn. I saw, in relief between me and the lighted porch, a man bent over and hopping on one leg, who to my horror I realised to be in the act of removing his trousers.
I screamed for my husband. When I did so, the man freed his other leg and turned and came toward me running, clutching a knife (I could see the light from the porch gleaming on the long blade) in one hand, and a flat, square object in the other. I turned then and ran screaming toward the woods.
I had lost all sense of direction. I simply ran for my life. I found that I was inside the old vineyard, among the grape vines, running directly away from the house.
I could hear the man running behind me and suddenly I heard him begin to make a strange noise. It sounded like a child trying to blow upon a penny whistle, then I realised that it was the sound of his breath whistling past the knifeblade clinched between his teeth.
Suddenly something overtook and passed me, making a tremendous uproar in the shrubbery. It rushed so
