When she paused Dreeme lit his pipe and the sharp flare of his match danced about the room. Martha Westcott’s cheeks were glowing with the ardor of her memories. She seemed to take on a girlish aspect as she spoke of her girlhood and her face reflected the seasons as she enumerated them. When she spoke of the winter her cheeks were as white as snow and when she described the summer they were flooded with rich blood that glowed through her pale skin. She was like some rare sensitive instrument reacting to the moods that flowed through her. Dreeme’s antagonism to her began to dissipate and a creeping interest manifested itself in his attitude, as, puffing upon his pipe, he leaned forward and listened to her recital. If she noticed this weakening on his part she gave no sign of it but continued to dwell among her memories wholeheartedly, snatching out of the past whatever came within the net of her words.
“Once,” she said, abruptly diverting the thread of her memories, “I was wandering about in the old house, poking into odd corners, opening forgotten chests, creeping under the stairs, investigating the numberless tiny closets that occupied so many curious places in the walls. It was a summer day and I can recall the buzzing flies that hovered about me and the sound of Jeffrey Westcott’s footsteps downstairs as he moved about the kitchen. I was running my hand along an upstairs fireplace, thrusting my fingers between the bricks when one of them moved. With an effort I pulled it out and discovered a hollow into which I could force my whole arm. I fumbled about and my fingers closed on something that felt soft. Drawing it out I discovered that I clutched an old book in a soft black leather cover, apparently a notebook for it was filled with a strange writing in archaic characters and symbols and a map. I was sitting on the floor investigating it when Jeffrey Westcott came upstairs. I could hear him walking behind me and pausing and looking over my shoulder. Suddenly he cried out, ‘Old Uriah’s black book!’ and snatched it from me. He retired to his room with it and passed the rest of the evening there. It was on that day that Jeffrey went mad. Old Uriah was my grandfather, Uriah Carrier. He. …”
“I know,” said Dreeme, removing his pipe from his mouth. He remembered Humphrey Lathrop’s description of the old sea-captain. A hunter of whales in the Pacific who had terrorized and robbed the natives of Tahiti. A blackbirder off the African Gold Coast. A man with the devil in his tobacco pouch.
“What was in Old Uriah’s black book?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I did not find out till years later,” she replied. “I know but I will not tell you. It is not part of my story.”
She dismissed it with a wave of her hand.
“Jeffrey Westcott changed from that day,” she said. “His relations to me changed. He was no longer the kindly guardian but a silent malicious man eaten up with a mad dream, with an idea, with a monstrous theory. We met and ate in silence and he would have nothing to say to me. A year or two after that the old house burned down. It was struck by lightning one day while Jeffrey was in the fields working and I was wandering by the river. I saw the smoke and flames rising in the dark stormy air and then the storm burst. But it was too late. There was nothing but a black gutted ruin after the rain cleared and the last ember expired. For a while I thought my past had gone up in fire and smoke and then I began to realize that houses may burn and people may die but the past is indestructible. We carry it about inside of us and nothing can smash it to pieces. Jeffrey was not too demoralized by the fire. He said, ‘It was time. It is a symbol. It means there is nothing for me to find here until I have studied there.’ He decided to go away. I remember the long ride to Boston, the wait for the boat, and the longer trip to Hamburg. It was in Hamburg that Jeffrey married me. He said that it made things easier, that it smoothed the difficulties of traveling. It was in Germany that I grew to maturity, grew to a lonely maturity while Jeffrey dragged me from town to town and city to city, wherever there was an old library or an old withered man full of insane notions. He had been in Germany before, had studied there as he had studied in other parts of Europe and Asia. He left me much by myself and I read a great deal, all sorts of quaint old books, philosophy, poetry, history, and the natural sciences. At first I loved Germany. The little towns with their quaint houses delighted me and the homeliness of German life soothed me. As time went on, however, all this became an old story and a vast weariness descended on me. I knew that I did not love Jeffrey Westcott and he knew that he did not love me. I grew in upon myself, became silent and morbid, passed my days revolving the various thoughts that came to me out of old books. A reticence fell over me. I could not talk to people. I was eaten up by a desire to be myself and I knew that I could not be myself as long as Jeffrey Westcott dominated me. His will grew stronger and stronger as the days passed and I could feel
