It Was a Frightful, Incredible Thing,
Found in the Amazon Valley
THE GRAY DEATH
UNWAVERINGLY, my guest sustained my perplexed and angry stare. Silently, he withstood the battering words I launched at him.
He appeared quite unmoved by my reproaches, save for a dull red flush that crept up and flooded his face, as now and then I grew particularly bitter and biting in my tirade.
At length I ceased. It was like hitting into a mass of feathers—there was no resistance to my blows. He had made no attempt to justify himself. After a momentous silence, he spoke his first word since we had entered the room.
"I'm sorry, my friend; more sorry than you can imagine, but—I couldn't help it. I simply could not touch her hand. The shock—so suddenly to come upon her—to see her as she was—I tell you, I forgot myself. Please convey to your wife my most abject apologies, will you? I am sorry, for I know I should have liked her very much. But—now I must go."
"You can't go out in this storm," I answered. "It's out of the question. I'm sorry, too; sorry that you acted as you did—and more than sorry that I spoke to you as I did, just now. But I was angry. Can you blame me? I'd been waiting for this moment ever since I heard from you that you had come back from the Amazon—the moment when you, my best friend, and my wife were to meet. And then—why, damn it, man, I can't understand it! To pull back, to shrink away as you did; even to refuse to take her hand or acknowledge the introduction! It was unbelievably rude. It hurt her, and it hurt me."
"I know it, and that is why I am so very sorry about it all. I can't excuse myself, but I can tell you a story that may explain."
I saw, however, that for some reason he was reluctant to talk.
"You need not," I said. "Let's drop the whole matter, and in the morning you can make your amends to Laura."
Anthony shook his head.
"It's not pleasant to talk about, but that was not my reason for hesitating. I was afraid you would not believe me if I did tell you. Sometimes truth strains one's credulity too much. But I will tell you. It may do me good to talk about it, and, anyhow, it will explain why I acted as I did.
"Your wife came in just after we entered. She had no yet removed her veil or gloves. They were gray. So was her dress. Her shoes—everything was gray. And she stood there, her hand outstretched—all in that color—a body covered with gray. I can't help shuddering. I can't stand gray! It's the color of death; Can your nerves stand the dark?"
I rose and switched off the lights. The room was plunged into darkness, save for the flicker of the flames in the fireplace and the intermittent flashes of lightning. The rain beat through the leafless branches outside with a monotonous, slithering swish and rattled like ghostly fingers against the windows.
"The light makes it hard to talk—of unbelievable things. One needs the darkness to hear of hell."
He paused. The swir-r-r of the rain crept into the stillness of the room. My companion sighed. The firelight shone on his face, which floated in the darkness—a disembodied face, grown suddenly haggard.
"A good night for this story, with the wind crying like a lost soul in the night. How I hate that sound! Ah, well!"
There was a moment of silence.
"It was not like this, though, that night when we started up the Amazon. No. Then it was warm and soft, and the stars seemed so near. The air was filled with scent of a thousand tropical blossoms. They grew rank on the shore.
"There were four of us—two natives, myself and Von Housmann. It is of him I am going to tell you. He was a German—and a good man. A great naturalist, and a true friend. He sucked the poison from my leg once, when a snake had bitten me. I thanked him and said I'd repay him some day. I did—sooner than I had thought—with a bullet! I could not bear to see him suffer."
The man sat there, gazing into the flames—and I listened to the dripping rain fingering the bare boughs and tap-tap-tapping on the roof above.
My friend looked up.
"I was seeing his face in the flames. God help him! . . . We had traveled for days—weeks—how long does not matter. We had camped and moved on; we had stopped to gather specimens—always deeper into that evil undergrowth. And as we moved on, Von Housmann and I grew close; one either grows to love or hate in such circumstances, and Sigmund was not the sort of man one would hate. I tell you, I loved that man!
"One day we struck into a new place. We had long before left the tracks of other expeditions. We trekked along, unmindful of the exotic beauty of our surroundings, when I saw our native, who was up ahead, stop short and sniff the air.
"We stopped, too, and then I noticed what the keener, more primitive sense of our guide had detected first."
"IT WAS an odor. A strange odor, indefinable and sickening. It was filled with foreboding—evil. It smelt—gray! I can not describe it any other way. It smelt dead. It made me think of decay—decay, and mould and—ugly things. I shuddered. I looked at Von Housmann, and I saw that he, too, had noticed it.
"'What is that smell?" I asked.
"He shook his head.
"'Ach, dot iss new. I haf not smelled it before. But—I do not lige it. It iss not goot. Smells is goot or bat—und dot is not goot. I say, I do not lige dot smell.'
"Neither did I. We went ahead, cautiously now. A curious sense pervaded the air. It puzzled me. Then it struck me: silence. Silence, as though the music of the spheres had suddenly been snuffed out. It was the utter cessation of the interminable chirping and chattering of the birds and monkeys and other small animals.
"We had become so accustomed to that multitudinous babel that is absence
