Chapter VII: The Image of God

The story which I have to tell will be briefer than the others you have heard, but it is the story of twenty-three long, delusive years. It is the story of an ambition that was reaching up to Heaven when, like Babel’s tower, it succumbed to confusion, and fell crumbling to the earth.

My father, dying just after I became of age, left me a large, carefully invested fortune, and if I had acted in accordance with his last wishes I would have addressed myself to commercial pursuits, as he had done. But Art had enthralled my mind, and I made my home in Paris where I studied painting under several masters.

From the first, fortune favored me, and critics already were beginning to refer to me as the most promising painter that the New World ever had given to the old. My head was turned, and I aspired to climb to artistic heights that few men had been bold enough to try to scale.

I conceived the idea of a great painting that should be my masterpiece. In this the central figure was to be the Deity, Himself. For more than two years I sought a model for this wonderful figure, but my search was vain. My idea had its inception in the scriptural authority that “God created man in his own image.” I sought the perfect man. During this period I made hundreds of sketches, trying to evolve from many models points of perfection that might be embodied in an harmonious whole.

I had no suggestion from any of the old masters to aid me. Every deity that the world has worshipped has been, at some time and in some manner, represented by the reverent hands of sculptors and painters. But few Christian sculptors ever attempted to give form to Him who made man in His own image, and these few were content to imitate the ancient conceptions of Jove.

Late one New Year’s Eve, I knew that I had failed, so, collecting all the sketches I had made, I hurled them into my fireplace. Then, with a sharp knife, I went to the end of the studio where stood the great canvas, with its background partly painted, on which I had designed to place my conception of the wonderful image.

I mounted a stepladder, and was about to thrust the knife into the top of the canvas when a sound, coming to me from the hall, caused me to hesitate.

It was the cry of a new-born child!

I knew its parents. The father had died six months before this plaintive cry, even now, had reached my ears. He had been an unfortunate artist, and had left his widow so destitute that I was contributing to her support. She was nearly forty now, and, in her youth she had been very beautiful. But poverty and care had extinguished many of her former charms long before this, her first, child came into the world to share her life of misery.

A new idea now flashed into my mind, and, as I thought, I slowly descended the ladder.

Half an hour later, when I laid the gleaming knife upon my table, the canvas was still untouched by the blade, and in that still, grimy old studio it remains untouched at this very hour, for no foot has crossed the threshold since that fateful New Year’s Eve.

I took the infant from its dying mother’s arms, and before the first month of the new year was ended the babe was in the United States. Here I confided it to the care of a New England woman who, for two years, cared for it as if it had been her own.

I had been shooting and painting in the Adirondacks several years before, and, profoundly impressed by the grandeur of its great mountain fastnesses, I thought that somewhere among them it might be possible to find one which no human foot, unguided by mine, would tread for a quarter of a century.

I now determined to search for such a valley, and, taking with me Glenagassett, the most perfect type of Indian manhood I had ever met, I set out on my quest.

In course of time, we came to what is now known as Deadwood Valley. There I found a little natural cave, and across the front of this Glenagassett and I built a wall of logs. Then, returning to New York, I took the two-year-old child, and, retracing my steps through the mountains, I found myself again in the valley. Here I gave the child into the care of Glenagassett.

To the Indian I then confided my purpose. I told him that this child was Rayon Demain--“the beam of to-morrow”--that he was the son of the Great Spirit, himself, and that he should come to possess all the Great Spirit’s powers should he attain his twenty-third year without seeing the face of a woman, or exchanging words with any man whom I did not take to him myself. Amid these solitudes the child should be taught that he was lord of all, and that when the right hour came, his supremacy over nature and man would be fully proclaimed.

The boy, Rayon, was to be taught the language of the forest as Indians had been able to understand it. He should be impressed, too, with the belief that the storm, the waves and every living thing in the wilderness were daily beseeching him to exert in their behalf his god-like, dormant power.

I told the Indian also that not until the boy was ten years old would I see him again, but that at that time, when his forest education was done, I would bring other teachers.

All this was in accordance with a theory that I had formed--a theory that the human mind is the sculptor of the features and poise that express its meaning. In short, that if a man is to have the facial expression of a god, he must think as a god, and have god-like things to look upon.

When the workmen left the valley, Rayon and Glenagassett reentered it. While he was away the boy had seen no face other than that of the Indian.

When the lad was ten I visited him. I saw Glenagassett had done well. Whether Rayon talked, walked, ran, or swam in the dark lake, his grace, dignity and self-possession amazed me, and, always clean-minded and with more than even a proud man’s self-respect, he already had begun to develop the most remarkable beauty I ever had seen on a human face.

I then had a new and more spacious rock chamber finished, and I sent to Rayon teachers whom I could trust to carry out the delusion I had been so carefully fostering in his mind. Believing me to be a messenger of the Great Spirit, his father, he corresponded with me, reporting to me on what he had learned each day. The books, music and pictures I sent to him were carefully chosen, and were of a nature to encourage in him a belief that he was superior to the human race.

When the boy was eighteen I began to visit him more frequently. Amazed by the manner in which my theory was working out, I began to feel myself inferior to this strange youth, whose mind was dominated by a sense of power, and into whose heart no guile had ever entered. There were times when even I was half-tempted to share Glenagassett’s belief that the youth really possessed divine attributes.

At length, when the boy was twenty, I assured myself that I would have only three or four years more to wait, and that then the marvelous figure would at last find its place on the big canvas in my closed Parisian studio.

Clouds at last began to rise above the horizon, however. In the valley below Deadwood lake a woman established a summer home, and brought several servants with her. Glenagassett wanted to burn the log-house then, but, fool that I was, I forbade him to do so. I was beginning to be confident of Rayon’s own power now.

Rayon had just entered his twenty-second year when, on a visit to the valley, I learned that a beautiful young woman had passed through the mountains. The Indian feared she was going to live with Mrs. Seaver.

“Shall I kill her?” Glenagassett asked me, eagerly.

But--still a fool--I told him ‘no’--to wait and see.

One day, while I was sitting in the cavern, there came a violent storm. I rose, and, walking to one of the windows, I watched the tempest as it rocked and threshed the valley. When it was over I lay down and slept.

When I awoke a sweet, strange sound was coming to me through the window I left open. Rising quickly I hurried to the window and listened.

It was a love-song--sung by a woman whose voice, stealing through and over the silent wilderness, was as beautiful as an angel’s.

Hurrying down the shore, I ran like a madman toward the place from which the voice was rising--the very spot on which I stood when I first delivered the little Rayon into the keeping of Glenagassett.

It was a long, hard scramble that I had undertaken, and my way lay over soggy mounds, shifting stones and fallen trees. Branch after branch smote me as I ran, until, with my strength all spent, I was compelled to pause before I reached my destination.

The first song had ceased, then, after a pause, the voice of the singer rose again. She was singing “The Lost Chord.”

Once more I staggered on, and, when I came upon the singer, I saw that Rayon stood beside her in the moonlight, with a hand resting on one of her arms.

Despair suddenly gripped my heart as I realized that the woman was no less beautiful than her wondrous voice!

My effort to draw Rayon away was successful, but, all the way back to the cavern he strode ahead of me, gazing sullenly to the ground.

At the cavern entrance he turned.

“Are all the devils as fair as that?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“No, no,” I answered, gravely. “The fairest has been sent to tempt the strongest man.”

He looked at me long and steadily.

“If you have deceived me, you must not live longer, Nathan,” he said; then, as if thinking aloud, he added: “I will see, I will see.”

That night the cavern chambers were too narrow to hold my thoughts, so I went out into the valley, and for more than three hours I walked alone beneath the stars.

Returning to the cavern I woke Glenagassett.

“The women must leave the valley below,” I said.

“They shall go,” Glenagassett answered.

Not once on the following day did Rayon speak to me. At night he retired early to his chamber.

The following morning, when I saw Glenagassett, I said:

“The women are not gone.”

“They will go to-night,” he replied, gloomily.

I nodded, and passed on. That day Rayon started off alone, but the Indian followed him. In the evening Rayon came to me.

“Does the Prince of Evil always look like the pictures we see of him, Nathan?” he asked.

“I think so,” I answered. “But why do you ask me that?”

“Because I’ve seen him,” he muttered, thoughtfully. “He haunts her every night, and----”

“Haunts who?” I asked.

“The woman.”

“Well, may he take her, then!” I retorted, irritably.

“Do you think he will?”

“I have not the slightest doubt that he will get her eventually,” I muttered.

“The Prince of Darkness must be tamed,” he said, gloomily. “We’ll see to that--Glenagassett and I.”

Half-choked by emotions of anger and fear, I looked at him several moments, without speaking. Rayon was looking down the valley toward the stream through which the waters of Deadwood Lake pass to the valley below.

“You have been going to the log-house at night?” I asked.

“He is always there,” Rayon went on moodily, “and, night before last, I met him face to face. Nathan, what is fear? How does one feel, who has it?”

“He feels as you must never feel, Rayon,” I replied, looking at him wonderingly.

“Is it a shrinking feeling--a feeling that a man might have if some great eagle fastened its talons in his head and was jerking out all his thoughts? Is it a thing that traps his voice, and holds down his hands when he would raise them--that grips his feet like boggy places?”

“Yes--yes,” I faltered. “But----”

“Then I have felt it, Nathan,” he went on, gravely. “I have been a coward.”

“In Heaven’s name, Rayon!” I began, but, with one of his imperious gestures, he silenced me.

“For the last two nights, while you thought me sleeping, I have been in the other valley,” the young man said. “When I went there on the night I saw the woman, a strange thing happened. I had it in my mind to seize her and bring her here, where I might look at her and make her sing whenever it pleased me to hear her. But in the log-house there were many windows, and, while I stood in a shadow, wondering which might be the window of her room, I saw a figure that I took to be a man steal around the corner of the house. Leaving the shadow, I walked toward the figure. It turned, and, when I saw its features, I knew it was no man. It was the Prince of Darkness, himself.”

“Come--Rayon, Rayon!” I muttered, protestingly.

“It was he, and no other,” the young man said, with an appearance of the most unmistakable conviction. “And, as I looked at his grinning, triangular, black-bearded face, I felt that thing which, as I know now, was fear.”

“Did he speak?” I asked, sharply.

“Not there. For a long time--it may have been one minute or thirty, but I felt as if it would never end--he kept his gaze on mine. I could not tell whether he had expected me, or whether my coming had taken him by surprise. The evil smile on his hideous face revealed nothing. His awful eyes held me as a serpent’s holds a bird’s. Their beams burned like brands. Though he was smiling, no muscle of his face had moved. He stood like a thing of stone.”

Thrill after thrill passed over me. Was Rayon crazed, or had he, indeed, seen this hideous thing? A great chill smote me as I saw that drops of perspiration were gathering on the speaker’s brow. Ay, it was plain that fear had come to him, at last. For the first time, in many years, I remembered that he had had a mother. The creature I had labored so long to invest with divine attributes had woman’s blood in him, after all. He who created man in His own image made the first of our race All-Man. It was not until the first man learned to love a woman that there came into the world those strange hybrids who were to people it--men with some of the weaknesses of women, and women with some of those higher, and partly divine, attributes, with which God invested man.

After a pause, Rayon went on:

“At length the creature looked toward the open window he had been approaching when my footsteps attracted his attention. For a few moments, the fear passed from me, and, with my eyes, I tried to measure his strength. I saw that he was as powerful as I. I think I should have thrown myself upon him had not he turned again to me so soon. Then my will left me. He pointed to a dark, heavily timbered spot in the forest, just beyond the clearing. Like a child, I did his bidding, and, as I walked, I heard him following slowly.

“At last I heard his voice. It was so different from yours or Glenagassett’s--so much like my own--that it startled me.

“‘Let us stop here,’ he said.

“I halted, and, as I turned to him, I saw his back was to the narrow shaft of moonlight that came through a rift in the mass of foliage above. Of this I was glad, for, if we were to talk, I would not be compelled to see his face. But I soon knew he had not taken me to that dark place to hear me speak.

“‘Among these mountains there are many valleys, and no man is lord of all,’ he began. ‘The valley above is yours, to have and to hold until that man comes who shall cast you out. But this valley belongs to me, and I hold it by virtue of a stronger will than your own. When you leave it now, take with you the knowledge that, if you return to it, the old impious fool who so long has deluded you, will never again look on the living form of Rayon Demain. Now go.’

“As he spoke, he turned from me and moved quickly into the darker shadows that lay around us. But if he thought that I, standing in the moonlight, did not see him take a revolver from his pocket, he did not know that my eyes could penetrate far darker shades than those in which he stood to watch me.

“I was unarmed, and, having felt that thing which comes over forest animals when men approach them, I knew that you had lied to me--that, after all, I was only a man, and would die like a deer, or bear or stricken bird if this strange being discharged his weapon at me. And so I did his bidding. I came back to this valley, and, as I stole hither, like a scourged hound, I heard stealthy footsteps following me as I went. I knew they were the footsteps of him who had taught me how to fear. It was not until I entered the valley that I knew my enemy had turned back.

“But, though I had walked that night as one who did the bidding of a master, my thoughts were not those of a coward. Nor were they the thoughts of one who was still a fool. I knew many things I had not known before. I knew that I was only a man--that he whom you have just told me was the Prince of Darkness was only a man; that when my enemy had spoken of ‘the old impious fool’ who had so long deluded me, he meant you--you, whom I have known as Nathan--you who would have a creature who is capable of feeling fear believe himself to be a god.”

As he bent his gaze on me now, I shrank appalled from what I saw. His eyes were burning fires in which seemed to be generated the whiteheated hate that was trembling on his face.

The man whom I had striven to make god-like had become an angered demon. In the Babel I had reared the confusion of tongues already had entered. Fear and Hate had gained admission, and I, the trembling architect, felt as if it were too late for me to escape from the tottering walls before they fell.

For several moments, confronted by that great hate, I doubted not that the man it had mastered would take my life. But his will fought back the fires, and once more a look of sullenness settled on his face. Then he spoke as quietly as he had done before.

“And so, knowing these things, I knew that the devil-faced creature, who had triumphed over me while I was unarmed, would have to die--that I must kill him before I would be able to get the woman,” he went on. “That is why I went again to the log-house last night. Hour after hour I sat in the fringe of the forest, watching for the man I had gone there to slay. But he did not come. I would have taken the woman then, had I not believed that he might follow and take me unawares while I had her in my arms. But, whether or not he comes to-night, I will bring the woman here.”

Trembling with astonishment and anger, more than fear, I laid a hand on one of his broad shoulders.

“Rayon--Rayon--are you mad?” I gasped.

Drawing back, he laughed harshly. Then, with a sudden movement he reached forward and, grasping me with his powerful hands, he raised me from the ground and held me out at arms’ length, shaking me as if I were a child.

“Yes, mad--mad--mad--you old fool graybeard--mad!” he cried. “But I am not half so mad as you would make me.”

Then, with a wild, rough laugh, he flung me to the ground with such force that, writhing with pain, I could not draw a breath.

When, at last, quivering with physical pain and mental anguish, I scrambled to my feet, I saw I was alone.

Raising my voice, I feebly called the name of Glenagassett. There was no response. Where had the Indian gone? Had I not told him to keep Rayon always in his sight? As my strength returned to me, I called louder.

Then suddenly I remembered that when I last had seen the Indian, earlier in the day, he had told me that the women in the valley below would “leave to-night.”

I never had known Glenagassett to break his word. How he designed to get the women away I did not know. It was a subject that I had feared to think upon, but I knew the next morning would not find them there.

Glenagassett undoubtedly was in the lower valley, and Rayon was now well on his way thither. What would happen if they met?

Into one of my pockets I slipped a revolver, then, with long, eager strides, I set out along the path that led to the valley below.

My strides soon quickened to a run. Then, losing breath, I slackened my pace to a walk again. On and on I went--now walking, now running, until Deadwood Valley was well behind me. At length, however, I heard a sound that brought me to a halt.

It was the sound of a pistol shot, and, as I listened, others broke the stillness of the night.

I had not far to go, and, as I ran, I dropped the burden of my years. A mighty resolve had hardened my heart and steeled my sinews. As I pressed on, the revolver that I brought with me was in my hand. The woman who was the cause of all this mischief should die, even if every bullet that I might fire should pass through her body into the heart of Rayon Demain!

I heard the shouts of men, and I knew that it was no one-sided battle that was on. Glenagassett had told me that the old woman’s two menservants were well-seasoned forest men of the same hard stuff of which the Adirondack guides are made. I had seen these from a distance, and I knew that neither of them was the “devil-faced” man Rayon had encountered. Who this stranger was I was unable to guess.

Shots and shouts ceased suddenly, then I heard a woman’s shrieks. These encouraged me in the belief that, thus far, victory lay with Rayon--or Glenagassett. It was the triumph of Glenagassett for which I was hoping now.

Suddenly, a dull, red glare began to steal through and over the forest trees. The odor of burning wood was in my nostrils. A wild, quavering, exultant cry issued from my throat, for I knew that the victory lay with Glenagassett--that it was mine.

From the log-house now there came no sound. The cries of the frightened women were still, and the fire glow became so bright that I could see distinctly the outlines of the boughs under which I was passing. Among the trees and bushes, however, the inhabitants of the forest were astir. Birds and squirrels had scented that which they dread even more than man--the smoke of an Adirondack forest fire.

Suddenly I remembered that I was old. My strength was spent, and my heaving chest felt as if it were filled with molten metal. My limbs were palsied by the violence of the unwonted efforts I had required of them. As I tottered on, the revolver fell from the hand that had been grasping it. I stooped to pick it up. I saw it gleaming--gleaming at my feet. I touched it--fell, and felt the damp earth against my throbbing temples.

“I will sleep,” I murmured. “All is well. Glenagassett has triumphed, and the woman--the woman----”

Ay, I slept, and when I woke the sun was shining.

So stiff was I in every joint and muscle that even the slightest movement gave me pain. The atmosphere was laden with the dank, heavy odor of burnt wood, but I saw no smoke.

Rising weakly, I looked around me. I had fallen in the forest, near the edge of the clearing that surrounded the log-house. But now I saw that the log-house was gone. A mass of black, faintly smoking embers was all that was left of the picturesque little home that an honest, nature-loving old woman had built here in the wilderness beside the still smiling lake.

But the blackened fragments of the log-house and barn were not all I saw. Lying in the clearing there were other objects, and, as these met my view, I knew they were human sacrifices that had been laid before the altar of my ambition.

All unmindful of the pains that had been racking my body and limbs, I passed from one still form to another. The first I saw was that of poor, devoted Glenagassett. The two others apparently were the bodies of servants--one a man and the other a woman. Of Rayon, of the woman who had owned the log-house, and of the young woman who had been her guest there was no trace.

One thing, however, was certain, and the knowledge of this made me a coward. Murder had been done, and those who sought the persons who were responsible for the night attack might, even now, be on their way to this valley. Thus, in the sunset of my wasted life, I was nothing more than a wretched criminal, for, though I had not been present when these three hapless beings were slain, I was as responsible for their deaths as if they had fallen before the revolver I had taken with me to the spot.

Had Rayon succeeded in getting the young woman to the cavern, after all? Did he know that, whether he had done this or not, the law would seek him out and punish him? Should I not go to the cavern and tell him of his peril?

I shook my head.

No, neither Rayon nor the woman was anything to me now. If he still lived, he was young and I was old. I had failed in all things. Let him work out his destiny alone.

Beside the body of the manservant lay his rifle, and around the waist was a cartridge belt. After taking possession of these, I knelt down beside Glenagassett and took from one of his pockets the flint and steel with which, for many years, he had kindled all his fires. Then, after one long, last look toward Deadwood Valley, I plunged into the wilderness, nor did I emerge from it again until the songbirds had taken flight for the Southland, and the frost was causing the nuts to drop from the trees. When I returned to civilization, it was at a point far distant from those from which I had been wont to approach Deadwood Valley.

Since the day I found Glenagassett’s body, it has been only in my dreams that I have heard the voice of Rayon Demain. But I knew that he did not die in the Adirondacks. From time to time newspapers published accounts of efforts that had been made to capture him. At first, he was sought only as “the Adirondack murderer,” but later other crimes in distant parts of the country were laid to his charge. How a man with such a striking face and figure could succeed in escaping capture, I could not understand.

At length, however, newspapers reported a misadventure that befell him in the West, and through them I learned the name of one who was able to give me the details of the affair. That gentleman, replying to a letter which I wrote to him, told me a story which is little less remarkable than the one you have just heard from my lips. He is that guest who is known to you as the Duckhunter, and you doubtless soon will hear from him the strange facts he has to tell.

* * * * *

The eyes of all except two of the guests were turned toward the Duckhunter. While the Hypochondriacal Painter had been speaking, the Aeronaut had drawn her veil over her face again, and, from that moment, those who glanced toward her saw that not once was her gaze turned from the Gargoyle. As if conscious of this fact, the Gargoyle sat with his head bowed. His right arm rested on the table, and his right hand shielded his eyes and part of his face.

There was a little pause, then, as no one seemed inclined to speak, Westfall nodded toward the Duckhunter, who forthwith began his story.