“When we came in sight of the house I got out of the wagon. ‘You dont 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. “Dont 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 near me that I could see its glaring eyes and the shape of a huge beast with horns, which I recognised a moment later as Carleton’s — Mr. Van Dyming’s — prize Durham bull; an animal so dangerous that Mr. Dyming is forced to keep it locked up. It was now free and it rushed past and on ahead, cutting off my advance, while the madman with the knife cut off my retreat. I was at bay; I stopped with my back to a tree, screaming for help.
“How did the bull get out?” I said.
He was watching my face while I read, like I might have been a teacher grading his school paper. “When I was a boy, I used to take subscriptions to the Police Gazette, for premiums. One of the premiums was a little machine guaranteed to open any lock. I dont use it anymore, but I still carry it in my pocket, like a charm or something, I guess.
Anyway, I had it that night.” He looked down at the paper on the table. “I guess folks tell what they believe they saw. So you have to believe what they think they believe. But that paper dont tell how she kicked off her slippers (I nigh broke my neck over one of them) so she could run better, and how I could hear her going wump-wump-wump inside like a dray horse, and how when she would begin to slow up a little I would let out another toot on the whistle and off she would go again.
“I couldn’t even keep up with her, carrying that portfolio and trying to blow on that whistle too; seemed like I never would get the hang of it, somehow. But maybe that was because I had to start trying so quick, before I had time to kind of practice up, and running all the time too.
So I threw the portfolio away and then I caught up with her where she was standing with her back against the tree, and that bull running round and round the tree, not bothering her, just running around the tree, making a right smart of fuss, and her leaning there whispering ‘Carleton. Carleton’ like she was afraid she would wake him up.”
The account continued:
I stood against the tree, believing that each circle which the bull made, it would discover my presence. That was why I ceased to scream. Then the man came up where I could see him plainly for the first time. He stopped before me; for one both horrid and joyful moment I thought he was Mr. Van Dyming. “Carleton!” I said.
He didn’t answer. He was stooped over again; then I saw that he was engaged with the knife in his hand. “Carleton!” I cried.
“ ‘Dang if I can get the hang of it, somehow,’ he kind of muttered, busy with the murderous knife.
“Carleton!” I cried. “Are you mad?”
He looked up then. I saw that it was not my husband, that I was at the mercy of a madman, a maniac, and a maddened bull. I saw the man raise the knife to his lips and blow again upon it that fearful shriek. Then I fainted.
IV
And that was all. The account merely went on to say how the madman had vanished, leaving no trace, and that Mrs. Van Dyming was under the care of her physician, with a special train waiting to transport her and her household, lock, stock, and barrel, back to New York; and that Mr. Van Dyming in a brief interview had informed the press that his plans about the improvement of the place had been definitely rescinded and that the place was now for sale.
I folded the paper as carefully as he would have. “Oh,” I said. “And so that’s all.”
“Yes. I waked up about daylight the next morning, in the woods. I didn’t know when I went to sleep nor where I was at first. I couldn’t remember at first what I had done. But that aint strange. I guess a man couldn’t lose a day out of his life and not know it. Do you think so?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I think too.”
“Because I know I aint as evil to God as I guess I look to a lot of folks. And I guess that demons and such and even the devil himself aint quite as evil to God as lots of folks that claim to know a right smart about His business would make you believe. Dont you think that’s right?” The wallet lay on the table, open. But he did not at once return the newspaper to it.
Then he quit looking at me; at once his face became diffident, childlike again. He put his hand into the wallet; again he did not withdraw it at once.
“That aint exactly all,” he said, his hand inside the wallet, his eyes downcast, and his face: that mild, peaceful, nondescript face across which a mild moustache straggled. “I was a powerful reader, when I was a boy. Do you
