"Please, how can I follow all these clues in pitch-darkness, without
ever having been near here before, and with only an indifferent pair of
headlights to tell me what is and what isn't a road? Besides, I think
it's going to storm pretty soon, and my car is an open one. It looks
as if I were in a bad fix if I want to get to Cape Girardeau tonight. The fact is, I don't think I'd better try. I don't like to impose, but
in view of the circumstances, do you suppose you could put me up for
the night? I won't be any trouble. Just let me have a corner to sleep
in till daylight, and I'm all right. I can leave the car in the road
where it is; wet weather won't hurt it." As I made my sudden request I could see the old man's face lose its
former expression of quiet resignation and take on an odd, surprised
look. "Sleep _here_?" He seemed so astonished at my request that I repeated it. "Yes, why not? I assure you I won't be any trouble. What else can I do? I'm a stranger hereabouts, these roads are a labyrinth in the dark, and
I'll wager it'll be raining torrents inside of an hour----"

This time it was my host's turn to interrupt, and as he did so I could
feel a peculiar quality in his deep, musical voice. "A stranger--of course you must be, else you wouldn't think of sleeping
here; wouldn't think of coming here at all. People don't come here
nowadays." He paused, and my desire to stay was increased a thousandfold by the
sense of mystery his laconic words seemed to evoke. There was something
queer about this place, and the pervasive musty smell seemed to cloak a
thousand secrets. Again I noticed the extreme decrepitude of everything
about me; manifest even in the feeble rays of the single small lamp. I felt woefully chilly, and saw with regret that no heating seemed to
be provided; yet so great was my curiosity that I still wished most
ardently to stay and learn something of the recluse and his dismal
abode. "You may stay if you really wish to; you can come to no harm that
I know of. Others claim there are certain peculiarly undesirable
influences here. As for me, I stay because I have to." With my curiosity still more heightened, I prepared to take my host
at his word, and followed him slowly upstairs when he motioned me to
do so. It was very dark now, and faint pattering outside told me that
the threatened rain had come. I would have been glad of any shelter,
but this was doubly welcome because of the hints of mystery about the
place and its master. For an incurable lover of the grotesque, no more
fitting haven could have been provided. *       *       *       *       *

There was a second-floor corner room in less unkempt shape than the
rest of the house, and into this my host led me, setting down his
small lamp and lighting a somewhat larger one. From the cleanliness
and contents of the room, and from the books ranged along the walls, I
could see that I had not guessed amiss in thinking the man a gentleman
of taste and breeding. He was a hermit and eccentric, no doubt, but
still had standards and intellectual interests. As he waved me to a
seat I began a conversation on general topics, and was pleased to find
him not at all taciturn. If anything, he seemed glad of someone to talk
to, and did not attempt to swerve the discourse from personal topics. He was, I learned, one Antoine de Russy, of an ancient, powerful
and cultivated line of Louisiana planters. More than a century ago
his grandfather, a younger son, had migrated to southern Missouri
and founded a new estate in the lavish ancestral manner; building
this pillared mansion and surrounding it with all the accessories
of a great plantation. There had been, at one time, as many as two
hundred negroes in the cabins which stood on the flat ground in the
rear--ground that the river had now invaded--and to hear them singing
and laughing and playing the banjo at night was to know the fullest
charm of a civilization and social order now sadly extinct. In front of
the house, where the great guardian oaks and willows stood, there had
been a lawn like a broad green carpet, always watered and trimmed and
with flag-stoned, flower-bordered walks curving through it. Riverside
(for such the place was called) had been a lovely and idyllic homestead
in its day; and my host could recall it when many traces of its best
period still lingered. It was raining hard now, with dense sheets of water beating against
the insecure roof, walls, and windows, and sending in drops through
a thousand chinks and crevices. Moisture trickled down to the floor
from unsuspected places, and the mounting wind rattled the rotting,
loose-hinged shutters outside. But I minded none of this, nor even
thought of my roadster outside beneath the trees, for I saw that a
story was coming. Incited to reminiscence, my host made a move to show
me to sleeping-quarters, but kept on recalling older, better days. Soon, I saw, I might learn why he lived alone in that ancient place,
and why his neighbors thought it full of undesirable influences. His
voice was very musical as he spoke on, and his tale soon took a turn
which left me no chance to grow drowsy. "Yes, Riverside was built in 1816, and my father was born here in 1828. He died young, so young I can just barely remember him. In '64, he was
killed in the war--Seventh Louisiana Infantry, C.S.A.--for he went
back to the old home to enlist. My grandfather was too old to fight,
yet he lived on to be ninety-five, and helped my mother bring me up:
good bringing-up, too, I'll give them credit. We always had strong
traditions, high notions of honor, and my grandfather saw to it that I
grew up the way de Russys have grown up, generation after generation,
ever since the Crusades. We weren't quite wiped out financially, and
managed to get on very comfortably after the war. I went to a good
school in Louisiana, and later to Princeton. Later on I was able to get
the plantation on a fairly profitable basis, though you see what it's
come to now. "My mother died when I was twenty, and my grandfather two years later. It was rather lonely after that; and in '85 I married a distant cousin
in New Orleans. Things might have been different if she'd lived, but
she died when my son Denis was born. Then I had only Denis. I didn't
try marriage again, but gave all my time to the boy. He was like me,
like all the de Russys, darkish and tall and thin, and with the devil
of a temper. I gave him the same training my grandfather had given
me, but he didn't need much training when it came to points of honor. It was in him. Never saw such high spirit--all I could do to keep him
from running away to the Spanish War when he was eleven! Romantic young
devil, too full of high notions--you'd call 'em Victorian, now--no
trouble at all to make him let the nigger wenches alone. I sent him to
the same school I'd gone to, and to Princeton, too. He was Class of
1909. "In the end he decided to be a doctor, and went a year to the Harvard
Medical School.